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by Joan Dabrowski
Published in the Chicago Tribune April 5, 2014
It is a fact of history that 1945 was the last year that the Chicago Cubs had seen the World Series. It is also a fact of history that the "last" German spies in America were captured on December 30, 1944 in Hancock, Maine. Until now, not one FBI agent, not one reporter has been able to connect those facts. As crews still pick up the pieces of the damaged SHIELD facility in Washington, D.C., people across the nation are wondering just how far the cancer of Hydra has metastasized into our most trusted institutions and even into our most beloved national pastime. Even the sacred ground of our very own Wrigley Field has been infected with this menace in a seventy-year campaign to destroy the spirit of the good people of this city.
Documents pertaining to this decades-long grudge against the Cubs and connecting Hydra to more sinister deeds were quite literally unearthed as renovations continue on the Friendly Confines, but their meaning was not fully understood until this weekend when long time Orland Park resident, James Hoffmann, was discovered to have been a third generation Hydra Spy. Hoffmann surrendered himself to authorities Friday and spun a tale so unbelievable that Chicago's finest had initially refused to arrest him.
In a 12-page confession released today, Hoffmann describes his role as head of Project Magpie, an inherited position passed down from father to son since just before the end of World War II, when Hydra agents, as we now know, only went deeper into cover. With Captain Steve Rogers' defeat of Johann Schmidt, also known as the Red Skull, marking the beginning of the end of the war, Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh, under the guidance of the elder Hoffmann were employed to "spy" on the United States, even receiving training at The Hague, which had been a German spy school at the time, but their mission was a farce and they had been set up to fail. The capture of Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh in the winter of 1944, according to Hoffmann, had been a smokescreen intended to give the impression that America's victory had been complete, thereby protecting agents that had gone more deeply undercover. Meanwhile, Hoffmann's grandfather, Peter Manfred Hoffmann, continued the project from the shadows to sow chaos and unrest throughout the Chicagoland area, even setting his sights on the Chicago Cubs ball club. James Hoffmann, describes the plan as follows:
"It wouldn't have been enough for Hydra to simply replace one government with another or to obliterate cities. The real target had always been the hearts and minds of the American people. When certain schools become little more than the entryway into prisons-- one of our biggest accomplishments in the City of Chicago-- when riots rage like wildfires in the streets, and when the most beloved team is one that never wins, eventually the people of that city begin to break."
As a sports reporter, my purview extends mainly to draft picks, statistics, and the occasional doping scandal, and it is rare that a story of this scope crosses my desk. Better writers than I will cover the more harrowing aspects of Hoffmann's deeds and those of his father and grandfather, including the 1968 Chicago Riots, Hydra agents embedded among the Chicago P.D., the decline of area schools, and a concentrated effort to sow racial unrest throughout the city. There's a kind of sense to these attacks against our city. We expect Hydra to turn us against ourselves through violence, but why attack baseball? Why focus on the Cubs?
Hoffmann describes in his confession the reasoning behind the 70-year grudge against the Cubs as one that would have been a symbolic victory, had it succeeded.
"We had hoped for a slow decay, for Chicagoans to watch their beloved team crumble into irrelevance. While other teams, the Blackhawks, the Bears, even the Sox, saw success throughout Project Magpie, the Cubs ball club represented the heart of the city, it's very soul. The Führer had wanted to know what inspired Americans so that he could systematically erode American confidence, city by city. My counterpart in Los Angeles did many of the things I did, bringing in drugs, eroding the education system, creating ghettos-- we were very good at making ghettos, though we did it more subtly here, through laws and contracts-- but where he created scandals in Hollywood, my job and my father's job and his father's job was to break the Chicagoans' can-do optimism. A one-time event like the Great Chicago Fire, would not have done the job. The people of the city would simply rally together, roll up their sleeves, and rebuild. No, our symbolic victory would turn a rally point into a thing of disdain and ridicule. That's what we wanted to do to at Wrigley."
The opening salvo of Hoffmann's shadow war on Chicago in general and the Cubs specifically had been the infamous Curse of the Billy Goat. While Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern in 1945, had himself not been a part of Hoffman's machinations, a memo, which had been sent in 1942 from Hitler himself and only recently decoded, describes in detail the importance of the symbolism of the goat and outright mocks the superstitious nature of baseball players and, more importantly, baseball fans. The red, white, and blue uniforms drew Hitler's ire as symbolic of America herself and eventually, in true Hydra fashion, Sianis had been manipulated by others to do Hydra's work for them. The idea of the goat and the curse had been, according to Hoffmann, placed into his mind like seed, fertilized by Hydra lies to ripen at the right moment.
As Hydra gained power, Project Magpie was transferred to the watchful eye of Johann Schmidt and subsequently to his successors, the Hoffmanns continuing their campaign against the city under deep cover. As the decades passed, James Hoffmann and his forebears celebrated as the city began to decay around them, but the Cubs ball club had been a perpetual thorn in their side. Hoffmann states:
"In a sense, we had won. We'd prevented the Cubs from even entering the World Series for seventy years, but we had never truly defeated them. Even when we had resorted to giving players drugs and attempting to kill all of baseball as an institution, Cubs fans were steadfast. They continued to cheer and to hope that next year would be better. Their spirit, their optimism, has never been and could never be broken. It is more infectious than Hydra lies and, ironically, even I found myself hoping that next year would be better, that we would eventually break them, that next year would be our year."
Though the team certainly has not entered a World Series since 1945, the fans' optimism has never faltered. It has, as we all know, grown to legendary proportions through the decades. Cubs fans, eternally hopeful, simply raise a glass to the year's successes and say "There's always next year." We can be found across the nation and even around the world. Other teams' attendance numbers rise when the Cubbies play. Every win is worthy of a cheer, every loss an opportunity to learn and do better. Hoffmann concludes:
"This year was to be Hydra's World Series, as it were, and we have lost to the Yankees once more. I am not as stalwart as the people of the City of Chicago and though I have lived here my entire life, I am made of weaker stuff. My father and his father set out to break this city, but it was a fool's errand to think that such people could be broken. I therefore willingly submit myself to the authorities and hope for mercy, though I deserve none."
James Hoffmann is being held without bail pending investigation into his claims. The Cubs play the second game in a series against the Phillies at Wrigley this afternoon at 1:21PM. As of today, the Cubs are at the bottom of the division, but who knows? Maybe this year will be the year.
Suck it, Hydra.