By Jeff Burd

I possess a dual baseball citizenship that triggers many sideways looks when I announce it. My fellow baseball junkies don’t understand how I can cheer for both the Cubs and the Brewers when they are division rivals. Some dismiss it as a result of living in Gurnee, which is almost the midpoint between Wrigley Field and Miller Park. The truth is that my burden can be traced back to a moment of transcendence I experienced in Milwaukee on July 5, 2004.

I was in my fourth season as a fan of baseball and of the Cubs as I settled into a seat behind home plate that day. I loved the Cubs, and had a pretty easy tenure with them up to that point. They had been a playoff hopeful my first season, a miserable mess the next, and then ran deep into the playoffs nine months previous.

Matt Clement was on the mound for the Cubs. He was one of the remaining starting pitchers saddled with keeping the team afloat until Kerry Wood and Mark Prior returned from their residencies on the DL. Ben Sheets was pitching for the Brewers. I was concerned about his status a Cub killer; he had compiled a 5-2 record against them in three seasons.

I blanched when “Jose Macias” flashed on the scoreboard as lineups were announced. He and his anemic .260 batting average would supplant Moises Alou in left field and bat second. Slugger Aramis Ramirez had been replaced by .262-hitting Ramon Martinez and the frustratingly inconsistent youngster Cory Patterson was batting fifth behind Derrek Lee. It wasn’t the first time that season I was questioning Dusty Baker’s judgment; in fact, it felt like it had become instinctual to do so since the Cubs’ failure in the NLCS.

The Brewers’ struck quickly when Craig Counsell unwound his corkscrew stance and popped a pitch over the fence in right center to grab a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first. The Cubs missed their first chance to strike back by stranding Macias on third the next inning. The same happened with Todd Walker the next inning, and they managed an early-game hat trick of wasted chances by leaving Michael Barrett on second base in the 4^th.

Nothing changed by the top of the 8th, courtesy of the twelve Ks Sheets hurled to help the Brewers hold on to their 1-0 advantage. Clement was lifted for a pinch hitter as the Cubs faced Sheets’ relief. Dusty put his faith in Tom Goodwin’s .214 BA instead of turning to Alou and his reputation as a feared clutch hitter who could deliver in critical situations.

As I watched Goodwin dig in, I thought about the game up to that point. The Brewers' solid play impressed me. They did all the little things you need to do to win games. Ned Yost had his team playing like a highly disciplined squad in the mold of Arizona, Anaheim, and Florida-- teams that had won World Series championships since I started following baseball. It was like they had planned this game as their coming out party to announce their legitimacy to the dismissive Cubs fans.

Goodwin struck out swinging. Walker did likewise. But then the Cubs rallied and had a runner on second base. Had Alou batted, it was likely that he too would have been on base or would have scored during the rally. When Lee struck out, wasting the Cubs’ fourth chance to score, Brewer Nation roared. I sank into my seat, shook my head, and sighed. Like all the other fans Cubs fans. Dusty leaned against the dugout rails throughout the inning, shifting his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other.

Dusty didn’t try to manufacture any more opportunities for the Cubs. He could have called on Alou with two outs in the ninth, but instead allowed Macias to hack futilely at the first three pitches he saw to become the seventeenth Cub to strike out.

I muttered a stream of profanities as I walked among jubilant Brewer fans in the parking lot. They were singing the praises of Ned Yost. His team played tough defense behind their pitchers. They made a single run stand up, despite striking out eleven times and managing only three hits. They were easily the best team on the field. It was all true; I realized that the Brewers were playing the type of ball I loved to watch. They had won my respect by doing so.

As for Dusty, he did nothing more than confirm what Chicago sports writers had been saying. He couldn’t manage tight games. He didn’t preach fundamentals. His players had no plate discipline. He wore out his pitchers. He couldn’t develop young talent. I had no respect for him, but could no more abandon the Cubbies than I could a close friend who had made some poor decisions. I decided that if I wanted to be happy watching baseball, I would have to do what most sports fans would consider unthinkable-- especially Chicago fans in regard to Wisconsin teams-- and adopt a division rival. Respect trumped my regional obligations, and that was enough for me to make my decision.

