HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!

The CUBS WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


FUCK YES!!!!!

In 1908 major league baseball was played in ten cities (eleven if you count Brooklyn, which had only been part of New York for a decade) across seven states (and DC). The St. Louis Browns and Cardinals were as far west as the leagues went, and you got there by train. Addison and Waveland was home to a seminary.

Roger Connor held the career home run record with 138; Ned Williamson's 27 remained the single-season mark. The Federal League had not yet been dreamed of; the Negro Leagues were not yet organized. The first expansion was fifty-two years away. There was no designated hitter, no save statistic, and no free agency. Every player was either white or close enough to pretend to be.

The Titanic had not yet been sunk; indeed, it had not yet been built. There was no concept of a global, or "world" war, let alone a protracted conflict which would use flying machines and poison gas as a matter of course. Russia was collapsing under Nicholas II. Turkey was controlled by the Ottomans, and a week before the Series the empire of Austria-Hungary officially took control of Sarajevo. The forty-six United States were about to replace Theodore Roosevelt with William Taft. The Brits were ruled by Edward VII. Einstein was still working on general relativity and both Pluto and penicillin were unknown to science. The airplane, the automobile, and the motion picture were all wondrous new frontiers, and the telephone was as old as the internet is today.

The Gerontology Research Group lists twenty-two known human beings living today who are confirmed to have been at least five years old in October 1908. All but one are female, five are American-born, and none lived in Illinois or Michigan. It is an effective certainty that of the approximately 6,300 people at Detroit's Bennett Park on October 14, 1908, none are still alive. The memory of the Cubs' victory, be it witnessed, read, or overheard, exists in the mind of no person. Great-great-grandparents born after that date are being buried.

The Cubs were the first team to win the World Series twice. Since then, the world has marched on and the game has rebuilt itself time and again. Of the original sixteen teams, the Cubs (and the Indians) are now tied for last among franchise championships. But they have not been left behind. They have not folded or moved; they have thrived as one of the most popular teams in the country. It is the romance of eternal struggle which brings the world to Wrigley, a struggle against the odds, against time, against the dying of the light. All people, all Americans know this struggle deep within them; it is where baseball becomes a metaphor for life. It is why we come back to this game every spring: the standings reset, the grass is fresh, and the promise of the dream stretches before us.

And every once in a while you get your chance to break through.