This summer, my friend Dr. Brian Brennan realized that whenever he would leave town, the Cubs would struggle. Case in point: I went to Vegas with him and Trevor Sierra, and the Cubs went 0-4. By the end of the week, we had lost our patience as well as our money.
So on August 28, Dr. BB did some analysis to see exactly how serious the Brennan Principle really was. Turned out that on days when he had been in Bloomington, the Cubs were 48-37. On days when he was anywhere other than Bloomington, they were 15-25. Based on winning percentage, the Cubs would have been 71-54 on Aug. 28 if Brian had simply never left town. Not too much to ask, one wouldn't think.
On the other hand, if Brian had never been in town from Opening Day forward, the Cubs would have been 47-78, worse than every team except for the Nationals.
Which brings me to .the Krupin Effect. While I don't want to denigrate Brian's impressive (and depressing) ability to negatively impact the fortunes of his favorite team (why is it that all my Cubs fan friends decided to sabotage the 2009 season? You'll recall that Trevor Sierra and Andrew Kapral played a key role in their demise as well. I need new friends ...), Sports Illustrated has a great story about a Nationals fan who did even more damage to his team's hopes than did Brian.
It's worth a read, but here's the main plot line: 27-year-old Stephen Krupin shares Nationals season tickets with his father, and attended 19 games at Nationals Park in 2009. How many times did he see Washington win?
Zero.
In a sport in which every team is essentially guaranteed to win at least a third of their games (and, really, even more than that at home), Krupin went 0-for-19! Unbelievable. Check it out.
Let us know what we can do to ensure Brian never leaves the specified area.
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