Part of being a lifelong Cubs fan is that you never bother to plan what will happen when the Cubs win the World Series, because you’re too busy worrying about other, more likely possibilities. Like what to do if you’re in a plane crash, or your house burns down, or, I don’t know, a sea of angry merpeople storms Loyola Beach.
Now it’s the morning after. I don’t think the world has ended, or maybe the afterlife is a lot like the regular world, except that it’s November 3, and the window is open, the sun is out, and I can hear and smell someone cutting grass outside. I am sitting at my desk drinking coffee and eating a scone I stress-baked during the tenth-inning rain delay. (My stress-baking tally for this World Series: one tray of nachos, one lemon-drizzle cake, two brioche loaves, four chocolate brioches, and eight chocolate-chip scones, plus one batch of brioche dough that ended up in the trash.)
2016 World Series.
Cubs vs Indians
And then the world will end with the score tied in game seven in extra innings #apocalypse
— GIO (@RaysFanGio) November 4, 2014
CPD – Clark & Addison – EMS needed for the guy who climbed up a pole and then fell down 00:45 #ChicagoScanner
— Chicagoland Scanner (@CFGScanner) November 3, 2016
I still don’t feel ready to face the existential questions. Like, what will it mean to be a Cubs fan now that I have actually seen them win a World Series? What will happen to our long heritage of self-deprecating humor and superstition? Will anyone ever be able to listen to Steve Goodman’s “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” ever again, or will we be stuck with its inferior and peppy alter ego “Go, Cubs, Go”? Will the Cubs become assholes, like the Boston Red Sox? Will Cub fans become entitled and obnoxious instead of drunk and obnoxious? Will my misty reminiscences of 1984, 1989, and 2003 somehow become irrelevant because a younger generation will never remember the Cubs sucking? (Oh my God, am I old now?) How can I justify rooting for Aroldis Chapman, domestic violence perpetrator? (Was it a sign from somewhere that he choked in the eighth and allowed the Indians to tie?)
