Sunday, April 2, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.
I guess when it comes to Chicago Cubs fans, my two favorites have always been my Mom and Bill Murray.
While Mom's place in the batting order is secure, after spending Saturday afternoon watching the Cubs misjudge fly balls against the San Diego Padres at Cashman Field with a die-hard Cubs fan named Dani Janich, I might have to start platooning ol' Carl the Greenskeeper.
If you've never met Dani Janich, it's not a big deal. Heck, before Saturday, I had never met Dani Janich, although I felt like I knew her. We've been e-mail pals, which is sort of like being pen pals without stamps, for a while now. I think our correspondence began roughly the same time I cursed our fellow Cub fan Steve Bartman in this space, but don't hold me to it.
A couple of months ago when we were discussing Bruce Sutter's split-finger fastball or something else that seemed vitally important, she mentioned in passing that she has brain cancer.
Whoa. Brain cancer is not something you dismiss like an 0-2 waste pitch. Especially the kind she has. It's called Glioblastoma Multiforme, which is basically doctor-speak for the worst kind. It's an aggressive illness for which the medical experts and their statistics say there is no cure.
What the medical experts forget is that Cubs fans don't believe in statistics. If they did, they'd be holding flea markets in Wrigley Field.
Dani was 52 years old, working in the personnel department for Metro Police in August 2003, when doctors told her it was three strikes. They told her she had six months. Maybe a year.
Do the math. Life tossed Dani Janich a nasty curveball. She keeps fouling it off.
Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, I hope you're reading. Dani has had three brain surgeries and gone under the gamma knife - a procedure in which radioactive beams are directed into the patient's head without having to open it up - twice. Even worse, at least the way she looks at it, she can't watch baseball from the bleachers anymore. The medication she's on does not allow her to be in the sun.
Yet she refuses to go on the disabled list.
In fact, if she hadn't let it slip, you would never know she has brain cancer. Her hair and her Cubs cap do a nice job of concealing the physical scars. As for the psychological ones, well, if she has any of those, she keeps them hidden in the corner of the dugout, where the utility infielders sit.
Her spirit is stronger than Fergie Jenkins on four days' rest.
"People don't survive this cancer. But there are miracles, you know," she said of the faith that gets her through the day.
She also has some people in lower places that she depends on. Her primary care physician, Dr. Ira Copeland; her neurosurgeon, Dr. Derek Duke (magician Roy Horn's physician); and her oncologist, Dr. James Sanchez; are tops on her all-star ballot. There's her active 83-year-old mother, Marcia, with whom she shares a home in northwest Las Vegas. There are her cousins and friends, who make sure she gets to her appointments.
And there are her Cubs.
Dani grew up in South Holland on Chicago's south side and graduated from Thornridge High School in 1968, a couple of years before a pretty good basketball player named Quinn Buckner would lead the Falcons to an undefeated season and a state championship. But baseball has always been Dani's game, and the Cubs have always been her team.
Ernie Banks - who else? - is her all-time favorite Cub. She has a framed get-well card from Ron Santo, the revered third baseman who is battling serious health problems of his own, next to her TV. She liked the quiet determination of Ryne Sandberg, and of the newer generation of Cubs, she was fond of throw-back first baseman Mark Grace.
"Did you know he was the only player in the league who didn't wear batting gloves?" Dani says, her encyclopedic knowledge of the Cubs going deep once again.
When Greg Maddux returned to Chicago, she cried. She was processing a new police academy recruit when she stood up and announced: "It's a wonderful day. Greg Maddux is a Cub again."
She said she also cried during the falls of '69, '84 and '89, the closest the Cubs have come to making it back to the World Series, where they haven't tread since 1945. And, of course, 2003, when Mr. Bartman took Luis Castillo's foul fly out of Moises Alou's glove with the Cubs just five outs away from the World Series that Dani truly believes they would have won.
I guess that doesn't make her any different than most Cub fans. What does set her apart is that she doesn't say "Wait 'til next year" any more.
That's because she knows how special every day of this one is.
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