*

I’ve cheered for both teams with equal enthusiasm the past four years. The tension that would seem to naturally evolve because of my dual citizenship has been non-existent, probably because the teams have never slugged it out with something at stake late in the season. That is all going to end over the next two months. When the Brewers inked CC Sabathia as a summer rental, they elevated what had been a tepid regional conflict into an arms race in which the Cubs immediately fell behind, despite the addition of Rich Harden. If he is able to impact the Cubs the same way Sabathia already has the Brewers, then my teams will be engaged in a full-blown divisional war late this season that could rival the intensity of Bears-Packers.

My friends have grilled me about what I’m going to do since the Cubs and Brewers will play ten more games before all is said and done, including four this week and three the last weekend of September at Miller Park. They dream up scenarios involving bean balls and take-out slides and extra-inning grinds and the possibility of the rivals meeting in the playoffs. They press me for answers in emails and text messages and during phone conversations and at parties and over beers as we watch games. They don’t understand that there is room enough for me to love both teams, that I don’t consider my baseball allegiances to be a monogamous marriage from which I can never stray or even be divorced, that I never stopped loving the Cubs and that I’ve been as happy as every other Northsider to see them return to playing winning baseball. I know they won’t cease their assault until I tell them the truth: if it comes down to game seven of the NLCS, I’ll be cheering wholeheartedly for the Cubs. Of course. You never forget your first love.

Jeff Burd works as a high school Reading Specialist when he is not writing and watching baseball. He is in the Master of Creative Writing program at Northwestern University.

By Donald G. Evans

I’m sitting here in the very last row of the upper deck at Wrigley Field, on a night I’d swear was February if I hadn’t confirmed May 27 with my calendar. The wind is howling. I’m wearing long underwear and leather gloves, not to mention a flannel shirt, sweatshirt and sweater, and still: freezing. Soriano hits one ball like a shot out to left, and when it leaves the bat I’m thinking, “Waveland Avenue,” but it blows across the diamond and back toward home until, finally, Fukudome catches the ball just behind second base.

Kosuke Fukudome bobblehead giveawayFukudome. The reason I’m here (other than the fact that it was 80 degrees yesterday and I assumed today would be at least in that vicinity) is Fukudome. More precisely, the Fukudome bobblehead given away to the first 10,000 fans. Only: no Fukudome bobblehead. My ticket said, “7:05 p.m.,” which I assumed meant, “7:05 p.m.,” but when I arrived at around 5:30—plenty early to claim my prize—they were ALL GONE. Turns out the game, without my consent, had been moved up an hour to accommodate an ESPN broadcast.

I’m bitter. I’m a middle-aged man, and I can’t help but look with envy, lust and desire at all the Fukudome bobbleheads propped on empty seats and sticking out of tote bags and lying between legs. This has ruined my night, and this wind isn’t helping. I want a Fukudome bobblehead; I need a Fukudome bobblehead; I have to have a Fukudome bobblehead.

I can tell you precisely how it started, but not why. It was two years ago. I remember, because Dusty was two, and I know the season hadn’t yet started because parking was insanely easy. Right in front of the fire station; spitting distance to the entrance. I took Dusty over to look at the big red fire engine parked out front, and then a fireman let Dusty play behind the wheel for a bit. His day was made, but I had bigger fish to fry.

It had been billed as Wrigley Field Garage Sale, and while there was no actual garage it worked, as far as I could tell, on the garage sale principle. The Cubs had some junk they wanted to unload; I had a few bucks earmarked for their junk.

At this point, I didn’t collect memorabilia. No signed baseballs, no old scorecards, no vintage newspaper clippings. My baseball cards were long gone. I didn’t even own a Sandberg or Buckner or Lee jersey. But I love the Cubs and I love garage sales, and I figured the intersection between the two could only be good. Unfortunately, my two-year-old son, as two-year-old sons are wont to do, set a languishing pace. He apparently didn’t understand the concept of Early Birds. Between that, and the dalliance in the fire station, the good stuff at the good prices, if there ever was such a thing, was long gone. Still, it was worth poking around a bit.

I’ve always been a collector. In addition to the usual—baseball cards, beer cans, superhero dolls—I even, as a kid, collected soap wrappers. There was something that appealed to me about the wide variance, yet finite number, of some category. You knock out Dove and Dial and Crest right away, but as you drill deeper you find there’s Camay and Irish Spring and Lifebuoy. There’s something, I don’t know, satisfying about tracking down a hard-to-get example, or just stumbling across something unusual, and it’s sort of exciting to display them all together in anticipation of somebody acknowledging, “Wow! There are a lot of different kinds of soap that I didn’t even know about,” or “Man, that’s a lot of soap!”

