Constable: Cubs win World Series, and so much more
A 3-run Cubs' lead disappearing in heartbreaking fashion with four outs to go? Extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series? A rain delay before the 10th inning? For Chicago Cubs fans who have been waiting since 1908 for their team to win another World Series, this wait finally paid off. The team that never gives up used key hits from Kyle Schwarber, Ben Zobrist and Miguel Montero, nifty baserunning from Albert Almora Jr. and a one-out save from Mike Montgomery to rebound in stunning fashion and beat the Indians 8-7 in 10 innings and break hearts in Cleveland.
More than a century of longing, heartache, loss, love, passion, failure and anticipation rolled across the infield for a moment at 11:48 p.m. Wednesday before Cubs third-baseman Kris Bryant plucked it from the grass and fired it into the comforting glove of first-baseman Anthony Rizzo for the final out of the game.
This is the year. The Cubs are World Series champions.
For decades, generations, lifetimes, 108 years, that fervent hope has been whispered, prayed, shouted and sobbed at funerals, births, weddings, graduations and thousands of baseball games. Fans have proudly displayed that Cubs' winning "W" flag from cars, cribs and caskets. We predicted it every spring and promised to "wait 'til next year" every fall. We've been planning for this moment for so long that we can't believe it is here.
"I'm going to open that sucker up," says 68-year-old Bob Ibach of Huntley, the former public relations director of the Chicago Cubs, who has been holding onto a liquor-filled porcelain bottle in the shape of a bear wearing a Cubs jersey that was given to him in 1984, when his favored Cubs shockingly ended that season by dropping three straight playoff games to the San Diego.
"I've kept it all these years. I'm going to have a shot in memory of all the old guys I knew on the '84 Cubs who didn't get this chance," Ibach says.
For Leon Durham, the Cubs first-baseman on the 1984 team, the win ends the fable of Cubs' curses.
"The goat, the black cat and all that stuff is over. The past is the past," said Durham, who still hopes to get to the World Series in his new job as hitting coach with the Detroit Tigers. "I'm happier than hell about the Cubs winning the World Series."
Cubs center fielder Dexter Fowler opened Game 7 with a home run. Kris Bryant stole a couple of runs with his baserunning. Willson Contreras doubled home Zobrist. Anthony Rizzo singled home Bryant. Javy Baez homered. Kyle Hendricks outpitched Indians ace Corey Kluber. David Ross homered. Jon Lester kept the lead. And closer Aroldis Chapman gave up a game-tying homer with four outs to go. Television reported that Chapman was crying as he left the dugout during the 17-minute rain delay. Then he became the winning pitcher.
Comedian Bob Newhart, who was born 87 years ago in Oak Park, posted photos on social media of him (and sometimes friends such as Don Rickles) hoisting the W flag after every Cubs' postseason victory. Harvard-educated musician and social activist Tom Morello, 52, the Libertyville native who co-founded the band Rage Against the Machine, credits the Cubs for helping develop his empathy for the underdogs in life.
"After I cry and toast and sing that 'Go, Cubs, Go' song until I've lost my voice, my 93-year-old mom and I will drive to that hilltop cemetery, drape one of those big W flags on Aunt Isabelle's tombstone, sit down and tell her all about it," Morello says in a video he posted on YouTube. "Because we love this team. Because we love Chicago. Because we deserve a World Series championship. Because it matters."
We know baseball is a game, but fans sob tears of joy that the Cubs won this one because it reminds us of people and moments we love. Games on radio and black-and-white TV brought the Cubs into homes across the nation and beyond.
"This is the biggest family tree of all time," says Connie Kowal, a marketing executive with the Cubs during the 1980s and '90s and current director of the Libertyville Sports Complex. "And Game 7 is backyard stuff when you're a kid."
American literary giant Mark Twain, who was alive the last time the Cubs won a World Series in 1908, recognized baseball as a metaphor for more. During a dinner honoring the original Cubs great Albert Spaulding, who won 47 games as a pitcher for the inaugural 1876 team, Twain called baseball "the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush, and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming 19th century."
Now Cubs fans can celebrate a 21st century championship, and still get excited about the wait 'til next year.
"They are a good, young team," says 86-year-old Stan Rauch of Schaumburg, who sold pop and peanuts as a Wrigley Field vendor during the 1945 World Series.
"I'm not so old that I can't say the Cubs won't win two or three World Series in my lifetime."