The Chicago Cubs are the Official Team of Jews—Also Christians, Buddhists and Muslims
Jews, Christians, Muslims see affinity in club’s 108-year exile
By ANDREW BEATON and KEVIN HELLIKER
Oct. 21, 2016 10:25 a.m. ET
Within hours of the Chicago Cubs getting eliminated from the 2015 postseason, a devoted fan named Deric Brazill went online to share a revelation. The next season would mark 108 years since the Cubs had won the World Series.
In Buddhism, he wrote, 108 is a significant number. To mark the New Year, Buddhist temple bells ring 108 times. Strings of Buddhist prayer beads contain 108 beads. If the Cubs win the World Series in 2016, Mr. Brazill says, “the Dalai Lama should probably comment.”
Cubs cap
Should the drought extend to 109 years, however, Cubs fans won't be surprised, especially those who are Buddhist. “The Buddha is quoted saying, ‘Life is suffering,’” says the Rev. Patti Nakai of the Buddhist Temple of Chicago, located just blocks from Wrigley Field. “We always say, ‘Us Cubs fans know that real well.’”
All religions, to some extent, seek to understand the value, meaning and purpose of suffering. That includes everyday plagues, such as enduring a calamitous baseball losing streak. It’s no accident spiritual thinkers make the connection.
“All this attention on the Cubs has me thinking about hope, the most underappreciated Christian virtue,” Michael Laskey, a Yankees-loving National Catholic Reporter columnist, wrote last year.
Lauding Cubs fans for braving horrible weather in support of often-terrible teams, Mr. Laskey wrote that “this type of hope—showing up when things are hard—might be exactly the virtue the church most needs right now.”
Arnold Kanter and his dog, Judson. PHOTO:CAROL KANTER
A rabbi who is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post recently hailed the Cubs as “the Jews of the sports world,” an idea seconded by the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, who made a stop at Wrigley Field on a swing through Chicago this month.
“The Cubs might be the most Jewish team in America,” said Mr. Dermer. “They’ve experienced a long period of suffering, and now they’re hoping to get to the promised land.”
There are Cubs-themed yarmulkes and caps spelling the team’s name in Hebrew. “What did Jesus say to the Cubs?” says a popular T-shirt in Chicago. “Don’t do nothin’ til I get back.”
“Sabr, or patience, is one of the defining traits that the Qu’ran exhorts Muslims to develop, stemming from a certainty that God will grant us relief from our afflictions, if not in this life then in the next one,” says Rany Jazayerli, a national baseball analyst who is Muslim.
“Cubs fans seem to have mastered the concept. It will happen some day. If not in their lifetime, then in their children’s lifetime, or grandchildren’s.”
In their best-of-seven National League Championship Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Cubs enter play Saturday up 3-2 and smelling like a contender. That’s a big improvement on the four straight losses they endured in last year’s NLCS. Heightening fan optimism is their home-field advantage for the rest of this series. Also, the Cubs punched out the best record in baseball this year, 103-58.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of the Cubs’s 14 postseason appearances since that 1908 title reveals a distinct pattern. When leading an NLCS or World Series, the Cubs always lose. When trailing in such a series, the Cubs lose. When entering the playoffs with the best record in baseball, the Cubs lose. By historical standards, this year’s squad is perfectly positioned to break fans’ hearts.
Little wonder that the franchise reminds some religious leaders of Job, a character found in both Jewish and Christian texts, who loses his children, his health and his prosperity as a test of faith. A team that hasn’t even made it to the World Series since 1945, the Cubs are “long-suffering, mocked and maligned, preyed upon by Giants, Pirates, even birds and fish, always seeking the Promised Land of postseason play yet never quite making it there,” Rabbi Stewart Weiss wrote recently in the Jerusalem Post.
Like Job, Cubs fans have withstood the challenge, flocking to Wrigley even amid hopeless seasons to raise signs saying, “Wait ‘til next year.”
In a recent online essay in U.S. Catholic magazine, 23-year-old Jay Bouchard vowed to carry on the Catholic and Cubs-loving traditions of his parents and grandparents, even though their faith in the team never paid off.
Rabbi Stewart Weiss, who works in Ra'anana, Israel, holds a traditional Cubs hat and another that says the team's name in Hebrew. PHOTO:RABBI STEWART WEISS
“I have faith the Cubs will win the World Series this year. Or the next, or at the very least probably before I die,” he wrote. “But if they don’t, well there is always the mystery of faith promising me a front-row seat and a 16-ounce cup of cold salvation in the bleachers beyond.”
Religion can help soften the seemingly inevitable disappointment of rooting for the Cubs. Since becoming a Buddhist about halfway into his 20-year engagement with the Cubs, Daniel Garrett now screams at the television less often, a benefit of the Buddhist practice of nonattachment, he says.
“I can still be happy and excited about the prospect of going to the World Series without attaching myself to the outcome,” says Mr. Garrett, a 49-year-old businessman who lives near Wrigley Field. Whatever happens this year, he says, “it is what it is.”
Theologians have long seen baseball as a sport with metaphysical qualities. Its slow pace requires that fans pay close attention for hours in the hope of a transcendent moment when a display of grace and greatness saves the day. “Inside the game, the formative material of spirituality can be found,” John Sexton, a New York University law professor and theologian, wrote in his 2013 book “Baseball as a Road to God.”
What if, on the off chance, the Cubs win it all this year? That may diminish their value as a model of faith amid hardship, according to a message Arnold Kanter delivered in his annual remarks at Yom Kippur services at Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill. While other congregants rise during an open-mic session to bare their souls, Mr. Kanter invariably stands and talks about the Cubs. This year, he sounded depressed at the prospect of the Cubs finally winning the World Series.
“We Jews are not happy when we’re happy,” he said. “We need something to kvetch about. Forty years we walked in the desert. For what? To become the damn Yankees?”
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