So while Dusty busted up an aisle filled with stuffed animals and giveaway baseball cards, I browsed. I didn’t know what I was looking for. My garage sale philosophy is that you don’t go after need, but best available. You take the good deal and decide what to do with it later. When I first spotted the bobblehead set, it didn’t strike me as that exact something you know when you see. It was really only the price. Ten bucks for three: Sandberg, Farnsworth and Sosa. Two would-be Hall-of-Fames and an asshole with a blazing fastball that had been run out of town. Not a bad start. I thought to myself, I truly thought this, “Those would look good in Uncle Rick’s hot dog stand.” My Uncle Rick has a Chicago-style hot dog stand in Mesa, Arizona, and the place is loaded with Chicago stuff, especially Chicago sports stuff. A couple Cubbie bobbleheads around the relish tray would be a nice addition. I got them.

In my adult life, I’d mostly channeled my collecting energy into books, reserving some relish for Margaret’s tea cozy collection. When I was a boy collecting baseball cards, I went hard after complete sets. I liked getting stars, but I had more enthusiasm for tracking down the missing pieces: the Joe Lovittos, the Fritz Petersons, the Fred Schermans. It became an obsession, going after those last bits: buying packs, stealing packs, trading doubles.

I looked at my bobbleheads in the light of my living room. I had been trying to decide—really—whether to ship them off to Arizona now, or deliver them myself when I visited there later in the month. I took Sosa out of the box, just to see. I set him on the mantle above my fireplace. I excavated Sandberg and then Farnsworth from the packaging and put them on either side of Sosa. Looked kind of cool.

At this point, there was a subtle shift in my thinking. Dusty would, one figured, soon be a Cubs fan, and wouldn’t he appreciate a head start on a little collection like this? I’d keep these three bobbleheads—it’s crazy, anyway, to put these things in a hot dog stand, where anybody could bump into them, CRACK!—and maybe add a few key pieces to the set. When he got old enough, I’d turn them over.

I hopped on Ebay, just to peak. Man! Santo, Jenkins, Grace, Banks—those were all out there. Greg Maddux in a Cubs uniform, yes. Dusty Baker. Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. I obviously needed to get busy. Now, part of collecting, to me, is to shrewdly secure the desired pieces—meaning, either get them as a giveaway, trade for them, or buy them at good prices. Any collection (well, the soap wrapper collection was probably never going to appreciate), you want to it to be more valuable over time, and so you can’t pay top dollar. A bobblehead’s just not going to go through the roof, even if you sit on it ten or twenty years. Besides, there’s no challenge in just plunking down the cash, BAM!—if you were willing to do that, you just get them all and be done with it. Good deals: that was definitely part of it.

My niece Brianne had Santo sitting on a bookcase at home, and when I made a subtle inquiry she said, “Take it.” Good deal? I think so. The memorabilia shop on Addison and Clark was having a fire sale on Dusty Baker. Check. There were dozens of Kerry Woods and Mark Priors on Ebay, and the combination of availability and depressed value (both pitchers were at this time doing towel drills somewhere in Arizona) made them a steal. Check, check. Somebody on Craigslist was unloading a Jenkins at a fairly reasonable price, especially when you considered: it was signed.

Wait: signed bobbleheads. Signed…bobbleheads. Ron Santo was doing a fifteen-buck-a-throw signing at a card shop on the North Shore, and I was going out that way anyway. I dropped the bobblehead off, picked it up a few days later with Ronnie’s scrawl on the pinstriped leg. How great was this! Now, not only were there all these great bobbleheads to run down—many of them limited edition numbers passed out at games—but now the collection had a new level of difficulty. You couldn’t buy these even if you wanted to. You couldn’t get these on Ebay; nobody on Craigslist was trying to extort you for them; you could go to ten thousand garage sales and flea markets without so much as a sniff of one. I mean, who gets their bobbleheads signed? Meaning, if I lived long enough, I would have the only truly complete collection of signed Chicago Cubs bobbleheads known to man. Santo, Jenkins, Ramirez, Lee, Sandberg, and so on. (There is no Billy Williams bobblehead, which begs the question, “What’s the benchmark for getting your own bobblehead?)

