Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop

Is this finally the night a lifelong Vikings and Cubs fan feels the rush of glory? Or just another night of despair?

Maybe this time it will be different. It’s a lie we tell ourselves every new season. It worked for all those other teams. Maybe this time it’ll work for us.

The Kansas City Royals won a World Series. The city of Cleveland won a championship, for crying out loud. Maybe it’s the Vikings’ turn. Maybe it’s the Cubs’ turn. Maybe these teams are different.

Maybe.

They say you’ll know when you’re in love. How do you know? Maybe you know it by the heartbreak when it’s over.

My first broken heart came in 1998. Well, 1999, I guess. I was 15.

It was the best Minnesota Vikings team of my life. It was Randy Moss and Cris Carter and Jake Reed and Robert Smith and Randall Cunningham. It was the greatest offense in NFL history. It was one kick away from perfection in the regular season, and then one kick to total deflation in the postseason.

It was our year. Until it wasn’t.

He Who Shall Not Be Named stepped up after his personal perfect season, a kick away from icing my team’s trip to the Super Bowl. Instead, it was a kick in the balls instead to tens of thousands of fans like me. And just like that, it was over. No Super Bowl win. Not even a Super Bowl appearance. It was just over. That kick still stings two decades later.

Like any first broken heart, I suppose it always will.

In January 2001, my brother died. It was the worst moment of my life so far, and so much worse than this other sports nonsense. But we cling to sports and temporal things like that in those times as a coping mechanism to get through it, and seeing as how Nate was a diehard Vikings fan, I assumed the story this time was that the Vikings would would finally win it. For him.

One totally regular Friday night, I went to bed excited for a Vikings playoff game the next day. A few hours later, I said goodbye to my brother.

I vaguely remember watching us beat the Saints in a hospital waiting room that day. A week later, my Vikings would play the Giants for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. After a week with crying relatives and distant friends, I was ready for a distraction. I was ready for the Vikings to win it for Nate.

We lost 41–0.

I guess the Giants won it for someone else that day.

I guess not every story is my story.

I’m 33 now. My heart has been broken again and again. Being born a Vikings and Cubs fan has been a blessing and a curse — though I’m still waiting for the blessing part.

In 2003, I had my first real Cubs heartbreak. I’ll spare us both the details. In 2009, I spent all season talking myself into Brett Favre only for him to literally throw our season away minutes from the Super Bowl. Last year, it was the Cubs again. Our kids came through and we won a playoff series at home for the first time in franchise history (no, seriously) and knocked out our vaunted rival Cardinals and … well, let’s not talk about what happened after that.

Heartbreak.

1998 and 2001 and 2003 and 2009 and 2015.

Five times now, my team has been special, on the brink of a chance to win the championship … right up until they weren’t. Five times, my spirit has been crushed. Five times I’ve talked myself back into it all over again.

Okay fine, more like a hundred times. More like a million times.

Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

I’m not in a cell with Red and Andy, but sports sure feel like a prison sometimes. Maybe never more so than in baseball, where the games can go on for hours, and solitary at-bats feel like they can go on for days. Baseball starts in March and goes ‘til September, or October if you’re lucky. Maybe even November, if you’re still breathing by then to see it.

As sports fans, we become prisoners of the moment and prisoners of the idea that it’s all about us. Our guys come through in the clutch, and our guys thank God for smiling on us that day, and our championship DVD is the one being written. And our disappointment is the story to tell, if it doesn’t happen.

It’s easy to forget that my 1998 Vikings nightmare was the apex of Atlanta Falcons’ fans sports lives, or that a Brett Favre interception brought hope to an entire community in New Orleans after Katrina. My lifetime of heartbreaks are all on championship DVDs — just not mine.

But what is sports if not a new hope every single season? Each year, you start 0–0, and each new playoff is a chance to wipe away all the old pain and frustration. Heartbreak lasts for an eternity, right up until it doesn’t, right up until the next love comes. Last year’s Cubs were great, a team I’ll remember forever — right up until the 2016 Cubs took their place.

These Cubs are hope.

These Cubs are Jake no-hitting the Reds, and Javy walking off the Nats. These Cubs are Heyward robbing Span, and Willson crushing his first pitch. These Cubs had the Rizzo Wall Catch and the Travis Wood Game and the Lester Bunt. These Cubs have seen Kris Bryant drop a bomb on the Giants when all hope was lost, then Miguel Montero drop a grand slam on the Dodgers when all hope was lost again in the very next game.

These Cubs are different.

Tonight these Cubs, my Cubs, our Cubs have another shot.

A victory wins us the World Series. Finally. We’re right there. No Cubs fan reading this has ever been so close (even all those other times that we aren’t thinking about right now, because come on, we talked about this already, but literally never this close).

Look, I’m a realist. Maybe it won’t happen tonight, because baseball is silly and life is silly and hope is silly. Maybe the game tonight will forever be in Corey Kluber’s first Wikipedia paragraph, or maybe this is all part of the unexpectedly amazing 2016 Cleveland sports DVD.

But maybe it isn’t.

Maybe this time is different.

Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, humor, pop culture, and life musings. Visit the rest of Brandon’s writing archives here.