Cubs 7, World 5: How a Box Score Became the Planet’s Cheapest Therapy
Cubs Score: A Small Number in a Big, Rotting World
By the time the Cubs’ latest box score flickered onto smartphones from Lagos to Lahore, the planet had already tallied far grimmer numbers: 2.3 million new covid cases, $1.4 billion in fresh sovereign debt, and one rogue beluga suspected of Russian espionage. Yet for eight innings on a Tuesday night in Chicago, the only integer that mattered to a certain cross-section of humanity was 7-5—an unremarkable final that nevertheless reverberated through the anxious arteries of global fandom like a defibrillator paddle.
In the VIP lounges of Dubai, oil traders in Thom Browne sneakers paused mid-deal to check if Seiya Suzuki had indeed gone 2-for-4. Over WhatsApp voice notes, Manila call-center agents debated whether Marcus Stroman’s ERA now rivaled their own cortisol levels. Even a yak herder on the Tibetan Plateau—whose sole concession to American culture is a faded “Try Not to Suck” T-shirt gifted by a gap-year backpacker—received the score via stat-push and, according to anthropologists studying digital penetration, grunted approvingly. The Cubs, you see, are no longer merely Chicago’s adorable exercise in civic heartbreak; they are a multinational coping mechanism, a secular rosary for the overworked and under-rested.
Why does a provincial baseball result feel so planetary? Look no further than the universal human craving for controlled catastrophe. In Kyiv, where air-raid sirens drown out mundane conversation, the controlled catastrophe of a bases-loaded jam feels downright quaint—an emotional spa day. In Buenos Aires, where inflation mocks every paycheck, the fact that the Cubs’ payroll is “only” $182 million inspires a perverse solidarity: even rich people feel broke. And in London, where Brexit has achieved the rare feat of making every option worse, the tidy binary of win/loss offers a nostalgic echo of a time when outcomes could still be binary.
Meanwhile, the geopolitical butterfly effect twitches. The Cubs’ victory nudged DraftKings’ stock up 0.7 percent, which in turn marginally inflated the 401(k) of a mid-level manager in Des Moines who, feeling momentarily flush, ordered extra guacamole, thereby increasing demand for Mexican avocados and validating yet another cartel’s quarterly forecast. Somewhere, an algorithm quietly files this under “soft power.”
Of course, the darker joke is that none of it matters. The Cubs could go 162-0 and glaciers would still calve, oligarchs would still oligarch, and your landlord would still “forget” to fix the radiator. But that is precisely the point: in a world where agency is rented by the hour, the illusion of influence—cheering, booing, doom-scrolling—is the last affordable luxury. The score is not a number; it’s a placebo marketed as a narrative.
There is also the small matter of legacy. Japan’s baseball scribes now compare the Cubs’ rebuild to the Meiji Restoration—overstated, but any metaphor involving samurai swords and Kyle Hendricks’ curveball deserves applause. In Seoul, data scientists model the Cubs’ minor-league pipeline as if it were a K-pop trainee system, minus the rigorous dancing. And in Havana, where baseball is both religion and exile, the score is smuggled in via USB drive, a pixelated reminder that somewhere, capitalism still allows grown men to fail upward for our entertainment.
As the final out nestled into Cody Bellinger’s glove, a hush fell over the collective diaspora of blue-clad masochists—followed immediately by the familiar shiver of dread that tomorrow will bring another number, another heart murmur, another existential audit. Still, for one night, the ledger read: Cubs 7, Opponent 5, Existential Dread 0.
Tomorrow, of course, the universe will demand rematch interest, compounded hourly. But until then, the yak herder refreshes his feed, the oil trader resumes bidding, and we all pretend that a Midwestern box score can balance the books of a planet spinning deliriously off its axis. Play ball, or whatever passes for it these days.
