The economy has girded itself to boom and bust. The lines of bars stand vacant, save for a barkeep idly tapping an iPad or a geared-up waitress in V-neck T and skirt staring longingly out the window. The empty merch stores get a rare chance to straighten their wares and even the beggars seem content to let the odd passerby go unquestioned.

At the field that feeds the neighborhood, the TV screens on the upper level outdoor bar patio show a multicolor test pattern, as the famous Wrigley sign sings an electronic message to lonely, fanless streets:

“Vital Proteins, Official Collagen of the Chicago Cubs”

…

It’s no secret that sponsorships are a major deal for the major league. Sports teams are expensive to run, and the Cubs are no exception.

The team has three levels of partnership: Legacy, Official and Proud. Legacy is the most spendy, with an annual investment of at least  a million a year for at least 10 years. Official is in the hundreds of thousands to $1 million range. Proud is for the cheapos who only pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the 2016 World Series Champions linked ever so tenuously with your Schaumburg-based independent insurance agency.

Some make perfect sense. People drink pop at games, of course team up with Pepsi. Teams stay in hotels when they travel, so hello Sheraton/Starwood Preferred Guest. Of course mustard, grilling and beer.

Others make sense with some light mental gymnastics. Binny’s isn’t “the Official Liquor Store” but “the Official Champagne Provider.” Champagne, popping champagne, victory, got it. Hefty® Ultimate™ Crack Resistant Cups as “the Official Party Cup” is a stretch, but this short video of an old lady chugging a brown liquid designed specifically not to look like beer at least explains what they’re going for.

But the official aluminum foil? Aside from the fact Reynolds and Hefty are the same company, is there an intrinsically “Cub” method of making sure your lasagna doesn’t get freezer burn? (And I’m not talking about this.)

So here are a list of a few official, legacy or proud partners of the Cubs and why the team-up doesn’t make sense.

Partner:

Vital Proteins, Official Collagen of the Chicago Cub

Why it doesn’t make sense:

A bit of background: Collagen peptide supplements are made from mammal cartilage, bones and hides or fish bones, skin and scales. They’re advertised as having a slate of benefits from moisturizing skin to promoting joint health to fighting bum cellulite or improving muscle mass in elderly men with sarcopenia, but even the fluffiest of news sources give it a resounding “maybe” over whether the supplements do anything on their own. The consensus appears to be “Sure, why not? Just eat healthy and exercise and you can throw any fish scales down your gullet you please.”

Whether it works is not my issue. My issue is that, although they try their damnedest in their communications to “emphasize the importance of clean protein sources while helping players lead healthier, fuller lives,” Vital Proteins’ collagen peptide line is less about the joints of professional athletes and more about skin care for the type of people who “Make every day a spa day with our delicious and nutritious line of Collagen Beauty Water™”

Maybe any company that has to footnote every claim on every product line on every page of its website with “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease” should stick away from associating with professional sports teams.

Partner:

Beam Suntory, Official Spirits Partner of the Chicago Cubs

Why it doesn’t make sense:

In one way this makes perfect sense because a huge portion of Wrigley’s business is aging suburbanite dudebros who amble to town to get trrrrrrrrrashed at a ballpark. Give ‘em a Jim Beam and Pepsi, Effen Vodka and Pepsi or Maker’s Mark and Pepsi in a Hefty brand Official Party Cup and watch the money flow in!

But it also is loudly advertising that a huge portion of Wrigley’s business is aging suburbanite dudebros who amble to town to get trrrrrrrrrashed at a ballpark.

At least keep the pretense of being about baseball, the same way Hooters keeps up the pretense of being about hot wings. No one is really buying it, but we all appreciate the facade.

Partner:

Impact Networking, Official Provider of Digital Office Equipment and Managed Print Services

Why it doesn’t make sense:

Because this conversation has never happened:

“Daddy, someday can I rely on the latest technologies to faster and more accurately capture data, including DocuWare, SmartSearch, eCopy and Autostore?”

(Fatherly chuckle and affectionate ruffling of hair)

“Just like Kris Bryant?”

“Just like Kris Bryant.”

Partner:

Sloan Valve, Official Water Efficiency Partner

Why it doesn’t make sense:

Wrigley Field is famous for troughs in lieu of urinals in the mens rooms. You have associated your brand with antiquated urination systems, Sloan. Tesla doesn’t sponsor horses and you shouldn’t hitch your wagon to a plumbing system that, while beloved, is best described as a “piss trough.”

Learn more about the Chicago Cubs’ owners’ ties to Trump

This is all leading up to me deciding if I can still support the team that means baseball to me.

