Though I’m in far-off Hong Kong, I just got the news that my city’s beloved Cubbies finally won a World Series—after a 108-year drought. And it was a squeaker, too, with a rain delay and a 6-6 tie that sent the game into the 10th inning. And then the Cubs did it—they came back to win 8-7 over the Cleveland Indians, and in Cleveland. The last time this happened was when Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House.
What’s even more amazing is that the gutsy Cubs were down 3-1 in the Series, and Cleveland had to win only one game out of the next three to take the title. They failed.
I’m glad I’ll miss the election (I’ve already voted), but I wish I could be in Chicago now to see the jubilation that’s been waiting for over a century.
Here’s the Chicago Tribune online headline (click to go to the story):
Here are the last inning’s highlights, with the moment of victory taking place at 3:40 when Martinez was thrown out at first. (The broadcast is in Spanish, but who cares?)
There’s going to be one hell of a celebration when the Cubs return to Chicago!
What great news during these sick times. I am elated, and I’m not even a Cubs fan.
108 = 1^1 X 2^2 X 3^3
Tw##t by Simon Pampena
I’m glad for you and your team Jerry. I watched the clip but having no understanding of baseball or Spanish I was somewhat mystified. Now cricket – that’s a game!
I was so happy I didn’t get to bed until 3 AM.
Yeah. I was very glad to see the cubs win, but Thursday morning me is kinda hating Wednesday night me at the moment…
I grew up in San Diego and my dad took me to a few Padres games. I don’t think I would like sports no matter where I grew up, but I do feel a little sorry for my dad and other Padres fans. I think most San Diegans adopt a vicarious team to cheer for because the Padres (and to a slightly lesser extent, the Chargers) are rather hopeless.
As a Cleveland-area reader, I am of course crushed.
Frank B: My favorite joke about cricket:
Q: What are the rules of cricket?
A: It has RULES?!?
Yes cricket – a world game – has rules, blow me if I ever learned them all.
I’m not even a baseball team; but I was pulling for the Cubs. And what a great comeback from 1-3 down, with the final two games in Cleveland!
I think everyone (except Tribe fans) in the US was pulling for the Cubbies.
Kind of like the Red Sox in 2004.
Which, alluding to the Bambino, I recently read Bill Bryson’s excellent One Summer: America 1927, where, among many other interesting things, I learned just how great a baseball player Babe Ruth was — and what a partier/womanizer he was.
Should be: I’m not even a baseball fan, obviously.
I’m a big guy; but not that big! 🙂
LOL!
Oh, I love Bryson!
Where do they go from here?
Subway series?
Maybe the “L” series 🙂
What a great game! It had a little bit of everything.
I’m delighted for those long-suffering Cubs fans. Unfortunately, I’m a long-suffering Expos fan who has only just returned to watching baseball. After they cancelled the season in ’94 I swore off MLB for 20 years. Expos were in 1st place, six games up on Atlanta! It was OUR YEAR! Argh!
I guess I should follow that up for those who don’t follow baseball: The Expos relocated to Washington D.C. in 2004, so unless they get another team it can *never* happen for Montreal.
commiserations are in order for the sad plight of Montreal baseball. They are missed. I swore off baseball for several years due to the strike and to my favorite players turning out to be ‘roided-up cheats. Only my young son taking an interest in the game and starting to watch the Series together back around when Boston was fighting their own curse did I fully get back into it.
I’ve never had an interest in any sports except for the Cubs. I’m thrilled and only wish my late father could have seen this. He would have been ecstatic!
The Cubs played with the heart of a grizzly! Congrats on your team’s win, Dear Professor. Try finding some Chicagoans over there to celebrate with.
Congratulations Cubs! Game ended late where I live and only got to bed at 2!
I was pulling for the Cubs, even though I don’t give a hoot for baseball. I was born a Leafs fan, so I know the pain.
Genuine question for USers:
Is this as big a shock as Leicester winning the league? Or is it more like a big team who should have done it before, but just hadn’t?
