Russell Elleven got a Chicago Cubs tattoo in 2015 as the team was ramping up for its historic 2016 World Series run. He covered up the Cubs logo tattoo with an owl last fall.
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At 13 years old, Russell Elleven was out of school for months, recovering from the amputation of his arm and facing chemotherapy. Bored, frustrated and bordering on hopeless, one thing was sure to bring him comfort: the Chicago Cubs.
It was the 1970s and he lived 993 miles from Wrigley Field. But the WGN superstation brought the Cubs to his home in Joshua, Texas, just outside Fort Worth.
He was dealing with the same challenges as any teenager — worries about fitting in, making friends and impressing girls.
But with the aggressive bone cancer — called osteosarcoma — taking hold in his body, the trials mounted. At one point, doctors gave him a 40% chance of survival. He was forced to relearn how to do everything without his dominant hand. Writing with a pencil was once simple, and eating with utensils was a piece of cake. Not anymore.
“When you’re 13 and you’re losing your hair, and things aren’t going so good, you look for and reach out to things that will help you feel better,” Elleven says. “And the Cubs was one of those things.”
The team was a perpetual underdog in the 1970s, more than 60 years into its 108-year drought without a World Series title.
Elleven, now 59, felt like something of an underdog himself.
So as he grew up and recovered from cancer treatments, he felt a personal connection to one of the most storied teams in baseball history. When the opportunity came to visit the city with his wife in the 1990s, he jumped at the chance.
The two found themselves drawn to the area, and moved to Highland Park in 2013. Elleven bought a condo in Lake View to attend as many games as possible and established a routine of admiring the skyline from a certain spot near the iconic Wrigley Field marquee.
The team “was kind of sick, in some ways like I was in my youth. I was sick, the Cubs were able to overcome this and win the World Series,” he says. “Just like I was able to overcome the cancer of my youth and thrive in a place that was new to me.”
In 2015, the Cubs were starting to heat up, and Elleven’s love for them surged. The pride and excitement was palpable, and Elleven’s fandom was solidified by living near the ballpark. The die-hard fan got a tattoo of the Cubs logo on his back just before the team, in 2016, won its first World Series in more than a century, sending the city into prideful pandemonium.
“I wasn’t from here, I wanted there to be some sort of a connection between me and the city and the ball club that I had grown to love so much,” Elleven says. “I think there was that sort of idea that you’re not from here, but if you get this tattoo, in some ways, you’re one of us.”
But changes started coming to the Cubs and Wrigley Field in the years following the triumphant season, and Elleven felt the experience of following the team shift. Wrigley Field became more exclusive and more expensive, and going to a game became a rare experience for Elleven. He once admired the city's views before a game from an area near the ballpark's iconic marquee, but it became exclusive to those who paid to get in, he says.
Marquee Sports Network, operated by the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcast Group, launched in 2020 and became the premier way to watch the Cubs, accompanied by a price tag that made Elleven shake his head.
“I continued to root for the Cubs, but I couldn’t understand why my cable bill went up, just because the Cubs wanted it to,” he says.
“It seemed like I was getting priced out of something that was free to me as a kid," he says. "… It seemed like there was less and less of a place where I could go in Wrigley.”
Frustrated, Elleven covered up the Cubs tattoo last fall, replacing it with an owl design, a nod to his hometown’s high school mascot and the interest in birds that he shares with his wife. While he doesn’t regret the Cubs tattoo, it didn’t represent the same things it used to, he says.
“The Cubs have become so exclusive that it doesn’t fit at all with those ideas and ideals that I had as a kid watching them on WGN in Texas,” he says.
While he says he's grateful for his connection to the team, it's something that belongs in the past. To Elleven, the kid that needed solace during trying times found it in the Cubs, but the man who's tired of spending more and more money on a pastime is ready to let the relationship go. He roots for the team, but much more subtly, and says he won't give the Cubs any more of his money.
Elleven sold his Lake View condo and hasn't watched a game in years. After religiously "Flying the W" outside his home, the flag is stowed away. He won't buy another jersey or ball cap, he says.
"It all seems so greedy now. ... I didn't see any of that as a kid, and I don't know if I'd want to warn him or not because it's a beautiful game," he says.