Last season, the collection kicked into high gear. I was at Wrigley Field to get my Ramirez, Lee, Zambrano and Barrett; I traded a guy my extra Barrett for Soriano, a different guy my extra Lee for Pinella. (Tip: When you go to a Bobblehead Day, only go with somebody NOT INTERESTED in his or her bobblehead, like your wife). Meanwhile, the Peoria Chiefs were giving away Jody Davis. How far is Peoria from Oak Park, anyway? Couldn’t be too far.

I have no space for these bobbleheads. I’ve got some displayed on makeshift shelves around my makeshift office; a lot are stored in a trunk. The dream is, someday soon we’re going to build a two-story garage, with the second floor being my writing loft, and in that writing loft will be bobbleheads (Cubs bobbleheads) (signed Cubs bobbleheads) as far as the eye can see. I told myself they were going to go to Dusty when he got old enough, but who’s to say when that will be? Besides, I’ve got to have something to leave in my will.

Only here I am, no Fukudome. Between shivers, maybe even mid-shiver, I’m imagining that writing loft with all those signed Cubs bobbleheads, and I can see, I can just see, the big gaping hole that should be, but isn’t, filled by that Fukudome bobblehead. I walk down the ramp to go to the bathroom and get my circulation going, and as I do I spot two boxed bobbleheads lying, relatively unguarded, under a seat. The perfect crime reveals itself to me. Remember the bowler hat scene in the Thomas Crown affair? Dozens and dozens of guys in bowler hats and trench coats, carrying briefcases and scattering in every direction. The perfect crime, because the actual thief and all his look-alikes are indistinguishable. I’m thinking of that same scene, only with Fukodume bobbleheads—identical Fukdume bobbleheads—spraying every which way. This isn’t a serious thought—I hope not, at least—but it is a thought. Who would question me? I went to Fukudome Bobblehead Day, and I came home with a Fukudome bobblehead. Right? Besides, this is a dubious moral position: the difference between this person, and not me, coming to own this bobblehead—and not one but two bobbleheads, probably only to be sold on Ebay anyway—is razor thin.

I choose, instead, to offer to buy the extra Fukudome bobblehead, and when I get turned down I’m a marked man. Now I’m the guy without the Fukudome bobblehead looking for a Fukudome bobblehead, and the whole Thomas Crown Affair scenario is blown.

I return to my seat, a freezing, Fukudome bobbleheadless father whose moral compass, in deed if not thought, is intact. Worthless trinkets, but ones I prize, and there’s no telling where, when or how this will all end.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others, and he will soon have a story appearing in the Xavier Review.

By Dan Long

I am writing this from my apartment right behind the left field foul pole as I wait for batting practice to begin on an almost cloudless Saturday morning. Watching the hustle and bustle of the workers, seeing the anticipation of the fans already waiting in line three hours before game time, it makes me think of the day I came here by myself for the first time.

Hey, Hey by Will ByingtonThere we were. It didn’t matter whether the Cubs were good or bad, or who they were playing, or what the weather was like. We were going to see our favorite team, in the coolest of places, and we were going by ourselves.

I’d been waiting for this day a long time. For years we’d visit my favorite place, six kids in tow, making our once or twice yearly pilgrimage to where baseball was king and played right there in a city neighborhood.

And that was awe-inspiring to a kid growing up in a farm community some 70, but seemingly millions, of miles from the big city. So the few family trips to the big place were always a treat. Sure, we always sat far, far away from the action, bringing our lunches (peanut butter and jelly since I hated everything else), maybe getting a vendor’s Pepsi. But some day I knew I would come to this hallowed place and sit up close to the action. Now I had my chance.

I was going to Wrigley Field and I was going to sit in the box seats. Box seats. No parents, no crappy rides in cramped cars with too many family members to remember, no sitting in overpriced parking lots waiting three hours so we could leave. Just me and a buddy on a summer afternoon, going to the place we always wanted to see. By ourselves.

We were 13, barely teens, and for some reason our parents trusted us. I couldn't imagine parents today letting their children go on such a Huck Finn adventure into the big city, but times were different then. We rode the Chicago North Western into the city, then hopped on the El. Once on the El, the trip should have been a breeze. We'd gotten off at Addison, and should have been looking up at the Wrigley scoreboard. But it was the wrong Addison stop. We'd taken the Brown Line instead of the Red and had to hoof it a ways to get to our destination.   

Eventually we made it and took our box seats down the left field line near the Cubs bullpen. We wanted just one thing, the one thing every kid who goes to a baseball game wants. We wanted to snag a foul ball and take it home.

