Chicago's Dragon

A Cubs-spirits fan/hero in the Windy City attempts to use American flair to challenge the 'hand' of a dark day.

An 'Americana' tale inspired loosely by both Angels in the Outfield and Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty). Thanks for reading, 

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American baseball had become a thing of wondrous socialized magic and cultural celebration, given its laid-back attitude towards competitive fury, its summertime grandness for people of all ages, its market-values, and its general patriotic flair for hoisting games as symbolic of dance.

In fact, in the Windy City of Chicago, baseball had an almost 'uncanny' sense of extra-field vitality, leaping out of the 'pages' of the actual sports-arenas and into the homes of consumers/fans in the form of video-games and collector's athlete cards, featuring photos and stats of the actual Cubs players.

Amlan Satan is a Cubs nut in the Windy City and goes to every game during the summer to take iPhone snapshots of the colorful fans who appear in the lots/arenas and uses the imagery to compose special patriotic mosaics online for his treatises on the intrinsic link in America between Cubs fanfare/spirits and social sanity! He's become a real Cubs photojournalist.

AMLAN SATAN: What I cherish most is my Cubs baseball-cards collection, an extension of my 'excellent' cheering in Chicago.

Satan's a real Chicago man, and he graduated from the Ivy League (Dartmouth) before moving to the Windy City and becoming a freelance architect by day and doubling as a sports-writer (cyber) by night. He loves Chicago's authenticity so much in fact that he's a regular at a very iconic city hot-dog dive.

AMLAN SATAN: When you eat a hot-dog in Chicago, you feel like an America, and that's rare.

Wrigley Field, the sports-stadium in which the Chicago Cubs play their broadcast baseball-games, has in fact become a national landmark, which is partially why the Windy City has become synonymous with socialized distances and human activity.

Satan's most cherish possession is the amazing Kerry Wood Upper-Deck rookie card (Cubs). Wood and his team-mate/co-pitcher Mark Prior effectively hoisted the Chicago team to a triumph not seen by the poor/sad Cubs fans, hungry for a 'real' achievement in quite some time, which makes the Wood Upper-Deck card a 'fantastic' diamond for anyone into the natural flair of Cubs dance.

However, all's not well in paradise, since in Chicago, a dark and evil crime-ring called the Black Hand rises to power and one of its gargoyles has read Amlan Satan's cyber-blogs about Cubs fanfare/spirits/tales and has marked him for death. You see folks, the Black Hand wants to exterminate modern city-forms of pedestrian patriots and substitute them for extortion-runners and clandestine hitmen, darkening and stamping the city as their own! This information was received by the valiant Satan (Amlan) who went 'rogue' as an underground vigilante named Shadow.

BLACK HAND: I want this 'Shadow' erased from the legendary annals of Windy City lore; we're replacing him with death.

Shadow triumphs in one major 'score' by stealing 'blood-diamonds' from Black Hand's Chicago bank safe-box and swapping the gems for toy-gems and leaving Cubs comic-book copies all over City Hall's steps with the note(s) reading, "The Black Hand can't swipe Chicago's baseball appeal/demand(s), simply because the Cubs remind us all of simple...dollars!"

BLACK HAND: When/if we discover who the 'Shadow' is, we'll unleash the fury of the Dragon upon his Cubs-hide.

Shadow responds to these threats by posting an anonymous editorial in the Sun (newspaper), offering a very wry Mad-Libs fill-blank conversation joke-like about the nature of modern American criminality and the dire need for responsive patriotic humor(s) in this post-9/11 era of commercial fears!

SHADOW: It was a terrorism-rich, cold November day. I woke up to the bloody smell of cardinals roasting in the basement downstairs. I flew down the stairs to see if I could help forecast the dinner. My mom said, "See if Uncle-Babe needs a fresh Cub." So I carried a tray of glasses full of chlorine into the Black-Handing room. When I got there, I couldn't believe my ears! There were gangsters pining on the Wrigley!

In a very funny tactical maneuver, the valiant Shadow managed to use Mad-Libs wry humor about political cartoons to portray the evil Black Hand organization as simply reflective of anti-Cubs poetry. This 'dash' against criminal darkness in the Windy City would forever deflate the nature of organized crime involvement in modern American sports diaries. The Shadow would be considered the modern-day Robin Hood!

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)