Quick Recap

Tom Ricketts is the owner and chairman of the team, but his parents Joe and Marlene and all three of his siblings (Todd, Pete and Laura) share interest in the team through their family trust.

Todd raised $30 million for Trump through the family-run super PAC Future45 and the dark money 501(c)(4) 45Committee. Todd, who ran a Future45-funded attack ad with images of Clinton interworked with news photos of ISIS during Game 6 of the Cubs’ National League Championship Series, was recently appointed by Trump as deputy commerce secretary.

Pete, the governor of Nebraska, endorsed Trump and has served as an informal advisor to the campaign on agricultural issues.

After initially donating $5.5 million to an anti-Trump conservative super PAC during the primary, Joe and Marlene Ricketts switched side after Trump tweeted at them “I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $’s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!” and told The Washington Post he was considering taking out a series of ads attacking their management of the Chicago Cubs.

$1 million of the $30 million Future45 and the 45Committee raised for Trump came directly from Joe Ricketts, although as a 501(c)(4) dark money fund, the 45Committee does not have to disclose donors. We don’t and never will know who, Ricketts or no, donated to that group.

Laura was a major fundraiser for Clinton.

Tom Ricketts called the family political ties “no big deal.”

Getting This Out of the Way

The Cubs’ various owners over the years have been various levels of horrible, or had business and political ties I would consider horrible. For pity’s sake, Charles Weeghman hosted Klan rallies.

But saying I should be fine with the Ricketts’ family because I didn’t care about past owners is lazy logic.

Maybe I should have cared about where my ticket money ended up the whole time.

Bad Product vs. Bad People

There is a difference between boycotting a company because the practices and products are morally bad and the owners are morally bad.

Jimmy John Liautaud of Jimmy John’s subs is a right-wing megadonor who used to get his jollies shooting endangered species in the face. I support hunting (of non-endangered species) and Liautaud has since sworn off big-game hunting, but if you have a problem with that, it’s a problem with the man.

The problem with the company is its treatment of workers. The sandwich chain recently had to shell out $100,000 in Illinois in fines for making low- and minimum-wage workers sign noncompete clauses, saying they couldn’t work in other sandwich shops for two years if they left Jimmy John’s.

Liautaud wasn’t worried about workers taking the trade secrets of meat, mayo and bread to the competition. It’s easier to bully, mistreat and underpay fast-food workers if they literally have no other employment option.

Do you avoid Chick-Fil-A because of the founding family’s stance on gay marriage or because they continue to use non-degradable Styrofoam cups? Do you dump Miller products because of Trump ties or because they make crappy beer?

And what of cool people? Bill Gates is a hero of mine, not because I’m a huge Windows fan, but because of the astounding work done by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That said, one of the dirty secrets of modern technology is that no one — not Apple, Dell or sainted Steve Jobs — can say for sure if the tantalum used in the needed capacitors helps fund warlords in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Maybe that hero helped put blood on my hands through the keyboard I’m using to write this sentence.

That said, stances need to be made. We get no change without them.

I believe economic protests can work, but only when they’re targeting a practice or product and not someone’s belief system.

Changing Actions vs. Changing Beliefs

McDonald’s got rid of its Styrofoam packaging in 1990 in the face of economic and social pressures, including some boycotts.

Chick-Fil-A faced a wave of boycotts in 2012 when conservative Christian COO Dan Cathy shocked the world by being a conservative Christian and saying he opposes gay marriage.

In the 26 years since the McDonald’s boycotts, the planet’s landfills were spared an incalculable amount of non-degradable polystyrene.

In the four years since the Chick-Fil-A boycotts, Dan Cathy is still conservative and Christian.

A protest aimed at “Change this specific business practice” has a better success rate than one aimed at “Don’t think the things you think.” And with the Cubs, we’re in the territory of the latter. No matter how few Cubs tickets you buy, the Ricketts family will continue to hold the horrible beliefs they hold.

But there’s a harder issue.

I’m Already Not Buying Cubs Stuff

I own one Chicago Cubs baseball cap. I’ve owned it since I was 12, it’s falling apart and I plan to have this the rest of my life. I have a hoodie I bought at a cold game and a few T-shirts have trickled my way over the decades.

I went to one game in the 2016 season, but probably won’t go in 2017. I got to see the team that went all the way, plus they’re jacking up the ticket prices this season.

I can’t boycott the Cubs because I’m not giving them money right now.

But am I giving them free advertising with my worn-out cap from 1991? Am I inadvertently funding Trump when I buy a sandwich, coffee or shoe from an “Official _____ of the Chicago Cubs” company?

