Curses and Uncurses

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Stupid Poetry. I had to take a break these last couple weeks due to having that classic ailment, Vomiting My Guts Out A Few Days in a Row And Then Being Really Exhausted Because of Said Vomit. The haters were grinning ear-to-ear. But try as they might, the haters did not win. They tried to take me down. They tried to kill me. Nevertheless, I am back and no longer puking a bunch.

As proof of life, here's a couple pictures of me with my cat, in which, if you look close enough at one of them, you will see that I have a can of Juiced Bad Apple Monster Energy Drink sitting on my bedside table (let he who has not made a habit of drinking energy drinks in bed cast the first stove, etc. etc.). This flavor of Monster was not released in the U.S. until this month. If you are soooooo convinced that I actually passed away three weeks ago and that in the lead-up to my dying from my head filling up with puke like a big balloon and asploding onto the walls like a Looney Tune, I told a guy he could have my PS4 and my Switch if he kept this newsletter going, how would I be drinking this Monster right now??? Just think for a fucking second, please.

So what have I been up to? Well, a lot of baseball, actually. I am both excited and saddened to announce that I have signed a contract with the Milwaukee Brewers to play 3rd base and also to be one of the running sausage guys during the 7th-inning stretch. This means my poetry must take a break while I go hit some dingers.

Nah nah nah. I’m just playing (but not baseball). I really have been watching a lot of it though. I am a Cubs fan, and a couple Sundays ago, I took a bus-trip to Wrigley Field with my dad and brother for their regular season closer. It was a good time, and even some of the other people on the bus there and back were not smelly and/or drunk and/or loudly upset about how nobody wants to work now of days.

My relationship with baseball has ebbed and flowed over the years. I loved it as a little kid--played Little League til 6th grade, collected the trading cards, watched every Cubs game all summer back when they still let you do that instead of telling you you can't because you're actually supposed drive a couple hours into a different state and spend 60 dollars if you want to watch a baseball game.

But I started becoming more interested in other things as a teenager. This is when I started playing drums and got much more obsessive about the music I was listening to. Sports were everything to my family, immediate and extended, and as much as that served me and allowed me to bond with the people in my life when I otherwise had no clue how to, I had this urge to pretend I didn't care about them out of some teenage rebellion to what appeared to be a symbol of status quo. Sports were not for sensitive, wise-beyond their years kids like me, who obsessed over noted piece of shit, fascist, Zionist pop-rock band, Disturbed and smashed old computer monitors in my friend's driveway. Despite listening to a lot of music that could ostensibly be defined as Jock Jams, I didn't think sports were for me anymore.

The excitement of the Cubs' World Series victory in 2016, building off the momentum of that year's Superbowl appearance for my other favorite cursed sports team, the Carolina Panthers, is what pulled me back into the Wide World of Sports (the abstraction, not the defunct Disney Park). Of course, it was their first championship since 1908, breaking the various curses they accrued over the years, from the curse of the billy goat to poor, poor, Steve Bartman (who basically didn't do anything wrong). I was in college at the time and couldn't be home to watch the series with my family, but when I watched Cubs first-baseman, Anthony Rizzo, catch the final out of the series in the dark in my small apartment while my roommates were asleep, it felt like a communal experience. It was a collective gasp from dozens and dozens of people I have known, some of whom I have loved, all at the same time. I thought about my dad and my 20-years-passed grandmother and the friends I fell out of touch with. I thought about how sports strengthened those relationships, and about how foolish it ever was to close off that avenue to connection.

I thought about all of the people who have let their fandom in their notedly bad or "cursed" favorite sports teams turn them into a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to the sport. Now, I think that is a fine, often fun and admirable brand of curmudgeon, don't get me wrong. But, as a 21 year old who was "getting sober" for the third time in a year, who was new to my university after dropping out of community college a couple years prior, it also made me think about the weight of defining yourself through your failure. It made me wonder what you do with that once you succeed. What do you owe the people who were there with you before, and how do you cope if they didn't end up there when you won.

And so of course, I wrote a poem about it. And as you may know, the Chicago Cubs have unfortunately been ousted from the playoffs as off this past weekend by my new employer, the Milwaukee Brewers. I promise to miff a few grounders and to win all the sausage races to make up for it. Let this poem be an epilogue for the Chicago Cubs 2025 season. It's kind of a long one, so just think of it as making up for the last couple of weeks.

Oh, also, since we are talking Chicago, I would be remiss to not say Fuck ICE always and forever.