CUBS WIN!! CUBS WIN!! CUBS WIN!!, page 4

I represent the third straight generation of Cubs fandom in my family. We had season tickets for more than 50 years, from the early fifties up until 2004. I've been to more than a hundred games in my life- being only 36 years of age I wasn't around for the team's collapse in 1969, and I was only 4 years old for the crushing defeat of 1984. But I was there at Wrigley Field for every home playoff game in the 2003 playoffs, including the infamous 'Bartman Game'. After 92 years in this life, my old Granddad passed on in 2004, having known nothing but unrequited hope and repeated disappointment. So for me being here over the last several years, being lucky enough to witness the process of this team being purchased by dedicated ownership and then being handed over to the very best management, being intentionally razed to its very foundation in order to be skillfully rebuilt as an absolute juggernaut, and all of it culminating with this harrowing, white-knuckle rollercoaster ride that was the 2016 postseason... It's been an indescribably amazing experience!!

A fan wrote in to Chicago's flagship sports talk radio station, and I think his words pretty accurately sum up my feelings.

"I'm still trying to process this, and I don't know that I ever fully will. If this game seven had happened a hundred years ago, we'd believe that every account and description of it was apocryphal and half-truthful, and we'd be right to do so! The confluence of drama, hype, hype paying off, history, and weather... It doesn't happen in reality UNTIL IT DID. LAST NIGHT. There will be poems, books, songs, and movies made about that game. This core of players will be around, but this year's team is unique. No matter how many they may win, they can never win this one again... but they did. We wish this season could last forever, but ending the way it did- not just in outcome, but in process- is the next best thing. The memory will last forever, and nothing can take that away."