Rizzo catches last throw, salutes fans

Chicago Cubs' Anthony Rizzo reacts after teammate Kris Bryant scored on Rizzo's hit during the fifth inning of Game 7 of the Major League Baseball World Series against the Cleveland Indians Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016, in Cleveland.
Chicago Cubs' Anthony Rizzo reacts after teammate Kris Bryant scored on Rizzo's hit during the fifth inning of Game 7 of the Major League Baseball World Series against the Cleveland Indians Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016, in Cleveland.

CLEVELAND -- Anthony Rizzo was 3 years old when his father, John, first knew he might be a baseball player.

"I chipped him golf balls and he'd catch everything," John Rizzo said early Thursday morning at Cleveland's Progressive Field. "I was learning how to play golf. He used to get his mitt and catch the chips."

The steady right hand that snagged golf balls as a boy would one day catch The Ball, the one that delivered the Chicago Cubs their first championship since 1908. With two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning in Game 7 of the World Series, Anthony Rizzo raised his glove and caught a throw from third baseman Kris Bryant, who had gathered a slow chopper from the Cleveland Indians' Michael Martinez. The Cubs had triumphed, 8-7, for a moment 108 years in the making.

"There's a lot of relief involved, because there's so much stress -- it just builds and builds and builds," Cubs' chairman Tom Ricketts said. "Relief, and then you start to absorb it. Honestly, I never really let myself think too hard about what happens next. So now we'll see what it all means."

It means that baseball is different, forever. The franchise most famous for failure now sits on top. The holy grail of sports -- as David Ross, the beloved retiring catcher, put it -- has been found.

The group that did it will be Chicago legends for life. The Curse of the Billy Goat -- the ludicrous notion that an aggrieved tavern owner hexed the team for denying his goat entry to Wrigley Field for the 1945 World Series -- is no more.

"This is why I came here: to break the goat or the black cat or God knows what somebody else wants to talk about," pitcher Jon Lester said. "It's over. A curse, for me, is an excuse, looking for a way out. We just played good baseball. We didn't care about a goat."

The Cubs played extraordinary baseball, winning 103 games in the regular season and taking this World Series after falling behind 3-1 at home last weekend. Rizzo -- "Our own Italian Stallion," as Ben Zobrist, the Series' Most Valuable Player, called him -- played the "Rocky" theme in the clubhouse after that, and the Cubs never lost again.

"I hope every Cubs fan enjoys this," Rizzo said. "We're champions. It happened. It happened. We're the champs. There's no one better than us."

It was fitting that the final out would find Rizzo's glove. He was one of Theo Epstein's first acquisitions as the Cubs' president of baseball operations, in January 2012, and quickly became a franchise pillar.

Before the 2015 season, with Rizzo an established star and players like Bryant, Javier Baez, Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber rising quickly, the Cubs recruited Joe Maddon as manager, signed Lester as a free agent and reached the playoffs. Before this season, they signed Zobrist, pitcher John Lackey and right fielder Jason Heyward.

Zobrist and Lackey performed as expected, but Heyward, who signed for eight years and $184 million, hit just .230 with seven home runs. Yet he starred on defense and formed a critical part of the Cubs' leadership.

While Rizzo's "Rocky" theme might have set the mood, it was Heyward who spoke up during a 17-minute rain delay before the top of the 10th inning of Game 7.

The Cubs had been four outs from the title when Aroldis Chapman allowed a game-tying, two-run home run to Rajai Davis in the eighth. Then, in the ninth, the Cubs had Heyward on third with one out. But Baez struck out while attempting a safety squeeze and Dexter Fowler bounced a ball up the middle -- right to shortstop Francisco Lindor, who was shifted there and made the play.

When the rain came, Heyward called the players into the weight room, in an alcove just off the dugout at the bottom of the clubhouse steps.

"I just sensed they needed to hear it from somebody, from somewhere," Heyward said. "I don't know if it was gonna come or not, but I just feel like we needed to be reminded how good we are. I needed to love on 'em a little bit and tell them: 'Hey, I love everybody in here. You guys should all look in the mirror and understand you can get it done, I don't care who it is.' "

The rally that followed will be etched in baseball lore: a single by Schwarber, a fly ball by Bryant, an intentional walk to Rizzo, a go-ahead double by Zobrist, another intentional walk to Russell and a run-scoring single by Miguel Montero.

A week ago, Bryant said, Rizzo had told him he wanted the final out to rest in his glove -- and that when it did, it would be so valuable he would never let it go. Sure enough, after Rizzo caught the throw and thrust his arms to the sky, he stuffed the ball in his back pocket before bouncing off to start the party.

As the Cleveland fans filed out and Cubs fans swarmed the lower bowl behind the visitors' dugout, Rizzo strode triumphantly to the first-base line. He reached into his pocket, held up the ball they had all been waiting for, and kissed it. The owner will not take it from him.

"You know what, Riz can have it," Ricketts said. "He deserves it. I'm not hung up on objects. It's not about the things that were here tonight. It's about the fans who got to see the game, and the end result."

Some fans found their way to the clubhouse for the celebration; one of them, the actor Bill Murray, cradled a Champagne bottle and embraced Rizzo, telling him he was the most valuable Cub. Then Ryne Sandberg, the Hall of Fame Cubs second baseman, came by. Rizzo wrapped him in a hug.

"Ryno!" he shouted. "For everyone who's worn this jersey!"

Ernie Banks wore it, too, and never won the World Series. Neither did Andre Dawson, Fergie Jenkins, Ron Santo, Sammy Sosa, Billy Williams or Hack Wilson. Neither did any other Cub, for more than a century of glorious torture.

These Cubs did it. And the fans Rizzo saluted, with that priceless baseball on a rainy morning in Cleveland, can finally feel like champions.

Sports on 11/04/2016

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