A Cubs Fan's Dying Wish

This year's baseball season is under way, and this opening day in particular, people are talking a lot about my team, the Chicago Cubs.

That's because this season marks 100 years since the Cubs last won the World Series. Now, there are a lot of ways to illustrate just how long ago that was, but here's my favorite: The last time the Cubs won the World Series was nine years before the Bolshevik Revolution. Communism rose and fell, and the Cubs didn't win a World Series.

But you know, I wasn't always a Cubs fan. I actually grew up as a New York Yankees fan and converted to a Cubs fan as a adult. That decision wasn't made lightly — it took five years.

Long story short, the Yankees only consider a season to be successful when they win the World Series. And I came to realize that that takes the fun out of being a fan. You see, the most exultant moments in sports come when your team exceeds expectations and makes your faintest dreams a reality. And if your team expects to do the very best thing a team can possibly do, you can never exceed expectations. There's only satisfaction or disappointment.

That point was driven home to me when I went to the Yankees' clinching game of the World Series in 1998 and saw just how relatively unimpressed Yankees fans were with the victory.

Fast forward to 2003. I'm living in Chicago, rooting for the Cubs a bit, and in that year the Cubs went on a very improbable run, exceeding all expectations. Cubs mania swept the city. And when the Cubs got into the playoffs — just got into the playoffs — we poured out into the streets to celebrate. Cops closed down the roads around Wrigley Field, and we sang Steve Goodman's cheesy but beloved Cubs anthem, "Go Cubs Go."

At that very moment, there in the street singing "Go Cubs Go," I realized I was a Cubs fan.

But that's not the best song in the world today. Because to really call yourself a Cubs fan, you have to experience some serious pain. That's what happened to me a couple of weeks later, when the Cubs completely self-destructed, just five outs away from the World Series. It was the most crushing defeat of my life as a sports fan.

But the great thing about Cubs fans is that 99 years of bad teams and bad losses haven't robbed the fan base of a sense of humor. And nowhere is that more evident than in the Best Song in the World Today.

As I said, Steve Goodman wrote "Go Cubs Go," so as you might guess, he was from Chicago and was a huge Cubs fan. Goodman also wrote "The City of New Orleans," which was made famous by Arlo Guthrie, and "You Never Even Call Me By My Name," which was made famous by David Allan Coe.

Goodman was a pretty successful singer/songwriter in his own right from the early 1970s to the mid-80s. Throughout that time, he was also battling leukemia. In 1984, he passed away at the age of 36. Eleven days after he died, the Cubs played their first playoff game since 1945. He was supposed to sing the national anthem. Instead, his friend Jimmy Buffett filled in.

But before Goodman died, he wrote a musical will of sorts. It's a song that truly typifies the Cubs fan's ability to laugh through the pain: "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request."

The song begins with an old man on his death bed, surrounded by his friends, wearing a Cubs hat. He tells them he knows he won't be able to see his beloved team play anymore, so he's going to give them his last request.

And Goodman goes on to ask such questions as "Do they still play the blues in Chicago?" and "When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play in their ivy-covered burial ground?" He blames the Cubs for driving him to drink, and then he describes his ideal Wrigley Field funeral in great detail. He wants his coffin carried around the bases, he wants everyone to get peanuts and frosty malts, and he wants his ashes thrown into a bonfire on homeplate.

In the end, like all loyal Cubs fans, Goodman finds a silver lining, saying to his friends, "I've got season tickets to watch the Angels now/ So that's just what I'm gonna do/ But you the living, you're stuck here with the Cubs/ So it's me who feels sorry for you."

So today, as the baseball season starts in earnest, this is the Best Song in the World Today.

Watch Steve Goodman perform "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request."