Come on Chicago let’s silence those Rams!

by CYRYL JAKUBOWSKI

“Bear down, Chicago Bears! Make every play clear the way to victory.

“Bear down, Chicago Bears! Put up a fight with a might so fearlessly,” the 1941 song says.

I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about. None of it really did anything for me when I was a kid.

I was schooled on the Michael Jordan/Pippen years, and the Bears were almost an afterthought. Sexy Rexy who? Kyle Orton what? Ditka? Of course I know Ditka.

You have to forgive me. I’m Polish. I didn’t understand.

But now I see the significance. I see the light.

I see the graying grandpas in their old La-Z Boy chairs waiting for this moment since 1985.

Hardcore fans doing anything they can to boost up the team, grating cheese at the football stadium, grilling sausages in the parking lot at Soldier Field, chasing it down with light beers, doing the “Superbowl Shuffle.” The significance is that we won everything … basketball, baseball, hockey…  just never football in the last few decades.

The “Monsters of Midway” have a chance. In the freezing cold. “Bear weather.” And we’re all rooting for these animals. Da Bears.

The city has not unified like this for a long time. Not since Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews and the Hawks paraded down Michigan Avenue drinking champagne, and everyone and their mother had a Blackhawks sweater. I still have mine. The Kane one.

And then the CUBS. The city went wild. I still sport a sort of Jake Arrieta beard these days. That’s who got me to grow one in the first place.

“Dude, let’s go, we’re going to TP (toilet paper) Wrigley,” a buddy told me that night in 2016. I think he also took a picture on top of a CPD squad car.

And let’s not forget the White Sox in 2005, when we swept the Astros in October of that year. And tore the city apart in celebration, from the North Side to the South Side.

Konerko? Pierzynski? Remember those guys? So nothing has changed. We still dance on top of police cars. Chicago style.

We are ready for another big one. Another dance.

But win or lose, the energy of this city right now is amazing.

It should be bottled, and put away, for a time when we don’t feel so great anymore. Like when the county taxes come. Or the Bears lose.

But as Bears coach Ben Johnson said … “F#$& the Packers.”

That’s music to our ears. Let’s silence the Rams.

This is just part of today’s coverage. Get the full story - every article, every ad, every page. Subscribe now.

The Latest From Our Community