Cubs Through The Years

You think it’s just about a baseball game?

A moment ago the Cubs journey to win it all just got stopped cold. And I remember back when we were young guys, my friend Larry and I in a late September, near empty Wrigley Field watching Andre Dawson throw a man out at the plate from the right field wall, his throw like a supersonic rainbow and I thought “There it is. There’s our World Series. Pretty cool. Right?

If you think it’s just about a baseball game, then walk through that second to last game. The team, scratched, limping, bleeding somehow came together and they won. Forget stats and money and marketing malarkey. See that game and you see heart. Beyond words. Just heart.

This was my Grandfather’s team. So of course it’s mine too. The love spans the generations.

We can listen to the Steve Goodman song, “Dying Cubs Fan Last Request” and dig down a bit now to know that we’re not losers anymore. We all won the World series last year and this year we were still standing in October when pretty much everyone else was sitting down. We can listen to the song and hear the rhythm of the game across the years. Another spring. The summer nights on the radio. The dancing autumn lights of October.

And the liberating revelation that our world needs so deeply now: just because you won, does not mean that I lost.