It's been a good year for Han, she says. He is winning awards as a sushi chef, he's getting married, and the Cubs are on a roll. As the photography wraps up, it's time to pin down Han: which is a bigger deal, you getting married, or the Cubs winning the World Series? Oh, keep in mind your bride is standing right here.

Han laughs. All he'll say about a Cubs World Series is, “It has to happen.”

The streets around Wrigley are otherwise quiet. A Mets fan from Harrisburg, Pa., is in town on business and taking pictures. A few of the young professionals and recent college graduates of the surrounding Lakeview neighborhood are walking about. A few are running, for exercise. The neighborhood's plentiful bars have a few customers, but for them it's the calm before the fan hurricane hits the next week, when the streets will be so crowded it'll be impossible to walk or drive through the area. Some of those customers are people who plan to hole up during playoff time. “Am I excited about the Cubs? Excited, like my bunions are about to start tingling?” cracks Mike Molesti, a 40-year Lakeview resident supping at Murphy's Bleachers, right across from Wrigley's center field.

Cubs fans are known as superstitious lot, what with all the talk of curses. “A perfect example of the tentativeness of Cubs' fans is that they put the Cubs on the cover of Sports Illustrated,” said David Strauss, 28, tending the bar at Sluggers, within site of Wrigley on Clark Street. “There's always the jinx.”

“Most Cubs fans, they've seen so many improbable things go wrong, it's almost impossible not to think about it.” — David Strauss Bartender, 28

“Most Cubs fans, they've seen so many improbable things go wrong, it's almost impossible not to think about it.” Like what happened the same year his family opened the bar in 1984 — the ball rolling through first baseman Leon Durham's legs, allegedly because his glove had grown heavy by the Gatorade Ryne Sandberg had spilled on it, opening the floodgates for an NL Championship Series-ending loss to San Diego.

At Trader Todd's on Sheffield, Cubs fan Curt Musser, 33, of Chicago, worries that overzealous celebrations will hurt the city's 2016 Olympics bid, especially if it's a Cubs-White Sox World Series, and the “meat eaters” (his euphemism for the Ligue types) come north. He notes fans turned horses over in 1908 when the Cubs won the World Series. Horses?

“Yeah, they fell over when they turned the buggies over.”

Musser's friend, White Sox fan Chad Kulavick, 34, of Wilmette jokes: “It'll be like 'Cool Hand Luke.' They'll be cutting the tops off of parking meters.”

Don't get Musser wrong: he hopes that the Cubs will win. But he wonders if 100 years of pent-up demand will be unleashed in a fury. “Because they're the lovable losers. Because they've been out of it for so long.”

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley appears to have the same fears. He wants Wrigley-area bars, like the park itself, to stop serving alcohol in the seventh inning. No surprise, bar owners are perplexed, but they agreed Monday to do so for series-clinching games. They can resume after the game is over, or after the ninth inning if the game goes extra innings.

And while Daley is pushing for similar rules for bars around U.S. Cellular Field, it should be noted that the mayor is a White Sox fan, and didn't suggest any bars shut down early in 2005.

Daley is from the South Side of Chicago, but there are plenty of Cubs fans in that area. Like Otto, whose family is Cubs crazy. His wife, Debbie, 57, went to her first Cubs game in 1952, before her first birthday. Her father died in 1999, and her mother died in 2004, and each was buried wearing a Cubs cap.

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