Cubs Fans, You Ok? You Wanna Talk About It?

Welp, if you know a Cubs player, odds are they’re gonna ask to borrow your truck this weekend and/or offer you beer and pizza to help them move. Literally, everyone not named Jason Heyward or Willson Contreras has been shipped elsewhere. I’d like to say his trade deadline was one to forget for the Northsiders, but it’ll be the day no one forgets. In less than 24 hours, the Cubs lost Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Craig Kimbrel, Javier Baez, and to the Reds.

But now it’s back to the future for the Cubs. And I’m not just saying that because Willson Contreras is like Marty McFly in this photo.

It’s because now Cubs fans are back to a familiar spot of looking ahead to the future. “There’s always next year” is slowly rearing its ugly head yet again. This is fine for the diehards because every coffee shop hipster who hopped on the bandwagon in 2016 will slowly go back to wearing vintage Bulls jerseys, leaving only the people there from the beginning. The ones who remember the 108 years. But that’s probably literally the ONLY silver lining.

If you know a Cubs fan, please reach out to them. Let them lament these losses. If they need to talk, buy them a drink. But not a Malort. Because it sucks. Actually, on second thought, buy them a Malort. This kind of shitty situation calls for it.

I mean, not even Theo Epstein is still around. And hear me out, I’m not looking to unload a vat of Morton’s salt into this already gaping wound but isn’t it ironic how the first year after wonder kid Theo leaves town and the entire team is sold off for spare parts? Theo is smart, complete team fire sales are not. Just ask the Marlins. And then ask the Marlins again.

Sure, you can try and hype the prospects the Cubs got in return for their firesale. But that’s like selling all of your grandma’s most valuable antiques for Dogecoin. Will Dogecoin even be worth anything in a few years? We don’t know. I never understood the “loading up your farm” argument over keeping proven major leaguers on your roster. A prospect is a chance. A guy batting .280+ is not. So why would you not just keep the latter? It’s like these front office guys watched too much Moneyball. Or maybe not enough, because they’d know from that movie that prospects don’t always pan out.

*clears throat* ahem!

All in all, this sucks for Cubs fans. And really, it sucks for baseball. The Cubs from 2015 to 2019-ish were fun as hell. From Javy Baez to Bryzzo to that beer league softball player Kyle Schwarber (gone prior to this season, but certainly not forgotten). The Cubs were fun. Keyword: were. Because now they have to rebuild Wrigley from the ground up. Kind of like they already did.