The impossible becoming possible does not dull the message of “Cubs in Five.”

Track: “Cubs in Five”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

“Well, I’m free of all that now; there’s a lot of unlikely stuff that’d have to happen before I’d ever dive back into that radiant, glowing, magnificent ocean of high highs and hurt feelings.” – John Darnielle, about the creation of “Cubs in Five”

This quote that John Darnielle said in an interview with Slate is a lie. It’s true that he said it, but he said that he knew that he was kidding himself. This love story is the central joke in “Cubs in Five,” after a list of things that are unlikely or impossible. “I will love you again,” John Darnielle and Peter Hughes say, “I will love you, like I used to.”

The Cubs won the World Series. I live in Chicago and I lived here when that happened. I’m not much for baseball but even I understood the significance when it happened. Prior to it happening it seemed impossible, which is something many people feel about snakebit sports teams, but this one really might be the top of the list. Then it happened.

The song doesn’t lose anything by that happening. Tampa Bay also won a Super Bowl, which the song also suggests would be impossible, and that doesn’t matter either. What matters is that in the moment the song details, the narrator tried to come up with a list of things that seemed actually impossible and they centered their list with two things: the Cubbies winning everything and this love coming back. They both ain’t happening, and the certainty of the former helps you understand the certainty of the latter.

The power behind the sentiment (and the droning guitar) is what matters. There is so much powerful language in Mountain Goats songs, but never is someone trying to make a point more emphatically than this.