Scoop Jackson Thinks Wrigley Field Will Be Empty Next Year

Usually I leave Scoop Jackson to J.S., but with his Rocco Baldelli-esque illness proclamation, I will have to scoop up the Scoop shit with a shovel. I know we all have gotten enough of the Cubs and the columns on them losing to the Dodgers in a 3 game sweep in the LDS. Let's just focus on Scoop and his overly dramatic take on the subject. Scoop seems to think Wrigley Field is going to be empty next year and the fans are going to stop cheering for the Cubs. I am little confused as to how such loyal fans, as has been displayed at least twice this summer on the Sports Illustrated cover and in articles in the magazine, would just give up on the team, but stranger things have happened.

Like the Cubs losing in a short playoff series...

Scoop Dawg!

No one here saw this coming. Not like this. The elimination of hope. Quick as a Jennifer Aniston relationship, instant as a Wall Street bankruptcy.

You can't see me right now but I am literally playing the world's smallest violin for Scoop right now. I went to Ireland, found the smallest leprechaun who plays in an orchestra, kicked his ass and stole his violin, and now I am playing it. It is difficult to play because it is so small.

One day, the top team in the National League and a favorite to win the World Series for the first time in 100 years. Four days later, gone.

As I have learned in the past week, the LDS is a 5 game series, so in a short series like that pretty much anything can happen, and it did. They won 97 games this year and were 5-2 against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Of course they had also not played the Dodgers since June 8, so I think it is fair to say the makeup of both teams had changed signficantly since that date.

The Phillies did win 92 games this year and Milwaukee won 90 games, so I would say the Cubs were not the overwhelming favorite to win, but yes they were favorites. Greater upsets have occurred, and will occur again, in a short series such as this.

The team with the best record in baseball, the Anaheim Angels also lost in a five game series. Maybe not as quickly as the Cubs did and the public did not whine about it so much, but they still lost.

This was worse than last year. Worse than 1989. Worse than 1984. Maybe the worst ever.

Maybe if it is so bad you should take a sabbatical from writing and go on a vacation Scoop...and never come back.

Because this time the Cubs didn't just lose a series. They lost a part of their soul, plus a large majority of their fans.

Cat Stevens said the first cut is the deepest, but that's not true, it's the 100th cut that runs the deepest for the Cubs fans. If anyone in sportswriting has his finger on the pulse of America it is Scoop Jackson, and he doesn't feel a heartbeat for these Cubs fans. The majority of Cubs fans, 50% or more, are now going to not cheer for the Cubs anymore because they lost this one series of five games...according to Scoop. Does seem arbitrary considering they have 100 years of history to whine about? Yes, but this is the final straw.

You heard it here first everyone. The Cubs have lost 50% or more of their fans. That means next year Wrigley Field will be empty because the majority of Cubs fans won't attend those wonderful day games/parties. That's right, they are so serious they are going to get JOBS just so they can't attend day games and fall back in love with the Cubs when they start winning again. I wish these fans great joy in their new endeavors in attempting to find jobs.

This is known as the Cubs Economic Predictor, where when Cubs fans get angry with the team and stop going to Cubs games, the Chicago area is flooded with job applicants, new industries come into the area because of the influx of new workers, and the local economy is booming. The economy is booming so much companies expand into other areas, creating even more jobs until unemployment is at 0% (which is not economically healthy, but who cares?), and finally America is saved by Cubs fans finding jobs and just remember where you heard the news first. From Scoop Jackson.

As one Cubs fan said when leaving Bridget McNeill's -- one of the few bars just outside Wrigleyville that was allowed to sell alcohol after the seventh inning of the close-out game -- "Still waters don't run that deep."

Really? A man coming out of a bar he was in simply because it let him drink longer said, "still waters don't run that deep?" Are you sure he did not say, "I am pissed the Cubs lost and am going to get further drunk until I fall and break a vital limb on my body?"

Two things are happening here: Either Scoop Jackson really thinks the majority of Cubs fans are going to not cheer for the team next year, or he is just being very dramatic about this loss and undermining the entire point of his column when the fans attend the games next year, which his point is that Cubs fans have had enough.

The town has officially given up on the Cubs.

There is our answer.

