Wrigley Rising

Mad Dog and I looked at each other.  The stakes were high.  Do we roll the dice?  Do we go all in?  Do we leave it all on the field?

Yes, yes and yes.

So what if we watched The Professor lose by a painfully tiny margin at game 3?  So what if we might see Cleveland take the Series at Wrigley?  So what if the price tag for tickets made me silently weep?

THE CUBS WERE IN THE WORLD SERIES!

There had already been so many tears.  Tears when we made it to the World Series realizing I couldn’t share that moment with my mom.  Tears when we lost game 3.  Tears, tears and more tears.  You may wonder why I allow myself to be a part of something that makes me cry so much.  It’s in my genes.  I can’t not bleed Cubbie blue any less than I can’t not breathe.  After 42 years of being a Cubs fan, I figured tears were always going to be a part of it.  I knew that ultimately if I was heartbroken again, I would rise up and keep on cheering…and crying for my team.

Mad Dog and I went for it and got the tickets.  We figured we would rather face our fears than live with regret.

GAME 3

Every pitch we watched was like taking a bullet.  I had to keep asking Mad Dog ‘Are you sure about the money?  Will you be able to let it go no matter what?’  He reassured me he was fine but I could see the worry in his eyes.  He was concerned that his extremely sensitive wife would not recover from witnessing a loss of this magnitude at her beloved Wrigley Field.  He was probably right.

Game 5 felt different than game 3.  Maybe it was when Anthony Rizzo changed his walk-up song to the Rocky theme that embers of hope began to ignite.  Maybe it was Kris Bryant’s solo home run that shifted the tides of momentum in our favor.  Maybe it was my lucky socks.  Maybe it was finally damn time that the baseball gods realized the Cubs were due.

By the end of the game I felt faint.  The standing, the cheering, the adrenaline all were taking their toll.  Chapman’s heroic 8 out save to send us back to Cleveland was the most stressful stretch of a baseball game I have ever seen. Game five was epic.  Only to be outdone by game 6 which gave way to the greatest single game 7 in the history of baseball.

When the final out of game seven was called, I think you know where this is going…

Tears, tears and more tears.

Finally tears of joy.

Thanks to the Chicago Cubs, I will now always believe in miracles.

Go Cubs Go!