The Chicago Cubs are in the World Series. You’ve maybe heard this over the last few days. So has Washington State football coach Mike Leach, who has thoughts on a great many things and does not, as a matter of habit, hold back.
At a Leach press conference on Monday, someone asked the Cougars boss if he had a World Series favorite. He answered, “I want the Indians.” Then he elaborated.
This elaboration lasted about 400 words. I’m going to put the whole thing right here for your consumption, but let’s start with the real heat:
There’s some teams — the Cubs are one of them — where there’s just too many Cubs fans. They’re one of those teams that, for whatever reason — I guess it’s cause people like the way their uniforms look or something — every yuppie with a BMW or some special attachment to its computer or some designer set of jeans or something like that is a Cubs fan, and refers to it as ‘my Cubbies.’
If you say ‘my’ in front of your team, well, then that’s dubious, OK? You know, ‘my this, my that.’ Come on, now. And so you get ‘my Cubbies.’ You don’t get ‘my Indians.’ You get ‘my Cubbies,’ OK?
And I think there’s just too many out-of-the-woodwork people that like ‘em that just like ‘em cause they like the uniforms, don’t know the first thing about baseball, probably have never even attended a Cubs game, but that’s just gonna be their team since they have something to talk about over the copy machine and the cooler.
So as a result, you know, going against the whole wave of probably seven-eighths of America, I want the Indians. Me and the city of Cleveland.
I’m a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, and my NL Central allegiances lead me to root against the Cubs. Personally, I absolutely hope they lose, although I’m definitely just bitter that some other tortured franchise is having success when mine is not. So I sort of get where Leach is going.
But, golly, he’s coming in hot. I didn’t know Cubs fans had a particular attachment, beyond that of other people, to BMWs or computers, or designer jeans. This is new knowledge for me.
Other passages! Here’s Leach on his baseball allegiances, more generally, when asked if there was a reason he wanted Cleveland to win.
Not really. I’ve always been an American League guy, primarily. I’ve always been an American League guy. I really respect, though, the Cubs’ manager. Everywhere he goes, he does a tremendous job, [Joe] Maddon. He does a great job. From that standpoint, I like him and all that. When I was a kid, I was more of an American League guy.
My teams were basically every team that Billy Martin managed, so I started out liking the Yankees. Then as I went to law school it was too easy to like the Yankees, so then I became an Angels fan, and that’s when the Angels were right on the brink. They’d make the playoffs and would almost get there, you know? Almost. So I became an Angels fan. I’d say I’m still an Angels fan.
And Leach, about a time he beat Navy while coaching at Texas Tech, likening it to his desire for the Indians to beat the popular favorite, the Cubs:
It’s like when we played Navy, when I was at Texas Tech. We played Navy. So we beat Navy, and it was right during the Gulf War, so we beat Navy, which was quite a deal, cause there was 300 million people that were ticked off and 250,000 that were happy. It’s like being the Oakland Raiders in the 70s. It was awesome.
This was a lot to process on my own, so here’s the video with all these comments in order. Baseball commences at the 22:26 mark:
Washington State’s on a five-game winning streak and plays Oregon State this weekend. Leach is going to miss Game 4.