Opening Day

And with opening day of Cubs season coming up on Monday, I can't help reminiscing about some of the times I've spent there.

One of the most memorable rituals of my youth in the late 1960s and early '70s was playing hooky from school on opening day, hopping on the clanky El to "The Friendly Confines," and enjoying the game from the outfield bleachers. This was before the modernists had installed lights there, so game time was always 1:35 p.m. The price of a seat back then was a buck. Talk about hyper-inflation: Now you can't get into the bleachers for less than $50.

So many kids from my high school, New Trier, skipped on opening day that the truant officer used to hang out in the bleachers trying to hunt us down. If you were AWOL from school that day your punishment was a week in something called Breakfast Club, which started at 6 a.m. — and, yes, this was the program for deviant kids that the movie was named after. You committed the crime, you did the time. But, oh, was it ever worth it!

Like most Chicago kids of that generation, I vividly remember opening day in 1969, when Mr. Cub Ernie Banks hit home runs in his first two at bats and the Cubs won on an 11th-inning pinch-hit homer by Willie Smith. It was the scripted start of a fairy-tale spring and summer in the Windy City. Every Chicagoan worth his frosted malt can still recite the starting lineup: Kessinger, Beckert, Williams, Santo, Banks, Hickman, Hundley, Young and Jenkins.

The Cubs were winning 3-0 going into the sixth inning, and then my idiot brother came over and uncorked some champagne. We all knew we were done for.

From April through the middle of August, the Cubs were the best team in baseball — and for a 9-year-old, all was right in the world. But this fairy tale didn't have a happy ending. The team infamously collapsed, thanks to what is commonly referred to (among New Yorkers, anyway) as God's last documented miracle on this Earth: the amazing Mets. That was the summer that my friends and I lost our innocence.

For much of the next 10 years this cycle would repeat itself. The Cubs could've, would've, should've won in 1970 and '71 with mostly that same all-star lineup. In 1978, I went off to college on Aug. 20 with the Cubs in first place by nine games, but they ended up losing the division by seven. In 1984, the Cubs won a division title and then pounded the lowly San Diego Padres in games one and two in the best-of-five playoffs. One win away from the World Series, my team dropped games three and four, but no worries — we had the Cy Young Award winner Rick Sutcliffe pitching in game five.

His record that year was 16-1, and he had won something like 12 games in a row. The Cubs were winning 3-0 going into the sixth inning, and then my idiot brother came over and uncorked some champagne. We all knew we were done for. They lost. The first baseman Steve Garvey, playing for the Padres, hit a game-winning home run and rounded the bases with his fist in the air, and for that he was recently voted the most loathed professional athlete in Chicago history.

Later that same night Ronald Reagan gave a terrible debate performance. I remember commiserating with fellow Cubs fan Bob Novak about it later: "That was one of the worst days of my life," he said. "The Cubs lost the pennant, and it looked like Walter Mondale was going to be the next president of the United States."

Being a Cubs fan builds character — like being from Poland and getting invaded once every 25 years. As even the most casual baseball fan knows, the Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908 — which is the longest record of franchise ineptitude in professional sports history. But every team is entitled to a bad century.

Some 20 years later the Cubs were again one nail-biting game from the fall classic, leading the Florida Marlins three games to two in a best-of-seven playoff series. In the sixth game, the Cubs were again nursing a 3-0 lead with just five outs to go. But at that point an overeager fan in the crowd — his named turned out to be Steve Bartman, now a notorious figure in Chicago sports lore — reached over the wall from his front-row seat and knocked a pop foul ball away from the outstretched glove of Chicago's Moises Alou. I realize this sounds psychotic, but I instantly knew that this was a premonition and that the series would slip away — as it improbably did. The Marlins went on to score eight runs that inning and clinch the series the next night.

Being a Cubs fan builds character — like being from Poland and getting invaded once every 25 years. As even the most casual baseball fan knows, the Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908 — which is the longest record of franchise ineptitude in professional sports history. But every team is entitled to a bad century. People who move away from Chicago almost always remain life-long Cubs fans — like Ronald Reagan, who visited Wrigley in the last year of his presidency. One of the few traitors is Hillary Clinton, who though born in Chicago-land switched allegiances and donned a Yankees cap when she ran for Senate in New York in 2000.

The 94-year-old Wrigley Field has become so dilapidated that there's now talk of a face lift — or, worse yet, the wrecking ball. That would be a shame, because Wrigley is one of the last old-fashioned stadiums without jumbo TV screens and rock music and sky boxes and, God forbid, a domed roof. At a Cubs game, pretty much all you get in the form of glitz is an organist who tries to spark rallies with "doot, doot, doot, doot. Doot, doot, doot, doot." And they still actually change the scoreboard by hand. I always wanted that job.

I won't be sneaking out to Wrigley Field on Monday because The Wall Street Journal doesn't have Breakfast Club. But I have a hunch that this, the 100th-year anniversary of the Cubs' last trip to the World Series, will be the year. You never know.