This story is part of FanSided’s Fandoms of the Year, a series spotlighting the teams, athletes and cultures that defined sports fandom in 2025.
None of us could have known what we, as Cubs fans, were in for when Pete Crow-Armstrong arrived to Sloan Park in Mesa, Ariz., sporting a bleach-blonde hairstyle that, if it weren’t already loud enough, featured bright blue stars. What looked like style and swagger at the time became something else over the course of the season: a young player learning, publicly and painfully, what it actually means to be a Cub.
Somewhere between that first impression and the grind of a full season in Chicago, the stakes seemed to changed for him. “I just want to be the best Cub I can be,” Crow-Armstrong wrote later in a Players’ Tribune essay, a mindset that would come to define his year.
The season the Cubs (and PCA) took the leap
After back-to-back 83-win seasons and toting a postseason winless streak dating back to the better part of a decade, the 2025 Chicago Cubs — led by their dynamic budding superstar — won 92 games, coming within one win of a date with the reigning champion Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
The spring training dye job was just a sign of things to come for one of the league’s most electric players. PCA teamed up with Kyle Tucker in the first half of the season to steal the show and give the Cubs one of the league’s most potent 1-2 punches, pairing his unrivaled defense in center field with a game-changing offensive profile that, all of a sudden, featured jaw-dropping power.
Crow-Armstrong joined the 25/25 club before the first half drew to a close, earning his first All-Star selection. He headed into the week’s festivities in Atlanta with MVP-caliber numbers: 21 doubles, 25 home runs, 27 stolen bases and an .846 OPS. He was quickly becoming the league’s new poster child: a face for a new generation of baseball players — one a new generation of fans immediately fell in love with. He was loud, emotional, exciting. And he was capable of doing things rarely seen on a baseball field.
Then, a second-half swoon saw PCA’s stock tumbling in the national conversation. An August slump carried into Chicago’s first extended postseason run since 2017, and it brought out a new side of the intensely emotional Crow-Armstrong: a player who wore his heart on his sleeve and, in doing so, endeared himself to the Wrigleyville faithful. You know what happened? They only seemed to love him more when he was down.
Chicago fans don't need perfection from PCA
Crow-Armstrong batted just .216 and slugged below .400 in the second half of the season and, when it mattered most, he disappeared in the National League Division Series against the rival Brewers, slashing .118/.167/.118 with six strikeouts in 17 at-bats. You might think that the fanbase would have cooled on him given how he closed out the season, much the same as they did Tucker with his extended struggles.
You’d be wrong.
All season long, during home games at Wrigley Field, you could feel the love the Bleacher Bums had for their team’s young star, regardless of whether he was scorching hot or ice-cold. Chants of ‘P-C-A, M-V-P’ became commonplace — and it seemed like he always found a way to impact the game.
Maybe he went 0-for-3 at the plate, but he reached on an error and stole a base to set up a run-scoring opportunity. Other days, he looked super-human at the plate, smashing mammoth home runs off the right-field video board that looms over the iconic ballpark. Every day, it seemed, he saved runs in the outfield. He regularly got to balls in the gaps that few others, if any, could even come close to reaching, saving run after run in the process.
Throughout his ups and downs at the plate, despite being just 23 years old, the former first-round pick just kept saying all the right things, putting the team above himself. Coaches and teammates noted he was a relentless worker and, when he was slumping, he was seemingly trying to will his way out of a cold spell. When he was hot, he never allowed himself to get too high. He just wanted to help the Cubs win ballgames.
That remained true as the regular season wound down and the Cubs locked up the top Wild Card seed in the National League, and it was just as true when TBS cameras caught PCA slamming his bat against a chair in the visiting dugout of American Family Field.
“I feel no pressure about making my individual mark, only because my goal is just to play as long into October and then hopefully early November as I can,” Crow-Armstrong told Marquee Sports Network during the team’s postseason play.
Playing with his heart on his sleeve
It’s not hard to understand why No. 4 Cubs jerseys with ‘CROW-ARMSTRONG’ emblazoned across the back seemed to fill more and more seats with each passing week. PCA lived and died with every pitch, every at-bat and every game, the same as the fans. He wholeheartedly embraced what it meant to be a Cub, and how big of a role the team plays in the lives of its national (and international) fanbase.
Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer and the organization are well aware of what they have in Crow-Armstrong, as well. It’s why they attempted to lock him up to a long-term extension this spring and expect to re-visit talks this offseason as they look to keep a young player who, seemingly overnight, has become the face of the franchise, overshadowing established and decorated veterans like Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ.
Major League Baseball saw notable fan and viewership growth this year, both at the ballpark and with television broadcasts, and they have incredible talents like PCA to thank for it. Not just for what he did for 162, but for how he did it: staying humble, hungry and true to himself — flash, style and all — ready to carry the weight of a city and a fanbase hungry for a return to relevance.