I Bleed Cubbie Blue - Free Kindle Non-Fiction

I Bleed Cubbie Blue: My Six Decades as a Cubs Fan 
by Doug Erlandson 

Why would anyone root for a team that hasn’t been in a World Series since 1945 and hasn’t won one since 1908, has had just 20 winning seasons since 1939, and plays in a ballpark that’s nearly a century old and is falling apart? I Bleed Cubbie Blue, a memoir of one fan’s six-decade love affair with the Chicago Cubs, offers a charming and compelling answer to this burning question.

Combining personal memories and reflections with meticulous research, native Chicagoan Doug Erlandson describes his lifelong affection for a team that has raised but ultimately crushed his hopes countless times, a team to which he remains intensely loyal after nearly sixty years of fandom. Beginning with a description of the first game he attended in 1954 (a loss, of course, to the New York Giants), he weaves highlights from every season from the late-1950s through 2012 with detailed descriptions of significant games, front-office follies, trades (some of which should never have been made, others of which turned out to be sheer genius), as well as the individual players (from the great to the incompetent) who toiled in a Cubs’ uniform during this period.

I Bleed Cubbie Blue provides often humorous, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, but always accurate commentary on P.K. Wrigley’s college of coaches, the Brock-Broglio trade (which, according to Erlandson, did not seem like such a bad trade the day it was made), the collapse in 1969 (which still ranks as quintessential of all Cubs’ swoons), why Leo Durocher was a great manager (and why he was not), the lean years of the Seventies and early Eighties, the wonderfully giddy year of 1984 (along with a detailed account of the two most important games of the season), a year that ultimately resulted in the second Great Disappointment (the first being 1969), the improbable divisional championship of 1989, why Kerry Wood’s fifth Major League start was and remains the greatest pitching performance of all times, why Steve Bartman was not to blame for the Cubs’ loss in the 2003 playoffs, and much, much more.

Along the way I Bleed Cubbie Blue describes bizarre plays (such as Cal Neeman’s unlikely inside-the-park homerun when Bob Skinner forgot what inning it was), the tragic death of Ken Hubbs at age 22, the pitcher who claimed he pitched in a hypnotic trance, Jack Brickhouse’s call of an around-the-horn triple play (before it happened!), the unintentionally funny moments with Harry Caray in the broadcast booth, and the most memorable performances by guest conductors during the seventh-inning stretch.

A comment from the Epilogue sums up Erlandson’s reason for writing this memoir: “Whether in winning or losing, the Cubs have provided me with countless memories that are as wonderful and as fresh as the beautifully-manicured baseball diamond that has anchored the northeast corner of Addison and Clark for a hundred years.”

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