For Chicago teams, fans -- it's never easy

What possible burdens could professional athletes face? They're paid gazillions to play games of youth. Many receive buckets of cash for telling the rest of us what kind of cars to drive and jeans to wear. They draw adoring throngs. And no matter what their sport, they take off at least, what, one-third of every year? Could life be any sweeter?

Ah, but put a bunch of professional athletes on the same team, throw in the expectations of all us obnoxious media types and even the adoring fans who pay their salaries and endorsements, and then you've got a different story.

Here we are -- one day after the close of regular-season Major League Baseball and one quarter of the way through the National Football League schedule -- and we see three Chicago teams facing three different burdens.

For the thrice-beaten and badly wounded Bears, it's the burden of expectations. All summer, all of the experts declared that the Bears were on track for a return to the Super Bowl. Best defense in the league; Rex Grossman a year older and more mature; running back Cedric Benson ready for a breakout season. How could they lose? Well, four weeks later, let us count the ways. Injuries, interceptions, porous offensive line, fumbles and bumbles. Super Bowl? Bear fans will take a win -- any win -- at this point, and the Bears themselves are licking their wounds. It's no fun for any team to lose three of its first four games; to do so when everyone expected excellence, that's a special brand of unpleasant.

As for the White Sox, how about the burden of success? World Series champions in 2005, the Sox and their fans figured the players were in place who would compete for another title year after year. Nope. Instead, the South-Siders spent Sunday getting pasted 13-3, putting the finishing touches on the seventh-worst record in baseball this year and the Sox' worst season in 18 years. Fans might not mind so much if not for that little detail of winning it all just two years ago. Now all everyone wants to know is: Why can't they do it again?

Well, you ask, what about the Cubs? They won their division Friday, doused each other in champagne and now get to compete in the playoffs. It's all good, right? Mostly, yes. Cub Nation is smiling today -- as much as its members ever permit themselves to smile. Because Cub fans never forget that their team bears what might be the nastiest burden of all: history. This is the franchise that has its Bartman curse, its routine ground ball scooting under Leon Durham's glove, its 1969 collapse against the Mets, its goat curse. On and on.

But hope springs eternal, and the past does not always dictate the future. This just may be the year that the Cubs deftly turn the bat on fate's attempted bean ball and knock it over the brick-and-ivy for a World Series title.