For the ultimate optimist: 'Futures' market for playoff tickets

Certainly, the unhealthy fixation on a jilted billy goat provided a clue.

But a fledgling Web site provides quantitative proof (this won't come as news to South-Siders) that Cubs fans are prone to irrational rooting behavior.

The Web site yoonew.com has created a futures stock market for big-ticket athletic contests, including the World Series.

Through the site, fans can buy stock options, often for a fraction of face value, that guarantee them a seat to a game if their team reaches the World Series, Super Bowl or Stanley Cup finals. It's like the Chicago Board of Trade without the corn and soybeans.

The catch: If the team doesn't make it to the big game, the fan is out the price of the option.

Replete with stock ticker and historical price charts, yoonew.com provides a minute-by-minute snapshot of the mental makeup of a team's fan base.

And, if the going price for a Cubs World Series option is any indication, Cubs fans are suffering from a serious case of irrational exuberance.

An option for a first-day ticket behind the plate to a Cubs World Series registered at $2,678 Friday.

"That's almost the price of a ticket! Guess folks are optimistic," Kellogg School of Management finance professor Robert McDonald wrote in an e-mail. The derivatives expert cautioned, though, that the site does not specify trading volume, so it's difficult to tell how many fans really are willing to pay these prices.

The site's asking price for an actual World Series ticket -- not an option -- was $4,085 Friday.

Statistically, then, a Cubs fan who pays the going price for an option essentially is betting the team has a better than 66 percent chance of making the World Series.

Fans of the first-place White Sox are less confident, judging from the going price of a Sox World Series option.

A fan can guarantee a premier seat in October at U.S. Cellular for $324.

Indeed, throughout the season, the highs haven't been as high and the lows have been lower for Sox fans.

After the Sox dropped their first two games, a World Series option was pegged at $5. Ticket prices reached $510 after an early June sweep of the Twins and then dropped to current levels after the team lost three straight to the Cubs.

Meanwhile, Cubs fans have largely belied their reputation for extreme overreaction in the face of minor setbacks, according to options prices.

True, a two-game losing streak to start the season sent spirits and options prices plummeting, to $23 on April 3. But since then, Cubs fans have displayed a stubborn willingness to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a ticket to a game that might or might not be played.

Even when Cubs pitching ace Carlos Zambrano was pulled from a game due to shoulder discomfort, ticket prices dipped a few hundred dollars -- but remained above $2,000, still about $600 higher than the second priciest option, a Red Sox World Series ticket.

It's just this sort of steely, marginally delusional, optimism that fuels Sox fans' disdain for Cubs fans.

And it could provide Sox fans with the ultimate form of revenge, regardless of the results of this weekend's cross-town series: short selling.

The financial maneuver allows speculators to sell first, buy later and profit from a stock price decline.

A Sox fan who shorts a Cubs World Series ticket, then, stands to make a killing in August or September if the Cubs collapse.

For a certain breed of Sox fans that might be almost as sweet as exercising their own World Series option.

Of course, that certain breed of Sox fan could end up in the galling position of having to buy a Cubs World Series ticket to cover his short position.

After all, this could be the year.