With Spring Training now fully underway, we are inching closer and closer to Opening Day. For us who love baseball, there may not be a better day of the year than Opening Day. It is a day of new hope (especially for Cubs fans) and total optimism. However, Opening Day on the North Side this year is going to feel a little different than it has in recent years past.

Cubs fans never expect the Cubs to win the World Series, but in the back of our minds, we always believe they might be able to pull it off. This year I think it is fair to say that we have no hope whatsoever. Since bringing in Theo and Jed Hoyer, the Cubs MLB roster has been pretty well dismantled. We’ve seen Marshall get traded to the Reds, Zambrano to the “new look” Marlins, Ramirez has signed with one of our biggest rivals up in Cheeseland, as well as a handful of other moves. In recent years, us Cubs fans have gotten used to them spending a lot of money in the off-season to try and build a team that could win it all that year. This off-season has been the first one of its sorts in a long time. A complete overhaul of the team. As disappointed as I am that the Cubs will have no chance this year, I am still looking on the bright side of things.

Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer brought 2 World Series titles to Boston in a span of 4 years after the Red Sox had gone since 1918 without winning one. This gives me total confidence in them, at least for now, that they know what they are doing in trading away half of last year’s roster. It might take 2-3 years until they put a winning team on the field, but when they do, we can be certain that Epstein and Hoyer will have done everything in their power to make it a World Series caliber team. Yes, they obviously took on the job of bringing a World Series to the Cubs because of their love for the game, but also because of their egos.

If Theo Epstein (especially) and Jed Hoyer are able to bring a World Series title to the Cubs, just imagine the feat that they would have accomplished… They would have completed the 2 most difficult tasks in baseball by leading the Red Sox and Cubs to World Series victories. This would make each of them instant legends around the baseball world. So while they are in this for the sake of guiding the Cubs to a ring, they are also in this for the possibility of becoming 2 of baseballs biggest legends off the field.

This year is the year for all of us Cubs fans to sit back, relax, and just watch baseball. We don’t need to worry about the standings or the playoffs, and we don’t need to judge what we see on the field every afternoon at Wrigley. This is our time to watch baseball without being on the edge of our seats for once, with the hope of doing the exact opposite in next few years to come.