Some of the things uttered as Alfonso Soriano struck out to end the series cannot be printed on this Web site. Some, Quentin Tarantino couldn't even put in his films.

This has never happened before. A fan has never uttered horrible language in the direction of a baseball player. Ever. Red Sox fans watch out, these Cubs fans may turn out to be the most dedicated in the world...except for the whole abandoning their team forever thing.

The ugliest breakup in sports just happened.

This is what irritates me about hyperbole. Cubs fans are clearly not going to quit cheering for the team forever but Scoop insists on still being dramatic about it. Is this break up really uglier than the Cleveland Browns leaving for Baltimore? It left a city without an entire football franchise, at least the Cubs are still there. Uglier than the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to Los Angeles? They moved 3,000 miles across the country, basically started a new fan base and ensuring the old one could rarely attend games. Uglier than the Charlotte Hornets leaving for New Orleans? George Shinn got pissed the fans would not pay for a new arena to help fund a team that was struggling because fans quit attending games due to the team trading away all the star players. Oh, and George Shinn had also just gotten acquitted of sexual harrassment, but he still wanted a new arena, as an acquittal present I guess. To this day, some people in the Charlotte area will not attend NBA games or watch NBA games because of that situation. It alienated a rabid fan base into absolutely not caring about the sport at all.

Even if the Cubs fans give up on the team, which they are not going to, it will not be uglier than any of these situations.

And that "It's Gonna Happen" mantra has turned into an "It's Never Gonna Happen" belief and a "We Don't Give a $%&* If It Ever Happens" feeling.

That mantra was kind of presumptive anyway. Probably best to leave it behind. Even the Red Sox fans were not dumb enough to have the mantra, "This year we kick the Yankees Ass" in 2004.

Obscene gestures, followed by obscenities. So many obscenities. "I can't think of an obscene word that describes how obscene they played," another ex-fan said, after dropping an f-bomb.

These same things happen after every pro/college football team's loss and at the end of every playoff game that a team loses. Nothing to see here. I have threatened more lives in my sports viewing history than I care to mention. It is called frustration and usually it goes away.

Phone calls and e-mails poured in. One read: "Man, [expletive] the Cubs! Forever! I'm done with them! Sorry sons of [expletive]. Unless Mark Cuban buys them. That's the only way. … I hope the [expletive] Cubs burn in hell!"

I don't get the Mark Cuban love. Mark Cuban's team, the Dallas Mavericks, usually make the playoffs as a high seed and have only made the NBA Finals once, where they choked and lost. Usually the Mavericks are defeated in the playoffs and the high expectations for the team are usually not met. The team has a made a few questionable moves lately, firing Avery Johnson and trading for Jason Kidd, and they could be a great team or a big mess this year. What is so different that Mark Cuban has brought to the Mavericks the Cubs don't have?

Or, as lifelong-but-no-longer Cubs fan Andre Curry said, "They need players that can play in October, [expletive] April."

Maybe they could go to the "Baseball Players Who Are Good in October Store" where you can definitely get players like that. This store is empty.

There was one scene that said it all. An image that will be played over and over, year after year, until this team finally wins a championship. Derrek Lee's batting helmet lying on the grass next to his bat. He had just thrown them both to the ground after striking out in the fifth inning of Game 3.

The way his helmet rolled over, then stopped on its side, it looked dead.

I did not see this. I did not see the helmet stop on its side. I think this helmet and batting helmet story may be a more local thing or Scoop is desperately attempting to prove his "The fans will never get over this hypothesis" and needed a bad analogy.

A perfect symbol of what the Cubs just became to this city.

Get the wife and kids, burn your Cubs memorabilia, tear down Wrigley Field! The Cubs are dead to this city as of today and the entire city means it. No one will be at opening day next year. No one! This would be the point where Scoop would run into his room and start crying if he were 8 years old again.

First it was the walks (seven in Game 1),

Good thing they started Ryan Dempster, the ace, right Gene W.? Ted Lilly would have kicked so much more ass.

Actually, he may have...

then the errors (four in Game 2),

I don't know if a weird statistical incident like that would be a good reason to give up on a team.

then life.

Is Scoop going to kill himself? I hope not, I am having enough trouble finding horrible articles to mock without him offing himself.

