Chris​Hubbs​.com

I don’t remember when I became a baseball fan.

I remember playing teeball when I was in elementary school. I remember my folks taking the family to an Omaha Royals game about that same time. I remember watching parts of the 1985 World Series (Royals / Cardinals) and watching Bret Saberhagen win Game 7 for the Royals to clinch. I was 8.

We moved to Texas when I was 13 and I pretty quickly became a Rangers fan. I listened to so many games on the radio. In the summers when I got really bored I got a baseball scorebook and would keep score while listening to the game. We went to several Rangers games as a family over the years. I remember seeing Nolan Ryan pitch, including in a game where Bo Jackson came up to bat against him. My brother’s friend somehow got tickets to the 1995 MLB All-Star Game and we got the tickets for free as long as I could drive us up to Arlington for the game. (I still can’t believe my mom let us do that.)

When I moved to Iowa I needed a new team. Iowa famously lies in a terrible MLB TV blackout area; there are 6 teams in surrounding states but none of them in Iowa. I could’ve gone any one of several directions, but I fell in with a bunch of Cubs fans, and so a Cubs fan I became.

Cubs fans live by the Dread Pirate Roberts’ credo: “Get used to disappointment.” Save for one shining season in 2016, my 25 years of Cubs fandom has largely been enough winning to keep me motivated to keep up with the team, and then a whole lot of just missing the playoffs or dropping a quick wildcard game and exiting early.

The past several years my tradition has been to wear a Cubs jersey to work on baseball’s Opening Day. As I joke, this is the one day of the year I can be sure that my team has at least a share of first place. This year the Cubs got a head start on opening day with a two-game series in Tokyo against the Dodgers. By the time I got out of bed this morning the Cubs were already losing the game, and I had forgotten to dig out my jersey last night, so I missed the traditional garb. Maybe I’ll dig it out for tomorrow and see if the Cubs can win the second game of the series to at least pull an even record.

Baseball is a beautiful, patient, detailed game, and I’m thankful once again for the occasional hours of respite it provides from the craziness of the rest of the world. Let’s play ball.