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There’s nothing quite like winter weather to provide a perfect setting for a baseball team’s annual fan convention. Folks bundled up and scurrying about enter a building where warmer temperatures and delightful dreams await. And so it is with the Cubs Convention. If looking to the future is the idea, then the Cubs definitely are a winner in that regard.
How many other web sites will have Sophia Loren in conjunction with the Chicago Cubs? We all have our impossible dreams.
And that might be as close to winning as they come in 2014. The Cubs have lost 197 games in the last two seasons, so there is hope — not necessarily grounded in anything much more than wishful thinking and possibly the law of averages — that 2014 will provide Cubs fans with a better team (although the bar has been set so low that “better” does not necessarily come close to “mediocre” or “competitive” or any of a number of other adjectives that would placate a fan base yearning for a reasonably good team to watch.
With Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein talking Friday of Clark (the team’s recently revealed and much maligned mascot) and not rushing the young players in the minor leagues along too quickly, Cubs fans cannot be too optimistic about the immediate future.
That Clark would even be a topic of discussion is somewhat mind-boggling. Then again, maybe by the time the youngsters to whom Clark is supposed to appeal are adults, the Cubs will have a winning team. Then again, maybe not.
Oh, look. There’s Jeff Samardzija talking about Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka and what a difference he would mean to the team. So what if Tanaka reportedly has narrowed his choice of teams to the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels. The Cubs have been aggressive in their pursuit of him. So the story goes.
It doesn’t matter how aggressive a team may go after a player, if that player has little — if any — interest in that team. But this is Cubs Convention. And the event is nothing if not about dreaming.
The franchise celebrates its players of the past and its hopes for the future. As for the present, there is genuine fan interest in the players they see on a regular basis during the season. After all, how many people get to be that close to their heroes (or reasonable facsimiles thereof), pose for a photo with them and/or obtain their autograph?
Fan conventions are feel-good events. Expectations can be unrealistic — as in the Cubs winning a World Series. Would you believe a National League pennant? OK, how about a division title? More games than last season? Dreams can come in all sizes.
And as long as you’re going to dream, you might as well conjure up a 70-degree day with a warm breeze to greet you as you depart the Cubs Convention.
Sometimes reality can be so cold — figuratively as well as literally.
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