Be careful what you wish for, CubFan. Your team is four wins from the World Series, and four more from a world championship. Eight wins in the next couple of weeks, and all your dreams will come true. What a nightmare.

If the Cubs win the World Series, they will cease to exist. They'll still play in precious Wrigley Field. They'll still have legions of loyal Yuppie fans. The Cubs will still revel in the ghost of Harry Caray and the joy of Ernie Banks.

But they won't be the Cubs.

You cannot, for example, call a team of world champions the "Cubbies." You can't claim martyr status if your team wins everything. Charlie Brown never kicked the football. We loved him for that. If he kicked it, we'd feel betrayed.

A Cubs world title would lead some to believe that life is fair, good things come to those who wait and patience is a virtue. None of which is true. World Champion Chicago Cubs would go from being a harmless oxymoron to a reason to believe for millions of chronic losers. Nothing is crueler than false hope.

Think about it, CubFan: Winning is dirty, ugly business. Instead of appearing noble and steadfast, you'll be front-running slugs. You'll be no better than YankeeFan. We hate YankeeFan.

Entire generations of Cubs sympathizers have crossed the ultimate river believing suffering is good, perpetual heartbreak builds character and no defeat is so wrenching it can't be fixed with a couple ice-cold Old Styles. If the Cubs win everything, nothing will ever be the same.

True CubFan is dreading the next few weeks. Because what was always fundamentally and happily impossible is now frighteningly logical. In the impossibly saccharine NLCS that begins tonight, the loveable Cubbies will begin their defeat of Geriatric Jack McKeon and his Florida Marlins.

If Atlanta couldn't hit Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, Jeff Conine surely won't. Then the Cubbies will advance to the World Series for the first time in 58 years, with the same two flamethrowers, throwing gas over all that sweet Cubs history. CubFan will rejoice in public. Privately, he will grieve.

He won't know how to act. He has always innately understood the world is a better place when the Cubs lose. He benefited personally from the certainty of it all. If the Cubbies win everything, CubFan will feel abject panic at not incurring the familiar break of the heart. He will be empty and stressed. This, after all, isn't how it's supposed to be.

(And good lord, if the Cubs ever play the Red Sox in the World Series, exorcists will be calling balls and strikes.)

The Cubs hadn't won a postseason series in 95 years. With a few notable exceptions, life has been pretty darned good since. A Cubs championship would seriously tweak the karma, and that's not healthy for any of us.

You'd be wise, in the next fortnight, to root for misery, CubFan. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. If you win it all, the mantle of misery will be passed on to BengalFan. No good can come of that.

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E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com

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