Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Valuing the Present vs. the Future

Happy Friday Chicagooo! You’ve made it through another week and we’re here to get you to the finish line. Grab a cup of coffee, log off of Gmail or Teams, and take a 10-min break with Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.

As always, I appreciate your support:

If you missed last week’s newsletter, make sure to read that here. I know a lot of you are on your little foo-foo summer vacations and are catching up on things, but not me, noooo, not me. I’ve been grinding. They can’t stop the kid.

(That’s unless I got a busy week, I get an unexpected migraine, or I decide to drink on a day I wasn’t planning to, then they, in fact, can stop the kid.)

---

One of the most pressing questions in every human being’s life on a day-to-day basis is whether to value the present more — this moment — or the future.

I’m not talking about being present in some Zen Buddhism way, but more so about making decisions that can improve your life immediately, or ones that will improve your life not immediately, but in the future.

In everyday terms, some examples:

Example 1:

Go to the bakery at the ground level of my apartment, ask for a piece of cake, they don’t have any left, so I say I’ll take a whole Oreo cake, and eat two or three pieces of it.

Immediately, my life is filled with so much unadulterated fucking joy I could faint from the sugar rush, with my hairy belly button hanging out of my shirt right there on the couch for everyone to see.

Now, if I were to be weighing the future, I would have probably a) turned around right when they said they were out of individual pieces, both a sensical diet choice as well as a solid fiscal choice 2) not gone down to the bakery at all, given the fact that I had already had a Ribeye steak for dinner and was not in any way hungry. Valuing the present, there, was the choice.

Example 2:

The very concept of drinking is almost synonymous with the present vs. future philosophical question.

Go out and have fun with my friends, get tipsy, and smash a pulled pork sandwich on the couch and fall asleep watching World War 2 in Colour OR wake up in the morning feeling like a goddamn king off the high that is just being an adult who actually got a full night of sleep?

If you choose the latter, you get to be a part of this wonderful secret society, which is these people walking around the town at 9 a.m. on a beautiful weekend morning, holding hands, grabbing coffee, walking dogs and babies, smiling and looking like they’ve never been in bad shape or drank in their entire lives.

But then again, it’s Friday… it’s nice as hell out — hey, summer only lasts so long, right? — and you’ve got two texts of friends virtually threatening you if you don’t come out and ruin your next day. One of them says it’s time to go “Demon Mode.” That, in itself, should be a detterent, but on this night, it for some reason has me picking out a t-shirt to wear to the bar immediately after.

Example 3:

Your great aunt pops up on the phone. She wants to get dinner.

You cannot possibly think of something you’d less want to do at that point, a fact you already feel guilty about. A night watching Netflix — or literally doing anything else — is out of the question if you say yes.

At the same time, you know it will make her happy both now and for the weeks following, as she tells her friends over dinner how proud of you she is, even though you’re not even remotely deserving of the praise.

Then, in turn, you feel great about yourself — selfishly — because you made your great aunt feel good.

Example 4:

You live your life thinking about the next work day, the next job you want, the blood pressure marker you want to get down to, or the six pack you want to obtain by summer.

You operate on this route for years and years. It yields dividends, but there’s always the next car you’re chasing.

You’ve theoretically hit all of your goals, but you look back, and you’ve valued the present so little that you realize you’ve never really lived much at all.

---

I sounded like the script writer for the last five minutes of a romantic comedy. there, huh? And the switching between first and second person sure makes it seem like a back-and-forth between myself and myself.

If we want to rely on real-world — well, some of those are very real, so I’ll say outside world — examples, the 1972 Stanford Marshmallow Experiment will probably do that more succinctly for us, versus my semi-coherent proselytizing.

In essence, the experiment went like this: offer a child a marshmallow now, or tell them if they don’t take the one marshmallow now, and can wait, they’ll get two marshmallows as a reward.

Plenty of children, obviously, took the marshmallow right away — valuing the present. Then some little cerebral shits waited to get the two marshmallows.

Apparently, waiting for the two marshmallows was tied to future success, as it pertained to SAT scores, body mass index, among other measures.

