It's Only September

The division is clinched. Homefield advantage is within striking distance. If ever there was a Cubs team that was made to win, Maddon & Co. are it. We, as Cubs fans, should be enjoying this ride because this year has been fun as hell. Even the pre-Break slump helped provide a baseline of sorts--a lengthy reminder that, yes, we're still watching the Cubs--and that just made what came after all the more exhilarating. And on both ends of that slide, they've been frighteningly good. Their bats are so solid that even when one or two guys go cold (Heyward and Zobrist, as I write this), they still have three or four other guys who can fill those holes (Soler, Russell, and Contreras, as I write this). Bryant, meanwhile, is putting together a convincing MVP campaign that's sometimes been obscured by the funhouse that Rizzo's been building. Their rotation includes Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey, but its their number three starter (Hendricks) who's boasting a baseball-leading 2.03 ERA, with Lester just behind him. They went 22-6 in August. 22-6.

This summer has been way too hot and the wider world has been unrelentingly awful and I almost don't care about any of that because the Cubs have been so, so, so good. My point here is that one day we're going to look back on 2016 and realize that it was a lot more fun than some of us are currently appreciating.

But to tell myself that I need to relax and enjoy the spectacle means I that have to ignore my own struggles with anxiety. Academically, of course, I can do that: I can lay out all the reasons why I should strap in and devote myself to the journey, not the destination. You can analyze any situation rationally and verify everything, making sure that the logic is 100% sound, and know in your higher brain functions that every little thing is gonna be alright. But anxiety doesn't work that way.

Just because I can run through the numbers doesn't mean that I don't get flashbacks to the 2008 squad that dominated the league from April to September only to shit the bed in a three-game slow motion nightmare in October. And with the phrase "slow motion nightmare in October," I'm now getting flashbacks to 2003. If we care to dig through some more numbers, 538 calculates that the Cubs have a 22% chance of winning the World Series. And that's actually really high; the Red Sox, with the second-highest odds, sit at 15%. But that still leaves a 78% chance that the Cubs don't get it done this year. And Fangraphs puts the Cubs' odds at 17.2%, (with the Sox at 15.5% and the Dodgers at 14.8%), leaving a failure to convert chance of 82.8%. Winning the Series is just that dependent on dumb luck and fleeting hot streaks. So we shouldn't even be looking at numbers like that, but part of anxiety's power comes from its ability to make you look for and provide its own fuel.

So, again, I know that, rationally-speaking, I have every reason to stop putting so much stock in a World Series title. I've had panic attacks over genuine anxieties that, if they came to pass, would've been far more devastating to me than whether the Cubs go another year without a title; I owe anxiety some credit in forcing me to have some perspective. But those experiences have also left me with some blindspots when it comes to less crucial subjects. My anxiety and my Cubs fandom likely have very little to do with one another; the former is so skilled by now that it would find something to latch onto, regardless what club I cheer for. Although, I do suspect that the pressure to see my team win (can you feel pressure in an entirely passive situation?) has not paired well with my anxiety. But because I live with both, I end up spending a lot of time trying to keep that anxiety from poisoning my fandom. Luckily, I've had some practice.

When considering the benefits of trying to enjoy this season while it lasts (mindfulness, as some professionals call it) the anxious mind can become divided against itself. If one can focus on smaller scale hurdles, anxiety's instinct to mull over all the nightmare scenarios becomes distracted by the little steps along the way. Clinching the division, and then securing homefield, and then each series in turn once October begins. It's the long stretches of nothingness that allow anxiety to stretch its legs; it's the same reason that your brain suddenly summons everything it thinks you should be worrying about just as you're trying to fall asleep. Because your brain hates you. But the good news is that anxiety doesn't have be conquered en masse (it's really not advisable to do it that way). Just day to day, game to game, series to series. I am not a trained therapist.

This year has been more fun than we ever could've imagined. And after last year's finish, we imagined quite a lot. And, since Spring Training, they've been setting us up for one hell of a finish. But that's for next month. For now, it's only September.