Some of the money you spend on the Chicago Cubs will go to support Donald Trump. Maybe pennies per ball cap or fractions of a cent per one of those bison hot dogs they started serving at Wrigley since Tom Ricketts took over (his dad owns the bison meat company), but the uncomfortable fact remains that money spent on blue goes to help orange.

So, for me at least, it’s decision time

Can I love the Chicago Cubs?

I can’t recite batting averages from 1967 or tell you more about draft prospects and series standings than that both concepts exist, but I do love this team. I cried a bit when they won and proudly wrote my late grandfather’s name on Wrigley Field in chalk when we as a city were still doing that.

I wrote his name twice.

But I value my political morality more than I value my team loyalty.

I can’t condone the Cubs’ owners, even if they were bullied and cowed into a spineless support of the tweeter in chief. But I can’t put it on the same level as the blood on my hands from cellphones, pollutants or maltreated low-income sandwich workers.

My decision is hope and resignation, adding the crack of a bat to the ever-growing list of ways I am complicit in the world’s decline. I’ll make no effort to spend money on the Cubs, but won’t pretend I have a choice in whether I root for this team or wear the clothes I already own.

We’re all hypocrites in this world, or at least have been forced by economy into a perpetual cognitive dissonance. We love animals but eat meat. We root for peace but profit from war. The VW of hippies’ delights was built on Nazi slave labor and that’s the symbol that best represents how we live today.

Don’t get smug. Do you know if child laborers sewed the clothes you’re wearing?

That’s the resignation. My hope comes from the Ricketts’ moral cowardice, the fact they were bullied into giving millions to a candidate they campaigned against in better times. They’re opportunists who will turn away from Trump when he has no more to offer, so let’s do what we can to make that moment happen. We organize. We educate. We fight.

It won’t happen in the waning days of 2016, nor in 2017, when he will ascend to the nation’s highest post. But the year will come when Trump will have no more to offer and the rats will scurry. I don’t know when, but I can wait.

I’m a Cubs fan. There’s always next year.

…

Submit your stories to help nonprofits Trump/Pence targeted

I’m going to use this space to lay out some thoughts on the Chicago Cubs’ ties to President-elect Donald Trump and, on Friday, decide if as a moral person, I can continue to support the team I love.

The Ricketts

Donald Trump and the Ricketts family, which owns the Cubs, have a weird relationship.

After family heads Joe and Marlene Ricketts donated $5.5 million to an anti-Trump conservative super PAC, the future leader of the free world threatened the family on Twitter in February, alluding to exposing the Ricketts for an unnamed “lot to hide.”

“It’s a little surreal when Donald Trump threatens your mom,” said Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts.

In his candidate interview with the Washington Post in March, Trump was asked about the threat. He re-upped, threatening to “start taking ads telling them all what a rotten job they’re doing with the Chicago Cubs.”

This was, of course, referring to the 2016 Chicago Cubs.

Pete Ricketts — brother of Tom, son of Marlene and Joe, governor of Nebraska — did not appear to mind the threat as much. He endorsed Trump in May.

The man whose face will be on elementary school walls next to the flag while children say the Pledge of Allegiance took the opportunity to slam Pete’s brother Todd and praise the Cubs.

“I love Pete, but I think his brother doesn’t like me as much as he does,” Trump said. “I like him so much, I’m starting to like the Chicago Cubs again.”

Todd Ricketts more than made up for that. Todd took control of both Future45 and the 45Committee, which together raised $30 million for Trump.

Future45 is a super PAC, meaning it can raise as much money as it wants, but has to disclose the names of donors and can’t coordinate with campaigns. The 45Committee is a 501(c)(4), meaning it can raise as much money as it wants and can keep donors anonymous.

The Playoff Ad

Future45 used portions of that $30 million — $1 million of which came from Joe Ricketts — to fund several anti-Clinton attack ads. One of them ran during Game 6 of the Cubs’ NLCS playoff.

So Joe and Marlene helped pay for Todd’s ads to ran during Tom’s team’s game.

Politico reported Tom Ricketts told media buyers to decline Future45 ads during the World Series after sites like Deadspin called the family out on the perceived conflict.

Last week, Trump named Todd Ricketts deputy commerce secretary.

Despite these ties, I’ve personally haven’t seen much anger against the Cubs in Chicago. The Cubs don’t make the widely circulated #grabyourwallet list of companies to boycott, even though the group advises people to consider boycotting Miller beer for economic ties I consider much looser than the ties the Ricketts have to Trump.

There have been an angry letter to the Trib or two, but Tom Ricketts brushed off the ties as “no big deal” and claimed he hasn’t gotten any angry emails or letters from fans post-election. We rally around bars that dump Miller (incidentally, that last link goes to a news site owned by Joe Ricketts), but I’ve seen little similar outcry for our new-minted World Champions.