Stanford really was having a field day with the experiments in the 1970s. Just torturing people in the name of science (i.e. Stanford Prison Experiment). That’s not exactly, I don’t think, how scientific conclusions are supposed to be drawn: by grabbing unwilling participants and seeing how they react to one situation or the other.

But nevertheless, they did. And I bet the scientists that initiated these experiments felt like geniuses in the aftermath, whether they gained worldwide acclaim or not.

And in sports, these geniuses are known as “president of operations” or “general managers.”

Hold that thought.

In all reality, positioning the future vs. the present is a good exercise. If you consider the ramifications of your actions before you do them, that generally sets you up for success. It can also make you an agonizing, boring, annoying piece of shit. The guy that can’t ever go out because he has a meeting the next day at 9 a.m. — spoiler alert, we all do, dude — is not exactly Socrates.

But for some reason, there’s a disconnect between how we think about this question in our everyday lives and how we think about sports.

This certainly wasn’t the case last century, or even a decade ago. But these scientists, these GMs from Harvard, have convinced us that every team must be torn down and rebuilt every five years.

And the media are the sheep that parrot these “processes.” The 76ers former GM Sam Hinkie is still put up on a pedestal for making his team absolute dogshit for years and years, all to get Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Nerlens Noel.

The 76ers have still not been to a conference final since Allen Iverson took them there.

If you dropped an alien into my life and had them consume the NBA media that I do, they’d tell you the best teams in the league are the Lakers (for obvious reasons), and then something like the Pistons, Magic, and Thunder.

A team like the Bulls is cast aside for actually trying to build a good team into a great one. You can disagree with what the Bulls offseason thus far (I still don’t think they’re done) and also acknowledge they were a really good team last year before injuries derailed them.

Now, because they didn’t lose 60 games last year and get a top-draft pick — which are hit-or-miss tries, or more like hit or miss, or miss, or miss, or miss — they’re completely cast aside.

The Golden State Warriors have gotten less praise this offseason than the fucking Oklahoma City Thunder, who are going to lose 55 games next season.

“But they’re set up so well for the future.”

You thinking that is literally every GM — and specifically, owner’s — wet dream. Our fans are happy with us, we’re making money, and we’re doing absolutely nothing to win? What a deal!

If you’re always set up well for the future, that just means you’re never enjoying the present. And that means your past is going to look like shit, which is all we’ll have when these lives of ours come to close.

“How was the 2022 Cubs season, grandpa?”

“Oh, it was actually great. They lost 100 games, but they had a lot of really good prospects, the Ricketts built a sportsbook — good for them!, and the farm system — again grandson, the farm system — it was unreal! I watched Pete Crowe-Armstrong hit 21 home runs from iPhone 1 camera footage.”

When did having good players become so lame? Sure, the Cubs were “right” to trade their core last year. And now we have people asking what we could get for Patrick Wisdom? I don’t know man, he’s a really cheap, decent player, I’m not sure if getting every prospect from every team possible should really be the goal of a major league baseball team.

Someone asked me the other day if I “liked the direction the Bulls were going.”

Well, considering that they were terrible and missed the playoffs for five straight years, and then they made the playoffs and signed their best player to a long-term deal, I can’t be too mad, right?

Give me a shot, man. That’s all I ask for as a sports fan.

I know rebuilds are necessary, and I have advocated for them before. But since the Bulls traded Jimmy Butler, while every fan gave into the notion that “they had to, because he was their only chip,” the Bulls have been to the playoffs once and Jimmy Butler has led multiple teams to deep runs in the playoffs.

I’m not even saying the Cubs shouldn’t trade Willson Contreras, though I’d be devastated if they did and think they could very easily make him one of the faces of the Cubs next good team, whenever that will come.

But the amount of prospect-obsessed sports fans now just disgusts me. You’ve got competitive teams like the White Sox, even, who don’t want to give up a prospect to get a guy that can help them win now — in one of their only World Series windows of this century.

For the love of God, go out with your buddies once and enjoy the night.

Every time you clutch your pearls thinking about the future, you are not only buying into what every owner and general manager wants you to, but you are also deliberately depriving yourself of happiness.