Be careful what you wish for. During batting practice we were open targets. We found ourselves ducking to protect ourselves. At one point, Cubs reliever Donnie Moore even gave us a “Look out!” warning. But we didn't get the ball. It plunked some kid in the row behind us and his mom won the scrum under our seats. So close, but still no ball. I was sure that we were going to strike out and go home empty-handed.

But then the baseball gods smiled upon me minutes later when slugger Greg "Bull" Luzinski hit a screaming liner. It was headed my way. There was no way I was going to blow a second chance. This one was mine. I was one of the better Little Leaguers in my town, and I could handle a line drive coming my way – even without a mitt. No problem.

I reached one hand out over the brick wall and SMACK, the ball hit my bare hand but then bounded away onto the field and ended up near the warning track at the left field wall. I'd missed it. Just about all of the fans nearby asked if I was okay. They'd heard that painful sound. But, to me, the real sting was losing the ball that should have been mine.

Two golden opportunities had been blown. I was all but certain that I'd never be given a third shot. Until a soft pop-up off the bat of Sam Mejias landed in the section with the folded-up seats next to us. The race was on. I ran. And when I got there, I couldn't believe it, but I was the first one there. I bent down and yanked it out from underneath the seat. Finally, I had a ball. I'd redeemed myself for the Luzinski error.

And the game hadn't even begun. This was all batting practice. My buddy John and I congratulated ourselves and showed off our ball to anyone who would look at it. 

The thing about getting a ball is that it gives you not only a sense of pride but also a new purpose. It's no longer just enough to have gotten the ball. You want it autographed. I suppose it's greedy, but it's only natural for a kid to see the white of that baseball and start thinking of all the room for signatures on it.

I wasn't having much luck until journeyman catcher Barry Foote gave the nod and I tossed him the ball to sign. Then I saw young Cubs reliever Bill Caudill stretching on the side. He didn't show much interest in my request for his autograph but eventually he caved in and I tossed him the ball. Problem was, I misjudged the distance and the toss was a good four to six feet behind him. As it rolled away from my intended target, a Phillies player (I don’t remember who) picked up the ball and was ready to toss it back to the infield. Nnnnooooooo! This was the end of my life as I knew it. We all dream of getting that foul ball and I had lived that dream, gotten the ball signed, and now I was watching it being thrown away.

My heart was sinking fast, but then Caudill saved the day and my ball. He got it from the Phillie, signed it and tossed it back. I would forever be a fan of Bill Caudill, who would go on to become an All-Star closer for the Seattle Mariners. 

It's funny, but I don’t even remember who won that game. Sometimes it's not the game that is important but what can happen to a 13-year old kid at that game. I'll never forget that game, or that ball, or Bill Caudill.  It was one of the most memorable games of my life, even though there was nothing memorable about the game itself.

Since then, I've been fortunate to snag a lot more balls at games. It helps to have a roommate who works for the Cubs and gets me into some of the best seats in the park. Every time I sit in one of those prized seats, I look around to see where the kids are, the kids that look like I did on that one memorable day. I don't need the ball any more. I'd rather see the look on a kid's face when I put it in his glove. I know that feeling, because I once felt it, and there aren't many better feelings for a young baseball fan.

I think of that day every day there’s a ballgame and try never to take this for granted. Most every other team -- save for Boston and a few others – built their parks in far-away mall-type areas accessible via many expressways. People have to drive for hours to go to a place in the middle of nowhere. I live 460 feet from home plate. I can actually see some of the field during the games without ever leaving my living room. It’s a pretty incredible sight. 

Everybody asks me, Doesn’t it get old living there with all the hassles, the parking situation, and the drunks stumbling around after the games? Doesn’t it bother me?

I still have the ball…

Dan Long has spent the better part of the last 20-some years working as a sports, music and web journalist for various outlets in Chicagoland; he still does freelance work. Since moving to the city proper in May of 1989, he's never lived more than a mile from Wrigley Field so he knows what it's like to live and die the life of a Cubs fan many times over. Dan is coordinating a Cubs crawl that takes place June 28 ( www.cubcrawl.com).

By Randy Richardson

I sift through my collection of baseball memorabilia with the intensity of Indiana Jones digging for an ancient artifact. Trading cards. Game giveaways. News clippings. They've all been stowed away in a plastic bin that rests under my underwear drawer. They represent the memories of a past that I cling to for reasons that I can’t adequately explain. All I know is that I can’t let them go. Some I’ve had in my possession since I played Little League. To professional sports hobbyists, they probably would have little value: They haven't been hermetically sealed in protective casings and, thus, show the stains of time.

