On Admitting To Mistakes - Part 1

Everybody makes mistakes. And accidents happen. We spend a lot of time repeating these truisms to our three-year old daughter. Hoping to avoid making her overly fearful of error. To err is human, right?

Well, this baseball season I finally identified a serious error I've been making. Prior to today, the world has known me as a Cubs fan.


ROGER CLEMENS BRINGS IT.
ASTROS FANS EAT IT UP.

That's right. Prior to today. You see, I only used to be a Chicago Cubs fan. During easier times. I was nuts for the Cubs in 1984. I was proud to proclaim myself one of their biggest fans in 2003 after they won National League Central Division and then beat the Atlanta Braves 3 games to 2 in the 2003 Divisional Playoff series.

But then I felt that allegiance starting to dribble away. The waning began at about the time that Steve Bartman knocked that foul ball away from Moises Alou, causing the Cubs to lose the National League Championship Series to the Florida Marlins. The drip, drip, drip of my diehard Cub blood picked up speed in 2004, when the Cubs played modestly well, but were just not an inspiring franchise. (That is, they did not make the playoffs.) This year, the Cubs finished with 79 wins and 83 losses, 21 games back. Hell, the Cubs finished 2 games back of the Milwaukee Brewers, the best Triple-A franchise out there.

Fittingly, given the direction my loyalties and fanship have flowed, the Cubs' last loss of the 2005 season allowed the Houston Astros to clinch the National League wildcard.

So, the Cubs were then. And this is now. This is Astros time. And, to try to head off those among you who would hurl the "Fairweather Johnson" epithet my direction, accusing me of switching horses in midstream simply because I thought I had identified a team with better prospects for success, I wanted to hurry up and declare my true feelings now before the Astros make it to their first ever World Series.

Like so many things in life, choosing which professional sports teams to follow is difficult. Like so many of us struggling to find our way along the murky path of life, I have been blessed to have friends. About this same time last year, one of these friends officially announced that he had abandoned the only baseball team (and football team, but I digress) that he had ever followed. For the Red Sox. Prior to his declaration, I was a little confused. I'd always thought that true allegiance to a sports franchise was like a good yeast. I thought true allegiance had to grow organically, starting small and then, incrementally over time, developing, if the conditions were proper, into something beautiful, meaningful, and lasting.

But that's clearly not the case. As he showed so brilliantly last year, you can become a diehard fan of a World Series Champion overnight. All it takes is for you to declare that you have seen the light (note that it works better if you can say your switch was the product of some inspiration other than a won-loss record, but the true, true fan takes what he can get).

Said another way, many sports teams head out down the road to Damascus every year. If you wait until the lot of them are pretty much at the end of the trip to identify your chosen franchise, you've got a significantly improved chance of backing the best. So I'm proud to root for my all-time favorite baseball team of forever and a day here in 2005, your Houston Astros.

CONCLUSION:
I was wrong to like the Cubs more than the Astros at the beginning of this baseball season. I made a mistake. I can see that now; my error couldn't be more clear. The teams' results speak for themselves. Allegiance invested in the Astros has paid off significantly. Allegiance invested in the Cubs has once again been wasted.

GO 'STROS!

P.S.
("'Stros' is the nickname we true believers use; it's short for "Astros".)