It's Finally Sinking In

It's Saturday evening, some 60+ hours removed from the last out of the World Series, and I am still emotionally drained. The playoff games did not mesh well with my sleep schedule, which did not help my state of mind. Couple that with my predisposition for Rom-Coms, feel good stories, and all things sentimental and I was pretty much a hot mess the past two days.

I enjoy a good cry when they come around and I think I've already met my quota for the next few years. I keep watching highlight reels, interviews with the players, parade and rally footage and somehow even the seemingly benign anecdotal stories just overwhelm me... it all started with local boy, Ben Zobrist, knocking in the go ahead run in the tenth inning:

I had to teach the next morning so I went to bed happy after a couple of post game interviews and didn't stay up for the MVP selection. Ben grew up in a town thirty minutes east of P-town, the same town I went to college in. I've met Ben on a couple of separate occasions and he truly is one of the good guys on this earth. When I tried to describe his at-bat to my wife the next morning and how he had won the MVP trophy I couldn't get through my story without getting choked up.

I saw this picture of Theo (below), wearing a Cub mascot head, obviously living it up and having the time of his life, and I realized I'm not really wired that way.

I didn't go buy a World Series Champion shirt at Dick's Sporting Goods at one in the morning like a good percentage of P-town did.

 I didn't take the day off from work to travel to Chicago to watch the parade...

and I was okay with catching the rally in Grant Park on the internet the next day.

And, I'm certainly not the guy who goes on a bender.

I'm the guy who sits comfortably on the couch, as the hour approaches midnight on an early November night, and tells his fifteen year-old cat that THIS GAME was the reason we've watched so many Cubs games together.  Poor Gus... he's watched a lot of bad Cubs baseball, but at least he's had a warm lap to sit on through it all.

I'm the guy in the school building everyone wanted to say "Congratulations" to the next morning. Did they care that I was in the middle of explaining how to implicitly differentiate and equation to a class full of seniors at 7:30a.m.?  No.  Did I mind? Nope, I didn't much mind either and I think all my seniors understood how a big a day it was for me as well.

The morning before Game 7.

I think I may be the last Cubs-centric baseball card blog to comment on the World Series win. That's fine. I've taken the time soak the victory in and really enjoyed all the emotions. I've read many good posts from all over the "cardsphere" but I think my favorite came from Can't Have Too Many Cards. This one struck me a chord with me:

"At some point rooting for a team is like love. You give your heart and you're sometimes rewarded with joy. Sometimes your heart gets broken."

I think it's all the heartbreak in the past that has made this World Series Championship so joyful. So many good people, family, friends, and players have come and gone without celebrating a championship on the north side of Chicago. Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, and Harry Caray come to mind.

 I like to think they're all celebrating with us in some fashion.

There have been so many excellent story lines for the team I love to follow, but I'll just mention one, because this post is already getting longer than I intended . . .

 The Grandpa Rossy #yearlongretirementparty was so much fun to watch unfold this season. I scratched my head, like so many other Cub fans, when he signed as a free agent, but his persona and leadership skills won me over. His throwing error in Game 7 was so out of character for him, but likewise was his homer, which made me pause during the game . . . Was this really happening?

The above card, the lone one in his post, will hopefully arrive in my mailbox within the month and it'll easily be one of my Top 5 favorite cards in my collection. Yep, Topps Now finally sucked me in.

As I wait for my Grandpa Rossy auto I'll continue to soak it in.

I'll watch the Cubs on SNL tonight (edit: link updated) and play Eddie Vedder's "All The Way" video, and read all the Cubs-centered material I can find on the interwebs. 

And yes, I'll probably shed a few more tears as I continue to digest it all . . . but make no mistake about it, they are tears of joy.

Thank you for reading and thank you to the Chicago Cubs for making me an emotional wreck.