Note--Last week I sat in my easy chair and watched the team that broke the Cubs' high flying hopes--the team that led the National Leage Central from day one and had the best record in the NL, had the fewest home runs and the most hits, played old-time small ball spiced by 100 mile per hour pitching win the 2026 World Series in Game 4 against Tampa Bay. And I was cheering. The Milwaukee Brewers were indisputably the best team in baseball. I knew what it was like to win a long-delayed Championship on the Road with high drama. Ten years ago, it was the Chicago Cubs celebrating on an alien field as fans everywhere when wild. To capture that thrilling moment, here is my post from November 3, the morning after the game exactly as it was written then.
My beloved Cubs, I always say, as if they belonged to me. This boy from Cheyenne who grew up a Cardinals fan has been hooked on the Boys in blue pinstripes since I wandered into Kap’s, a fanatic Cubs bar on Armitage near the old Town Burlesque in 1969. My first trips to Wrigley Field were that year, the first adrenaline rush of a pennant race, the first embrace of heroes I would come to know as well as family, the first bitter heartbreak of disappointment.
I returned to the well year after year in good times and in miserable seasons—the same ones our beloved Chicago Shorty—Steve Goodman—knew so well and immortalized in both wistful and hopefully defiant song. I wore out transistor radios listening furtively to Cubs games at various jobs--Jack Brickhouse, Lou Boudreau, Milo Hamilton, and Harry Caray.
Fans celebrate outside Wrigley Field as the marquee flashed news of the win in Cleveland. Similar explosions erupted around American Family Field last Wednesday.
Yet my claims were shallow. A veritable Johnny-come-lately. The city, suburbs, and beyond are filled with generations of fans—a faith and hope passed on by miraculous baptism linking great grandfathers to babes in Cubs onesies. The stories are legion. This week the team provided chalk for those deeply connected fans to inscribe on the bricks the names of loved ones who waited for this moment. It would be a cliché if it weren’t so damn real.
As much as I have loved them, I surprised myself last night during the emotional roller coaster of what may go down in history as the greatest Game 7 ever played. In the span of three and a half hours I soared to elation, was kicked in the gut by despair, and miraculously restored to faith. I was not prepared for the surge of emotions at that final tenth inning out. The celebrations in the field and in the streets were matched in a shabby Crystal Lake living room by an old man in a recliner and ratty old cap, his fair-weather fan wife, and a perplexed dog.
I laughed. I wept. I could hardly sleep at all.
This morning a fog lay on the ground as I took the bus to work. By the time we got to Woodstock it lifted and the Sun was rising in a perfect blue sky just peeking through the crowns of golden maple trees. The air electric, crisp, expectant. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
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