Marla Collins, Cubs ballgirl 1982-1986One day this collection will be my son’s, and I hope that he will find in it something that will make him feel the same way I felt about baseball. Maybe he will find in it the kid that I used to be.

But there’s one treasure in it he can’t have, at least not until he’s mature enough to understand it, and it is what I search for today.

I am alone in the house, except for the Siamese cat that sits on the floor next to me, curiously watching over my every move with a tilted head that seems to ask, “What the hell are you doing?” Damn cat.

An army of baseball cards surrounds me. Tony Oliva flanks my right side. Jose Cardenal is at my rear. Boog Powell holds guard at my left knee.

I've undertaken this excavation not to find a baseball card but another piece of my baseball past, a gift from a law school roommate that I've never let anyone else see. I know it’s in here: somewhere.

After ten minutes of fruitless searching, my patience runs thin. I dump the entire bin's contents on the floor. A foot-high mountain of baseball memorabilia encircles me. The cat looks at me as if I've lost my marbles. Using both arms as plows, I separate the pile in two. That’s when I catch glimpse of it, plain white poster paper, unblemished except for an old piece of cellophane tape on it, evenly divided into fours.

Even though I know I'm alone, except for the scrutinizing eyes of my cat, I self-consciously look around before unfolding it with the care one would give to opening a long lost treasure map. I sense myself blushing when I finally do see what, or perhaps more appropriately, who, I've been looking for.

It's her, alright. Make no mistake about it. She's supine on pink satin sheets and wearing a gold bracelet, a turquoise scarf – or is it wrapping paper, I can't tell – and matching turquoise loop earrings. And nothing else.

She is Marla Collins, who for five years in the 1980s kept me watching Cubs home games on WGN-TV even in the worst of times. From 1982 to 1986, my college years, she was the Cubs ballgirl and she would dress up for home games in a shrunken Cubs uniform that left little to the imagination. Her job was to shag foul balls and to keep the home plate umpire's pockets stuffed with baseballs. My eyes usually weren't on the game. They were on her. She had become what Farrah Fawcett and Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter had been for me during high school – a fantasy.

I can't adequately explain why I wanted to shag this ball-shagger. She was of course beautiful, with fiery red hair and a curvaceous body, but there was more to it than that and I think it had less to do with her and more to do with the uniform, a confession that I am a little uncomfortable about.

The late, great Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray was one of Collins' biggest fans and would often be distracted from the game by her. Some viewers found this habit of his annoying if not disturbing. But it was what made Harry different from most every other sports broadcaster out there. He was genuine and never pretended to be anything other than what he was. He saw in Marla Collins what I saw in Marla Collins.

On one unseasonably cold spring day, Harry notices Marla is dressed for the weather and not in her usual "hot pants". Without thinking, he utters, "Hey, we see Marla Collins without shorts for the first time." (Listen to the audio clip from the WGN Radio archives.)

Marla Collins, Playboy magazine September 1986The Cubs fired Marla Collins in the middle of a dismal 1986 season after she posed nude for Playboy magazine. According to Chicago Tribune columnist Fred Mitchell, she was fired for breaking the "family-oriented spirit" of the Cubs. Playing lousy baseball apparently didn't wreck that family-oriented spirit, as all of the players kept their jobs despite a 5^th place finish in the NL East that year with a dismal 70-90 record.

Mike Royko, the late Tribune columnist, wrote of Collins' dismissal: "Of course it's hypocritical. But hypocrisy is the very backbone of our sexual moral standards. Many of our most outstanding bluenoses are secret lechers."

It is ironic that the Cubs hired Collins and put her in the shortest of shorts, and then fired her for taking them off.

I look at that nude picture of Collins and another picture of her dressed in that shrunken Cubs uniform, and they don't seem all that different to me. The reality was that I'd seen that nude picture of her long before she posed for it. That was the fantasy.

Randy Richardson, author of Wrigleyville murder-mystery Lost In The Ivy, is a Regular Loser. His work has recently been anthologized in Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul and Humor for the Boomer's Heart.

