Wait 'Til Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs (review)

Obviously, the people who made Wait 'Til Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs are emulating two Red Sox documentaries, The Curse of the Bambino (2003) and The Reverse of the Curse (2004). By promoting the idea that the Cubs have been and continue to be cursed, they hope to endow the team with the tragic fate and eventual triumph of the Red Sox. Acknowledging the curse can result in its being lifted.

The Cubs and the Red Sox—and their documentaries—share many similarities. Both teams play in the oldest and quaintest parks in MLB: Fenway Park, built in 1912, with its "Green Monster" left-field wall and Wrigley Field, built in 1914, with its ivy-covered walls. Both teams were dominant in the early days of baseball; in the first sixteen years of the World Series from 1903 to 1918, the Red Sox played in and won five Series, and the Cubs also appeared in five and won two in 1907 and 1908, their only Series victories. In 1918 the Cubs were defeated by the Red Sox, which was their last Series victory before the 2004 sweep of the Cardinals. Overall, the Cubs have appeared in ten World Series, seven since 1908, and have lost three playoffs in 1984, 1989, and 2003. The Red Sox have won six of ten World Series and two of six playoffs. Both teams have lost playoffs and Series in strange ways. In 2003 the Cubs and Red Sox collapsed against the Marlins and the Yankees, respectively, in eerily similar and all-too-familiar fashion with only 5 outs to go. In addition, fans of both teams point to key errors by first basemen on ground balls, Leon Durham in 1984 and Buckner in 1986, as major milestones of futility. Further, both teams have memorialized two players as their bogeymen: Bucky Dent of the Yanks for his "Green Monster" special in 1978 and Steve Garvey, former Dodger stalwart, for his dismantling of the Cubs in the 1984 playoff series after they had taken a 2-game lead over the Padres. Finally, Cub fans claim they suffer under a curse inflicted, like the now dispelled Curse of the Bambino, after a single event, the ejection of a goat owned by Greek restaurant owner William Sianis from the fourth game of the 1945 World Series, which the Cubs lost to the Tigers in seven games. This putative incident may have been included in the Cubs mythos because it adds a sense of Greek tragedy, whose origin some scholars have traced to a goatskin mummery performed during Dionysian rites.

The Cubs' decline into their prolonged futility did begin in the decade of the goat, 1941–50, with a .472 winning percentage, which was followed by five decades of sub-.500 baseball. In the decades preceding the fatal '40s, the Cubs finished with the best winning percentage in the National League in 1931–1940 and second best in 1901–1910 and 1911–1920. However, their so-called curse is hardly equivalent to the personalized curse of Babe Ruth, as comedian Jeff Carlin declares in Wait 'Til Next Year. Refusing a goat entrance into a ball game does not initiate a curse, but continued losing creates a tradition of futility. This is the major difference between the two teams: the Cubs are noted mainly for their prolonged futility, but the Sox are noted for coming tantalizingly close and losing via a bizarre play or two. In the decade following the trade of Ruth to the Yankees (1921–1930), the Yanks had the best winning percentage and the Red Sox had the worst percentage in the American League, .375, after leading the league in the previous decade with a .573 percentage. However, unlike the Cubs, the Red Sox finished with above .500 percentages in five of the ensuing seven decades.

Wait 'Til Next Year, like the Red Sox documentaries, consists of commentary by colorful, articulate, and diehard fans mixed with a running...