On the Cubs Defecating the Mattress

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com



Even though I'm a huge fan, I'm not going to let the choking of a bunch of multi-millionaires I've never met ruin my day. After all, I didn't suck, they did. I'm all for watching sports to escape dwelling on work, or less-fun parts of your life, or watching sports so you and a few friends have a better excuse to get together at a bar and drink for an afternoon- those things can legitimately improve your quality of life. But I'm not about to let sports do the opposite and put me in a foul mood for three days.

My dissociation from the Cubs at their time of suck reminded me of my Capstone class in school as a Psychology Major. The class was the Psychology of Sports Fans, and it met once a week for 3 hours. It was one of those classes/fields of study where you think, "I didn't realize someone made this an academic discipline, I'd just always thought this kinda stuff on my own while watching games with friends." Most of it was really intuitive and other stuff was surprisingly insightful. What I took away from the class most was BIRGing and CORFing.

BIRG is an acronym for "Basking In Reflected Glory", for your team. When your team wins and you're feeling great about the win, razz your friends who cheer for the vanquished opponent or wear your team's jersey to work the day after a big win, you are BIRGing.

The opposing of BIRGing is CORFing, or Cutting Off Reflected Failure. My opening sentence about multi-millionaires is an example of CORFing. Sometimes these constructs are referred to as the- "We won, but they lost phenomenon".



Now that my Superego got that off its chest, time for the Id to rant a little.


As I stated in an earlier post: I never want to see Soriano lead off again. Ever. He's a mistake pitch hitter with huge holes in his swing. He'll never be anything different. Of every major leaguer I've seen this year, Soriano strikes me as the player that thinks the least on the playing field. On top of that, he insists on leading off- yet he sucks. That's like if I were having dinner at your house and all the sudden felt nauseated and announced that I might be getting sick, then you said "Ok well, lets get you to the restroom...." and me responding with, "No, I'm fine right here. I'd feel the most comfortable throwing up on the dinner table." Who cares where you're comfortable? Try to quarantine your crap so it upsets as few people as possible. What a joke that guy is.

It was such a team-wide collapse that I hardly think it's worth trying to distribute blame to a select few. Soriano was putrid, but it wasn't just his fault. If he hit .500 they still would have lost. If Zambrano had pitched game one, the Cubs still wouldn't have gotten any hits off Lowe. With the exception of Zambrano, the Cubs didn't pitch, hit or field well collectively.

While the Cubs get to search their souls for answers, I'm gonna be watching the Bears and CORFing up a lung.