Constable: Game 7 heaven, enjoy the trip
It's November, and Cubs fans aren't talking about waiting till next year. We actually can say, “The Chicago Cubs can win the World Series today.”
The young Cubs exploded Tuesday night for an early 7-0 lead on a home run by 24-year-old Kris Bryant, and a two-run double and a monster grand-slam homer by 22-year-old Addison Russell. Lefty Anthony Rizzo, the 27-year-old veteran, added a two-run homer, and the Cubs held on to beat the Cleveland Indians 9-3 to set up the climactic Game 7 on Wednesday night between two franchises infamous for their failures to win a championship. Cleveland last won the World Series in 1948. It's been 39,467 days since the Cubs last accomplished the feat in 1908.
“We're here to have some fun. We're here to win some ballgames,” Russell said during the postgame TV interview.
“Of course, I want them to win Game 7,” says Karen Ross, an avid Cubs fan who watched the Game 6 victory on TV with fellow fans and sons James, 27, and Dan, 25, and James' fiancee, Liz, 26, at Ross' home in Warrenville. “But just the fact that we got to Game 7 makes me very happy.”
The 2016 Cubs' campaign now is in its eighth month of making fans happy. The season began April 4 with a dominant 9-0 win behind the pitching of Jake Arrieta on a glorious day with temperatures in the mid-70s in Anaheim, California. It was extended to the limit in the World Series on Nov. 1 behind the pitching of Arrieta on a glorious day with temperatures in the mid-70s in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Cubs will start Major League Baseball's ERA leader Kyle Hendricks in the final game against Indians ace Corey Kluber. Between Opening Day and today, the Cubs have won an astonishing 113 games.
“I'm just so proud of the team and how far they've come,” Ross says.
“It reminds me of 1945,” says Stanley Rauch, 86, of Schaumburg. Rauch was a vendor selling peanuts and pop in Wrigley Field that year, the last time the Cubs played in a Game 7 at the World Series. Coming off a thrilling extra-inning win in Game 6, the 1945 Cubs fell behind 5-0 in the first inning as starting pitcher Hank Borowy was hit hard and didn't retire a single batter. The Detroit Tigers won the game 9-3, and won the series four games to three.
Rauch, who made $25 a day as a vendor, had a better series than those 1945 Cubs. But, he says this year's Cubs can write a new chapter in the team's history.
“I'm glad they made it to Game 7,” Rauch says. “I'll just be rooting for a different outcome this time.”
Watching this World Series from his residence in what he calls “the old people's home” in Arlington Heights, former Cubs prospect John Picchiotti remembers how he missed his chance to see the 1945 World Series at Wrigley. Now 88 years old, Picchiotti was a 17-year-old shortstop for the Cubs minor league affiliate in the Tri-Cities community of Leaksville-Draper-Spray, North Carolina. “I was one of the highest-paid players on the team and I was paid $125 a month,” Picchiotti says. “That was it. We were all starving to death.”
He and three other players were so sick of the backwater community by season's end that they hopped on a train back to Chicago even though the team ahead of them in the standings had one more game to play. The players were halfway to Chicago when they learned that the leaders had lost and their Cubs team surprisingly made the playoffs.
Missing their team's playoff game put them in hot water with the Cubs brass, who summoned them to Wrigley Field, where the Cubs already had won the pennant.
“They started yelling at us. They were mad. They were telling us that we'd never play again, that we were horrible guys,” Picchiotti says. That's when his teammate Milt asked, “Are we going to get tickets to the World Series?”
The four were kicked out of Wrigley, and Cubs Manager Charlie Grimm gave them a lecture on the way out. “Some of the things he said, I can't repeat,” Picchiotti says. He recovered and played five more years in the Cubs' system. His baseball highlight might have been playing a game against a team that featured a young Jackie Robinson.
Picchiotti says he'll be watching the final game to see if the Cubs finally can win it all.
“I always liked to watch the Cubs, even when they were losing,” Picchiotti says. “But these guys have been doing a good job.”
We'll find out in Game 7 if the Cubs are doing a history-making good job.