Cubs would never need to try to lose

The Cubs are accustomed to being the butt of negativity.

Take the Toby Keith song “Somewhere Else” about a poor sap who stumbles home from the neighborhood bar in a fit of loneliness:

“Knowin’ too well the kind of night I’m in for … Cubs got beat again on SportsCenter … My bedroom’s cold as my TV dinner …”

The symmetry is obvious: The guy is a loser because his lady left him and the Cubs are losers, well, just because they are.

Anyway, if song lyrics and late-night jokes weren’t humiliating enough, the Cubs’ historic visit to Fenway Park this weekend reminds of an even worse insult.

This is the first time the two storied franchises played each other in Boston since 1918. Recently the Cubs were accused of throwing the World Series to the Red Sox that year like the White/Black Sox threw the Fall Classic the next year.

Now, that’s absolutely the most absurd statement anybody could make about the Cubs and I am taking it upon myself to defend them.

The notion that the Cubs took a dive goes against everything this team stands for after what now is 103 years since its last championship.

Trust me, the Cubs never have had to try to lose something. They haven’t been good at much over the past century, but losing is the one thing they have done naturally and quite often effortlessly.

The Cubs can lose games as easily as knuckleheads can lose car keys. They can squander certain victory as proficiently as Charlie Sheen can squander good fortune.

The Cubs have mastered the art of losing from behind and losing from ahead. They can lose in regulation, and they can lose in extra innings. They can lose slugfests, and they can lose pitchers’ duels. They can lose at home during the day, and they can lose at night on the road. They can lose vice versa, and they can lose verse vica.

That kind of versatility is the only way a major-league baseball team — which the Cubs occasionally are called — can go since 1908 without winning a World Series.

Every time the Cubs threatened to win something significant the past century, it took all the ingenuity they could muster to lose again, and again, and again.

It took the manager going AWOL to a family outing in Wisconsin in 1969. It took a Gatorade-soaked glove in 1984. It took the Bartman ball as an excuse to implode in 2003. It took the Billy goat, the Wrigley family, the black cat, the Tribune Company and every other imaginable hex.

The Cubs haven’t just gone 103 years without winning a World Series; they have gone 66 years without even qualifying for one. They haven’t just gone 66 years without qualifying for one; they have gone nine straight playoff games without winning one.

A franchise has to win at losing to be that bad.

The Cubs threw the 1918 World Series? How could you tell? What would look different from any other series they lost in any other autumn, summer or spring?

Toby Keith sings, “Cuz if you don’t know where you’re goin’ you might end up somewhere else.”

It takes a special skill set for the Cubs to never know where they’re going yet always end up in the same place.

So please don’t insult the Cubs by saying that they threw a World Series when they don’t have to try to lose anything and can lose anything without trying.

mimrem@dailyherald.com