The Cubs Won the World Series! No Really, They Did!

Well, this is just getting ridiculous.  As I mentioned after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, this has been an unreal run of major sport championships for me.  And unbelievably, it's gotten better, as the Cubs have just won the World Series!  What?!  That's right.  The lovable losers, who had gone 108 years (!!!) since they last won the World Series, and hadn't even been in the World Series since 1945, have won!  They were my favorite team since I first discovered baseball in 1988.  I watched hundreds of Cubs games on TV over those first few years, probably nearly every single game when I wasn't in school during the summer of 1988 and 1989 when we lived in Iowa, and then many more games in the following years.  WGN carried every game, so I could always watch them, and I loved seeing Harry Caray (and also Steve Stone) on the broadcasts.  When I would hit the whiffle ball outside by myself, I would simulate games with me playing each position in the Cubs lineup (Sandberg, Grace, Dawson, Law, Berryhill, Dunston, Webster, Walton, etc.).  When I had a chance to get choose a team for a branded item, it was always the Cubs (I still have a Cubs coffee mug that I got years ago), or later when I was playing baseball video games, I would always play as the Cubs.  I was crushed in the playoffs in 1989 when they lost to the Giants in the NLCS.  The Cubs were my team for everything.  But they always lost.  But I never lost hope, because that's what being a Cubs fan is all about.

We moved to Kansas City when I started high school, and by my 30s, I have to admit that my love of the Royals finally overtook the Cubs.  But while the Royals were my new #1, the Cubs were, and still are, a very, very close #2.  Theo Epstein was the GM of the Red Sox when they ended their 85-year drought in 2004, and they won another one a few years later.  In 2011, he resigned from the Red Sox and was hired as GM of the Cubs.  I so believed in him at the time, that I told me friends that he would be the one to end the Cubs drought too, but that it would take time, and that I didn't care how many awful seasons I would have to endure, because I knew he would have a plan.  And he did.  The Cubs were extra terrible in those first few years as Theo tore it all down and rebuilt from scratch, netting high draft picks that turned into Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, and others, and trading away older players to get young soon-to-be stars like Addison Russell and Anthony Rizzo.  It seemed like they were building up to be a great team in 2017, but they had an impressive run in 2015 (the year I thought I might face the apocalyptic scenario of the Royals and the Cubs playing each other in the World Series!), leaving them the favorites for this year.  And they did it!  And they did it in crazy dramatic fashion in an amazing Game 7 win over the Indians that I can hardly believe I just witnessed from my hotel room here in Minneapolis.  I don't love it as much as I loved the Royals win last year, but it is still pretty fantastic.  My Cubbies have finally won the World Series!