The Rocky Mountain News’ Bernie Linicome submits that the Rockies will have a more cherished place in history if they aspire to Cubs-levels of futility. Or as I’d have subtitled it, “Things To Write In Denver When You’re Brain Dead.”
Losing is as good as winning if it is done over time and with great style, so, just to make a recent comparison, when a Clint Barmes injures himself carrying venison, it brings, as it should, a smile, but it has no legs elsewhere – and the poor deer didn’t, either, for that matter.
When Sammy Sosa injures himself sneezing, as Sosa did as a Cub last season, the laughter is a knowing chuckle, and it is part of the great tragic opera accompanied by a chorus that has echoed through the ages.
The Rockies should study what the Cubs have, and on the weekend when Detroit comes to Coors Field for no reason anyone can figure or care about, the Red Sox and the Cubs meet amid the ivy in historic Wrigley Field, their first meeting since the 1918 World Series, causing poets to sing.
The Rockies should note what the Red Sox have surrendered to the Cubs, the uniqueness of failure. What this weekend might have meant, had not the Red Sox ruined it all last autumn by turning suddenly from dependable losers to boastful October bullies, is the one-time grapple for lasting pity.
How much more dreamy would have been the matchup between two teams that could be relied upon to lose the last game.
Any last game that mattered, anyhow. Always.
What I am saying is that the Rockies may never achieve the Yankee legacy, but they can aim for the Cubs’. The world needs a familiar team in last place, needs it to fail, gamely but invariably, not big perpetual failure, not foot-wipe, irrelevant , neglected failure, not the Los Angeles Clippers kind of failure, but warm and tender failure, the kind that will take a bow after losing and be cheered for doing it.
This is what the Rockies should want to reach for. When Grantland Rice wrote his line about not winning or losing but playing the game, the Cubs were pretty good, so he could not have meant them. Same with Pierre de Coubertain, the Olympic midwife, who exalted the taking part rather than the victory, but he was just giving his fellow Frenchmen a place to fall.
Yet, this grew to be the greater function of the Cubs, to represent the taking part and the playing of the game, and making it seem a noble thing to do.
The Rockies must realize this is a very delicate and precarious position – and is so easily ruined. The Cubs did not get to where they are by violating the rules of their nature with periodic excellence. No, the Cubs are just never quite good enough, and have invested nearly 100 years in the proof.