In a city that seems to loath all things Trump, even the press is wondering why we’re not talking about the big blue elephant in the room.

Which brings us to me and my big decision. Can I continue to support the Chicago Cubs and what does a boycott of a sports team actually look like?

Saving the World vs. Saving Yourself

Boycott Trump is a free app that lists products and businesses with ties to the Trump family.

“[W]e aim to give people a safe and productive way to voice their disapproval of Trump,” one of the creators told HuffPo.

But look at a prominent tech blog’s take on the app.

“[T]he Boycott Trump app may provide some small piece of comfort knowing you’re striking a blow, however small…”

No you’re not.

It’s an app designed to express disapproval that at least one top tech blog is claiming you can use to make a difference. Finding your voice is part and parcel of change, but it’s dangerous to confuse the two. Change doesn’t happen if you just voice your disapproval — verbally or economically — and then go home thinking you made a difference.

(Seems like a good time to promote my upcoming fundraiser for nonprofits Trump/Pence has targeted)

A better example than the Boycott Trump app is #grabyourwallet. It doesn’t stop with listing companies to avoid. It includes text to send the companies explaining why you’re avoiding them, Trump-free alternatives and an Action Guide so your activism doesn’t end with just not buying Ivanka purses.

I support the boycotts paired with action. Not doing something that you might not have done anyway is at best a lazy form of activism.

Doing Good vs. Not Doing Bad

I am, at this exact moment, not eating a Chick-Fil-A sandwich or drinking a Miller beer. In an hour, I will still not be eating a Chick-Fil-A sandwich or drinking a Miller beer.

I’ve not reversed the Chick-Fil-A founding family’s opposition to gay marriage, I’ve not ended a Miller board member’s Trump fundraisers. Without action attached, all I’ve accomplished is not getting drunk at work.

I’m not asking people to support companies that violate their moral beliefs. I’m asking people not to think economic activism is as easy as choosing a different beer.

Look at the device you’re reading this story on. Do you know if the columbite-tantalite ore mined for the tantalum capacitors funds warlords in the DRC who use mass rape as a weapon of war?

You don’t know. Apple and Dell can’t even be sure.

Trying to make a difference with our wallets is difficult, nuanced. There are no easy answers, especially since my problem isn’t with the Cubs but with the owners.

Come back on Friday for the fate of my fandom.

It was a place where the Cubs lost and the Sox won, but I didn’t care because the Sox were pooey dumb-dumb heads who smelled like poo. And I loved the Cubs.

I loved the Cubs because of ivy and piss troughs, because of Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace and Andre Dawson. I loved the Cubs because the Cubs meant a two-hour drive out of my hometown to that place I thought was a perpetual carnival of sports and fun and a pre-1:20 lunch at Ed Debevic’s.

In the years, yeah, decades since, my dream became my home. I realized Chicago wasn’t a carnival but a deeply troubled and divided city. I realized I wanted to write about Chicago, not party there. I realized that if I could do one thing for this city it would be to fix it.

But I still loved the Cubs. I grew to see the economics that took the bleachers from the bums to the richies. I grew to see the political favors that made my childhood carnival happen in a bleeding town. I see every complaint you’re about to lodge against the Cubs and Wrigley and I just don’t care.

Because the Chicago Cubs taught me to believe.

It was my grandfather’s creed more than mine. Many years my fandom was more a tribute to him than to the team. I tried to care about the Trachsels, Dempsters and Sosas, but no one ever mattered as much as the guys I loved as a kid, or maybe Kerry Wood because I knew my granddad liked him. Pre-injury, of course.

My childhood carnival is my troubled, bleeding home. And now the Sox lose and the Cubs just won it all. A Chicago friend called me after the game. Mid-conversation I realized I’ve known him maybe 15 years.

I don’t know what to say other than this means something. The obligatorily snarky will tease and prod about what next and it’s just a ball team, but we know better. For me, the Cubs were Chicago were joy via piss troughs and ivy. The Cubs were my first step toward what would become my home.

I can never thank them enough.

The Cubs won it all. Storyline ended, narrative changed forever. It’ll be fine for a while at least. I’ve loved Baez and Rizzo as much as Grace, Dawson and Prior.

But my Cubs, my lovable loser Cubs have brought me to the place I called home. For that, I can only offer one thing: If you’ve survived my tedious screed so far, I’m asking a solid. Take your drink in your hand, hoist it to the skies and just say the three words you know you want to hear.

Go Cubs Go.

