Colbert, Offerman among long-suffering celebrity Cubs fans

CHICAGO (AP) The Chicago Cubs are trying to do something that hasn't happened in the lifetime of anyone born in the last 108 years: Win a World Series.

So naturally, the chance to be part of that history has prompted people who live in Chicago, once lived in Chicago or just rooted for the Cubs from miles away to descend on Wrigley Field or tune in on television.

If you didn't know Chicago was once home to scores of celebrities, you do after tuning into the game. Broadcasts have shown actor Bill Murray, delirious with joy, in the middle of a throng of fans that included John Cusack, an actor who has long rooted for the Cubs, and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, who turned his love for the Cubs into a song, ''Someday We'll Go All The Way.''

Here, then, are some Cubs fans who are better known for what they do for a living than who they root for.

NICK OFFERMAN and STEPHEN COLBERT

''Parks and Recreation'' star Nick Offerman , a Cubs fan born in Joliet, Illinois, appeared on ''The Late Show'' on Tuesday with host Stephen Colbert - also a Cubs fan. The banter:

Colbert: ''I'm a Cubs fan, you're a Cubs fan ... how are you handling the stress?''

Offerman: 'I have a compartmentalization system. When I auditioned for the role of 'Ron Swanson' (on Parks and Recreation) it took five months to get the job so for that five months I had to put that information in this drawer that's not attached to emotion. So I know that something might happen in the coming weeks that would be very good for my baseball team, but I'm not attaching emotion to it.''

Colbert: ''When do you attach the emotion to it? You've loved and lost is what you're saying and now you're afraid to feel?''

Offerman: ''I suppose so. I've become inured to feeling.''

BOB NEWHART

Chicago native Bob Newhart has been posing with the team's signature ''W'' for win flag in pictures on his Twitter account during the playoffs.

The 87-year-old comedian said his first memory of going to a Cubs game was with his mother at age 6 or 7. He was 16 when he went to Chicago's LaSalle Street to cheer the Cubs as they were welcomed home after winning the National League pennant in 1945. The Cubs went on to lose the World Series to the Detroit Lions and haven't been back since.

So why remain a Cubs fan?

''I guess I'm not easily dissuaded,'' Newhart said. ''I used to say I'm a Cub fan in my stand up because it kind of prepared you for life, you knew you were ahead and you knew you were going to blow it somehow. That's a lesson all Cub fans shared until this year.''

SARA PARETSKY

Novelist Sara Paretsky traces her devotion to the Cubs to the day she heard about a young man who had shoveled the sidewalk in front of the home of a woman and her mother - a man who turned out to be the Cubs first baseman at the time, Bill Buckner. The way Paretsky, a casual Cubs fan at the time, figured it, any team that had a player who helped a couple of women for no other reason than to be neighborly deserved her devotion.

Now as the team that won more games than any other in the majors is in a position to reach the World Series for the first time since Harry Truman was president, Paretsky is, of course, distraught.

''I thought I had protected myself emotionally, but I realized this morning I am already in mourning,'' she said Wednesday, the day after the Cubs were shut out for the second straight game in the NL Championship Series.