Back in the day, Dubsism had a contributor named JFI. Like a lot of bloggers, he was a big, fat slob. Like a lot of big, fat slobs, he had diabetes. That’s ultimately what killed him…according to doctors and other so-called “experts.”
Being a blogger myself as well as an epicurean, I am also a big, fat slob…hence, I too have the sugars. Once I got my diagnosis, I started researching what diabetes really is and it’s true causes. But when it came to JFI’s case, I couldn’t help but notice a connection between the success of his beloved Chicago Cubs and his own march to the great beyond. Being a life-long fan of the Chicago Cubs, JFI lived long enough to see the North-Siders win a World Series.
The problem is he didn’t live too long after that.
I’ll admit the causation is nebulous, but the correlation is as strong as the case for “climate change” or any of the other propagandist mythology like “trust the science.” The fact is diabetes exploded in this country over the last 40 years. That’s nearly identical to the timeframe for the Chicago Cubs and their sad-sacking odyssey into America’s living rooms through the co-axial hydra known as cable TV.
The pivotal moment came in 1982; that’s when the connection becomes visible between the rise in the number of diabetes cases in America compared against a timeline of the significant events in recent Cubs’ history.
One of the first things I learned after my diagnosis was how much sugar is hidden in so many products. If you would like a bit of your own discovery, take this challenge the next time you’re in an American supermarket. Read some random food labels and see how many things are actually loaded with sugar that you wouldn’t have expected to be. Having said that, I’m sure by now you’re wondering what the hell this has to do with the Chicago Cubs?
Simply stated, there is nothing that has been more artificially sweetened in the last 40 years than the narrative around that goddamn team.
Just go back to that graph and look at the timepoints mentioned. Every one of them involves the corn-syrupy establishment of the Cubs as baseball’s “loveable losers” against the “THIS IS FINALLY THE YEAR!” hype-monster and the sucking vortex of reality. Welcome to the Scylla and Charybdis through which the sugary slop surrounding the Cubs is channeled.
Start with Harry Caray putting the face of your loveable, but always piss-drunk uncle on it. Everybody loved Harry Caray and his Budweiser-soaked rambles through Cubs’ games, and that sweetness rubbed off on the team. That’s why when a few years later the Cubs won the NL East, the hype-monster had them as “America’s Sweethearts” during their first post-season appearance since 1945.
The reality was the Cubs lost that series. Solution: add more sugar.
In a move which drove more monstrous hype, the North Siders added a “superstar” to a line-up featuring fan-favorite and future Hall-of-Famer Ryne Sandberg. Andre Dawson exceeded all expectations by leading the National League in home runs and RBIs along the way to winning winning the 1987 NL MVP award.
The reality was that Cubs team finished dead last. Solution: add more sugar.
The very next year, the Cubs joined the 20th Century through the addition of lights to Wrigley Field. Somehow, night baseball was supposed to make the awful 1988 Cubs better.
The reality was any toilet shines if the bulbs are bright enough. Care to guess what the solution was?
Not only does that cycle live to this day, it’s been intensified by orders of magnitude. Come the late 1990s when the Cubs’ era of quasi-regular contention began, the “rinse-lather-repeat” cycle became a self-nourishing entity; the hype-monster feeding off the similarly surging sugary expectations.
Again, the graph shows the obvious trend line reflecting it’s rapid growth. Time after time, point after point, the sugar buzz amongst the Cub faithful only grows. When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 and the hype and the vortex of reality actually intersected, diabetes exploded to pandemic levels.
Granted, you would think a historically middlin-to-shitty baseball team would be far down the list of causative factors for diabetes in a city whose streets are paved with deep-dish pizza and the fire hydrants pump cheap beer. But every time the Cubs break their fans hearts, another ton of sugar gets brewed into the Chicago zeitgeist which keeps Wrigley Field filled in the summertime. Given enough cycles, eventually the hyperbolic media narrative became so sickeningly sweet that even non-Cubs fans now have blood with the consistency of Karo syrup.
As find ourselves on the cusp of Independence Day 2025, the “perfect storm” is looming yet again. The Cubs are as of this writing a bona fide World Series contender, and the hype-monster is already looking toward October baseball on the North Side.
The trouble is win or lose, this a terrible development for the overall health of America. If the Cubs don’t make it to the World Series, the narrative will again be sweetened to pancreas-exploding proportions. Conversely, if Chicago sees another championship, combating the resultant surge in diabetes will require a fleet of B-2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound GLP-1 “sugar busters” directly into Wrigley Field.
If there was a ever a time to make America healthy again…
You can see all our signs we are near the end of civilization here.
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