My Cubs story

Piano Legs Gore, Hippo Vaughn and Dandelion Pfeffer

The screaming captain of 2015

The patron saint of the belly-itchers

What it really means to be a fan

The bars. The crowds. The water bottle and bootleg T-shirt vendors hawking wares and the how-are-they-not-arrested scalpers yelling “Tickets! Tickets! I got extra!” from their pre-arranged Wrigley stoops.

Slow cruises of suburbanite SUVs trickling slowly, slowly down Clark looking for that holiest of Grails, a cheap parking spot by the field.

The smell of booze and pre-event jitters, to be replaced later that night with the stink of horse flops from the Chicago Police Mounted Patrol Unit’s rides.

The cottage industries that surround the ballpark were ready to go, from the street vendors and screaming scalpers to the bars to the neighbors-turned-parking-attendants. They were ready as they are 81 home games a year for a crowd of fans to slurp into the neighborhood by train or car and then hollow out to suburbia once their deed was done.

It was the perfect scene for a day of Cubs baseball at Wrigley Field.

But it wasn’t baseball. The economic driver of stadium, neighborhood and booze, cops, scalpers and bootleg street-sold T-shirts was the music of James Taylor with special guest Jackson Browne.

Like a diesel car converted to run on sunflower oil, the neighborhood accepted its new folk-rock fuel.

The scalpers offered folkie tix instead of views to the current leader in the National League Central standings. “Browne” and “Taylor” replaced “Arrieta” and “Rizzo” on the bootleg shirts. The pre-stadium drunks pre-emptively warbled “Fire and Rain” instead of “Go Cubs Go” or “Take Me Out…” as they ambled to the field.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised the area adapted, that the rooftop owners still sold tickets and the bro bars still sold overpriced beer.

The first concert at the stadium was in 1922, although they didn’t become a regular feature until Jimmy Buffett kicked off a regular series in 2005. (I know what you’re thinking: “Did he play ‘Margaritaville’?” He played “Margaritaville”!)

I should be surprised that I was surprised, that a street vendor’s bills still need to be met more than 81 home games a year, that life around this strange, magnetic park, a place made of nostalgia and ivy, existed for a night without the team.

It felt odd to hear singing from the park that wasn’t the national anthem, or to hear cheers not for runs.

But it was weirder still to see all the trappings of economy around this stadium knowing good and well the Cubbies were 725 miles away, playing their game to a different crowd.

What’s with all the baseball this week?

A man called Piano Legs

And, just for fun, how Chicago invented the ray gun

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Catch. Throw. “I could feel it slipping.”

Catch. Throw. “Oof. Sorry, Dan.”

As I mentioned last month, I’ve been asked to throw out the first pitch at an upcoming Kane County Cougars minor league baseball game in August. I’m sort of a sports Einstein (in that I play like an elderly physicist), so for the last several weeks I’ve been practicing.

I know I’m not going to get great, but as visions of 50 Cent’s and Snoop Dogg’s humiliating first pitches swirled my brain (and Carly Rae Jepsen’s was no prize either), I decided to drive to the suburbs once a week to get pitching lessons from a friend who coaches his son’s Little League team.

And the son, OK? The 11-year-old boy is giving me tips as well.

I’m legitimately getting better now that I know things like “how to hold a baseball” (apparently, the position of the seams matters), but it’s a hard slog.

When I get discouraged, I think of Lennie Merullo, 1917-2015. The 98 year old was the last living person to play in the World Series as a Chicago Cub.

Merullo played shortstop for the Cubs from 1941-1947 and was, by all accounts, terrible. Slow and error-prone, his record of four errors in a single inning wasn’t matched until 1986.

He described himself as a “no-hit, very erratic player” in a 1983 letter * to newspaper columnist Mike Royko.

“However, it was not from not working at it,” Merullo added. “I worked at it too hard. I was not relaxed. Too tense.”

The letter was in reference to Royko’s yearly Cubs quiz. The columnist would kick off each new season by asking the most unbelievable Cubs trivia of the reader, from an outfielder who once missed a game claiming his eyelids got stuck (“the immortal Jose Cardenal”) to a player who made a throw from the outfield that went into the dugout, bounced through an open door and landed in a toilet (“the immortal Dave ‘Ding-Dong’ Kingman”).

But Royko always saved a barb for the terror and disappointment of his youth, “the immortal Lennie Merullo.”

Like this one, originally from 1968:

Q: The immortal Lennie Merullo couldn’t field or hit, and he wasn’t fast. What was he known for?

A: He was best known for not being able to field, hit or run fast.

