Cubs win! Cubs win! Cubs win! Paul Sullivan from The Chicago Tribune, November 3, 2016
Finally.
The most epic drought in sports history is over, and the Cubs
are world champions.
After 108 years of waiting, the Cubs won the 2016 World Series with a wild 8-7, 10-inning Game 7 victory
over the Indians on Wednesday night at Progressive Field. The triumph completed their
climb back from a 3-1 Series deficit to claim their first championship since
1908.
A roller-coaster of emotions spilled out in a game that lasted
almost five hours, featuring some wacky plays, a blown four-run lead, a
17-minute rain delay and some 10th inning heroics that sealed the deal.
It was a perfect ending for a franchise that had waited forever
for just one championship, and your stomach never will be the same.
This is not a dream. The Cubs did it.
It was real, and it was spectacular. After blowing an
eighth-inning lead in stunning fashion, the Cubs bounced back in the 10th with
run-scoring hits from Ben Zobrist and Miguel Montero.
Over? Not quite.
The Indians came to within a run with two outs, until Mike Montgomery entered to induce the game-ending
grounder to third base that saved the city. The Cubs rushed the field, waved
"W' flags and held a group hugathon.
Tears flowed across Cubs Nation after the final out, and fans
responded with the world's biggest group hug, remembering all the loved ones
who could only imagine what it would be like to experience this moment of pure
bliss.
The 1969 Cubs, the team that defined the word ''collapse,'' were
off the hook. So were their predecessors in '84 and 2003, who also came close
only to suffer painful endings that scarred two generations of Cubs fans and
kept the drought alive.
The billy goat is gone, and the black cat too. And what was the
name of the foul-ball dude? No matter. It was never really his fault, and now
he's just a footnote in Cubs history.
The catchphrase Cubs fans uttered over the last century and
change has been "just one before I die," a plea that fell on deaf
ears decade after decade.
Well, you can die in peace now, thanks to Joe Maddon's resilient club, which was bloodied and on
the mat after a Game 4 loss at Wrigley Field.
The Cubs picked themselves up when Jon Lester and Aroldis Chapman tag-teamed the Indians in Game 5,
and they battled to a Game 6 victory in Cleveland to set up the mother of all
Game 7s between two franchises synonymous with heartache.
The road trips to cemeteries commence Thursday, where caps,
balls, pennants and news clippings will be placed on markers of loved ones,
letting them know they did it. The Cubs did it.
It may look like the final scene of "Field of Dreams,"
a caravan of cars on a mission of closure.
When the Red Sox ended their 86-year championship drought,
Cubs President Theo Epstein was moved by all the cemetery scenes, the touching
tributes to those who taught us to love a baseball team through thick and thin
— or in the Cubs' case, through thin and thinner.
Epstein, then the Red Sox's general manager, said fans have
thanked him almost every day since 2004 for "what it meant to their
family" and those who didn't live long enough to see it happen.
"That really resonated," he said last year. "More
than anything else, that feeling influenced my decision to come to Chicago,
because that was the one place in the world where you could experience
something that meaningful again and play a small part in contributing to
something that meaningful."
Epstein arrived in Chicago in the fall of 2011 with the
gargantuan task of rebuilding an organization that had tried everything
imaginable.
It took him five seasons, three managers and dozens of moves to
get the job done, but he did it. The Cubs did it.
The funny thing about waiting 107 years for a championship was
that when it finally happened, you didn't want the season to end. It was that
much fun, from Kyle Schwarber's smashing of a windshield outside the outfield
wall with a spring training home run to Wednesday night.
This was a team in the truest sense of the word.
These Cubs worked together and partied together, and some of them
prayed together. The moments were so delicious you could watch them on an
endless loop. Dexter Fowler's surprise return in Arizona. Anthony Rizzo hopping
on top of the brick wall. Javier Baez's backhand swipe to pick off Conor
Gillaspie at first in the National League Division Series. Kris Bryant's home run off the top of a cartoon car at
AT&T Park. David Ross' final regular-season game at Wrigley. Aroldis
Chapman's marathon outing to save the season in Game 5 of the Series at
Wrigley.
