The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Trivializing the competition

My trivia team, "I'm Goin' Alone," has a 16-2 record. The trivia host, Brain Sportz Trivia, posts the night's topics every afternoon on Facebook. But something has changed.

Initially, they posted the topics for all six rounds, including the Speed Round, which is key because a team can get 35 points (out of a possible 105) in that round. The members of I'm Goin' Alone dutifully studied the topics before each game, and routinely smashed the opposition, sometimes by 25 points.

Brain Sportz seemed to figure out that teams were doing this, and suddenly two weeks ago, they stopped publishing the Speed Round topic.

We won anyway, but only by 5 points.

Today, the sum total description of the quiz is this:

We're getting closer to Halloween, so tonight's trivia topics at Polk Street Pub (630), MATILDA-babyATLAS (730), Fizz Bar, Richmonds Sports Bar, The Reservoir & Links Taproom at 8 will cover ‪#‎HALLOWEEN‬,‪ #‎HORRORMOVIES‬, and everyone's favorite Halloween family, the‪ #‎MUNSTERS‬

It's also Game 1 of the World Series, and one of our team mates is from Kansas City, so we may have some distractions.

We're still going to win. But we're a little annoyed that we can't study up for it, crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Or, at the very least, get shots for each round we win.

Was it a great year for the Cubs?

The Tribune waxes rhapsodic about the season that was:

Let's take stock of all that before we start with the wait-till-next-year business.

Let's celebrate this year.

It was awesome. It was unexpected. It was thrilling.

It was a gift to the city of Chicago from a team of overachievers, including four standout rookie starters.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Cubs all-time postseason home run leader Kyle Schwarber, age 22. Rookie of the year candidate Kris Bryant, 23. Cardinal-killer Jorge Soler, 23. And who knows how this series might have ended if clutch-hitter Addison Russell hadn't been forced to sit out with a pulled hamstring? He's 21.

Sure. Let me put it another way, in October 1918:

Let's take stock of all that before we start with the wait-till-reparations-are-paid business.

Let's celebrate this war.

It was awesome. It was unexpected. It laid waste to Belgium.

It was a gift to the nations of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia—sorry, the Soviet Union (a brand-new country!)—from a team of overconfident aristocrats, including four standout emperors.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the largest sum ever spent on a war in the history of mankind: $337 billion, which will be $5.3 trillion adjusted for inflation just 97 years from now. Fourteen million dead (equivalent to 56 million in 2015), not including the 20 million who are about to die of influenza. And who knows how this war would have ended had we not attacked American ships in the Atlantic? Maybe we would have held Alscace for another century. And who will ever forget how tanks changed the game entirely? No more endless trench warfare! Huzzah!

No, guys. The Cubs lost. Again. They lost the league for the 70th time in a row. They haven't won the World Series since just after Henry Ford sold his first Model T. They bloodly lost.

So win the damn pennant, and STFU until then.

AC0070107

It's a little like hearing from an abusive partner a year after breaking up. Glad you're doing better, glad you're getting on your feet, but you're still doing the really bad things that led to me leaving, so no, don't call again.

I've been a Cubs fan for most of my life, as were my parents before me, and some of my ancestors before them. My mother lived and died without seeing them in the World Series, as have about two billion other people who were born after October 1945. It's possible I may never see them win the pennant either.

After last season's 89 losses—not a great improvement over 2013's 96 losses—I broke up with them. They kept saying, "I promise to do better, if only you'll give me another $1,800 and buy some $9 hot dogs." And every year, I'd fork over the money. And then I stopped.

This year they won 97 games. Mazel tov. But when it counted, when they really needed to get their shit together and win, they completely fell apart. Tonight's 8-3 loss to the Mets ended what the Tribune unironically called the Cubs' "Magical Season," perhaps forgetting that they've done this repeatedly.

Keep in mind, they were the wild card this year; the Pirates and the Cardinals had 98 and 100 wins, respectively, putting the Cubs in third place at season's end. And the Cubs had 97 wins in 2008, another heartbreaking year. (And 98 wins in 1945, which wasn't so heartbreaking only because no one could foresee, just a few weeks after the end of World War II, and after the Cubs had just played their third World Series in 10 years, that the Cubs would never win another pennant.)

So tonight, I have mixed feelings. I'm happy the Cubs did better this year than in the preceding six. And I think they have some potential to win next season. But after 70 years, I just can't keep expending emotional energy on them anymore.

Someday, probably, they will win the pennant. Someday they might even win the World Series. But after so many chokes, after so many goats, after so many abject failures when it really counted, I'm done. I was done at the beginning of this season, and I'm still done. I wish the team well in 2016. I hope the fans enjoy the games. But until the Cubs actually win the National League Championship, I'm not giving them a dime. You can call me a fair-weather fan, or you can acknowledge that after hoping against reason for more than 40 seasons that this year could be the year, not giving any more shits is a rational response.

Maybe next year...but I won't be there.

Note: The title of this post echoes a sign across Sheffield from the park. The letters "AC" mean "Anno Catuli:" "Year of the Cub." The first two digits (00) count the years from them last winning the division, the second two (70) from the National League championship, and the remainder (107) from the World Series. They had to add another digit after the 2008 season. That should have told you something.

 

Sports game interfering with trivia

Tonight's pub quiz got cancelled because of some sports game.

Long-time Daily Parker readers may remember I used to go to lots of Cubs games. Then I got season tickets, after which they lost 185 games in the following two seasons. So we didn't re-up, and this year, the cubs won 97 and tonight will play game 3 of the NLCS.

This year I've been pretty annoyed with myself, and with the team, so I'm just not into the playoffs. Not to mention, this season feels a lot like 2008 or even 2003, both of which ended in heartbreak. The Cubs' 0-2 hole in this year's series is achingly familiar.

So, we're looking forward to a Halloween-themed pub quiz next Tuesday—unless the Cubs do win the pennant, in which case I will, if only because my mother would have wanted it, watch them play game 1 in Toronto or Kansas City.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that all four teams in this years' playoffs have dark blue uniforms? And that this may be the first World Series in 22 years with a team from outside the United States? (That interval might possibly be shorter if there were more than one team in major league baseball from abroad. To the extent Toronto qualifies as "abroad," I guess...)

Wait, just a link list?

Yes, even with a new blog engine, sometimes link happens:

The new blog engine does have one key advantage: putting that list together took about 1/3 the time it used to take.

Lots of walking

I logged 24,771 steps yesterday (argh! 229 short!) mostly by walking from Arundel to Amberley in West Sussex. The walk seemed longer than 6 kilometers, but that's what my FitBit counted. I also walked from Victoria Station to my hotel, another 3.9 km, but at a much faster clip than down public footpaths and across fields in the South Downs.

My first stop was The Black Rabbit:

My last stop was The Bridge, where I stopped on similar hikes in 2009 and 1992. And I ended the day at The Blackbird, because of this:

I didn't bring my real camera on this trip, mainly because I didn't want to carry it and I wasn't sure about the weather for today's hike. I'm surprised and satisfied with my phone's camera, though it's not even in the same league as my 7D. It's also not nearly as heavy.

I'll have a couple more photos from the walk later on.