Celebration stays subdued
It was almost a surreal scene:
Jim Edmonds had already caught the last out, Cubs players had rushed the mound for an abbreviated group jump with closer Kerry Wood serving as the middle man, the coaches and manager Lou Piniella had already come out of the dugout for the postgame handshake line and the next thing you knew ... they were gone.
From the left field corner came a group of Chicago's finest. Ditto from the right field corner. Merged with other security personnel, they lined up from home plate all the way down the outfield lines and simply stared into the grandstand.
As Eddie Vedder's new ode to the Cubs blared over the Wrigley Field sound system, the 41,000 delirious fans on hand sang, swayed and yelled their hearts out toward the playing field, and all they got back were stares.
Finally the Cubs, sporting freshly printed NL Central champion T-shirts made their way out of the dugout and briefly sprayed some fans behind the dugout and along the third base line. Some even went out toward the bleachers and shared their bubbly with the folks out there.
But back inside the sealed-up locker room, there wasn't any music, there wasn't much champagne spraying - except from the younger guys on the team.
It never felt like a true celebration.
And that seemed to be the point.
"Well done; nice start," Cubs chairman Crane Kenney said as he greeted players in the locker room.
"It's a good first step," pitching coach Larry Rothschild chimed in.
Evidently when Ryan Dempster announced on the first day of spring training that the Cubs would win the World Series, he wasn't kidding.
"I believed in the guys in here and I believed in the guys upstairs and what we needed to do," Dempster said. "But we've still got a long ways to go."
A year after going three and out against Arizona in the NLDS, your Chicago Cubs are a team on a mission.
"I think we've all grown a little bit and the team's grown for sure, and hopefully we can correct our mistakes from last year," said shortstop Ryan Theriot. "I think we learned a lot from last year.
"Now we just want to get it started, get it going."
And not stop until they've brought home their first World Series title in 100 years.
"This city will never forget this team," said outfielder Reed Johnson, imagining the scenario. "Hopefully we can go all the way and do this thing."
Then you want to talk about a celebration ...
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