Discussing below are mandolinist and member of Punch Brothers Chris Thile, Nonesuch President Bob Hurwitz, and Senior Vice President David Bither.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

2 PM

Dear Chris,

I know it's been a big few weeks for you—the Tensions Mountain Boys (as a band name) has been retired, the Punch Brothers have been born, you're signing a new record deal, you've written four new songs, you're working with a new producer and engineer, in a new studio, you've finally recorded The Blind Leaving the Blind.

And so, when I visited the studio on the other day, what was everyone talking about? Baseball, of course. Indeed, all of us at Nonesuch were touched by your quote when you signed to the label: When I found out the boys and I were going to be working with Nonesuch, I felt like I had been drafted by the Cubs." After last night, with the Diamondbacks smoking the Cubs and the temper tantrum by Ted Lilly, the quote gives me some cause for concern.

Bob

Friday, October 5, 2007

12:15 AM

Hi Bob,

OK, it looks bad, but I will watch and root my Cubs on to whatever fate awaits them. The Diamondbacks are winning 6-2 in the top of the fifth after winning the series opener 3-1, but Hart just came in and struck out two batters (both on full counts) to clean up Ted Lilly's mess, and we have the top of the order coming up. OK, Soriano just singled (a LONG single. He's not running very well.). Good, good! You know, the ability to cultivate unwarranted optimism is a real blessing. Damn it!! Theriot flies out deep to left, Lee pops up, and Ramirez strikes out. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, and though I'm not going to start saying "wait till next year" just yet, I'm almost ready to say "wait till Saturday." Come what may, GO CUBS!

Chris 

Friday, October 5, 2007

4 PM

Hi Chris,

As you know, we have a kind of a divided office here. There are those (Peter, Karina, Gregg, Sam, Jocelyn, Ronen) who couldn't care less about what happens this week; I think they are sick of hearing the rest of us—Eli and Drew, Rhode Island boys/members of Red Sox nation; David, Cub, sufferer; me, insufferable Yankee fan; Josh, Dodger fan and Gagne look-alike; Melissa, kinda Yankees fan but stays above the fray (and certainly out of the debate). On the other hand, the Punch Brothers are Cub fanatics, members of a long-suffering tribe.

Bob

Friday, October 5, 2007

5:34 PM

Dear Chris and Bob,

Chris, your quote also troubled me, not because I didn't understand what you meant—to me it was an expression of the purest rapture—but because I was afraid that taken out of context, "I felt like I was drafted by the Cubs" could be misinterpreted by the uninitiated as gaining entrance to one of Dante's innermost circles of hell.

I've lived in New York City for almost 30 years but there has not been an instant that I haven't carried with me the weight of being a lifelong Cubs fan. I try to carry it with dignity; I occasionally carry it with ecstatic giddiness (1984, 2003); but always, it is there. I've been at Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees clinch pennants and World Series crowns, but I barely remember those events (wasn't Wade Boggs riding around the stadium on a horse one year?). My son, Sam, who is now eight, is a Yankees fan, as he should be: when he was too small to know any better, I used to outfit him in a Cubs cap, and I once had a father seriously berate me in a playground in Central Park for inflicting the Cubs on such an innocent youngster.

My grandfather had a tryout with the Cubs in about 1920; my father grew up near Chicago in the 1930s and 40s and raised his own family there in the 1950s–70s. So this thing goes deep and it goes way back. My heart was first broken in 1969—the damned Mets. It gave me great pleasure this year to watch the Mets stage their own epic collapse, just as it gave me a sort of evil joy to see the Padres lose in the one-game playoff to the Rockies (the damned Padres—1984—and that damned Steve Garvey with the home runs in game 4 in
San Diego!).

But what about this team, Lou Piniella's Cubs? I do think Lou brought the Cubs some Yankee swagger and a disdain for the tradition of losing. But let's face it—not only are these the Cubs, but also they 1) had the worst record of all the playoff teams; 2) played in the worst division in baseball and barely won that; and 3) exhibited all the usual Cubs traits (lack of timely hitting, wildly erratic starting pitching, a time bomb for a closer, etc., etc.) all season long. Even though I still don't know a single Diamondback player, even after watching the last two games (wait, wasn't Augie Ojeda a Cub once?) and that hissing sound they pipe into the stadium to rally the home crowd sounds like a toilet flushing … they're killing us. Yeah, Lou should have left Big Z in the first game, but if you can't score more than one run, you're not going to win even if a suddenly miraculously healthy Randy Johnson were to switch dugouts and come in to relieve Zambrano in the eighth.

They might win a game at Wrigley this weekend—Rich Hill pitches well with extra days of rest and he will have had a week off—but I do not understand why managers, in the face of an avalanche of stats to the contrary, think it is a good idea to bring pitchers back on three-days rest, which is what Lou intends to do in game 4 with Zambrano. I have the Cubs losing in four games. At Wrigley, just to make it extra bleak.

So Dad, at 78, I still don't think this is the year. Hang in there … the fates are just waiting for next year, that nice round centenary, 100 years since the Cubs last won the World Series. After all, they've got some good young kids, Soto behind the plate, Theriot at short, Hill and Marshall starting … Kerry Wood looks more dominant each time he pitches, he can close next year with Marmol setting him up … yes, 2008 will be the year ...

David