The View from Section 416: No Cubs curses -- just a lot of cursing

I won't even dignify them with their names.

The purported "curses" that have prevented the Cubs from winning a World Series since 1908, or going to one since 1945, are all nonsense, the purest media-driven bull ... stuff.

The Cubs have been losers not due to supernatural causes, but because of perfectly straightforward factors: they had bad owners, bad front offices, bad field managers and bad players.

When the Cubs somehow fielded good teams despite these long-term structural handicaps, other teams were better that year, or that series, or that one game.

To take these purported "curses" from most famed to most recent, let's begin with the male capra aegagrus hircus (all right, all right: the billy goat).

Full disclosure: When I give tours of Chicago to my students, they always end at a certain tavern on the lower level of Michigan Avenue. When I teach my Chicago Saloon History class, I assign a book about the place by Rick Kogan. I have been a semi-regular there for decades, and I respect and admire the hospitality, work ethic, and publicity smarts of the Sianis clan, whose late patriarch tried to bring his ... animal into Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series.

If it were somehow true that this particular "curse" exists, wouldn't the many times that the Cubs have welcomed a Sianis with a goat on a leash into the park have removed it? (Yes, that has happened; go there and look at the pictures on the wall.) If curses are real, couldn't they lift it as well as impose it?

This particular narrative has more to do with the intersection of saloon culture and journalism than the supernatural.

William Sianis's tavern was frequented by many writers from Chicago's newspapers. They needed material, and so they wrote about the tavern, its owner, and his curse. Then, that story became something (especially after 1984) that any deadline-pressed, ink-stained wretch could fall back on. The Cubs couldn't just lose, they had to be cursed! Those 800 words write themselves, then whose round is it? Good sportswriters would use it as a joke or a pivot, but others just retold the story, endlessly.

Could it be the Cubs lost in 1945 because they were up against Hal Newhauser, Dizzy Trout, and Hank Greenberg's Detroit Tigers, a better team?

Then, they lost for the next 39 years because of bad ownership, managers, and players.

First, the ownership: The Wrigleys, William and his son P.K., were not particularly interested in or knowledgeable about baseball. When they hired good general managers, they fielded good teams, and did go to the World Series five times -- in 1929, '33, '35, '38 and '45. P.K. was particularly uninterested in baseball, and much more concerned about yachts and chewing gum. (The family's yachting interest is why Wrigley is festooned with maritime-style flags to this day.)

Ironically, baseball incompetence probably saved Wrigley Field. As Stuart Shea's magisterial book Wrigley Field recounts, Wrigley knew that with bad teams, the Cubs had to sell fans on the park experience rather than on, oh, winning. So unlike some of its contemporary ballparks in other cities, Wrigley Field was well-maintained. The team promoted it as the "Friendly Confines," a cozy family venue to enjoy an afternoon picnic. Even if the team stank to high heaven, you had sunshine and hot dogs and beer and ice cream and a lovely lake breeze.

Had P.K. Wrigley been a hard-charging owner, looking to maximize baseball revenue to put an expensive -- but winning -- team on the field, Wrigley Field would probably not exist today. The team would've demanded, and gotten, a 1960s-era concrete bowl stadium next to an expressway exit in Arlington Heights or Schaumburg, and there would be no Section 416 as we know it today. Wrigley's not-so-benign neglect of winning helped Cubs fans win with this ballpark's survival.

Seatmate Azz would blame the fans, along with bad owners: We kept coming to the ballpark even when the team was terrible, giving ownership little incentive to win. That might be true since the mid-1980s, but during many of the Cubs' lean decades, the park was mostly empty. Their average attendance between World War II and 1984 was less than 14,000, with some years as low as 7,528 (1962). I personally credit baseball executives -- even incompetent ones -- and players with always wanting to win. Not being good enough isn't a curse. Sometimes, it's just reality.

After 1945, 1969 would be the next high point in the various Curse narratives, with the black felis domesticus crossing Ron Santo's path at Shea Stadium. Come the heck on. The Mets beat the Cubs in 1969 because of bad management. Leo Durocher played his regulars to death, and the Mets were just better. Yeah, the Cubs went on a late slide, but the Mets were on fire, going 28-8 after Sept. 1. And they had some pretty good players too. You have heard of Tom Seaver, yes?

The Wrigley Reign of Indifference ended when the Tribune Company bought the team in 1982. Competent GM Dallas Green arrived, and lo and behold, pretty-good field manager Jim Frey's boys won the NL East in 1984.

Then, it wasn't any Capricorn curse that did them in; it was baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth and television. With the better record, the Cubs should have hosted three games in that year's LCS. But with no lights (thanks, past bad owners!), TV networks insisted on giving San Diego three home games for more night games and higher ratings. The Cubs beat the Padres in the first two games at Wrigley, and then lost three in a row at Jack Murphy Stadium. Might things have gone differently had they played three games at home? We'll never know, and blaming the ground ball Leon Durham muffed is also nonsense. No team loses three games on any one play, unless you're trying to build a curse narrative.

Then there's the Innocent Fan Who Did Nothing Wrong Curse from 2003. This one, even moreso than 1969, must be laid at the feet of bad field management and the media. The Cubs were up 3-0 going into the eighth inning of NLCS Game 6, Mark Prior was dominating ... and Dusty Baker had no one up in the pen.

I don't care if you've got reincarnated Walter Johnson on the mound, when you're six outs away from the World Series with a slim lead, you have a righty and a lefty warming up in case things go south for your starter.

But the year before, Baker had been excoriated for lifting his starter, Russ Ortiz, too soon (according to 20/20 hindsight) in Game 6 of a World Series his Giants would lose to the Angels. So -- either being bad at his job, or remembering the media noise from a year earlier -- Baker opted to let his stud pitcher walk to the hill feeling invulnerable.

One utterly unjustified Moises Alou tantrum, one muffed double-play ball by shortstop Alex Gonzalez, and eight runs later, and we have a new curse.

But the Cubs could've won Game 7 of that LCS. Hell, Carlos Zambrano should have won Game 5 in Miami two days earlier -- but Josh Beckett, a better pitcher, shut the Cubs out. The only reason anyone talks "curse" is the national media and a local newspaper columnist teamed up to invent yet another story. This poor guy got death threats and had to relocate abroad. His life was ruined -- and it's not funny in the least. I will not use his name, to add anything I write to his lifelong Google burden. He did nothing wrong.

Bad field management continues the 21st century's non-curse narrative.

In 2007 and 2008, well, Lou Piniella was no Dusty Baker, but neither was he an Earl Weaver, despite his umpire-baiting, base-throwing, dirt-kicking expertise. The D-backs and Dodgers were just better, and maybe the players choked due to the pressure. Or maybe it's a bad idea to save your best starter for Game 4 in a five-game series where, as always, all games after the third are designated "if necessary."

Last year? I have heard no 2015 curse talk, mostly because no one expected Joe Maddon's team to go more than 81-81. Getting as far as the Cubs did was great -- especially beating the Cardinals in the NLDS at Wrigley. But the Mets' pitching, and one of their hitters, overwhelmed the young Cubs. As in so many other years, the Cubs got beat by a better team.

After the last out of a failed Cubs postseason run, people like to blame "curses" for the same reason some people prefer to credit Abner Doubleday with inventing baseball, rather than baseball evolving from other games. We prefer dramatic narratives with direct cause-and-effect over complicated stories.

If the Cubs don't win the last game they play this year, "curse" talk will come to the fore yet again. Baseball is a beautiful and complicated and cruel game, and teams win or lose for myriad reasons.

Curses are not among them.