I’m Canadian and can answer:
It’s the unconscionable length of time since the last title (108 years). It’s amazing for any club to have gone this long without the stars aligning in their favour. As for this year’s team — they were considered the best team in the league coming into the season and championship favourites. But, as any baseball fan will tell you, nothing is certain in this sport. Unlike other games, baseball is much more volatile (for a number of reasons). Even the best team is probably only a few percentage points more likely to win a title. And the Cubs franchise has, historically, often seen itself the victim of some shocking bad luck.
Also, its gotten more volatile in the last 10-20 years because of the emphasis on big hitting and home runs over base hitting. When two teams are earning their runs through consistent base hitting, their records are probably very good predictors of the outcome. When two teams are counting on home runs to give them the winning run, the outcome is much more akin to a roll of the dice (at least IMO).
Despite my skeptical personality, I almost started to believe in a literal curse when Davis hit that home run off Chapman. Couple that with David Ross taking a bounced curveball off the face mask, tumbling backwards, and then allowing TWO runs to score (something we’ll probably never see again)… and can you blame me?
I was pulling for the Cubs all series and very glad to see them prevail. That was a truly incredible game — the best WS in at least five years (Cards-Rangers Game 6, 2011 was my modern benchmark). The great thing about the Cubs is that they’re probably already the favourites for next year too. They’re an absurdly stacked team.
I didn’t think the could do it, honestly. I figured it was one curse at a time. they got the pennant this year, so maybe next year they could go all the way. I truly thought, based on how they were playing, that winning another 100+ games next year would be easier than winning the last 4 this year. I was almost correct, thanks to panicked management of the pitchers and the crap job of Aroldis-the-abuser Chapman. I do truly think that without Ben Zobrist (sadly, a very religious man) the Cubbies would not have won, nor would my Royals have won last year. That guy is unbelievably underrated. I must admit also that I”m not a life-long Cubs fan, being in KC most of my life, but they are my favorite NL team, ever since my pre-teen summer boredom led me to watching them on WGN, so, at least I can claim to be from the Harry Carey era, which is some sort of pedigree.
Royals won last year, Cubs this year…I don’t know what to look forward to now.
re “Royals won last year, Cubs this year
…I don’t know what to look forward to now.”
= Yeah, me either.
Those exact two summed This Big Deal of
Baseball’s World Series’ WINNERS
just … … all the way up !
Blue
It’s only a theory but sports is the domain of youth. The players are young and the young make up many of the fans. I was there once but no longer have any of that enthusiasm for it. So maybe it is age and maybe it is a changed game taken over by money and more money. You only get to be a kid once. Unless you live in Chicago, then you get it every 108 years.
I’m Jerry’s age, and a huge baseball fan!
I’d say today’s youth have much more to keep them occupied, thus have less interest in traditional sports, but that’s with about as much evidence as you have. 😉
Let me extend my congratulations to the (no longer long-suffering) Cubs fans on the cliff-hanger win over my beloved Cleveland Indians, who’ve now added another season to their own 0-for-my-lifetime streak of failing to win the World Series.
Wait till next year!
That was a great game, but hard to watch in parts – losing a 3 run lead in the 8th was a nightmare, and then a rain break at the end of the ninth just to added to the tension. And I’m not even a proper Cubs fan, I just live in Chicagoland. The number of fireworks going off after the game, even out here in the ‘burbs, was impressive, must have been pandemonium in Wrigleyville.
Congratulations to the team. Smiles all around to go with the very short fingernails in Chicago today 🙂
They’re singing
Go, Cubs, Go!
Go, Cubs Go!
Hey, Chicago, what do you say?
The Cubs are gonna win today
C’mon!! 🙂
Song by Steve Goodman
Wish he could have seen this day.