It was one thing after another, and you loved every second.
It was the arrival of the controversial Chapman from the Yankees in July that sent Chicago into a tizzy.
Did they sell their souls in pursuit of a championship? Three months and
hundreds of triple-digit fastballs later, few were debating the move.
Epstein said the Cubs had done their homework and Chapman would
not be an issue. He was the final piece to the puzzle Epstein had been working
on for five years, and the move signaled the Cubs were going for broke.
"If not now, when?" Epstein said.
The Schwarber comeback was so unbelievable, so corny, even Disney
wouldn't have dared touch it. After going down with a torn ACL in the third
game of the season after an outfield collision with Fowler, he spent the entire
season rehabbing and hoping he could make it back for the end.
"Pedro Strop said all along, 'Man, you're going to be back
for the World Series,'" Schwarber said.
Schwarber did it. The Cubs did it.
One-hundred and eight years is a long time, and Cubs fans have
suffered through a lot of bad baseball before getting to this day, coming
within inches of a World Series twice before losing the grip on the rope.
In May 1984, Jim Brady, the Illinois-born press secretary to
President Ronald Reagan, told reporters: "This is our year. This is the
year of the Cubs. I've been waiting for the antitrust department of the Justice
Department to come in and get us. We conspired before the season even started.
This year there will be no 'April Fold,' no 'June Swoon' and no 'October
Surprise.'"
A month later, young second baseman Ryne Sandberg hit a
game-tying home run off Bruce Sutter in the ninth at Wrigley and a game-tying
homer off Sutter in the 10th in a comeback victory for the ages.
Everyone believed.
The Cubs were one game from the World Series before it all fell
apart, suddenly and shockingly. They blew the final three games of the NL
Championship Series in San Diego when a ball went under Leon Durham's glove in
Game 5.
It would be 19 years before they got that close again, but in the
summer of 2003, Dusty Baker made us believe again. The Cubs had two
young studs in Mark Prior and Kerry Wood who everyone knew would carry them to multiple
titles. They combined for 32 victories in '03, and Wood beat the Braves in the division series for their first
postseason series triumph since 1908.
But it all fell apart, suddenly and shockingly. They blew the
final three games of the NLCS to the Marlins, with Prior imploding during the
Marlins' eight-run eighth inning of Game 6 at Wrigley when the Cubs were five
outs away. Over the next three injury-plagued years, Wood and Prior combined
for 30 victories.
But things changed when Maddon arrived for Year 4 of Epstein's
rebuild, promising at his introductory news conference in 2014 he would be
"talking playoffs next year."
After getting swept in the NLCS in '15, the Cubs won 103 games
this year, launched a ninth-inning comeback to take the division series against
the Giants, then came back from back-to-back
shutouts to down the Dodgers in six games. At long last, they had won a
National League pennant for the first time in 71 years.
All that was left was the Indians, a gritty team with a lockdown
bullpen and a likely Hall of Fame manager in Terry Francona, who ended the
drought in Boston with Epstein 12 years earlier.
With the Cubs on the ropes, trailing 3-1 and gasping for air,
they got some electroshock therapy from Lester and Chapman at Wrigley, then
headed to Cleveland after a brief timeout for some trick-or-treating.
A Game 6 victory kept hope alive, setting up the wild and crazy
Game 7.
It was one for the ages, with more twists and turns than a San
Francisco street.
They had it, they blew it, and then came a 17-minute rain delay.
After waiting 108 years, what was another 17 minutes?
Schwarber started off the rally with a single in the 10th.
Pinch-runner Albert Almora Jr. came in and advanced to second on
Bryant's long flyout. After an intentional walk to Rizzo, Zobrist doubled down
the left-field line, and Montero came up big with an RBI single after an
intentional walk to Addison Russell.
The Cubs walked off the field saluting the thousands of fans who
had traveled to Cleveland to scarf up tickets, singing "Go Cubs Go"
as the clocked ticked to midnight back home.
It took a while, and it wasn't the way they had drawn it up.
But they did it.
The Cubs did it.
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