At exactly 8:36 p.m. Thursday, Coors Field became as genuinely Chicago as deep-dish pizza, when nearly half the 24,444 fans in the ballpark tried to make new Rockies slugger Kris Bryant feel at home by chanting: “Letap go Cubbies!”
He wasn’t trying to be critical, but the keen eyes of Bryant have already detected the problem with baseball in Denver within his first week on the job in LoDo.
“I feel like every game,” Bryant said, “I’ve seen at least one Cubs jersey, regardless of who we’re playing.”
Denver is a great baseball city only because of the baseball lovers born someplace else. Thatap the fault of Rockies owner Dick Monfort. Although his team has been in business since 1993, itap never given newcomers to Colorado solid consistent reasons to switch allegiance from their first baseball love.
When the Cubs beat the Rockies 5-2 on a spring evening, way too much of the crowd drove home happy.
Loving the Cubs too much is a chronic disease, as impossible to eradicate as the chill that worms its way into the bones of every man, woman and child with the misfortune of spending too many winters on the gray and gloomy shores of Lake Michigan. (As a child that wasted too much of my youth at Wrigley Field, I should know.)
Bryant was lucky. He won a championship in Chicago. And got out.
As Bryant stepped from the on-deck circle next to the Colorado dugout and walked toward the plate with a bat in his hands, the motley crew wearing the No. 10 of Ron Santo or the No. 23 of Ryne Sandberg stood and gave a standing ovation to a player named MVP of the National League while working at the corner of Addison and Clark in Chicago.
OK, all you hopeless Wrigley romantics, chomping on your cheeburger, cheeburger while guzzling Old Style beer, here’s a little something to make you smile:
Bryant admits he still has Cubs jerseys hanging in his closet at home.
“Just because I don’t play for the Cubs anymore,” Bryant said, “itap not like you turn the page.”
So Bryant has kept the scrapbook filled with snapshots of winning the World Series in 2016. But to thrive in baseball, a cruel game of frequent failure, a successful hitter quickly learns to have a short memory. Yesterday’s gone. Why not think about the times to come? And not about the things you’ve done?
“He won a World Series. That is something special. So he’ll never forget the bond that was created with that (Cubs) team. Thatap real,” Rockies manager Bud Black said.
Then he spoke a sports truth extremely difficult, if not impossible, for most die-hard fans to accept.
“Players,” Black said, “are conditioned to move on.”
Bryant has indeed moved on with his life, which is more than I can say for the forlorn fans of the Cubbies, once again lovable losers who now seem bent on not winning their next World Series for at least another 100 years.
Back in Chicagoland, super Cubs fan Paul Dzien watched on television as Bryant stepped into the batter’s box wearing No. 23 emblazoned across the back of his purple Colorado jersey, and screamed his disbelief into the internet abyss: “Nope. Just not right.”
Trying to be helpful, I reached out via social media and suggested to Dzien that adjusting his TV set would not help, because money might not buy happiness, but the $182 million contract Bryant signed with Colorado quickly dissolved his seven seasons roaming the friendly confines of Wrigley Field into nothing more than a misty watercolor memory.
“Really blows my mind!” Dzien said.
After producing two more hits, Bryant is batting .360. For the Rockies.
The best thing about Bryant wearing a purple Colorado jersey?
It turns lovesick Cubbies fans green with envy.
