http://story.theinsiders.com/a.z?s=228&p=2&c=190337 (http://)

Cheers is compared to EVERYTHING...hehe

maria this link isn't working :(:(:(

It didn't work for me either.

Not for me either

I'll just post the article then:

I Do, And Then Adieu
By Steve Holley
Date: Oct 17, 2003

If you've ever watched the sitcom Cheers, you probably have automatically recognized the title I've given to the story of the 2003 season. What just a few days ago seemed like destiny quickly evaporated into a storybook ending that not even Glen and Les Charles could have pulled off.

For those of you unfamiliar with the title, it hails from the show's season finale in 1987.

After a rocky five-year relationship, Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) are ready to exchange their marriage vows. However, on the day of the wedding, Diane's former fiancee Dr. Sumner Sloan, who left her in the series premiere of the show five years earlier, returns announcing that he's had an offer to expand one of Diane's class papers into a novel.

Although fans of Cheers were fully aware that this was the final episode of the series' fifth season, the outcome of the story was one of the best kept secrets of the decade thanks to the strategy of filming a false ending in front of a live studio audience by the show's producers where Sam and Diane were actually married to hide the fact that Long was leaving the show to begin work on her movie career.

How does this pertain to the Cubs? In a bit of irony, the ending to the Cubs 2003 season is almost similar to that of Sam and Diane's relationship.

After Sam said, "I do," Diane quickly said, "Adieu." Compare that to the Cubs. After the entire baseball world had said "I do" to the Cubs making a World Series appearance for the first time in 58 years, the Cubs themselves quickly said "adieu" in the face of adversity.

Nobody could have predicted the Cubs would lose three straight after being up three games to one. Clearly all of the odds were in their favor. A two-game lead with the National League's hottest pitchers going at home in the chilly Chicago weather.

No tales of black cats, goats and other animals could mess this up. Yet somehow, the Cubs managed to let something so easy slip right through their hands.

Steve Bartman, my foot. The Cubs brought this on all by themselves. Let's first of all re-examine the situation (most painful as it is).

Nothing Bartman or anyone else at Wrigley Field on Tuesday night could do (aside from tackling Mark Prior in between pitches) could have caused the complete and utter meltdown by the Cubs in the eighth inning; a meltdown that will go down as the biggest in the club's history.

Let's first give credit to Pudge Rodriguez on a good piece of hitting. That would have been far too easy to overlook. What cannot be overlooked, however, is what happened afterward. Alex Gonzalez was hit a routine ground ball that any other time this season would have resulted in, at worst, a fielder's choice at second, and maybe an inning-ending double play.

Instead, Gonzalez gaffed an easy grounder that took the wind right out of the Cubs' sails from that point on. The rest was simply a woodshed beating by the Marlins offense.

I do not believe, nor will I ever, that Bartman's one lone mistake excuses Gonzalez' defensive blunder, Prior's inability to keep the Marlin hitters at bay in the face of adversity and the Cubs' offense laying goose eggs on the scoreboard the last two innings.

I'm heartbroken, angry and hurt as it is. No need to get self deluded.

What comes next for the Cubs are the bitter winds and cold temperatures that blow from here until the first of March.

Regardless of who the Cubs sign this off-season, who they decide to let go and who they decide to bring back, 2003's ending will be fresh in the fans minds from now until the Cubs are back in the post-season (which behind Dusty Baker should not be very long).

What happened in game six and the NLCS in general was a storybook ending that only the Cubs could script. Well, maybe the Red Sox, too.

And unfortunately, unlike Sam and Diane's storybook ending 16 years ago, this one was real.

**Steve Holley is the publisher of CubsTalk.com. E-mail Steve at steve@cubstalk.com.

Thanks for the article...:thanks:

Wow, it does connect to everything.
AND
George Wendt was on SNL, because of the Cubs "tragedy".


wow, this is kind of weird.... really weird.

........and it was published on Wendt's Birthday.