By Christine Sneed

In my family, baseball season hasn’t truly arrived if there isn’t a dog in the house cowering under a bed. First, there was Zip, a curly-tailed, snowy-furred, German Shepherd and Husky mix who had a fairly high tolerance for my father’s curses and lamentations whenever the Cubs were blowing a lead, which in the ‘80’s when I was a kid, they often were. As the game grew darker and the once-reassuring lead was piddled away with pop-ups and double plays, my father grew louder and more disconsolate. Eventually Zip would pack it in, leave her uneasy vigil in the green bean bag chair we kept for her in the living room next to the TV, and head upstairs, soft white ears flattened against her head. There she would stay until my mother coaxed her back downstairs with a treat and the soothing voice she has perfected in her long career as a veterinarian, this voice as close as any of us could come to an all-clear sign. Zip would nervously descend the stairs on my mother’s heels an hour or so after the game had ended, after my father’s heart had stopped its frantic hammering and the ringing in our ears had partially subsided.

Chicago Cubs Dog Bowl by Affordable PetableZip has been gone since 1989, and it took my parents almost nine years to adopt another dog. Perhaps my father worried about the damage baseball season could do to a creature who, as far as we know, has no capacity to reason through the Cubs-related auditory assaults and recognize that it isn’t the target of these outbursts. Eventually, however, my dad backed down, his vulnerability to cute dogs too strong to withstand the ambush my mother planned for his birthday in 1997 when she appeared with Lily on a leash, a birthday bow on her collar. Lily is an excitable and very smart Border collie, peppy where Zip was sanguine, a worrier and sometimes a moper, but also a tireless fetcher of balls and stuffed frogs and geese and woolly sheep, a whole assortment of baby toys the pet industry has convinced us normally sensible people that our dogs must have. My father, in any case, was determined to control his anguished outbursts during baseball season and overall, he has been much calmer, but Lily’s tolerance level is close to zero when it comes to any man-made shrieks and shouts. After the first rumblings, very minor ones compared to previous living-room storms, she is either trying to crawl under my mother’s feet, or else upstairs under my parents’ bed, waiting for the weather to clear. Sometimes you can hear her pacing, her rabies and ID tags jingling, a nervous music she also makes during thunderstorms and Fourth of July fireworks.

It is a good thing she wasn’t around during the era of Leon Durham, Ron Cey, Lee Smith, and Ryne Sandberg. That playoff game in ’84 when Durham let the ball slip through his legs set my father back for weeks – spontaneous cries and howls emerged from between his clenched teeth quite a few times after the Padres greasily won that gut-wrenching game. Lily might not have recovered if she had lived with us then. Zip withstood it all stoically, as my mother and I did too, and my paternal grandmother June Webb, who had helped to turn my father into a Cubs’ fan at a very early age. She lived to 87 and never once saw them win a World Series. When she died in November of 2006, one of the first things my father said at the start of spring training a few months later was, “All of those years that she hoped they would win, but even in 2003 when we had really started to hope, they just couldn’t do it.” My grandmother was born in New Holstein, a small town in central Wisconsin; she married a man from Illinois and eventually moved to Evanston where she and my grandfather raised my father and my uncle. When I was a little girl, I was amazed that a woman her age, apparently reasonable and accomplished, a world traveler and a retired registered nurse, could adore so passionately what seemed to me the excruciatingly slow game of baseball, that she could spend hours and hours on a sunny summer afternoon happily watching the Cubs flop out or else squeak out a win, all the while cheering them on fondly, clapping her hands as she said, “Come on Cubbies!” She loved them well and felt a mother’s, not just a fan’s, disappointment if they lost. All of those afternoons over several decades that she had struggled with them, nurtured them, taught them to keep trying when things looked so grim.

Maybe it’s unfair to speak mostly of how the Cubs have let us down or how each season they have helped to disappoint grandmothers or terrorize countless innocent dogs. But on the days when they win, it isn’t much easier for Lily because even though the shouts in my parents’ household are ones of joy, to Lily’s ear, they are equally loud, male and therefore frightening. My father might be smiling, but Lily is probably too afraid to look at his face; she’ll skitter over to my mother in the next room or race up the stairs and crawl under the bed. I imagine that PETA would have some objections if my parents could take Lily to Wrigley Field to see what all of the fuss is about, to see Derrek Lee hit a grand slam, or Carlos Zambrano pitch a shutout. The roars in such force and number would undoubtedly cause cardiac arrest. But as far as I know, no dogs are allowed inside the friendly confines. It’s the ultimate strike zone as far as they’re concerned.

Dogs, of course, are very sensitive creatures. But then, so are Cubs fans.