My grandmother moved from a tiny village in England to a small town in Canada in the late 1940s, by way of a cross-continental bus trip starting in New York City. In that small fishing town where most of her children still live, she fell in love with and married my grandfather, a doctor from Ireland. Somewhere along the line, despite living in a country obsessed with the sport of hockey, she became enamoured with baseball. Nobody knows exactly why, but at some point she chose the Chicago Cubs as her team. Her love of her Cubbies never wavered, even though year after year she saw them fail to claim baseball's ultimate prize.
She loved Ryne Sandberg - she thought he was cute. Harry Caray was naturally her favourite commentator. My fondest memories as a child are of watching the Cubbies with my grandma in the basement of her house. If the Cubbies were winning, she would rib my granddad, a Cardinals fan. If the Cubbies were losing, she would lose all of her proper English manners and scream and curse at the TV like any of the most passionate Canadian sports fans you can meet.
One of the most exciting times of my life was the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Of course, it seemed inevitable in our family that the two sluggers chasing baseball's most prestigious record should represent the favourite teams of my grandmother and grandfather, respectively. When Sosa lost out to McGwire, my grandma was beside herself. Once again, a Cubbie had fallen short.
I remember the infamous Steve Bartman incident. I remember how, prior to his snatching the ball out of Moises Alou's glove, Sammy Sosa launched a bomb out of Wrigley Field. My grandma stood up and cheered. When Bartman did what he did, all five-foot-nothing of my grandma launched out of her chair, wagging her finger at the TV as she screamed and cursed at the top of her lungs. Though it was never easy to be a Cubs fan, she never wavered in her support of baseball's perennial underdogs. She would joke often that she refused to die before her Cubbies won a World Series.
My grandfather was very ill when the Cardinals won in 2006, and in fact died not long after that series. I remember him refusing to go to bed before the end of the final game, storming out of his bedroom in his underwear with my aunt in tow, bursting into the TV room with a huge smile on his face to see his team claim the championship. My grandma was naturally happy for her dying husband, but she still harboured some competitive resentment that his team got to win so much (going back to the 60s and 80s) before her beloved Cubbies.
After my grandfather died, my grandma lived alone in the large house where they raised their six children. She hated it. It was empty and quiet and undoubtedly lonely, probably the loneliest she'd ever felt. Even though we'd visit her often, her favourite days were those with Cubs games, because the whole family would gather to watch the team with her.
Over the past five years or so, my grandma has had to suffer with terrible Alzheimer's and dementia. She's lived in a home for a long time, and we've all had to watch as she slowly lost her faculties. Now, on a good day she'll recognise her own children, but mostly she stares flatly into the distance. It crushes me to see the vibrant, sassy woman who helped raise me as my mother struggled with alcoholism reduced to a shell of her older self. It crushes me more to see what her current condition does to my father and his siblings. They wear the years of her illnesses on their faces in heavy lines and sunken expressions. Something we could always hold on to was Cubs games. We'd sit with her, holding her hand as she slept or stared at the floor, watching the Cubs on the big screen in the home.
When the Cubs started getting it together these past couple of years, everybody in my family would share sidelong glances of optimism, never daring to say aloud what we all hoped: that they might finally win a World Series for grandma. This past week has been an emotional roller coaster. During Game 6, my brother and his family showed up with a Cubs cap for my grandma. He put it on her head, and she grabbed his hands. She was murmuring something to him, but nobody could understand her; her speech has long since left her. My brother's daughter, all of five years old, touched his arm and said, "Daddy, she's trying to thank you." My brother looked my grandma in the eyes and said, "You're welcome." She sighed deeply, let go of his hands, and fixed her sight on the game.
Tonight, everybody in my family who still lives in the small fishing village my grandparents decided to call home was in my grandma's room, watching the Cubs game. Cousins living in different cities were Facetiming so we could all watch it as a family. We were getting text updates from aunties and uncles watching hundreds of miles away. What a game! One of the best baseball games I've ever seen: a game full of ups and downs, joy and despair, optimism and pessimism. My grandma was wearing her new Cubs hat, but she slept through the entire game until the 9th inning, at which point most of us joked that she would probably want to go back to sleep.
When the final out came in the bottom of the 10th, we cheered as loudly as we could at 10 o'clock in an old persons' home. We cracked open a bottle of champagne and my uncle took my grandma by the hands and told her that her Cubbies had won the World Series. We weren't sure if she understood what was going on, but she looked from my uncle to the screen and back again, and suddenly her old experienced eyes welled with tears and a huge grin spread across her face. She laid her head back in her wheelchair and relaxed. We snuck her some champagne - she's not allowed to drink but damn it, she deserves it - and all shared hugs as the celebrations carried on on the TV and around the room.
As I finish this, there are over 2000 comments and I know it will likely get buried, but I wanted to share the experience of a dedicated, lifelong Cubs fan. I know my grandma isn't the only old-timer with tears in their eyes tonight. Sports can seem petty at times, or base or meaningless, but seeing the reaction of my grandma - seeing her lucidity and understanding that her Cubbies had finally done it after decades of failure - was a stark reminder of the beauty and power and poetry of sports, especially the sport of baseball. It's tied to so many wonderful memories I have of my family, and tonight the Chicago Cubs gave us one more. I won't forget it for as long as I live, and I know my grandma won't either.