Here’s Something to Celebrate--Suffering

When the Cubs took a 2-0 lead against the Padres in the 1984 National League playoffs and then collapsed on the threshold of the World Series, Michael Givant sat down and composed a letter. He sent it to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“My heart went out to them,� he said. It wasn’t the ballplayers with whom he commiserated. After all, they are transients, liable to be wearing a different uniform each season. No, the object of his sympathy was the people who root for the team, the “long-suffering� Cubs fans, as they are most often portrayed.

Givant, chairman of the sociology department at Adelphi University, studies fans the way other men his age (46) study the standings and boxscores. And although he has never set foot in Wrigley Field, he has paid special attention to the trials and tribulations of the faithful who fill Wrigley Field with a special mixture of hope and anxiety. In his campus office, Givant has a folder of clippings attesting to his extraordinary interest.

He has done more than read the lines. He has read “between the lines� and it is there that he has unearthed what he terms a “celebration of suffering.� That’s an unusual discovery, even for someone who calls himself “an inveterate (football) Giants fan� and can recall throwing objects at the television set as Mark Moseley positioned himself for yet another game-winning field goal against his team. But, then again, the Cubs are not your average team, not even your average losing team.

The division title they clinched on Tuesday night guaranteed the Cubs their second postseason appearance since 1945, the year they last represented the National League in the World Series. They haven’t won a Fall Classic since 1908, which comprises the most prolonged slump in baseball history. Jerry Pritikin, the self-styled Bleacher Preacher who conducts services for the Bleacher Bums, said he asked his father to take him to the Series 44 years ago but the man told him that he was too young, that he would take him the next time. Pritikin’s father died in 1980 “but he left me enough money to buy a couple of Series tickets.�

In a story on the telephone ticket lottery through which Cubs fans without season tickets purchased seats for the playoffs and a possible appearance in the Series, USA Today recounted the saga of Dave Worland, an Indiana high school basketball coach who dialed for the better part of 26 hours before claiming his prize. He said he was inspired by the thought of his ailing father, who had promised to take him to the Cubs’ next World Series 22 years ago. Now he will take his father. “It’s neat,� he decided. “It was always Dad going to get the tickets for me, so I was keyed up because I was able to supply him with a ticket.�

Those people fit the profile of what Givant terms an “ego-intensive� fan, someone introduced to a team or sport by a love object, frequently a father. “Their second identification is with the team,� the sociologist said. “Their first is with Dad. The way it works is: Love Dad, love the Giants. What happens when the team gets really bad is that you might like to give them up but you can’t because it would be like giving up Dad.�

Givant, who has written the first draft of a book on the derivation of fans based on his own interviews, divides the species into three categories. In addition to the ego-intensive, who suffers the most, there is the “communal� fan and the “ego-deprived� fan. The former is someone who identifies with a team or sport because he grew up with it, in the sense that a Canadian grows up with hockey and a New Yorker grows up with the Giants, Knicks, Yankees, Mets, etc. The ego-deprived fan, Givant said, is someone from a fractured family who pursues a role model and roots for a particular athlete’s team until the player is traded or retires.

From personal experience and many conversations, the sociologist has determined that Giants fans are largely ego-intensive. Their loyalty is passed down from generation to generation, much like Cubs fans. But in Chicago, there is the added communal bond of neighborhood.

“What the Cubs seem to have done,� Givant said, “is integrate the team into the life of the North Side.� The principal factor in that, he theorized, was the absence of lights at Wrigley until last summer. “Secrets bond people together,� the man said. “Everyone who has cut out of work for a Cub game shares this wonderful secret.�

The combination of ego-intensive and communal fans has created a group that appears to revel in the suffering. But maybe this is the year something remarkable happens to the Cubs, something like the home run by Kirk Gibson that set the tone for last year’s World Series. Givant is not a baseball fan, although he can tell you that little Bobby Shantz was pitching for the Philadelphia A’s on the day he made his first trip to Yankee Stadium. What he is is a student of American culture.

And what he saw on television that Saturday night last fall definitely fit “a cultural symbol pattern. It was Mickey Mantle with his terrible legs. It was Joe Namath with his terrible legs. Here is the pitcher, Dennis Eckersley, Black Bart himself, right out of the old cowboy movies. And here is Gibson hobbling around the bases, triumphing over the system. Everyone knew the Dodgers were a .500 team but they still won.�

Were something similar to occur this fall, against the backdrop of Cubs’ history, it would be monumental. And Givant would applaud. On the other hand, should the team do what it has done consistently since the first decade of this century, he is prepared to write another letter.