So, the urgent e-mail comes in yesterday from a buddy:

 SUBJECT: WHY IS JOEPO HATIN ON US?

Well, JOEPO is none other than Joe Posnanski, sportswriter extraordinare for the Kansas City Star and, most recently, for CNNSI.com.  Joe is one of my faves, he is on my reglar rotation every day, and I wish I could write like him.  I am excited that he is getting national recognition now, even if his first column on CNNSI is being billed as "Why some people hate the Cubbies"

Well, if you bother to actually READ the article, Joe's assertion is based on the following:

• Every year, somebody has to be the 'bad guy' in the playoffs
• This year, the Usual Suspects, the Yankees and Red Sox, may very well be outside looking in
• The current NL favorite is a certain team named after young bears
• There are many people living in the Meth Belt, behind the Cheeze Curtain, and in the Dutty Mo, where men are men and daughters are scared, who dislike the Cubs
• Therefore, 2008 may be the strangest of all situations, whereas the Chicago Cubs may be the 'bad guy'

He doesn't hate the Cubs hisownself, but he took a relatively small sampling of the world at large and extrapolated a bit.  If you are blessed with a wee bit of perspective, and am able to step outside yourself a bit, imagine what the Cubs look like to the rest of the baseball planet.  HUGE following, RABID fans, a compelling story with the 100 years and the black cat and the billygoat and Bartman that's been told over and over again - all leading to the Hypothesis of the Year - "that Cubs fans deserve to win this year".  Well, the fans of the other teams don't wanna hear that.  Why are Cubs fans BETTER than us?

If you want to look at it another way, break the picture down team-by-team:

• Go right ahead and stick a fork in the Yankees; however, it is too soon to write off the Sawx.  And if they make it in, then THEY become the bad guys.  They are the defending champs; their fans are all Massholes; they just get CRAMMED down our throats every day, every hour by ESPN.  People have TRIED to tell tWWL that they DO play ball west of the Queens - honest!  There's a whole rest of the world out here.  They won't listen.  Fornicate ESPN!
• The Rays?  Nobody is gonna hate the Rays.  They haven't won more than 70 games before this year...they are the most downtrodden of the downtrodden.  They nearly got CONTRACTED, for pete's sake.
• The Angels?  Nice team, nice manager, nice guys, not the rabid fanbase we enjoy.  Nobody's gonna hate them.
• The Twins?  See "The Rays"
• The Sux?  Hey, I hate the Sux, and so do you.  I hate them and their shirtless coach-beating fans and their manager and general manager, who obviously suffer from Taret's Syndrome.  But nobody else cares about them.  I have actually met people in my life who WEREN'T AWARE that Chicago had two ballclubs, and these people were born in the USA.
• The Phillies?  If any team has a more futile history than we do, it would be the Phillies.  They are the only "original" franchise with fewer World Series wins than the Cubs.  What's more, their city has a more futile sports history than Chicago does as a whole.  The point can be made that Philadelphia fans deserve a championship more than we do.  Plus Philly is the only city in the world with a Letterly Street. 
• The D-bags?  Nobody cares about the D-bags, nobody is going to hate them.
• The Brewers?  See "The Rays"
• The Dodgers and the Mets?  Now, in my mind, here are the two teams to hate.  The Dodgers have Manny and the Grumpy Jeff Kent and Tommy Lasorda and Joe Torre who has won enough of these things and is being shoved down our throats as a "new LA guy".  The Mets are from Noo Yawk, another one of the Unholy Trinity being shoved down our throats by ESPN.  But somehow the Dodgers seem to escape much venom, maybe because of Vin Scully, or because their organization has been pretty well run forever.  And the Mutts seem to gather some sort of sympathy for being the "poor cousin" in NY, which is what the Sux would have if anyone really cared.

So that leaves us, and as I have said, if YOU'RE tired of hearing about Sam Sianis and Bartman and the 100 years of misery, think about how you would feel like if this WASN'T your team.  Maybe there's someone out there who would actually LIKE to see us in the World Series, but he or she also knows that a Cubs appearence on the Big Stage is going to include about 11,000 mentions of The Curse and The Goat and Leon Durham and Bartman and so on and so on.

I mean, nobody on Earth wants to see us in a World Series more than I do, and if so, I know I am watching the games with the TV sound OFF!!  I don't know how I am going to manage this, with the lag between TV images and the radio feed, but even I know what's coming, and I'm sick of it before it even starts!  Therefore, I can consider what JoePo is trying to get at.  Thing is, people are going to have to just DEAL with it!