No Matter What Happens, The Cubs Are The Story
October 26, 2016 at 4:13 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
And I am not alone.
Saturday night’s Cubs win in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series was more than just the yearly advancement of one team to the World Series. It was the end of a living nightmare that has been haunting the Cubs and their fans for more than seven decades.
No matter what happens in the series with the Indians, who took a 1-0 lead Tuesday night with a 6-0 win, what has happened with the Cubs of 2016 has put to rest a lot of the impossibility that has surrounded this organization and its faithful followers since the late 1960s.
The Cubs don’t need to win the World Series this week to accomplish what so many have tried and failed to do. They have lifted the burden of generations of men and women who have a love affair with day baseball in front of an ivy-covered wall in a village on the north side of Chicago.
It eases the pain of the Andy Frain guard who stopped and refused entry of the Chicago tavern owner who brought his billy goat to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. The Cubs were leading the series 2-1, but they lost Game 4 and eventually the series. As the story continued to be told, the goat being barred from entry changed from being common sense security to the prelude to a curse being levied on the franchise by the goat and its owner.
It lifted the weight of 1969 off of Billy Williams and his teammates. They had a huge lead on the Mets heading into the month of September that year, and then saw it slip away. The critical moment came in Shea Stadium, when someone released a black cat near the entrance to the Cubs dugout. It ran around in front of the Cubs dugout and players … and “the curse” took deeper roots.
In 1984, the Cubs had the rights to home field advantage because of their record, but the commissioner of baseball at the time (whose name does not deserve to be written in ink in this publication or any other) reversed the schedule and gave the San Diego Padres the final three games at Jack Murphy Stadium. The reason: Wrigley Field still didn’t have lights. The Cubs rolled through the first two games, but lost the last three and the series. By the way, Game 5 of that series was played during the afternoon.
In 1989, the Cubs once again had home field advantage and Will Clark sent a long drive into the Chicago night that ruined the Cubs’ hopes.
They were swept out of the playoffs in three straight games in 1998, 2007 and 2008.
And then there was 2003.
A win away from the World Series against the Florida Marlins, at home, 1 out, eighth inning. And then it disintegrated like an ice cube on a Michigan Avenue sidewalk in July.
Bartman happened.
An error happened.
Five outs away, but it felt like a million miles.
So when the Cubs won 103 games this season and made it to the eighth inning of Saturday night’s sixth game of the NLCS, and Aroldis Chapman struck out the first guy of the frame – all of Cub Nation held its collective breath.
But Chapman got them through the 8th, and the 9th, and set off a celebration not seen in the lifetime of anyone younger than retirement age.
And then what happened next was a phenomenon unparalleled in sports history.
Cub fans flooded social media with Facebook posts and Tweets. They were all expressing their unbridled and obvious joy over the fact that their beloved ball club had given them the chance to see a Cubs trip to the World Series in their lifetimes. They posted videos of themselves as the Cubs turned the double play that ended the series. But they went deeper than that.
They used the moment to share that joy with the people who made them Cub fans. Dads, moms, grandpas and grandmas, uncles and neighbors. They wrote about how those people took them to their first Cubs games when they were four years old. They remembered where they sat, what they ate, what the weather was like that afternoon.
More than that, they remembered the people who took them to Wrigley Field.
And they loved those people for making them Cub fans.
Many of those people – too many – didn’t live long enough to enjoy that moment Saturday night.
For years, I and my Cubby brethren have been mocked and jeered for our misplaced devotion to a lover who always seemed to have a sock drawer to reorganize. We watched all the games, including the last inning of the last games of seasons where the Cubs playoff hopes were clear on Independence Day.
“Why?” you ask.
Because deep in our hearts we always believed a night like Saturday would happen, and it was so much sweeter because we stuck it out. We never quit. We endured the lowest of lows, and that made the mountain top of Saturday just feel that much higher.
Imagine what will happen if they win it all.
And I am not alone.
Saturday night’s Cubs win in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series was more than just the yearly advancement of one team to the World Series. It was the end of a living nightmare that has been haunting the Cubs and their fans for more than seven decades.
No matter what happens in the series with the Indians, who took a 1-0 lead Tuesday night with a 6-0 win, what has happened with the Cubs of 2016 has put to rest a lot of the impossibility that has surrounded this organization and its faithful followers since the late 1960s.
The Cubs don’t need to win the World Series this week to accomplish what so many have tried and failed to do. They have lifted the burden of generations of men and women who have a love affair with day baseball in front of an ivy-covered wall in a village on the north side of Chicago.
It eases the pain of the Andy Frain guard who stopped and refused entry of the Chicago tavern owner who brought his billy goat to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. The Cubs were leading the series 2-1, but they lost Game 4 and eventually the series. As the story continued to be told, the goat being barred from entry changed from being common sense security to the prelude to a curse being levied on the franchise by the goat and its owner.
It lifted the weight of 1969 off of Billy Williams and his teammates. They had a huge lead on the Mets heading into the month of September that year, and then saw it slip away. The critical moment came in Shea Stadium, when someone released a black cat near the entrance to the Cubs dugout. It ran around in front of the Cubs dugout and players … and “the curse” took deeper roots.
In 1984, the Cubs had the rights to home field advantage because of their record, but the commissioner of baseball at the time (whose name does not deserve to be written in ink in this publication or any other) reversed the schedule and gave the San Diego Padres the final three games at Jack Murphy Stadium. The reason: Wrigley Field still didn’t have lights. The Cubs rolled through the first two games, but lost the last three and the series. By the way, Game 5 of that series was played during the afternoon.
In 1989, the Cubs once again had home field advantage and Will Clark sent a long drive into the Chicago night that ruined the Cubs’ hopes.
They were swept out of the playoffs in three straight games in 1998, 2007 and 2008.
And then there was 2003.
A win away from the World Series against the Florida Marlins, at home, 1 out, eighth inning. And then it disintegrated like an ice cube on a Michigan Avenue sidewalk in July.
Bartman happened.
An error happened.
Five outs away, but it felt like a million miles.
So when the Cubs won 103 games this season and made it to the eighth inning of Saturday night’s sixth game of the NLCS, and Aroldis Chapman struck out the first guy of the frame – all of Cub Nation held its collective breath.
But Chapman got them through the 8th, and the 9th, and set off a celebration not seen in the lifetime of anyone younger than retirement age.
And then what happened next was a phenomenon unparalleled in sports history.
Cub fans flooded social media with Facebook posts and Tweets. They were all expressing their unbridled and obvious joy over the fact that their beloved ball club had given them the chance to see a Cubs trip to the World Series in their lifetimes. They posted videos of themselves as the Cubs turned the double play that ended the series. But they went deeper than that.
They used the moment to share that joy with the people who made them Cub fans. Dads, moms, grandpas and grandmas, uncles and neighbors. They wrote about how those people took them to their first Cubs games when they were four years old. They remembered where they sat, what they ate, what the weather was like that afternoon.
More than that, they remembered the people who took them to Wrigley Field.
And they loved those people for making them Cub fans.
Many of those people – too many – didn’t live long enough to enjoy that moment Saturday night.
For years, I and my Cubby brethren have been mocked and jeered for our misplaced devotion to a lover who always seemed to have a sock drawer to reorganize. We watched all the games, including the last inning of the last games of seasons where the Cubs playoff hopes were clear on Independence Day.
“Why?” you ask.
Because deep in our hearts we always believed a night like Saturday would happen, and it was so much sweeter because we stuck it out. We never quit. We endured the lowest of lows, and that made the mountain top of Saturday just feel that much higher.
Imagine what will happen if they win it all.
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