Did the Bulls season end how we wanted it to? Hell no.

Were the days between the Game 2 and Game 3 some of the best days of my last year? (I set myself up for embarrassment here, huh). Yes!

Simply, sports fans generally — and Chicago sports fans, specifically — are more often than ever missing the forest for the trees.

Was the 2018 Bears loss to the Eagles in the playoffs one of the most agonizing defeats we’ve all witnessed? No doubt. But I wouldn’t give up that hope that we had all year — those 16 games leading up to that game — for anything.

Now, the Bears are rebuilding again, right? As I said last week, it’s far too early to judge GM Ryan Poles as good or bad. But applauding him simply for making the team worse is just curious to me. We may need to rebuild, but it’s not hard to get rid of Khalil Mack. It’s hard to become better and win a Super Bowl. Applaud steps toward that.

Now, maybe tearing down is the first step toward that — I can meet you in the middle on that.

But we are one of the biggest sports markets in the world, and there’s a chance that in one calendar year, 80% of our teams will be deliberately trying to lose.

And by the way, these aren’t victimless processes. Sure, we’re the victims. But do you know who else is?

Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, two guys who have brought this city immense joy, two guys most of us can’t picture in another uniform. And they don’t want to be in another uniform, either.

But, hey, sorry, the next GM wants to make us the worst team in the NHL. So forget glory, forget the idea of keeping the good guys around in the city forever. No, instead, because of our mismanagement, we have to show them the front door — against their will. Even if one of two of them is still a top-tier player.

What a shame that is. What a shame it is when a homegrown, 30-year-old talent like Willson Contreras says that he wants to be a Cub forever and we say, hey All-Star, no thanks. All while having no salary cap and an owner with unlimited money.

And more to the point, the Cubs losing doesn’t really hurt anyone too bad. It’s a mostly individual sport. You can still go out there and hit thirty homers even if your pitchers suck ass.

But in hockey and football?

Deliberately trying to be bad in those sports sure sounds a lot like a 1970s Stanford to me. The rest of the guys on those rosters this year sure seem like unwilling participants in a science experiment to me, a science experiment in which the scientist won’t be actually partaking, of course.

Sorry Justin Fields, the smart guy tells us we have to be awful so we can get more draft picks. Therefore, you’ll be punished. And when your body and mental completely breaks down, we’ll call you a bust and a bum in two years.

The same guy that is down to drink on that Thursday, knowing him and his buddies may hit it too hard and listen to The Eagles too late — but it will be worth it in the end — wants to trade Willson Contreras so the Cubs can be good again when he has kids and doesn’t even give a shit if the Cubs are playing that night.

Famously, every dying Cubs fan that got to see the 2016 World Series before they died said on their death beds, “We gave up Gleyber Torres for a half year of Aroldis Chapman?” before they croaked.

Again — let me be clear. I know rebuilds are necessary. I know they work sometimes. But there are no guarantees in this life. The Sox rebuilt for 10 fucking seasons and are under .500 at the All-Star Break.

They may be turning things around, they may not be. But the point is “setting yourself up for the future” should not receive standing ovations.

I can be excited for the awesome prospects the Cubs have in their system, and also acknowledge that it sucks to live a stone’s throw from Wrigley Field and know there will be not one important game played there this year.

All the while, it costs $300 just to cross north of Belmont.

I’ve written about the near-term outlooks for three of the five teams thus far. It would be silly to write about the Cubs’ own outlook before another bloodbath of a trade deadline. We have no idea what the Cubs 18-month outlook looks like as of today, but either way, it’s probably not great.

If you rebuild, if you pass up that cake and that night with your friends, you may become a CEO or a body builder. You may even win a championship.

But you also are very likely not to win that championship, or to become a CEO or bodybuilder. And then, looking back on that five-year period of valuing the future, you’ll have a past of no cake, no late nights with your friends.

And that sounds like shit to me.

Thank you for reading another edition of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago. Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll be back next week with a regular newsletter, and then back with outlooks the week after next after the MLB trade deadline.

Drop a comment below: