Cubs in pennant race, which means fans are afraid

CHICAGO – The Chicago Cubs are locked in a pennant race. So naturally, Tom Eukovich is terrified.\n“I’m scared to death, frankly,” Eukovich, a 52-year-old P.E. teacher decked out in a Cubs jersey, said before lining up for a seat in the Wrigley Field bleachers. “I believe we are cursed.”\nCall it pennant fever, Chicago style.\n“If you don’t have a sense of dread about this thing, you are truly not a Cubs fan,” said Steve Rhodes, on whose Web site fellow Cubs fans can listen to a Cubbified version of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” called “Please Stop Believin.’”\n“Not because of anything except an understanding of the way the universe works,” he quips.\nThe way it works – or at least the way it’s worked since the Cubs’ last World Series win in 1908 – is this: The Cubs come up short every year.\nOh, they get close. But then a tavern owner puts a curse on the team in 1945 when they don’t let his goat attend a World Series game. Or Chicago hands over first place to the New York Mets in 1969. Not too long after, a black cat got onto the Shea Stadium field and hissed at manager Leo Durocher.\nThen there’s the 2003 playoff game when a foul ball seemingly headed for a Cub’s glove is tipped as it slips through the fingers of a fan, just before a trip to the World Series slips through the fingers of the Cubs.\nIt all creates uniquely apprehensive fans, particularly since the Boston Red Sox put to rest their own run of futility in 2004 and the White Sox – painfully, for Cubs fans – did the same the next year.\n“Whether you are 13 years old like my son, 53 like I am or somebody’s 80-year-old grandfather, in the back of your mind you’re always thinking, ‘Are they going to win the World Series before I move onto the next world?’” said Lin Brehmer, a popular Chicago radio host and devoted Cubs fan.\nCubs fans talk about relatives who were born, lived long lives and died without ever having seen their beloved Cubbies win it all. They show off photographs, like the ones many carried into Wrigley Field in 2003 when the Cubs came within five outs of reaching the World Series before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.\nThey may even tell stories, like the one 82-year-old Joe Jobelius told Monday night at Wrigley, about deciding not to lose a work day back in 1945 to stand in line and buy a ticket to the World Series, reasoning “I’m going to wait until next year, I will come back next year.”\n“We’ve never been back,” he said Monday.\nSome fan worries are specific to the Cubs of 2007. Like the other day when Brehmer on his radio show compared seeing Cubs closer Ryan Dempster coming into the game to hopping into a taxi and finding Thelma and Louise in the front seat.\nBut most of it has to do with the team’s history.\n“I just can’t shake the fact that good things just don’t happen to this team,” said Marty Gangler, who helped write “Please Stop Believin’” with Tom Latourette, who sings:\n“For a few short days, they’re in first.\nBut don’t you know, these Cubs are cursed.\nWait till next year never ends.\nIt goes on and on and on and on.”\nPatrick Butcher, a 38-year-old Chicagoan, even worries some fan might play a role in the team’s collapse and be vilified the way Steve Bartman was after he tried to catch a foul ball in the 2003 NL Championship series against the Florida Marlins.\n“You think what’s going to mess it up and even if you (should) go for a foul ball,” said Butcher, who nevertheless wore his mitt as he took his spot in a line for the bleachers more than four hours before Monday night’s game started.\nFor the record, many fans, including Brehmer, don’t blame Bartman for 2003, when the team gave up eight runs after he tried to catch the foul ball down the line in Game 6 against the Marlins.\n“I blame God,” he said.\nStill, Cubs fans being Cubs fans can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year. Or at least they try to.\n“You want to believe but you have to be afraid to believe,” Rhodes said. “How many times can you go through this?”