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I have an old Chicago Cubs cap. If we’ve met, you’ve probably seen it. While I have other headgear, that is and has always been, my favourite.
I got the cap because I support the Chicago Cubs. I’ve never been to Wrigley Field, nor the Windy City, but I’ve been tied to the Cubs for 15 years and more.
Most of those years, the fun of baseball has been over early. Those years, I’ve been able to watch other teams enjoy their success a little longingly but consoled myself with the fact that, as with so many, there is always next year.
2016 is next year.
I have a very good friend who lives near Chicago. I told him before he moved that he should go watch the Cubs. I’ve told everyone I’ve known go to Chicago the same thing. Live my dream for me.
It might not have seemed so at the time, but he must have taken my advice on board. Maybe he was just amongst Cubs fans.
Either way, it has been a delight seeing the last couple of years from the ‘inside’; I haven’t felt so close to the Cubs for years.
Even however many thousand miles away, something special was happening, something palpable. It was unnerving, but it was good. It was different.
There were seasons during which I watched all 162 games the Cubs played. 162. Not 179 like this year. The Cubs of the Neifi Effect and the perpetual ‘what might be’ of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior.
They were fun days but they lingered. Constant failure is hard to stomach, but small successes make it sweeter.
I progressed from watching the Major League side to doubling up. There would be days go by that I would watch the Major League side, then listen to the Iowa Cubs and the Daytona Cubs. I had a few seasons with the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx before the Tennessee Smokies.
I thought of those teams last night. The endless hours of radio coverage I listened to, the adverts, the wins, the losses, the voices.
Bryant played for all three of those teams, though not while I was listening.
And yet for all that, I barely scratched the surface of Cub fandom. Over 108 years, a lot of people have put a lot into the Chicago Cubs. They will all be delighted at the moment; revelling in a moment that I’d almost trained myself to deny could happen.
Even in my short time with the Cubs, they’d found exciting new ways to disappoint. Losing was their thing, and they did it well.
That has changed now. The lovable losers are now machinated winners. They won 103 games this season. 103.
As the season progressed, people started getting excited by the Cubs. By the World Series my partner was watching the games. The 2016 Cubs belong to the world.
What they have done is truly historic. It is historic not for the 108 years that went before it, for as much as these young players will be aware of the past, they have never been weighed down by it.
They have opened a new chapter, closing the old one only because they had to. There is now the opportunity to win more, to establish the Chicago Cubs as one of the best teams that ever played the game – to make sure that this is just one amazing night in a clutch of them.
There is time for all of that. Now I can get a new cap. The old one will stand as a mark of the wait, not saying “I was there” but “I went through it”.
I support another team that have been champions in the recent past – and there is an interesting comparison to make.
By the time they stormed the field, the Cubs already had their champions merchandise; caps, shirts, everything. When Yorkshire won the County Championship, there was a wait of months before the champion tie was issued.
Cricket and baseball are different games. They might occupy the summer of their respective sports, but the finances and the standing of the two are completely different.
For now all that matters is that the 2016 Chicago Cubs are the World Series champions. They did it. Go Cubs, Go.
These are the happiest possible words,
Addison, Bryant and Rizz.
Trio of Cubs whose bats crackled and fizzed,
Addison, Bryant and Rizz.
Causing the Indians all kinds of trouble,
Scoring by homer, by single, by double,
Smashing a hundred year curse into rubble,
Addison, Bryant and Rizz.