Fans see chance to bury hex talk

Victory over Cards a promising sign, but doubts persist.

Billy Siegel doesn’t want to hear any talk about a billy goat curse or a Steve Bartman hex afflicting his beloved Cubs. He dismisses as rubbish any suggestion that a little black cat had anything to do with the team’s collapse down the stretch in 1969, too.

But when Kyle Schwarber hit a home run the other night at Wrigley Field that helped vanquish the hated St. Louis Cardinals, Siegel found it impossible not to see divine providence at work. After all, the ball landed on a videoboard advertising a beer synonymous with St. Louis — and it didn’t come down.

“Look at that ball that hit the Budweiser sign,” said the 67-year-old Siegel, a season-ticket holder since 1970. “Oh my god, that was a sign.”

Cubs fans can insist that they are done with talk of curses and bad luck. But this is not an easy habit to break for the devoted faithful of a team that has not won a World Series since 1908. Heartbreak and superstition are as much a part of Cubs lore as Wrigley Field itself.

As the Cubs battle the Mets in the hopes of getting to the World Series for the first time since 1945, fans swear that this team is different from all the teams that have failed before. This team will win — and they will, fans will tell you — because of the way they play and not because a curse was lifted or just ran out of steam.

“I am so sick of billy goats, sick of Bartman, it’s all a bunch of baloney,” said Jim Kelly, a 62-yearold substitute teacher.

For some, it’s just different rooting for a team that is so young the players have no connection to past failures. “There’s no real curse,” said Steve Rhodes, a fan who runs beachwoodreporter.com. “At the same time, (stuff ) happens to this team that doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

While Rhodes wonders if Schwarber’s next home run might be blown back into play by “a gust of wind,” these Cubs have already exorcised the demons that are the Cardinals. Fans wonder if they can now exact revenge on the Mets, who overtook the Cubs in 1969 not long after a black cat strolled by Cubs third baseman Ron Santo.

“I think it would be fitting to go through the Mets after what happened in ’69,” said Jeff Santo, a son of the late Cubs great.

For their part, the Cubs are staying far away from all this talk. They have not, for example, invited Bartman back to Wrigley as a guest of honor — a gesture some fans have suggested would be appropriate for someone vilified after he deflected a foul ball just before the Cubs collapsed in the 2003 playoffs.

It is pretty much the same story with the goat.

Seventy years after the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern put a curse on the Cubs when they wouldn’t let a pet goat attend the World Series, the tavern owners have asked the Cubs to let a goat back into Wrigley. “We don’t allow animals in the ballpark and we don’t believe in curses,” the team said in a statement.

Still, if the Cubs win the World Series, the celebration is likely to extend to the great beyond.

“The cemeteries will be overloaded with Cubs fans telling their loved ones they did it,” Kelly said. “I will be the first one out there, taking a (World Series) sweatshirt to my dad’s grave.”