I have had some time to bask in the glory of the long-long-awaited World Series victory of the Chicago Cubs.
I am a lifelong, die-hard fan of the Chicago Cubs. I started listening to Bert Wilson call the Cubs games on radio in 1940 when I was 8 years old. I first went to Wrigley Field in 1944 when I was 12.
Last year, the Cubs got close to going back to the World Series for the first time in 70 years. This year the Cubs were the very best team in all of baseball. They finished with 103 victories and won their division in the National League by a wide margin over my second-favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals. They next had to get by the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the playoffs to get to the World Series. They did so! After 71 years they were headed back to the World Series.
Quite a while before the Cubs got to the playoffs I just had a feeling that this year was going to be the Cubs’ year. A couple of months ago I called and made hotel reservations in Chicago for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights when the Cubs would be playing the American League winner in the World Series at Wrigley Field. Then I started to see about tickets. My online search gave me the indication that I could reserve the tickets I wanted if I would pay $3,000 per ticket. After communication with the Cubs I learned that the online price was not what the Cubs would be charging, but was the price ticket brokers were charging. The Cubs said season-ticket holders would have first choice in buying Series tickets. I began trying to find a season-ticket holder anywhere who might buy tickets for me. I had no luck.
In answer to prayer and because I have a friend who has a friend at Major League Baseball, I actually got to go to Chicago with our son, where we watched games 3, 4, and 5. And we got to do so at regular ticket prices. Scalpers were getting thousands of dollars for tickets. The fact that people actually paid those truly exorbitant prices says something about wealth in America.
I have had the privilege of traveling all over the country to attend meetings of groups of colleagues … friends who knew how I felt about the Cubs and how long I had waited for the “lovable losers” to go back to the World Series. Before this storied year, the last time they played for the World Championship was 71 years ago, in 1945. I still lived in Chicago then. I was 13 and saw the Cubs play in Wrigley Field that year. When they got to the World Series I listened to the games on a radio in South Shore Hospital, where I was having an appendectomy.
Since the Series, I have heard from these friends from all over. They congratulated me for the Cubs winning the World Series as if I had something to do with it. I appreciated their remembering. And I truly appreciate the Cubs winning after such a long time. Some wag once said about the Cubs: “Every team is entitled to have a bad century.” For the Cubs it was more than a century—108 years!
Baseball has always been my game. I started playing softball on a vacant lot in Chicago when I was 7. The older kids in the neighborhood let me play because, they said, “He can catch the ball.” The ball they were referring to was a 16-inch ball that was, in fact, soft. That kind of softball we played as kids in Chicago did not require ball gloves. By the time I got to high school, I played baseball (hard ball) on our high school team and American Legion ball. I was not a star player, but was always a regular on the teams on which I played. Always in those years, we who played would frequently go to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs.
I left Chicago after I graduated from high school. The family moved to Little Rock and my baseball-playing days were over. But not my love for the Cubs. I followed them in the box scores in the paper and later on TV when WGN in Chicago beamed the games to Little Rock. I kept waiting and hoping the Cubs would have winning seasons and go back to the World Series. I even got back to Wrigley Field from time to time to see my team in action. I took our son and our grandsons to Wrigley Field. Still waiting and hoping. They got close in 1969. And in 1984. And in 2003. And last year.
Harry Caray, the much-loved broadcaster who brought fans the games on TV and who led them in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the middle of the 7th inning when the Cubs were in Wrigley Field, often said, “Someday the Cubs are gonna win the World Series again.” He didn’t live to see it. Nor did a couple of Cubs favorites, Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Ron Santo. But I did.
“Someday” turned out to be 2016 and the chance to be there in Wrigley Field with our son for three of this year’s Series games was a special father-son time for us we will always cherish. We had watched Games 1 and 2 at his house with the family, our daughter, daughter-in-law, granddaughters, grandsons, great-granddaughters, great-grandson … and gathered there again for Game 6 and Game 7 when our oldest grandson from Nashville drove over to surprise me. There were lots of hugs, and tears, and shouts all around after that game—a game that had been watched on TV by 40 million people! And then, two days later, a victory parade in Chicago was attended by five million Cubs fans.
“Someday” had arrived indeed.
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E. Kearney Dietz spent 24 years as president of Arkansas Independent Colleges and Universities. He retired in 2012.