In Brief: Ever So Simple

Rich Cohen of The Wall Street Jornal has finally figured out the secret behind the Cubs' century of woe.  Turns out it was Wrigley Field.  Oh, is that all it was?  And to think we thought it was an ownership that was alternately disinterested and incompetent (and at one time likely so racist that it took someone of Ernie Banks' talent to get them to sign a black player).  Or the disproportionate amount of day games played in Midwestern summers.  Or fans and players and ownership alike putting too much emphasis on legendary curses, turning them into self-fulfilling prophesies.  What fools we've been and what a relief it is.  It's this simple: all we need to do is dynamite Wrigley--the institution that's basically insured the Cubs' status as the third or fourth largest market in baseball during a lengthy winning-drought--and fans will stop going purely for fun and instead go to see the winner that isn't there and hasn't been in over one-hundred years. 

Seems that Cohen, formerly of Chicago, has taken up in New York, where Yankee Stadium has shown him the light.  All baseball teams need are bland, soulless stadiums and then trophies will rain down upon them like the shards of glass from The Natural: electrocuting us and slicing our eyes open and blinding us with their terrible beauty.  It's the same reason the Rays have won every World Series since their birth in 1998 with the power of their ugly monstrosity.  And why the Phillies have been so lousy since moving out of their old, non-loserly eyesore and into that distastefully attractive Xanadu of a stadium.  Why do you think the World Series trophy is the ugliest of the four major sports?  Because baseball excels at ugliness above all, you morons. 

It doesn't make any sense for the controllers of the means of production job creators to build a winner when the fans are only paying for the pretty stadium.  You can only have one or the other.  It's really all the fans fault, those cheap-thrill yokels.  What the hell's wrong with you, you sons of bitches?  Don't you know that ivy on the walls is the first step toward welfare queen-ism? 

If the Cubs and their fans stop choosing to be losers, they'll stop being losers.  Bootstraps, America, Oorah.  Jesus, how could we have been so stupid and myopic and irritating and undeserving of an article on major national newspaper's website?