Let's take the Cubs fan survey!

The Cubs are not a bright organization. We know that. It's well established. And yet, they continue to do dumb things. Why, just the other day they sent me their fan survey. (Which I would have missed had Intrepid Reader Forklift not brought it to my attention.)

So, should I take it? Of course not.

WE should take it! Let's dig in.

Ahh, yes. They need some basic demographic information. I'm sure they want to brag to their beloved corporate partners about how young and hip their fanbase is. I can tell you that the average Pointless Exercise reader is in their early 40s, so we could go with that. But thanks to watching this team most of our lives we all feel a lot older. So let's go with the spiritual age that the Cubs have foisted upon us.

75 or older, it is!

Just going with the men's leagues, eh Cubs? Very forward thinking. It's not like one of your owners owns an NWSL club or anything? I guess "Professional Tennis" could be either, I'm not sure what "Profession Golf" is, but I know nobody proofread this survey.

What do we think? We're Cubs fans and I'm writing and you're reading a Cubs newsletter so we should put Passionate, but given the effort the club is putting into this team these days, do they really deserve our attention at anything above an average level?

As for the rest, I didn't even remember the MLS changed seasons until it was well underway, I haven't been able to stomach a full Bulls' game in years, I'm just going to wait for Fels to tell me when it's worth paying attention to the Blackhawks again, I don't like that they lumped redneck bumper cars in with F1, and as for the Bears? I'm ready to be hurt again.

This feels a lot like the previous question. Though I really wish there was a, "I didn't know they still had a team" column.

Nice to see them throw Laura's team a bone in the list, though. But honestly, shouldn't they have put (Red Stars) in parentheses next to Chicago Stars? Do they really think anybody knows they changed names?

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get to the good stuff.

Oh no, Crane. You really don't want to know the three words every Cubs fan wants to give you as feedback do you? Will Qualtrics even let you submit "Go fuck yourself" as an answer?

OK, probably not. So we should probably go with some real ones.

Off the top of my head, I think the three words I most associate with the Cubs would be: incompetence, greed, and apathy.

But wait, is it ineptitude or incompetence? Is it greed or avarice? Is apathy the right word? They clearly don't care if the team wins, but they do care about sucking every last dollar out of us. They clearly have contempt for us. How about we just spring a German word on them. Backpfeifengesicht comes to mind. Because the entire Cubs organization has a punchable face, which is what that means.

I'm going to with ineptitude, contempt and backpfiefengesicht.

Feel free to give me yours and we'll just crowdsource them and I'll find a way to submit the survey again.

As for the second part of this question. Unfortunately, I think we pretty much all care about the Cubs more than other professional teams. But I'll give them credit for trying to cure us of that.

I would love to be able to answer what makes the Cubs different than other professional sports teams with, "Other teams want to win." But we know that's not true. The Cubs half-assed approach to putting out a contender actually makes them more aspirational than at least half the teams in their own sport. What does set them apart though is that they have the resources to actually win and they just don't care enough to actually use them. So my answer to that would be, "You have the resources to win, but you don't care enough to use them."

The second question is harder. If you've been a Cubs fan since the 80s, like me, your connection to the team has waxed and waned. I've always been a Cubs fan and I've always invested too much time and thought into them, but they have often been too bad and/or dull to give maximum attention to. One thing they always did was have a really fun season out of nowhere just about the time you were ready to return them to casual status.

The 1984 Cubs were so fun that they sucked you back in, and then when those guys all fell apart and you started to lose interest the incredible 1989 Cubs came along and hooked you and the thought that a season like that might happen again carried you through the mostly awful 90s until Sammy puffed himself up and the insane 1998 season happened, and then they almost won it all in 2003 and then Lou showed up and then Theo.

Every time we were ready to quit them, something happened that kept us around. But the Theo thing was supposed to change that forever. If you had told me in 2015 that in just a few years we'd all be super pissed at the Cubs again I'd have just assumed they never won a World Series with him. That fact that they did and within four years of that we were all mad at them again, is incredible. It has to be the most impressive thing the Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™ has ever done. They should have been able to coast on the fact they actually won a World Series for decades. And they botched it completely.

So my connection to the Cubs today and in previous years, is still strong, but that says more about me than them, because I clearly want them to win more than they want to and for some reason I can't let go of that.

The choices are a weird progression from less than a year ago to 20 or more years ago, with nine step ups like 1-2 years, or 3-4 years, or 16-20 years. I've been in marketing for a long time and I still can't figure out what they're trying to parse here. It'd make more sense to me if they were based around ticket price increases or gate giveaways. Like, when did you initially become a Cubs fan? - During the Pat Hughes sweater giveaway season, - During the Ryan Theriot in a boat bobblehead giveaway season, - During the Cindy Sandberg Corncob Dress giveway season?

Plus, Cubs fans aren't going to like the 20 or more years ago, cap. Nobody loves to brag about how long they've been a fan of anything than Cubs fans do. Twenty or more is not going to suffice.

Now this one is interesting. I wonder if there are a lot of answers of The Cubs won the World Series in 2016, if Crane and his stooges would take that to mean, "When we win titles we get more fans" or, "This sucker jumped on the bandwagon in 2016 and nine years later they still haven't jumped off, so we'll have them forever no matter how little we win."

I think we know which way they'll lean.

They have "I used to live in Chicago" as an answer and then, "I'm an MLB fan and the Cubs are my local team" is on the list. I get the first one, but couldn't they just get the second one from the zip code we'll surely have to enter at the end?

"I like what the Cubs brand stands for" is just ludicrous. Anybody who unironically answers that should be flogged.

But the one that intrigues me is "I used to watch Cubs games on WGN." They can't ever replicate that.

