'The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse' weaves history, memoir as only a fan could

"The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse" by Rich Cohen; Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pages, $26)

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Back in 2000, Rich Cohen went on a mission.

The magazine writer, put on the literary map two years earlier with the book "Tough Jews," flew to Chicago to chronicle the legendary losing of his favorite baseball team for the esteemed pages of Harper's. It was such an unlikely assignment that the Cubs' hitting coach, Hall of Fame slugger Billy Williams, was convinced there was no such magazine as Harper's; Cohen must have made it up to get free tickets.

But there was indeed a magazine called Harper's, and it gave the Cubs' fabled culture of ineptitude the narrative literary treatment in a classic piece called "Down and Out at Wrigley Field."

Cohen's observations included Mark Grace's smoking habits (a cigarette at his locker before and after every game), Joe Girardi's naked body ("old-fashioned,