I want you to imagine that there is a destitute baseball franchise. This franchise has gone through generations of futility with their inability to win the World Series. Not only can they not win, but they lose in heartbreaking fashion in the playoffs, literally in the most excruciating ways. Now, this franchise reverses course and hires a man-child, baseball metrics genius to break a supposed curse, and the team does so by mowing through the playoffs against their decades-long archrival.
Sound familiar? Yeah, Cubs fans, we’re looking at you. Your 2015 playoff run is a rip off 11 years too late after Theo Epstein got America to buy into this story the first go round. But let me warn you, nation-wide overexposure comes with a price if you win the World Series.
I know, I’m a Red Sox fan.
After the 2004 Sox reversed the curse and became national darlings, they treated 2005 like a year-long victory lap, and the overexposure turned them from loveable idiots to being hated just as much as the Yankees.
You’re a great story for about 15 minutes before people just want the media, and every closet and bandwagon fan to just shut up about you. Winning a World Series is great, trust me, seeing three in 10 years after thinking I wouldn’t see one is amazing, personally. But ever since that 2004 run, every Red Sox fan will tell you that people’s perception of the team and you as a fan is forever changed. Especially in Chicago, when you’re no longer the loveable losers.
Good luck in the NLCS and your now re-hashed storyline (which, by the way, the White Sox also did 10 years ago), just no where it lands you if you do.