Soriano replaced A-Rod as the worst living postseason star (1-for-14, .071 for the series, after going 2-for-14 the postseason before). Aramis Ramirez (2-for-11, .182 for the series, after going 0-for-12 the postseason before) made Vlad Guerrero's postseason career look Hall-of-Fame-ish.

These Cubs players have a clear history of stinking in the postseason. So why is this so shocking and this is the straw that broke the camels back again?

The totals from the past two postseasons: 12 runs in six games. All losses. Overall? A 3-11 record in NLDS history, including three sweeps. A 7-20 record at home in the postseason, the worst mark in all of major league baseball.

So why the mass exodus from Cubs fans? I mean, they are who we thought they were! They didn't get let off the hook either.

It's like with all this bizarre "This is our year" talk and covers of major magazines pronouncing the Cubs going to the World Series, the Cubs almost believed the talk a little bit and never showed up in the postseason. I think it is a little bit of karma for being so presumptive all year about how this year is different for them and just kind of assuming success in the playoffs will happen. The funny part is the Cubs are a great team, it is just a short series and anything can happen, and it did.

Wrong? Wrong is knowing what this city has gone through for the past century yet not just losing but not even showing up.

What has the city gone through? The Chicago Bears have become a perennial NFC Championship team, the Chicago Bulls won 6 NBA Titles, and the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005. Now Illinois is about to have a Senator from the state elected President. That is just the last 20 years too! The city of Chicago has had it pretty good

The city has not gone through anything, it is just Cubs fans that are struggling, let's not make this much bigger than it has to be to make your column seem more important than it truly is.

And the biggest problem -- probably the biggest reason so many people are attaching four-letter words as prefixes to " … the Cubs" -- is that there's no answer for how to fix what happened or to make sure it doesn't happen a third, fourth, fifth, 10th time in a row.

Well you could find pitchers that can outpitch Derek Lowe, Chad Billingsley, and Hideki Kuroda in a 5 game series. That would be a start. I would worry about the offense after the pitching is taken care of.

On paper, and on the field for 162 games, the Cubs were (and can continue to be) the best team in the National League.

This happens every single year. A top team gets knocked off in the playoffs, just because it happened to the Cubs does not mean it is even crueler or more unjust than what has happened to every other team.

The Anaheim Angels had the best record in all of baseball and got knocked off this year, the year before, and it seems like every other year in the first round of the playoffs. Last year the entire National League was obliterated by the streaking Rockies. Was that unfair because the Rockies were not the best team in baseball all year? It is the playoffs, man up or get out...which the Cubs did.

There are no glaring holes or weaknesses.

Well, the Dodgers did have a better team ERA than the Cubs. That is worth something in a short series. The Cubs were also middle of the pack this year in fielding, right near the Dodgers in fact. So no glaring holes or weaknesses, but you still have to play the games.

Am I the only one is getting a sort of sense of entitlement the Cubs fans had this year? Like they thought they were clearly the best team and had a right to make it to the postseason and are a little shocked there are other teams that could beat them? It's like Scoop thinks they had a right to win.

No team in sports history has done this to its fan base before. No other fans have had to endure pain for as long as those who perpetually "wait 'til next year."

Now the Red Sox have won a World Series, this statement is very true. This was true before this year though, so why are all the fans bailing now? Or is Scoop full of shit? We know the answer to that one. The funny part is that other than Bartman from a few years ago, I can't think of any instances (and don't include the stupid goat) where the Cubs have come close to winning a World Series and did not do so because of some freak incident. Nothing like Bill Buckner has happened to the Cubs. Usually the Cubs have gotten beaten by another team or were just not good enough to win in the playoffs. (I am not saying it has never happened, I am sure something stupid has happened other than Bartman, but the Red Sox were never cursed and they had a couple heartbreaking and weird defeats along the way. I am just saying the Cubs have generally just gotten beaten or never made it).

And for the first time in 36,538 days in Chicago, no one gives a damn about next year. Or the year after that.

Wrigley Field will be empty and all of the Chicago Cubs fans are going to completely give up on the team. I bet $100 dollars Wrigley Field will be even more packed next year and Cubs fans will be just as rabid. Scoop Jackson is a hyperbolic spewing moron.