Les – totally agree. I recently wrote about Go Cubs Go – here is a nice article about Steve
http://forward.com/news/national/353124/as-chicago-cubs-won-game-5-folksinger-steve-goodmans-ashes-danced-in-left-f/
Loved Steve Goodman! He and John Prine wrote the perfect country & western song.
Well, I guess we can look forward to their next World Series win in 2124 !
A M A Z I N G ! Truly amazing !
(I know! I know ! = I AM using .that. word !)
cuz I know exactly .what. it feels like
to metaphorically be way, way down
… … as of 3 games to 1.
And in one’s final battle thereof to have
to utterly struggle on to THE very end !
As well: from back when, too = my three sons’
times in their Little Minors, then up to the
Little Majors … … & on up to this
morning !
I am soooo, so happy today.
Blue
Since a lot of black people live in Chicago Trump will say that the series was rigged.
Kyle Hendricks would have been the MVP if the ump hadn’t called that third strike a ball! He pitched a great game and was robbed. MLB needs to adopt 21st century technology to call balls and strikes.
There’s an increasing clamor for robo umps.
About time!
Perhaps there should be roboplayers. They would not get injured, and team owners would not have to pay them.
This was really special. I am not a watcher of sportsball, but I did watch the last two games. They were riveting, full of drama and suspense. Especially the last one when the Cubs lost their comfortable lead and faced a tie against a resurgent opponent. Wow.
I’m glad, because we won’t have to listen to all those agonized Cub’s fan’s anymore. Just like we no longer have to listen about “The Curse of the Bambino”.
I know next to nothing about the Cub’s long trek or, for that matter, baseball, but watching the video made me cry.
That was the kind of series that makes a baseball fan out of someone who never watched games. One for the ages. I think that Game 7 took 5 years off my lifespan (probably worth it).
As a lifelong Red Sox fan, and son of a lifelong Red Sox fan I was anxiously rooting for the Cubs. Congrats.
I never did believe in that Billy goat curse nonsense. (finally uncrosses fingers)
Hockey:Baseball::Leafs:Cubs
No longer true, though admittedly Leafs fans haven’t been *quite* so “starved” …
I read on Wikipedia that the Chicago White Sox used to be the White Stockings, the former name of Chicago’s National League team, the Orphans, now the Chicago Cubs.
I’m glad for the sake of Cubs’ fans that they no longer feel like orphans, Ar! Ar!
Should I ever move to Chicago and become inclined to worship at the shrine of baseball, which team should I support, the White Sox or the Cubs? (Which team is the University of Chicago president expected to support and ululate on behalf of?)
You could actually cheer for both of them, since one is in the National League and one in the American League. Someday there might even be a cross-town World Series – don’t hold your breath, although the Sox did win the Series in 2005. Sox tweet – “Congrats, @Cubs, on bringing another #WorldSeries Championship to the city of Chicago!”
“You could actually cheer for both of them . . . .”
Cheer for which one in the World Series, in which both are playing?
Depends whether you want to be national or american league.
There was once the black socks too but that is another story. Field of Dreams and all that.
🙂 Might depend on which side of town you lived. North Side, Cubs; South Side, Sox. We grew up in northern Indiana, and the Sox stadium was closer – so we were Sox fans. So – just move to Colorado and suffer along with the rest of us watching the Rockies.
Also, U of Chicago is closer to the White Sox Park, but that might be meaningless re the President.
When a new president (from some hundreds of miles away) moves to a new university, s/he must pledge (political?) fealty to/religious adoration of the university football/basketball team. I look forward to the day when a university president could not care less about such matters.
Sad but true – Gordon Gee is a prime example; got a new bow tie and suspenders with each new presidency – West Virginia, Colorado, Ohio State, Brown, Vanderbilt, Ohio State again, and West Virginia again. If I was king, Division I football and basketball would become minor league professional leagues, sponsored and paid for by the NFL and NBA.
Jerry, Do you still think Hillary is a shoo-in? DT looking more and more like a winner. If Hillary looks back she’ll see Trump ‘s toes doing down hard on he heels.