I’m much more calm as I write this the evening of November 2 than I was a year ago at this time. The Cubs aren’t playing in game seven of the World Series, so I don’t have that cocktail of equal parts disbelief and apprehension running through my veins.The impossible happened that night. A major truth of my life—that the Cubs don’t win the World Series—became false.I remember watching Cubs baseball as a kid, and at least a few times every season they’d show the setting sun, and Harry Caray would say something like, “There’s the sun setting in the west, just as it does every single night. It rises in the east, and sets in the west. What a story it would be if it ever happened differently.”That’s sort of how I felt about the Cubs and the World Series. Every September, I figuratively said to myself, “There are the Cubs, not making the World Series again, let alone winning it. What a story it would be if it ever happened differently.”And then it did.Somehow I still can’t believe it. All season I’d listen to promos on The Score that included the tag, “Home of your world champion Chicago Cubs” and it always seemed surreal. Like it couldn’t really be the Cubs who won the World Series.On their Facebook page today the Cubs posted a video commemorating their World Series victory and I watched the whole thing and felt a little choked up by the end.It’s so ironic that this game that is so reliant on statistics—more so than any other sport—really just comes down to emotion. We watch the game with one part of our brain focused on detached analysis based on a million different statistical measurements, while another part of our brain doesn’t care how it happens, we just want our team to win!And the additional irony is that when the team wins it’s not really about the team at all. Or at least the majority of it isn’t about the team. It’s about each individual fan’s experience.When the Cubs beat the Dodgers in the NLCS in 2016, I had to go see my dad. He lives 25 miles from me, and he was actually working at his overnight retirement job, but he’s the one that got me into this mess of being a Cubs fan, and he’s the one who taught me everything I know about baseball.And when I told my kids that I was going to see him, they all wanted to come, too. So me and my three youngest kids loaded into my car just after ten o’clock at night to go see him. We talked for a few minutes, speculated on what the World Series would be like, and then we drove home.During those seven games of the World Series, I didn’t cheer as much for the 2016 Cubs as I did for my relationship with the Cubs. I cheered for the years of losing, and the frustration I felt as a kid, and the countless times my dad took me to Wrigley Field, and Busch Stadium, and Three Rivers Stadium, and Riverfront Stadium to see them.I watched those games with my kids. My youngest son has transformed into a fanatic over the past year. He watches baseball YouTube videos non-stop, watched more games than I did this past season, and knows ten times as much about the game this November 2 than he did last November 2. I’m very conscious of the fact that this past year has shaped the way he’ll experience baseball for the rest of his life.My other son is thirteen, and while he’s not as big of a baseball fan as my younger son, he had a more emotional reaction to the Cubs winning the World Series. I have no doubt that he just understood what it meant to me.I’m lucky that I had the presence of mind to use my video camera to record our reaction during the end of the World Series. I don’t think I’ll ever share what I recorded, but it will always be a priceless treasure for me.It’s been one year since the Cubs won the World Series. And I don’t care if it’s 107 more. I had this one with my dad and my kids.What more could I ask for?Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
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