The Huddle
Sports reporter Jacob Carpenter examines sports issues from the past and present.
Recent posts
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Weekly Treat — Remembering Fall 2008
What can I say? Writing about sports every weekday during the Fall 2008 semester has been a treat.
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Weekly Beef — Avery Suspension Bogus
You’ve got to love how many role models there are in sports.
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On Campus — Favorite MSU Alumni
For every 500 MSU athletes who graduate with honor and class, there’s one Plaxico Burress.
The Question — Most Stressed Sports City?
For some reason, I make a point of visiting Yahoo.com every day, if only for entertainment. It’s not a particularly newsy site, but there’s always something there that makes me say, “Huh, that’s kinda cool.”
Today, it’s the list of “America’s Most Stressed Cities,” a list that I find to be strangely unquantifiable yet oddly interesting. The rundown contains the usual suspects struggling with a hemorrhaging economy, poor real estate markets and major unemployment. Leading the top five: Chicago, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco, in that order.
So it got me thinking two things:
1. What “City In The Crapper” list isn’t Detroit on right now?
2. What is America’s Most Stressed Sports City?
I figure answering the first question will take too much time and work and I probably won’t find a single list, so I’ll give the second question a shot.
While it isn’t exactly listed on the description for why it is apparently so stressed out, my vote goes to Chicago for the country’s most stressed sports city. All you need to tell any Chicago Cubs fan right now is one number. 100.
It’s the number of years since the Cubs have won the World Series. The Titanic hadn’t yet sunk when the North siders last were baseball’s best team.
This year, the Cubbies head into the playoffs with the best record in the National League, two bona fide aces in Rich Harden and Carlos Zambrano, superstar sluggers Alfonso Soriano and Derrek Lee and Sweet Lou Piniella (who doesn’t know a thing about being stressed now, does he?). No city’s fans are more tortured than the Cubs, so getting to the playoffs as favorites must have fans sweating in their boots.
As if Chicagoans didn’t already have enough to worry about, apparently.
Comments
Cubs, Smubs
09/30/08 @ 10:51am
The Cubs have it tough? Sure they haven’t won the World Series since 1908 when they beat out the Tigers, but let’s be honest here. They haven’t continually sucked since they last won a championship unlike the Lions, withstanding a sole postseason win in 1991. Not to mention there’s no other team I can think of that’s had to suffer under eight long years of utterly incompetent leadership.
Satty
09/30/08 @ 12:24pm
I’m not sure if you were mocking Chicago’s “sports stress”, but I am sure Cincinnati fans would gladly trade the Reds 18 year World Series draught and a miserable Bengals season to come for Chicago’s seasons. I also know for a fact that Seattle fans would trade the Mariners having never won a World Series, 101 loss season (not even bad enough to get the #1 draft pick), and losing the Sonics to Oklahoma City in a heart beat.
Inspector Butters
09/30/08 @ 11:29pm
Chicago? Most stressed sports city? I don’t think so. Not even close. Cubs fans misery is overexaggerated. What about Da Bears? And all of those Bulls championships? And plenty of Chicagoans finally got some relief when the Sox won in ’05. Chicago has had more than their fair share of celebrations.
The five most stressed (read: tortured) sports cities are as follows. They are listed alphabetically, because at some point, awful is just awful.
1. Buffalo
2. Cleveland
3. Philadelphia (they may finally have a chance to change that)
4. San Diego
5. Seattle