(Murray, passed over for Bobby Vinton for the National Anthem at Wrigley, 1985)
(Murray today, unbroken, now passed over for Billy Corgan for Anthem duty)
I may have to do some live blogging of all the Cub fan coverage today. The New York Times‘ Murray Chass, hard up for sports news in New York on Superbowl Sunday, interviewed Cubs’ lifers Bill Murray and former Bears Coach Mike Ditka on being Cub fans. Even the possibility of a Cub World Series trumps an Indy-Chi Superblow. The Lakers get Nicholson, the Knicks Woody Allen and Spike Lee, and the Cubs, Murray, who sums up a Cub fan’s Stockholm Syndrome for Chass.
œSomeone said you™re going to be very upset when you lose, Murray said, recalling the 1989 N.L. Championship Series against San Francisco. œI said: ˜You don™t get it. We™ve been losing since I was born. If defeat was going to break me, it would have happened a long time ago.™
The Bears have won more N.F.L. championships at Wrigley Field than the Cubs have won World Series. Each team has played at Wrigley five times for its sport™s championship, with the Bears winning four times and the Cubs none. When the Cubs won successive World Series in 1907 ” that™s 100 years ago ” and 1908, Wrigley Field had not been built.
And on the hoped for Tribune exit from Wrigley, Murray added : œThe thing is for sale, he said, referring to the Tribune Company, the Cubs™ owner. œI think once it™s for sale everything changes and teams spend lots and lots of money. That™s what I™ve noticed. Whoever buys it is going to eat all this money. They don™t care what happens. It™s a great way to go out, spending someone else™s money and still get tickets for the game.
And you can tell this story is by an AP writer and not a Sun-Times staffer, ie, as naive out-of-towner, Ashley M. Heher, allows this to go unchallenged:
Nearby, Chris Jamrozy and his friends secured spots at their lucky table by 9:30 a.m. The group, which has watched every Bears game this season from the exact spot near the bar’s jukebox, planned to open a Bears-themed Monopoly game as they waited for the game to begin.
”The Bears unite Cubs and Sox fans,” said Jamrozy, 26, who predicted the Bears would dominate the Colts. ”This is the one team that all of Chicago can cheer for.”
Let’s not get carried away. Go Bears, and all, but really …