By Dan Nancarrow
It was the masochist in me that drew me to the Cubs.
Why else would anyone choose a team who'd seen such little success since before sliced bread was invented?
The more I read about the history of black cats and billy goats and heartbreaking late-season collapses, the more I wanted to see these underdogs rise back up to where they once belonged.
I'd been channel surfing on a lonely weekday off from work when I fell for them. I was just looking for a distraction from an atypically bad Canterbury Bulldogs season when the Cubs' quest to break 100 years of World Series futility drew me in.
Pilgrimage: The author after a Cubs win in St Louis.
I'd assumed they were just weeks away from claiming that elusive third title, so I brushed aside any guilt about bandwagon jumping and prepared to watch them glide to glory to fill a gap in my sporting calendar until the cricket season started.
I had no idea what I'd got myself into. Neither did my wallet.
Eight years later, that World Series title has never come, Which is no surprise to anyone aware of the Cubs' history as US sport's "loveable losers".
Yet here I find myself on the eve on yet another of my annual pilgrimages to Wrigley Field to see the "baby bears" wrestle full-grown men on the baseball diamond. It's just this time I'll be seeing them in the World Series – at the cost of a couple of plane tickets back and forth from Australia to the US.
Field of dreams: The Cubs' home, Wrigley Field.Credit: Charles Rex Arbogast
If you think paying four figures for a baseball game is a little ridiculous, I don't blame you. The good Homer sitting on my shoulder agrees. It's just evil Homer makes a much more convincing argument when he's plying you with promises of deep dish pizza, watery American beer and the combination of the world's two most beautiful sounds – a Hammond organ and the crack of a wooden bat.
I lose all sense of perspective when it comes to the Cubs. Everything else gets put by the wayside to watch their push for glory.
I've missed countless crucial NRL semi-finals over the years after deciding to travel to the other side of the world to watch some meaningless Cubs game in Cincinatti, Pittsburgh or St Louis.
When Sam Stosur was beating Serena Williams in Queens to claim the US Open title in 2011, I was right next door cheering a rag-tag Chicago team on against the Mets. In hindsight, I'm lucky Wally Lewis didn't refuse my re-entry back into Queensland.
When I started my new job last year, the deal-clincher in negotiations was when they said they'd let me take my planned holidays to the US, which fell just three months into my new role.
But year after year I come back to Chicago to relive that experience of walking into Wrigley Field – that feeling of walking into an old photograph which comes to life with the warmest, joyous atmosphere. It's a stadium which had seemingly been frozen in time – like the Cubs' fortunes for so long.
It may sound ridiculous following a team from halfway around the world, who play a great deal of their games at 3am in the morning Australian time. But in the internet age, it's just as easy to follow a midwestern US baseball team as it is a rugby league team 10 hours drive away in Queensland.
It only gets ridiculous when you find yourself flying for twice as long as that to brave the chilly Chicago autumn in the hope that you might possibly see history 108 years in the making finally come to fruition. But like any good masochist will tell you, it's the pain that makes it all the more worthwhile.