Or this one, original date unknown:

Q: Everyone used to laugh at the immortal Lennie Merullo because he made so many errors at shortstop. And they laughed at the way he hit. But in 1947, he led the Cubs in stolen bases. How many bases did he steal that year?

A: Four. They laughed at him for that, too.

In that 1983 letter to Royko, Merullo talked about his life. He had become a well-respected scout, had a big family, still loved Cubs baseball. Royko in turn promised to knock off the Merullo-bashing, which, aside from when the Trib would reprint old Cubs quizzes, he did.

Merullo’s life was better and more amazing than he let Royko know. He still had a scar from the 1945 World Series, telling the New York Times in 2014 that he picked the scab for weeks, just so it would scar. He wanted a Series souvenir.

He was the Cubs’ chief scout from 1950-1972, later moving to the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau. He would end his stellar scouting career in 2003 at the age of 85.

That four-error inning, a feat the Associated Press reporter covering the game called “a new modern mark for errors,” was because he had just been told his first son, Len Merullo Jr., was born.

“The headline the next day in the Boston Globe said ‘Boots Is Born; Merullo Boots 4,’” Lennie Merullo told MaxPreps.com in 2010. “His own wife still calls him Boots.”

Boots Merullo grew up with baseball. He played in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system in the early ‘60s, but never quite came back from a broken leg in his first season.

“I grew up as a kid with Wrigley Field as our lawn,” Boots told MaxPreps.com. “We sawed the barrels off the bats so we could swing them. The clubhouse guy gave us sandwiches and then we sat in the stands and watched the games. It was huge, but it was always positive. It was like having 30-some uncles.”

Boots’ son Matt did take the family back to the majors, playing from 1989 to 1995 for various teams, mostly the White Sox. He later managed an Orioles minor league team and currently runs a youth baseball camp in Connecticut.

Nick Merullo, the fourth Merullo in the game, played for a few years with the Orioles system himself before returning to his hometown as a high school baseball coach.

Lennie Merullo started a four-generation almost-made-it dynasty. The Cubs’ goat became a legendary scout, honored and beloved at the end of his 98 years.

And he still sorta sucked.

“Perhaps my contribution to baseball can be described as being able to understand and have a feel for the player who is having a bad day—as I have had many, and know the feeling,” the immortal Lennie Merullo told Mike Royko one day in 1983.

Catch. Throw. “I let go too late.”

Catch. Throw. “Pushed it.”

Catch. Throw. “I don’t even know what happened with that one.”

As I learn at the age of 36 how to be a pitcher, not a belly-itcher, I take some comfort in my patron saint of Lennie Merullo. Maybe my one-pitch career will be a disaster, a la 50 Cent and Carly Rae, but even if it is, I know it will all be OK.

Read Merullo’s memories of baseball, Dizzy Dean and a declining Babe Ruth

Buy my coach’s latest book

Meet the Chicago Salmon “Base Ball” team

Why we play

My dad and I pretend to enjoy sports together

Cap Anson, Hippo Vaughn, Dandelion Pfeffer, Piano Legs Gore, Toothbrush Dailing and the other major Cubs error-makers of the last 140 years

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* The date is sometimes incorrectly given as 1989 because that’s when Royko’s syndicated column ran it, but it was originally published Aug. 21, 1983 in the Sun-Times.

He wore light khakis. He wore a checked button-up shirt under a cardigan under another cardigan.

He looked around, his fine mustache twitching, and found a spot. From his canvas bag advertising the Environmental Law and Policy Center, he pulled a folded-over copy of the New York Times. He pushed his thin bifocals up on his nose, twitched the ‘stache a time or two more and proceeded to read the Times, article by article, in order.

…

She sat on the bus in one of the inward-facing seats. She was young, Latina, very very cool.

She was old enough for a septum piercing and tattoos, young enough to retain a thin patina of acne. She toyed on her phone, did Millennial things.

She wore a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off. On her arm, a tattoo.

VIII XVIII XX

That was it. No accompanying illustration, no design or pattern. Just those 11 letters grouped into three Roman numerals.

VIII XVIII XX

8 18 20

A code? An address? High school locker combination forever scrimshawed into her flesh? I ripped through the possibilities as the Division bus bumbled through the bottleneck on Goose Island.

When the bus neared Wicker Park and she made moves as if to gather her bag, I asked.

She flashed a broad, full smile as she told me about VIII XVIII XX. It meant 8/18/20. August 18, 1920.

“It’s when women got the vote,” she said.

…

The man with the kitten shirt is not who I want to be.

He was a stumbling drunk, even compared to the other stumbling drunks of Wrigleyville after a Cubs game. Among this tide of blue, one young guy walked (stumbled) in a dangly sleeveless T-shirt screen printed with the faces of dozens of kittens.