First off, even if they were still on the old superstation version of WGN, it's carried in far fewer places than it used to be, and MLB would have a cow if one of its teams still had a quasi-national TV network. So I think the question is here in the hopes that they'll get fewer responses than we might expect.

Anecdotally we all assume that the Cubs are a national team because of the years they were on WGN, and it's almost a certainty that we're right. The Cubs play to big numbers of their own fans in every road stadium in the league for that reason. I think they're hoping this number will be small, like 10 percent or less to reassure them that the WGN effect is exaggerated and the fact that their own TV network's crap numbers aren't as disappointing as they really are.

My answer to this question is simply, My dad made me be a Cubs fan.

Hahahahahaha. Here are four doozies.

I would love to strongly disagree that a city with world-class culture like Chicago has, owes a big part of that to a baseball team, but honestly, we know that it actually does. Sports are a huge part of Chicago's culture. And the Cubs are a big part of that. Maybe not as much as the Bears, somehow more than the Bulls but less than the Bulls' (and the NBA's) greatest ever player, but the Cubs are way up there.

If the White Sox were a real team they'd siphon far more of the baseball interest away, but they aren't, and they've had 131 years to do it and never have. It's not going to happen.

Are the Cubs' best days ahead? Is there something to the right of Strongly Disagree that I can click?

Are they part of my self-identity? Yes, they are. And for most of my life being a Cubs fan has been a burden. It has made me (and all of us) the subject of mockery and disdain. To wear a Cubs hat, or shirt, or whatever, in public has for far more days than not been an invitation for others to look at us and question our intelligence. Why else do you think millions of us showed up at the victory rally? It was our chance, finally, to not just feel like we hadn't wasted our lives on this team, but to prove it.

Attending a Cubs game provide good value for the price? I'm surprised they have the balls to ask this question.

You can select multiple answers for this one. But it's odd that it says "most connected" which implies you should just pick one. If you only pick one and you pick "using mobile apps or betting on Cubs games odds", it's a cry for help. Plus, why does it say "Betting on Cubs game odds?" Do they think people bet on the odds.

"I'd like to bet $100 on the Cubs being 2000 to 1 or worse to win the pennant by the All-Star Break."

Actually, that's not a bad bet.

We all know the answer is Subscribing to PointlessExercise.com. Or going to a Cubs game at Wrigley. I mean, it's basically the same immersive experience. Am I right?

I like that "I won tickets in a contest or auction" is a choice. A better one would be, "I lost an auction and got stuck with tickets." I feel like they're going to try to arrest anybody who answers that they got them from a local ticket broker.

Why is "too many" not a choice? Also, I find it odd that they stop at 40 or more games. Why not throw a bone to Al and let him answer "All 81, because ..."

I know there are plenty of valid reasons on this list, but I really wish everyone would just answer "Team performance/record." Not that it really would matter, but things like parking or transportation just gives them an excuse to wave away attendance dips. We know that if the team's good enough we'll all put up with inconveniences to go to games. Though I do like that the first choice is "Trouble finding people to attend games with me." I'd like to think it would show that the team's not interesting enough for casual fans to be interested in going. But I think it's really there because they want to launch some sad paid app where Cubs fans can pair up with other lonely Cubs fans to go to games together.

I mean, we haven't had anything like that since the Desipio Messageboard went down.

Why isn't there a follow up to go with this? I guess they are just assuming that these are superfans who will travel with the team or they are fans who live outside of Chicago and will go see the Cubs when they get close to where they live now. But what about fans who go to Milwaukee because it's cheaper? Or fans who just want to experience other parks and will time it to when the Cubs are there because they don't want to give the Ricketts any money by going to home games?

Again, the clear answer is: Other: "Subscribe to PointlessExercise.com."

I'm sure the New York Times just loves that one of the answers is "National sports blogs (e.g. The Athletic)." Yes Cubs, that's a blog. Sure it is. How sad is, "I turn to friends or family members for news and updates about the Cubs?" I guess my mom would probably answer that. But I don't think she'd have made it this many questions into this survey. Still, the greatest moment in her fandom was when she called me on the evening of July 31, 2004 to ask, "Did you hear that the Cubs traded for No-Rod?"

I guess she ended up being right, sort of.

"Cubs emails" is another great way to follow the Cubs news and updates. You get like 20 a year. Eighteen of them are ticket solicitations, one is this survey and one is Tom's "well, we tried, sort of" season recap.

Here it is. My time to shine. Everybody stuff the ballot box!

I literally questioned my sanity when I started clicking on all of the streaming services I have. This question is basically a cry for help.

This question made me realize how little radio of any kind I listen to.

I don't know about you, but I pretty much follow the Cubs exclusively on WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

They seriously listed Telegram and not Bluesky? How did they resist the urge to put Truth Social on the list?

The first question should have just been. "Would you buy a $3,000 Italian bicycle if Todd did an infomercial for it on TikTok?"

As for the second, what are they going to do with a yes or no answer on such a non-specific question?

"Hey Crane, this person says they play some sort of sports video game on some platform, maybe a console or a PC or a phone, we're not really sure."
"Great stuff!"

Yes, I'm aware of them.

I'm familiar with them giving Cam Smith to the Astros.

How are there five degrees of familiarity? Either you are familiar or you're not. Is there really a difference between "not familiar at all" or "unfamiliar?" Or between "somewhat familiar," "familiar," and "very familiar?"

And that's about it for the survey, But take care to answer this question so Todd and Pete can alert the current administration where you'd like to be deported to for giving answers to this survey that make them uncomfortable.

I hope they found our input useful. Or at least uncomfortable.