Oh, no, Cubsism runs in the family

On Columbus Day, when my kids stay home from school to celebrate the spirit of discovery, I discover I have a defective gene that I have passed on to a new generation of Constables.

"Dad," says Will, my contemplative 8-year-old son, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. "When is it ever going to happen?"

Will is so earnest and so fragile and so sad -- I don't know what to tell him.

Less than a week ago, when my wife and I tucked him into bed, Will was the boy who gently put his hand on my head, gave a reassuring rub and said what I needed to hear.

"Dad," Will said, his eyes twinkling in the same way they have during Christmas Eve discussions about the likelihood of Santa Claus showing up with the present he wanted most. "I know this is going to be the year. I just know it."

I beamed.

"I do, too, Will," I said with a childlike enthusiasm that matched his. "The Cubs are going to win the World Series."

And we went to bed that night so giddy that we found ourselves almost hoping the Cubs would lose one of those first three games to the Arizona Diamondbacks so that Will's ticket to Sunday's Game 4 in Wrigley would be the game when the Cubs would clinch the series.

Just as some families are predisposed to afflictions such as alcoholism or depression, my sons are susceptible to Cubsism. Even my wife seems to have picked it up from her longtime exposure to me. Our twins, Ross and Ben, 11 years old and with memories of 2003, seem to be learning how to live with it.

"I didn't think the Cubs would win the World Series," Ross admits to me Monday. "But I thought they'd get to the World Series and lose. They do things like that. They disappoint. Then, when the last game against the Diamondbacks started, I knew they wouldn't win any."

His brother, Ben, appears completely immune to Cubsism.

"I thought that Sunday's game was probably never going to happen," Ben confesses, explaining why he never seemed as excited as Will did about having a ticket for that never-to-be Game 4. "For me, the Cubs have a history of getting me excited, and then, you know, losing. I just always had a bad feeling about it from the start."

Hearing the truth from the mouths of babes, I feel so foolish for having spent time last week searching Web sites for good World Series hotel deals within walking distance of Fenway Park in Boston and Jacobs Field in Cleveland. My dad, Willy, never saw the Cubs win a World Series in his 87 years of life, and he didn't seem convinced the first-place Cubs were going to do it when he died on the last day of August 2003.

Where did I get this Cubsism gene? Oh yeah.

"I thought they really were going to win it this year," Lois, my 80-year-old mom, says during Monday's commiseration speakerphone chat with her grandson, Will. They talk each other through the rough spots.

"It seemed like he was trying to save Carlos Zambrano for the next game, but first they've got to win the first game," Will says.

"And I was very disgusted with Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano and even Derrek Lee," Mom says.

"They had the bases loaded and he swung at a pitch that was a ball, and he hit into a double-play," Will says, recalling a low point for Cubs hitter Mark DeRosa. "If he would have taken that pitch, he would have walked and a run would have scored, and that would have made the score 3-2 and the bases still would have been loaded, and the next guy might have hit a double."

He and Mom go on like that for a bit, recapping moments that could have been, expressing anger and sorrow but showing no signs of changing their behaviors. I ask Will if he expects to be having this conversation with his grandkids someday.

"I'll be 97 years old and I'll still be saying, 'Oh, the Cubs will win it this year,'" says Will, his voice a mixture of pride and disgust. "But at the end of the year, they won't. It will be next year."

We sigh. We know the truth about ourselves.

"Still," Will says, the twinkle returning, "I'm glad we're Cubs fans."