The Summer of Cub.(Brief Article)

In the neurotic cocoon that is Cubdom, I'm compelled this week to issue a surgeon general's warning. Make sure the heart is healthy and the mind is strong, for the next three months will either enrich your life or compound your perpetual misery. There is no turning back, no jumping out the side window now.

The joy ride has ventured too far not to be real.

So far, anyway, the Cubs have been charming and wonderful, fuzzy and wuzzy, all those feel-good things that aren't supposed to occur in 2001. Life is better in America when the all-time slouches are in first place, trying gamely to defy a pathetic past and shoo away their various curses and hexes, black cats and billy goats. It creates a hopeful mood that anything is possible in the world, from palm trees in Cleveland to clothes on Britney Spears. And when the Cubs play well enough to survive June, which rhymes with swoon, it forges a giddiness among a national following of masochists that maybe, just maybe, this is the Summer of Cub.

Soon enough, George Will will be making the scene to pontificate about the Cubs and the meaning of life. Same goes for any other famous person who either grew up a Cubs fan or, worse, mistakenly thinks he or she did. Don't be surprised, either, if a certain flip-flopping senator from New York recalls her Chicago roots and begins sporting a blue cap with the "C" around Manhattan. The bandwagon effect is frightening when the Cubs are winning.

"There's nothing like it. Everybody is hyper, everybody is excited," observes Sammy Sosa, the heart-tapping and kiss-blowing ringleader, who blasts Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on the clubhouse speakers as the season's chosen soundtrack.

The danger in Cubbiephoria, though, is when folks become too comfortable with a burst of success. That's how Wrigleyville hearts are broken. So low are the standards, many fans are content with simply winning as opposed to winning a division (for the first time since 1989), a pennant (for the first time since 1945) or the World Series (for the first time since your parents' parents' parents were double-dating in the Edsel).

The mood is so merry, hardly a soul balked when the cold and calculating Tribune Company announced during a long home winning streak that it will retouch the Mona Lisa, renovate Wrigley Field, schedule as many as 30 cash-cow night games in the capital of day baseball and--someone call 911--consider selling corporate naming rights to the bleachers, one of sport's most sacred places. Don't bother us, Cubdom said. Everyone is too buzzed on a blue high, which qualifies as baseball's coolest story. If this keeps up much longer, the city will have a mass seance with Harry Caray and Jack Brickhouse, always linked to any Cub prosperity inside their great ...