It was a hip shirt worn hiply. He wore a hip hat of hip-cut curly locks. He trod with hipness, dipping between sidewalk and roadway as his leisure and Wrigleyville’s foot traffic dictated.

Hiply, he slammed his fist onto the trunk of a limousine for no reason, continuing his walk as if nothing had happened.

The limo driver yelled something at him from the front seat, but the man kept walking down the road, not looking back at the man whose livelihood he had just damaged for funsies.

The limo driver was a short, somewhat tubby Middle Eastern man dressed in a uniform all of black. Bright-polished black shoes, pressed black trousers, ironed black short-sleeved dress shirt. He got out of the car, watched as the kitten-shirted man continued his hip march and then inspected the damage done to his job.

The kitten man had dented the trunk. For fun. For no reason.

The black-clad limo driver grumbled a bit, got some well-deserved condolences from Cubbie-clad onlookers and then went about doing his job.

…

The world seems angry, full of noise. It seems a place of loud declaration, rancor and yelling, one where my opinion is just as valid as your fact. Sometimes it seems like our culture celebrates willful ignorance as purity of thought, hotheaded backlash as purity of emotion.

But then there’s a white-haired guy on the train reading the entire New York Times, article by article.

Then there’s a young woman on the bus who has such a deep abide for her forebears’ struggles she had a date needled into her skin.

Then there’s a man who stays calm and professional even when damage is done on a lark.

I want to be informed. I want to respect the past, when the past deserved it. I want to show grace under fire.

I still worry about cancer and racism, about the orange-skinned hateball running for president and about when it’s appropriate to tell people on Facebook to Shuckup about Hodor. But there are people walking these streets who show, not through words or speeches or loud declaration, who they really are.

And who they are is who I want to be.

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Three True Moments in North Side Chicago

The Bare Minimum Voting Guide

Just a reminder that there are only a few days left to vote for me as the best bahn mi sandwich in Chicago

“Hi!”

“Hi… We’re still friends, right?”

“Yeeeeees?”

“The tickets were for last night’s game.”

Loud laughter.

Thanks to a wonderful Christmas gift from my sister, I’ve spent the last few months going to Cubs games. I shivered in spring, baked a bit in summer and had an amazing time following this don’t-jinx-it season.

The last game of the multi-game package was Wednesday, when the Cubs faced off against the Brewers in a match-up that wasn’t on Thursday after all.

A great summer capped by a season-ending error.

The plans for today’s essay, a meditation on the power of baseball to connect people (and a few timely rants about that terrible goddamn Jumbotron), had to be scrapped as well.

This led me to start thinking about errors and the Cubs, which led me to the world’s premier source for information you’re mildly interested in but not interested in enough to do real research on: Wikipedia.

Turns out Wrigley was the right place for this.

The error records for five of the seven positions in baseball (counting outfielders as one) belonged to players who spent all or part of their careers playing for the team that under various names (White Stockings, Colts, Orphans, Microbes) would eventually become the Cubs.

That’s Cap Anson for first basemen, Hippo Vaughn for pitchers, Dandelion Pfeffer for second basemen, Bad Bill Dahlen for shortstops and Piano Legs Gore for outfielders.

Technically, Piano Legs only holds the National League record for errors by an outfielder. The overall record is held by Tom “I Don’t Have An Awesome Old Timey Baseball Nickname” Brown, who switched between leagues in his 17-year career. I just really wanted to type “Piano Legs Gore.”

I guess were I to excuse myself for bungling both a great night out with a friend and a great gift from my sister, I could point out that Cap, Hippo, Dandelion, Bad Bill, Piano Legs — sweet god those names — were legends.

Cap Anson I knew was big, but the other surprised me. Hippo Vaughn held a hitless duel in 1917 that lasted nine innings. Dandelion batted in more than 1,000 runs in the 1880s and 1890s. Bad Bill hit over .350 twice for the Cubs (then Colts).

And Piano Legs’ record of seven stolen bases in one game in 1881 has been matched once, but never bested.

They made errors because they got in there every time. They were the best, so they screwed up the most.

An article I found on baseball statistics explained it in the best possible way.

“The easiest way not to make an error is to be too slow to reach the ball in the first place.”

So although my sister is going to be a little hurt I screwed up her present and I have a round of teasing ahead of me from my friend (It’s OK. She and her boyfriend got an impromptu date night out of it.) I’m not going to kick myself too much for this.

I had a thoughtful, wonderful gift from a beloved family member. I had people I care about who shared or would have shared each game with me. I cheered and yelled and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” from those two wonderful seats time and time again.

