CUBS: Uncovered

NOVEMBER 2016

WORLD CHAMPS After being down by a 3-1 deficit, the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series in over a century

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Youngest team in History How five players under the age of 27, broke a 108-year curse

Contents

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World Series History

The Chicago Cubs made World Series history in a number of categories after their Game 7 victory over the Cleveland Indians

ON THE COVER:

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Building a Dynasty

The Cubs had primary players at five positions this season who were 26 years old or younger

Anthony Rizzo reacts after teammate Kris Bryant scored on Rizzo’s hit during the fifth inning of Game Seven of the World Series, Nov. 2, 2016

WORLD SERIES HISTORY

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ame 7 was a rollicking capper to a historic season. After being swept in the 2015 National League championship series, Chicago began this year 27-8, baseball’s best start since the 1984 Detroit Tigers went 30-5 (Detroit also won the World Series that year). Aside from a rough patch right before the All-Star break, the Cubs cruised to 103 regular season wins, the best record in baseball.

The Cubs know from hexes, however. Over the past quarter century, regular season success has cursed postseason glory. Only four teams with baseball’s best record over that span went on to win the World Series. The Cubs flirted with potential disastrous early playoff exit in the National League Division Series. While leading the San Francisco Giants 2 games-to-1 in a best of five, Chicago trailed 5-2 going into the top of the ninth inning of Game 4. San Francisco had developed a habit of winning world championships in even years (2010, 2012, 2014). A Giants victory would have sent the series back to Chicago for a decisive fifth game.

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Wrigley’s confines are friendly. But Cubs fans would have rather gone for a February dip in Lake Michigan than have to suffer through winner-take-all duel in the early playoff rounds. The Cubs, however, rallied to score four ninth-inning runs to close out the series.

Chicago would face the Los Angeles Dodgers for the pennant. After falling behind 2-1 in the series, the Cubs reeled off three straight victories, clinching the league championship at Wrigley on a crisp Saturday night. With the Cubs up 5-0 in Game 6 and five outs from the NL championship, Hendricks surrendered a single. Five outs: that’s all the Cubs needed back in 2003 before the Bartman incident sent Chicago spiraling. Many Cubs fans dreaded this sign. An innocent single can beget another stunning collapse. “I thought. ‘Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!,” says Holly Swyers, an anthropologist at Lake Forest (Ill.) College and author of the 2010 book Wrigley Regulars: Finding Community In The Bleachers.

“I’ll be OK. It’s not going to hurt as much as last time. But it will.”

The Dodgers, however, faded quietly. Chapman relieved Hendricks and induced double plays in the eighth and ninth innings to close out the series.

Wrigley partied hard. For Cubs fans, just reaching the World Series was a monumental victory in itself.

“It’s wonderful, but equally as strange,” said comedian Jeff Garlin in the days after the Cubs clinched the pennant and lost Game 1 of the World Series.

“It kind of threw me for a …what’s it called? Don Draper had it happen in his life, everything was a… what’s the term I’m looking for, when your life just spins in a direction, you have no idea … you’re a writer, dammit help me man!! … Ah, ah, ah … oh it’s going to come to me.. ohhhhhh … your whole life just turns upside down, I’ll get the phrase …

Ahhh, I got it! Existential crisis! I literally, I’m not even making this up, starting Saturday night, and through yesterday’s ballgame, I was approaching my work, approaching my marriage, approaching fatherhood differently. Everything sort of spun in a different way. Some for the good, some for the not good. It confused me. I’m not so confused anymore.

By the way, existential crisis over.”

It almost wasn’t. Cleveland took a 3-1 series lead, and Chicago’s bats looked lifeless. Cleveland pitching held the Cubs to just two runs in their three wins. Yet even as the Cubs faced elimination, the clubhouse didn’t panic. “We’re in the World Series, what better place to be, right?,” said Ross after Chicago’s 7-2 Game 4 loss. “There are lot worse things. There are a lot of guys at home wishing they were down 3-1, going into a World Series game in Wrigley Field.”

