The Cubs Fly the W!

I don’t know much about baseball, but here is what I do know:

1. I’m from Chicago, and the Cubs are my team.

(and that of my cousins, who headed to Wrigleyville Sunday - lucky ducks!) 

2. They play at Wrigley Field, the oldest stadium in the National League (1914). Formerly known as Weeghman Park and Cubs Park, it’s been Wrigley since 1927. I prefer chewing gum over “Guaranteed Rate Field” – come on, Comiskey!

3. In 1906 the Chicago Cubs won a record 116 games before losing the World Series to the Chicago White Sox, and then in 1907 & 1908 they won it all, becoming the 1st Major League team to play in three consecutive World Series (and the 1st to win it twice)….

4. …and the Cubbies haven’t won a World Series since. That’s 108 years, the record for longest period without a World Series championship.

5. The first three games of the 1945 World Series were played in Detroit, the last four in Chicago. During game four Wrigley ejected Billy Sianis who had come to the game with two box seat tickets – one for him and one for his goat. And so was born the Curse of the Billy Goat when Mr. Sianis uttered, “The Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.”

6. Black cats, wet gloves, Steve Bartman… the curse continues despite Billy Sianis himself attempting to reverse it.

7. Fast forward to the year I was born, when Harry Caray became sportscaster for the Cubs. His tradition of singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch has continued after Caray's death, with guest celebrities occasionally singing along to Caray on the jumbotron. For example, Eddie Vedder on game five…

8. …which was the first World Series win at Wrigley in 71 years.

9. At the end of the 1991 season Harry Caray said; “Well, a lot of things happened today, and they were all great and they were all thrilling and they were all dramatic… Sure as God made green apples, someday, the Chicago Cubs are going to be in the World Series — and maybe sooner than you think.”

10. Yesterday, Addison Russell’s grand slam (bottom of the 3^rd) was the first in the World Series since Game 2, 2005, and the first ever by the Cubs in the World Series.

Which all brings me to this – tonight is the night. Will the Curse of the Billy Goat be finally reversed? Will my boys forever know Zobrist as zobirste? Will the W fly once more?

All right! Lemme hear ya! Ah-One! Ah-Two! Ah-Three! Take me out to the ballgame, take me out with the crowd; buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don't care if I never get back.Let me root, root, root for the Cubbies, if they don't win, it's a shame. For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out, at the old ball game! Let's get some runs!