Grace period for expansion franchises?

I forgot they existed.

 

Lousy management, awful coaching, hold-your-nose players (for the most part), befuddling drafts and free agent signings and some bad luck.

 

Yeah, but with Mark Grace, Luis Gonzalez, a couple of other lesser-known ex-Cubs and (former and now current) Cubs announcer Bob Brenly on the bench, that team didn't have a lot of trouble winning over Cubbie fans in 2001 (in fact, they're pretty much the one team that's broken Royko's ex-Cub factor).

 

1960 Pirates also beat the Ex-Cub Factor (tm). But that was before the factor was widely known, so the monkey on their backs was quite light.

And here's one of Royko's columns on Ron Berler's Ex-Cub Factor: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/730735.html (scroll down to second one)

 

Hey, sometimes teams go through a few bad decades, though not many for the length of time the Lions have been bad. The Steelers were mostly shit for most of their first 40 years as a franchise, but that wasn't in the legislated parity era.

 

That picture never gets old.

 

Or the Cubs for ther past 100 years.
Or the Indians for the past 59 years.

 

Yankees for the past seven years. ...

 

St. Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals for God-knows-how long...

 

Fuck you all.

 

I ain't making fun of the Cubs.