The one sport I have followed since I was five years old is baseball. As a child I used to keep track of every player on every team. I loved the combination of the individual statistics and the team performance. During the summers, my brothers and I would play pick-up games all day long with all of the neighborhood children, and play in the Little League at night!!!! When not playing baseball, we collected, traded and flipped baseball cards. It was all we did, and we loved it.
When I moved to Chicago in 1977 for graduate school at Northwestern I started following the Chicago Cubs. I knew they hadn’t been in the World Series since 1945, but I figured since it had been 32 years, they could do it again sometime soon. Well, I was off a few years …39 more to be exact 😉
(That’s a total of 71 years!!!)
Okay, so here we are!!! And what a team the Cubbies have become!! They beat the SF Giants and the LA Dodgers to win the National League Championship and are now in the World Series against the Cleveland Indians!!!
I was lucky enough to go to Game 4 this past Saturday….an amazing thrill! (picture attached) Okay, they lost, but they are IN the World Series….let’s take it one day at a time. The team has an amazing number of young players and a fantastic manager, Joe Maddon.
Speaking of Joe Maddon, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Associated Press regarding Maddon’s leadership capabilities. We discussed a few of the reasons I believe he really is an excellent example of a values-based leader. You can read the article from Sunday’s paper here.
Well, tonight’s the 6th game in Cleveland and the Cubbies are down 3 games to 2….go Cubbies (but remember, there is also “next year”).
Great article, Harry. The great thing about sports is that it transcends all of the other things going on in fans’ lives. For a brief snapshot in time people can put aside hateful politics, fears of what the stock market is doing, and all the other things that clutter one’s mind and revel together in the moment of victory or lament in defeat if that’s the case. It doesn’t matter if the guy or lady sitting beside you in the bleachers at Wrigley is a democrat or republican. If they are a Cubs fan you are probably going to get to know them throughout the game and celebrate wildly together when they win. I think we will all remember where we were when the Cubs won the Series. A truly wonderful moment in history! Keep up the good work, Harry and keep those letters comin’. Paul
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Hi Paul, You summarized it well. Julie and the children went down to the Cubs parade on Friday expecting as many as one million people…guess what….there were more than 5 million people at the parade!!! Truly an example of people from all walks of life coming together to celebrate something special.