This was exactly how the Cubs had to win World Series
By Joel Sherman
New York Post
November 3, 2016 | 1:19am
CLEVELAND — This was the way it had to be, right?
The Cubs could not just win a World Series. First they had to walk through glass while holding an anvil and being kicked.
“It had to be super hard,” Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said.
They had to go seven games in the World Series. They had to be tied after nine innings. As if to accentuate that, even the heavens were not ready to let either of these teams finally win, there had to be a 17-minute rain delay before extra innings even began — a water-related delay for the two teams with the longest championship droughts in the sport.
There had to be one more moment in the bottom of the 10th inning with the tying run on base that the Cubs had to encounter. Because. Well. Because.
“You really wouldn’t expect it any other way,” said Cubs ace Jon Lester, a relief pitcher in Game 7 for the first time since 2007.
There had to be heroes and goats, and goats who became heroes, and enough plot twists to stretch believability even if you were watching it all go down on a Wednesday night that became Thursday morning at Progressive Field. And there had to be one moment of such abject Cub pain — Rajai Davis’ tying two-run homer off Aroldis Chapman with two outs in the eighth inning — that would feel as if Steve Bartman came riding in on a billy goat while holding a black cat.
But ultimately these Cubs were not all those other Cubs teams. And so finally — at last — this was indeed the year.
The euphoria and a championship came at 12:47 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 3, 2016, 39,466 days since the last one or a period in which there were two World Wars, 18 U.S. presidents and 27 Yankee titles.
The Cubs scored twice in the 10th after a rain delay that actually “allowed us to regroup,” Hoyer said, and perhaps was “divine intervention after 108 years.” Right fielder Jason Heyward inspired his teammates with a speech about the quality of the individuals and the group.
The final was 8-7, and finality was key to this. Never again do the Cubs have to explain, explore or exorcise hexes. This team proved too formidable for the rest of the sport and the franchise’s entire jinxed history.
“We killed it, it is done, it is over,” Cubs catcher Miguel Montero said.
The Cubs might have cake-walked through a 103-win regular season, but they had to rally from a 2-1 deficit to win the NLCS over the Dodgers and they became just the fourth team ever to recover from a 3-1 deficit in the World Series with the final two games on the road.
The Cubs also were in control of World Series Game 7. They were counting down outs, the large contingent of fans that had invaded Progressive Field and certainly their faithful flocked into Wrigleyville.
Chapman entered with two outs in the eighth. Chicago led by three runs. The Cubs were four outs away from the largest party perhaps in baseball history — certainly the largest exhale.
This was the team and the time. They had taken a lead against Indians ace Corey Kluber and expanded against Andrew Miller — pretty much Public Enemy Nos. 1 and 2 to hitters this postseason.
David Ross, who had made a mess of things defensively in the bottom of the fifth, had homered in the top of the sixth to provide a 6-3 lead, the goat-to-hero motif.
And then it happened. Brandon Guyer doubled home the runner Jon Lester had left on base and Davis — starting in center field because rookie Tyler Naquin had made such a mess of Game 6 — homered to left. A Jim Leyritz homer. A homer you just didn’t see coming that changed, well, everything. The scoreboard. And seemingly history.
But the Cubs revitalized — Chapman ultimately will not be Bartman in Chicago. He actually got the win in this game by pitching a scoreless ninth.
In the end, the Cubs won behind a young core that should be superb for a long period — Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber — and had huge moments in Game 7, as did old hands Dexter Fowler, Ben Zobrist and, yes, Lester and Ross.
“There are no curses,” Hoyer said. “There never was. It is about having the best team. The Cubs are no different. When you have the best team, you can win and we won.”
So a baton finally has been passed from Tinker to Evers to Chance to Russell to Baez to Rizzo. The Cubs no longer have to talk about goats and a black cat, about 1908, about all the horrors of the past. That is because after all these years, they are champions:
They are, at last, the team of the present.