The Cubs were essentially channeling Maddon, Chicago’s impossibly chill manager. A sign hanging in their home locker room says “Don’t Let the Pressure Exceed the Pleasure.” This season he set up a strobe-light-equipped party room in Wrigley Field so the Cubs could celebrate home wins. After the Cubs held on for a 3-2 victory in Game 5 to send the series back to Cleveland, another locker room sign reminded Cubs players that on the team flight eastward, “Halloween costumes are encouraged.”

Maddon is known for his strategic acumen — though that rep may take a hit after Game 7 — and ability to get through to players. “During pregame workouts, or pregame batting practice, he’ll go up to guys and ask how they’re family is doing,” says Ken Ravizza, a Cubs mental skills consultant and longtime Maddon confidante. “Guys pick up on that. Athletes today have to know you care before they care about what you know.”

After the Cubs hired Maddon, Epstein dispatched him to Puerto Rico to chat with Baez, a first-round draft pick who hit just .169 upon reaching the majors in 2014. “He built trust with Javy,” says Epstein. “Javy’s a great guy, but he’s not quick to trust you. Joe went to his hometown, got to know him, went out of his way to show how he believed in him.” Baez was co-MVP, along with Lester, of the NLCS. “Joe has kind of deconstructed some of the norms you used to see in baseball, where young players are seen and not heard,” says Epstein. “He’s created an environment where players are rewarded for being themselves. As long as they prioritize winning they can have fun.”

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BUILDING A DYNASTY

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hey won the World Series, and that’s a lot for one night, especially for players and executives representing a franchise that hadn’t won since Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House.

the Cubs’ president of baseball operations. “But when you win, it gives people something to hold onto for the rest of their lives. It feels really good.”

But the Cubs are more than just the 2016 champions, and they know it. Tom Ricketts, Theo Epstein, Joe Maddon and dozens of others have worked to build a team that has a chance to be the second coming of the Yankees, circa 1996-2003, and everyone knows it.

Miguel Montero, an 11-year veteran who drove home the second run in the 10th-inning winning rally, expects that there will be a lot more winning in the Cubs’ future. They’re the youngest team to win the World Series since the 1969 Mets, and they are coming off a season in which they won 103 games, eight more than any other Major League team.

That’s why the nerve-wracking 10-inning Game 7 victory over the Indians was as gratifying as it was, well, epic. The season would have been successful even if the Cubs had lost after reaching the World Series for the first time since 1945, but no one wanted just to come close a year after being swept by the Mets in the National League Championship Series.

The Cubs had primary players at five positions this season who were in their age-26 season or younger, including veterans Anthony Rizzo and Jason Heyward, and that list didn’t include Javier Baez, who was used all over the field, and catcher Willson Contreras, who didn’t get promoted to the Major Leagues until late June.

“I wouldn’t have felt any different about the organization or the people or the character [if we hadn’t won],” said Epstein,

Third baseman Kris Bryant, 24, is a favorite to win the NL Most Valuable Player Award, and 23-year-old Kyle Schwarber used the World Series to remind fans that he could be just as productive as Bryant once he’s fully recovered from the reconstructive surgery on his left knee, which sidelined him almost all of this season.

Ricketts, who bought the franchise in 2009, has overseen a renovation project at Wrigley Field while providing both the vision to invest heavily in the farm system and give Epstein the opportunity to sign major free agents such as Jon Lester, Heyward, World Series MVP Ben Zobrist and John Lackey.

No one’s more thrilled to end the 108-year championship drought, but Ricketts wants more than just one parade. He wants to return the team to the tradition from its early years, in particular the ownership of William Wrigley Jr. Ricketts remains driven to attain a lofty goal.

“We want to get back to that consistency,” Ricketts said. “Make [Wrigley Field] the best, as it always has been -- and make it even better -- and get back to being a consistent winner, do whatever we can to restore the glory.”

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