I had a fantastic season, even with the E.

Give me an old timey baseball nickname (I’m leaning toward “Rotary Engine” or “Toothbrush”) and, after this season, I’ll still feel like one of the greats.

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Childhood memories of Wrigley (and not actually liking sports that much)

An old man who rides his bike to games

The crowd after the Cubs

On Ernie Banks

We had finished our beers, sang our “Take Me Outs” and, after a 10-inning nail biter saved when Montero cracked a walk-off homer to left field, had screamed and cheered and sang “Go Cubs Go.” The Brewers fan who had heckled and flicked off the field the whole game slunk off with two beautiful friends.

We toddled down from the field, down looping paths of slanted concrete, past various booths in various states of openness selling beer, hot dogs, sweatshirts, Garrett popcorn. As a lumpy blue and red mass, we toddled by skyboxes and branded patio bars, past clogged restroom lines and smiling Cubs staff in various states of suppressed relief.

The mass became a glut outside the gates, a milling, confused clog below the big red sign and by the statue of Ernie Banks.

Some went north, south, east, west. Some hailed pedicabs or car cabs; some wandered in circles looking for their friends; some just stood, blocking paths and debating whether to hit a bar.

Rivulets formed in the crowd, little streams of motion in one direction or the other. We looked for one heading our intended way and grabbed onto that riptide, single-file following a current of strangers through the glut.

Our way headed east on Addison so we could slip north on Sheffield and grab a quick one at the Holiday Club before home. Gates and cloth-covered fences hiding bits of post-Jumbotron renovation pushed our Sheffield jaunt up against the far side of the street.

It squeezed the flow up against the wrought-iron fences of the rooftop buildings, the brownstoney business-homes that become elaborate playgrounds for the well-to-do on game days. Luxury food and luxury party packages for luxury people paying to watch the game from stands built on the roofs peeking Kilroy-Was-Here-style over the bleacher walls.

One of these clubs had a clutch of middle-aged white men with perfect hair, smoking perfect-smelling cigars on the stoop.

Then, out. Past the field, past the other side of the ivy-clad walls. Down sidewalks that in every direction seemed to be slick with men and women in Cubbie blue debating over transit routes or where they paid that guy to let them park their car. Streets were bumper-to with thick SUVs stuffed with smiling blue-clads miming to their loved ones Rizzo’s dive into the stands for a foul in the sixth.

Each step took each fan away from each other.

Each step in every direction meant another path away from the field.

36,000-something people, if I remember the “Guess the Attendance” winner right, were spreading out from a central spot, shooting off tangent in the night down gridded North Side streets, by foot, cab, bus, car, train, Uber. Back to their lives, back to their homes, back to their existences that had no connection other than a passing fondness for blue to the existences of the people they were cheering, yelling, hugging and high-fiving with just minutes before.

At Clark and Addison, an empty field waited for the next day, when it would happen all again.

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A tale of Wrigleyville

A father and son bonding over a distaste for sports

Wrigley after Ernie Banks

It’s apparently been tourist week on the site

I went to Wrigley. I did the things. $8.50 beer, $5.75 hot dog, $49.50 hoodie because I misjudged the chill night breeze.

We sat and laughed and watched the Cubs lose badly, cutting out early when the game got too dire.

That’s a thing you do at Wrigley too.

Then came the man in the bathroom.

He had thick glasses and a wide, toothless grin. Old and white and thin. “Wizened” would be a good vocab word here.

He started talking to me as we washed out hands.

“Oooah!” he said as his hands touched the water.

We were all filing out in the eighth, hitting the troughs before we slinked away.

“Yeah, nice and warm,” I said. “It’s cold out there.”

“And I’ve got to get on my bike after this.”

Continuing to wash my hands so as not to arouse the wrath of the many Cubs-garbed men waiting in line behind me, I turned to look at the man.

There wasn’t a bit of Cubs merchandise on him, no reek of beer or hot dog anywhere to be found. Just an old man who rides a bicycle to watch his team lose.

“Where do you come from?”

“Ravenswood!” he said proudly. “Sheridan and Lunt.”

I wished him well and left the bathroom, out back into the sea of Cubbie blue and Budweiser red. A mother dragged a crying little boy by his hand. A group of identical trim blonde girls colleged it up in micro short shorts despite the cold. Men in caps, shirts, jackets and $49.50 sweatshirts identical to mine stormed around with their dudebro friends, loudly proclaiming the exact moment the team lost the thread.

I thought of the old man riding his bicycle five miles in the chill and dark.

There’s always someone who loves baseball more than you do.

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