The Last Empire’s Day Off: How a Cubs Game Explains the World in 9 Innings

The Last Empire’s Day Off: A Cubs Game as Global Parable

Chicago—Somewhere between the seventh-inning stretch and the inevitable ceremonial first pitch from a hedge-fund mascot in a custom jersey, it struck me that the Cubs are less a baseball team than an international Rorschach test. To the locals, they’re a civic pacifier; to visiting Europeans, a pastoral hallucination; to the algorithmic overlords at Disney-ESPN, a content drip. And to the rest of the planet, still trying to decipher why 40,000 otherwise sentient adults pay triple-digit sums to watch grown men scratch themselves in public, the whole spectacle is a polite reminder that the American empire’s preferred opiate now comes with truffle-parm fries.

Wrigley Field squats on the North Side like a brick monument to pre-post-industrial optimism. Ivy bleeds over outfield walls that have seen everything from Capone’s henchmen to K-pop ambassadorships. On this particular afternoon, the marquee advertises a “Salute to NATO,” which apparently means a flyover by Belgian F-16s timed to coincide with the national anthem—an arrangement negotiated, one assumes, by the same committee that brought you Afghanistan exit logistics. The jets roar overhead; nobody flinches. In 2024, even sonic booms are background noise.

Down on the diamond, the Cubs trail the Cardinals 3-1, a scoreline that feels almost diplomatic. Both franchises are owned by billionaire dynasties who treat payroll like offshore tax strategy, yet the crowd chants “Let’s go Cub-bies” with the fervor of a sanctions rally. In the left-field bleachers, a German exchange student live-streams to 35,000 TikTok followers who think “W flag” is a new cryptocurrency. Somewhere in Seoul, a futures trader has hedged against Kyle Hendricks’ slider. Globalization, like a drunk bleacher bum, has simply wandered in and refused to leave.

The geopolitical subplot thickens when the Jumbotron cuts to a “special greeting” for the Ukrainian consulate, whose delegation waves from Section 213 like hostages proving they’re still alive. A smattering of polite applause; no one seems to notice the cognitive dissonance of cheering both military-industrial partnerships and seventh-inning beer snakes. Meanwhile, the concession stands hawk “Cubbie Cubano” sandwiches—pork, plantain, and a whisper of embargo irony—while the craft-beer kiosk lists ABVs in metric to confuse the Canadians.

By the eighth inning, the Cubs mount a rally that economists would call modest but fans label miraculous. A bases-loaded single ties the game; the stadium erupts as if the Fed just cut rates. In the global press box, a Brazilian reporter googles “baseball sacrifice fly,” then shrugs: “In São Paulo, we just call that corruption.” His Japanese colleague nods, eyes glued to Shohei Ohtani’s Instagram. Everyone is covering the same game, yet no one agrees on the narrative arc—Fox calls it hope, Al-Jazeera calls it late-capitalist pageantry, and the BBC calls it “quintessential Americana,” which is British for “we’re quietly terrified.”

The Cardinals eventually plate a run in the tenth, because Cardinals gonna Cardinal. The crowd files out singing “Go, Cubs, Go” in the tone of people who’ve memorized resignation. Outside the stadium, rideshare surge pricing climbs faster than the Doomsday Clock. A street preacher warns that the lakefront will be underwater by 2050; his audience, already ankle-deep in spilled Old Style, seems unbothered. The last empire, after all, has always preferred its apocalypse televised between innings.

And yet, for all the cynicism, there is something almost enviable in the persistence of this ritual. Nations rise, currencies collapse, but the Cubs reliably disappoint in high definition. The world watches, half-mocking, half-yearning, because somewhere beneath the corporate gloss is the same ancient contract: gather, hope, lose, repeat. Tomorrow, the headlines will return to war and weather, but tonight the ivy still clings to brick, the organ still honks out “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and 40,000 strangers agree, for three merciful hours, that the scoreboard is the only ledger that matters.

If that isn’t a parable for the 21st century, I don’t know what is.