Cleveland
Bedlam also ensued on the field as players celebrated an 8-7 victory over the Indians, ending the 108-year wait, at last.
For generations of fans, those will be the enduring images of Chicago sports for years to come. None of us will live long enough to see anything better, any moment packed with more meaning than the Cubs celebrating their first World Series since 1908. This is the view from the top of the sports world, the center of baseball utopia, a place where doubt and dread and devastation no longer reside, a place the World Series-winning Cubs and their loyal fans now occupy.
At exactly 12:47 a.m. on Thursday morning at Progressive Field, 108 years of suffering ended, officially marking the greatest moment in Chicago sports history. Holy cow, they did it, Harry. The wait is over, Ernie, after all those seasons you believed when nobody else did.
The last great American sports story has an ending now, the happiest one ever, pleasing baseball romantics and fulfilling the lives of so many Cubs fans. Many of the longest-suffering ones will say they can die happy now, no exaggeration. The younger fans who consider Ryne Sandberg old will expect more championships to follow, and they will. The rest of us can celebrate the death of redundancy when discussing the Cubs because this forever changes their tradition.
It seems impossible to write yet harder to fathom. The Cubs have won the World Series. That is no longer a punch line or part of a movie pitch. The Cubs have won without pigs flying or hell freezing over. That might not sink in for Cubs fans until they stop smiling, maybe sometime next summer. Or maybe never.
Nothing came easily. The Cubs waited out a 17-minute rain delay before the 10th. They paid for Joe Maddon’s unnecessary Game 6 use of closer Aroldis Chapman, who threw 20 pitches 24 hours earlier with a five-run lead. Chapman came on in the eighth with the Cubs four outs from history, and his weary left arm gave up three runs — a double to Brandon Guyer and a home run to Rajai Davis — to send the game into extra innings. Every jaw back in Chicago hit the floor and every blood pressure rose. This felt like a cruel joke to Cubs fans.
But Zobrist bailed his manager out.
In rallying from a 3-1 deficit to win the World Series, the Cubs culminated the five-year plan President Theo Epstein brought to town in 2011. Two years before Epstein arrived, the family of nerdy investment banker Tom Ricketts bought the Cubs for $745 million, vowing money would be no object when building a champion.
Ricketts, a die-hard fan who met his wife, Cecelia, in the Wrigley Field bleachers, had visions of doing what the Cubs had not done since 1908. Ricketts’ legacy now becomes being the guy who helped make the dreams shared by so many fans like him come true.
Credit goes mostly to Epstein, who reunited with executives Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod and, most importantly, lured Maddon to Chicago in November 2014. Epstein surely will go into the Baseball Hall of Fame one day, known as the Curse Buster after ending a combined 194 years of waiting for the Red Sox and Cubs. His roster transformation gives the Cubs reason to believe they will be planning more parades. After more than a century of futility, the faith is no longer blind — not after becoming the first champions since the Royals in 1985 to overcome a 3-1 Series deficit.
Dexter Fowler gave the Cubs instant confidence with a 406-foot leadoff home run to dead center off Corey Kluber, the first sign pitching for the third time in nine days took a toll on the Indians ace. Kluber left after four, outpitched by Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks, “The Professor” who earned tenure in Chicago after the season he punctuated with a solid Game 7.
The Cubs survived Maddon’s overmanaging when he replaced Hendricks with Jon Lester with two out in the fifth — despite Hendricks starting to find his rhythm. Maddon insisted before the game he didn’t want to put Lester in a “dirty inning” yet inserted him with a runner on first. After a throwing error by catcher David Ross on a swinging bunt and a wild pitch by Lester, the Indians had scored two runs without hitting the ball past the pitcher’s mound.
Fitting the Cubs’ storybook season, Ross went deep in his next at-bat — and in the final game of his career. By the time “Grandpa Rossy” finished rounding the bases, everyone from the Cubs dugout to Wrigleyville started to sense the inevitable.
The wait is over, at last. Has any sports league ever crowned a champion whose fan base deserved a title more than the Cubs? Has baseball ever played a more significant World Series game than this one?
Next year was here. It really did happen.