This question comes to me from my old Uncle Kringle, though he’s as Estonian as blood sausage and wife-carrying, he lives in Winnemucca, Nevada. He’s been there since age three when he was adopted by a family that drills for mines and for water for farmers in this remote desert land. Growing up in the outback of America, little Kringle and his friends had no baseball team to root for. But they did have the very strong signal of WBEZ Chicago, and so he and his desert friends grew up rooting for a team in a windy land far away that none of them had visited.

Anyway Kringle, I know it doesn’t look good right now, but Zamboni is here to tell you that yes, I do believe the cubs will still win.

Yet Uncle, you also know my credo, “only ask what is vital importance for you”.

Win or lose, how will this change your life?

If they win, will it mean for you that patience and time can overcome any curse, any obstacle? That no one is always fated to be at the bottom forever?

If they lose, will it just mean that though long suffering and waiting sucks- we can always yet do more?

Both are true. But above all importance:  the  faith that any of it matters.

Sports- they matter so much because they don’t.

Like William Carlos Williams and his red wheelbarrow, slick with rain.