The Chicago Cubs are the reason I play sports games. Let me rephrase that. The ineptitude and apathy with which the Chicago Cubs attempt to play baseball is the reason I play sports games.

See, I have been a die-hard Cubs fan for all of my life. The first game I ever watched on TV was the immortal "Sandberg Game" where Ryne Sandberg smacked two home runs to take down their heated rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals. I was just three years old at the time, so little did I know that I would be doomed to a life wrought with strife and disappointment.

I have watched the North Siders struggle through 26 miserable seasons since then, each marked with either tragic turns of fate or cartoonish displays of amateurism. We are currently experiencing the latter in Cub Nation. We have got a gaggle of underperforming players who would seemingly rather be shutout and swept than give even the lamest of opponents a competitive series.

The other day is a perfect example. The Cubs were facing division-leading Cincinnati at Wrigley, and the Reds treated the faithful to a 12-0 romp that cleaved whatever hope even the most ardent supporter might have had stashed away. There was not a single good thing to take from the loss. There was nothing to learn, no moral victory to be had. Simply put, to watch all nine miserable innings was an exercise in masochism.

But, luckily enough, I have video games. I can fire up the machine and throw in The Show or MLB 2K10 and find a world where my idols are not so embarrassingly foul. I have an alternate reality all to myself where Aramis Ramirez is not batting a buck-fifty and Alfonso Soriano's albatross of a contract is not such a burden because he actually produces. Oh, and Carlos Zambrano? He throws strikes and is not sent home after talking trash to virtual Derrek Lee in the dugout.

It is not a perfect substitute, obviously, but it is something. I mean, it will never replace the sublimity of sitting in the stands at Wrigley Field on a beautiful summer day and watching the Cubbies compete for a division crown, but, again, it takes a little bit of the sting out of the good for nothing dog of a season that we are slugging through right now.

I guess that is why the experience a video game provides me with matters so much. I am a die-hard proponent of realism in sporting games -- fervent even -- and if you use these games as an escape from piss-poor performances, you probably are as well. I want, at all times, for my games to come as close to re-creating the actual experience of the sport as humanly possible because, when they fall short, it only serves to undermine the illusion and enjoyment of the experience.

Now, let me also say this: we are living in a golden age of gaming. More and more attention and respect are being given to the pastime, and the development of marquee titles is now given its proper due as an art form. On top of that, we have got incredibly powerful systems now that, when used to their potential, provide photorealistic graphics and nearly instantaneous processing. There is honestly no excuse for lackluster games that offend both our aesthetic and gaming sensibilities.

So what I am asking, and I suppose what we deserve, are games that attempt to mirror real-life sporting experiences and create a virtual reality of sorts in which we are able to live out our most vivid sports fantasies. After all, we are paying good money for these games. Fifty to sixty bucks a pop should buy a person plenty in hard economic times, and the type of devotion die-hard fans give to franchises earns them equal parts respect and care.

Ironically, as I was finishing this article, it came across the wire that Aramis Ramirez had re-injured the same thumb that had kept him on the disabled list earlier in the year. Ramirez, once considered an integral piece of the Cubs' World Series puzzle, has bounced from the field to the trainer's room all year and, when manning third base, has looked sluggish and inept at the dish. On top of that, he does not seem to care all that much about his or the team's struggles. In what can only be considered more salt being poured into the Cubbies' gaping wounds, Ramirez is making $15 million dollars this year.

When considering this, and the type of torture I have had to endure as a loyal fan to a franchise that has discovered and invented new ways to lose spectacularly, isn't it fair to say I deserve a little bit of an escape? Would it be so much to ask that when I string together a particularly well played virtual World Series against the Minnesota Twins that I feel at least a fraction of the satisfaction an actual title would bring? Don't I deserve that? Don't all of us miserable misfits who didn't have the good sense to pick a decent team deserve at least that?