Intro and Explanation

Hi everyone (whoever that might be). I'm Chris, I live on the North Shore of Massachusetts (just north of Boston), am about to turn 31, and since as long as I can remember I've been a die-hard, bleed-royal-blue fan of the Chicago Cubs.

To answer some of the common questions I get when I tell people this:
-No, I did not grow up in Chicago, or anywhere in the Midwest. I actually grew up in northern Maine.
-Yes, I do realize I'm in the heart of Red Sox Nation, and do follow the Sox.
-If the Cubs and Sox play each other (as they did in 2004), I wholeheartedly root for the Cubs. No reservations.
-Yes, I'm a sick human being. :-)

So how did this happen? It's pretty simple - growing up in northern Maine in the 80s, my parents actually sprung for cable TV, but only the 'basic' package. So we got ESPN, MTV, TBS, and most importantly for this exercise, WGN from Chicago. What we didn't get was NESN, the New England station that carried most Red Sox games. Hence, I didn't grow up watching the Red Sox of Jim Rice, Rich Gedman and Calvin Schiraldi (though he did actually pitch for the Cubs in 1988 and part of 89.)

I was the only real sports fan in my house at that time, and also had a 9:00pm bedtime. So late games were basically out, as my siblings and parents wanted to watch TV after 7:00 and I had to go to bed in the 6th inning anyway. But during the afternoons, WGN carried every Cubs game. So I spent summer after summer listening to Harry Carey and Steve Stone talk about the mostly horrific teams of the late 80s and 90s. I got to see Ryne Sandberg and Mark Grace, the Shawon-O-Meter, and Greg Maddux when he could actually throw 90 mph.

I became a rarity - a big baseball fan in New England who didn't really root for the Sawx. I cared about them to some extent, but not like the die-hards. (I can watch this clip and laugh, for example - scroll down, you'll see it. This one, however? It still turns my stomach...) And though I know I'm not completely alone, or at least I think I'm not, I think I've got a little different prespective on the whole Cub fandom thing. And as I've mentioned doing something like this for a while now, and spring training is soon to be here, I figured I'd just go for it and keep a blog of a year in the life of Cub fandom in Red Sox Nation.

I'll update the layout and all that as time goes on, but that's it for now. Feel free to post comments and recommendations for things you think are interesting and relavant. I make no promises about how often I'll update this, but hopefully it'll be pretty regular.

GO CUBS!