Chauncey and Chumley's Dad

I had told myself that I had posted enough about the Cubs winning the World Series, but I couldn’t resist this one from Saturday Night Live.

With “Cubs Fever” having taken over the greater Chicago area and beyond, I am going to kick off this weekend with a song by one of the all time great Cubs fans and a musical genius, Steve Goodman. Steve grew up in suburban Chicago and became a folk musician with a gifted talent for songwriting. He battled leukemia his entire adult life and succumbed to the disease at age 36. However, he was always a cheerful man who wrote songs with humor and a great sense of irony. To that end, he wrote the song, A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request, using his humor and impending mortality to express the frustration and the eternal hope of being a die-hard Cubs fan. What many younger Cubs fans may not know is that Steve is the composer and singer of everyone’s favorite song, Go Cubs Go, which is played at Wrigley Field as a crowd sing-a-long after every Cubs win. Steve wrote the song for the 1984 baseball season, and the Cubs used it as their theme song for radio broadcasts. Unfortunately, he passed away four days before the Cubs clinched the NL East Division title in 1984, sending them to their first post season since 1945. Had he survived, Steve would have been disappointed again. After starting the five-game NL series with two wins, the Cubs lost the next three games, failing to advance to the World Series. Although some may think this song depressing, I think it is uplifting, demonstrating the love Cubs fans have for their team and also paying tribute to other dedicated Cubs fans that are no longer with us (most notably for me, my dad and my little sister). Rest assured, Steve would have been in the same frame of mind that all of us are in right now; anticipating a Cubs National League Pennant and World Series Championship.