Cubs fans can blame the system

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I was listening to one of Chicago’s sports radio stations on Friday, the Great Cubs liquidation day, and a woman over 80 came over to the phone line.

She was so angry that she told the hosts that she would never watch another Cubs game. And, she added maliciously, Cubs president Jed Hoyer had better put home security for more security.

It shocked me.

Have all been used to the indignation of the fans. They are passionate. They go up and down like elevators. Including.

But even with hyperbole, after what we saw on January 6 on Capitol Hill in Washington with rioters calling for harm to elected officials, you don’t say that stuff about your fellow citizens, even at all.

And in your ninth decade?

Maybe a little decompression is needed here. Starting with grandmother. Maybe for all Cubs fans.

It’s a good time to remember how baseball works in fact all of the elite professional North American leagues work. We were talking about Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

These leagues are closed entities, with 30 to 32 franchises, in all major cities, with little or no outside competition, mostly members of legal cartels.

There are rules, drafts, salary caps, player unions, trade deadlines, fines, revenue sharing, etc.

And no one else can enter. Leagues that try to compete well, good luck. Check the United States Football League and its sad history for proof.

It is a contained and arbitrary matter, in a sense, totally rigged. That is, someone in every cartel is going to win the championship every year, and a bunch of teams are going to be mediocre, and some are going to be terrible, and no team for that matter is lucky. .

The worst teams then get the highest draft picks and the best young players. And the best teams fall slowly (or quickly) and the previous losers increase. (Who thought the Royals would win the 2015 World Series?)

It’s nice and certain and predictable. All leagues want some semblance of parity, and their rules guarantee that.

The teams take the names of the chosen cities Miami, Boston, Detroit and so on as if they belonged to these cities. They don’t.

You invest in franchises because they are your teams, but their loyalty to you is paper thin.

The Los Angeles Lakers started in Minneapolis, remember. Jazz in Utah? (Try New Orleans.) And the Raiders have made three cities their home over the past three decades.

Cubs fans in the Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javy Baez jerseys are surely feeling that abandonment now. It hurts. It is unfair.

But that’s the system. Wealthy star players almost always end up being traded. Partly because they are so good, they are shattering the payroll.

If Jake Arrieta had been decent as a starting pitcher, if the Cubs hadn’t lost 11 straight games from June 25 to July 6, if Jason Heyward wasn’t batting under .200, if pitcher Adbert Alzolay didn’t wasn’t 4-11, if Rizzo hit more homers … maybe the Cubs would have tried everything instead of folding.

That 11-game slippage did it. The Cubs were tied for first in the Central National League on June 24, and for fourth place on July 6.

We’ve waited 108 years for the 2016 World Series crown, and here we go.

Yeah, it’s sad. Yeah, that’s giving up. But for now, let’s assume that’s Hoyers’ strategy, his disaster plan.

Fact: The Cubs title team that should have started a mini-dynasty has lost its mojo. Most championship teams do. No excuse, but it’s a fact. Consider that over the past seven years there have been seven different World Series winners.

The White Sox are now Chicago’s hot team, general manager Rick Hahn the new genius. (Thanks, Cubs, for Craig Kimbrel!) But the Sox have had five winning seasons in the past 15 years. And it’s funny how all those bad teams after the 2005 World Series Championship are now forgotten by the pilgrims of the Sox.

Try to win, to tank, to rebuild. It’s the baseball formula, repeated over and over again. Yes, even made by the beloved Cubs right before this 2016 championship.

I remember speaking with Leslie Epstein, Theo Epstein’s dad, in 2014 in New York when the Cubs started a fifth-place club 73-89.

Wait, Leslie said seriously. Give it time. It will happen.

I sniffled. But it happened.

Maybe it will start again. His baseball.

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