Opening day

"Of course, there's one catch: You might never get there. Every fan's worst fear. All that energy over the years just getting displaced, no release, no satisfaction, nothing. Season after season, no championship ... and then you die. I mean, isn't that what this is all about? Isn't that the nagging fear? That those little moral victories over the years won't make up for that big payoff at the end -- that one moment when everything comes together, when your team keeps winning, when you keep getting the breaks and you just can't lose."

-- Bill Simmons, ESPN columnist

People who go to Cubs games with me for the very first time are always a little taken aback by how quiet I am. They're expecting me to heckle, to scream my lungs out, to be raucous and obnoxious, to stand up and initiate chanting wars with the opposite field bleachers. Instead, I just kind of sit there politely, like I'm at church or something.

Which is actually a pretty appropriate description considering that in my entire life, the closest I've ever come to a religious experience has been at Wrigley Field.

It's the grass, man. Newbies don't get what the big fuss is about sitting out in the bleachers, so I'll explain: it's the grass. And the ivy. I can smell it. It's the beautiful, perfectly green vastness of the outfield. It's the outfielders that you can yell at when they get close enough. It's the flakes of peanut shells that fall into your beer cup but you don't mind. It's the elbows that rub against yours all game, the hot girls in tank tops, the conversation with total strangers. It's great.

That religious experience I mentioned earlier? It happens at least once every game, and it can ONLY happen while sitting in the bleachers. Maybe some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometime between the 3rd and 4th inning, right when everyone in the stands is getting comfortable, things just start to feel different. Clouds move out of the way, a few hundred more BTUs from the sun hits your skin, and baseball chit chat everywhere around you finds just the right cadence. And that's when you make connections to all the times you've spent at Wrigley and realize that every happy memory you've ever had there is an indistinguishable, inextinguishable stream of comfort.

I'm telling you. If Wrigley Field is a church, then bleacher seats are its pews.

And us patient fans today, on the 100th Opening Day since the last time the Cubs called themselves champions, we're all preparing for the Rapture. Okay this somehow got weird.