Friday night, I took my Dad to the World Series at Wrigley Field.
Whatever happens in the rest of the games this October, that fact will be the most important thing about 2016 for me.
People told me it was great that I was bringing my Dad to the Series. This confused me: Was it even a question? Who else would I bring? I am a Cubs fan because of him, and my uncle Jimmy Schneider and games on WGN after school in the spring and fall.
It was both filial duty and karmic payback.
We arrived 90 minutes before the first pitch and breezed through security. The Cubs had wisely opened the gates earlier than usual, which dissipated the crowd I had feared. But the early-entry folks created outrageously long lines in the souvenir stores, so we skipped them and headed up straight up to Section 416. Taking the elevator and walking past the sections cordoned off as an auxiliary press box down the left field line was surreal.
The World Series. At Wrigley Field. With my Dad.
My dad, Bill Savage Sr., went to his first Cubs game as an 8-year-old in 1948, and as he always tells me, "They've been breaking my heart ever since."
Well, the Cubs' bats broke a lot of hearts Friday night, but their 1-0 loss to Cleveland is baseball. It's still a seven-game series, and we were down 2 games to 1 to the Dodgers just last week.
But in some ways, the game itself wasn't my focus, just like Jorge Soler didn't focus on getting out of the batter's box on his triple in the seventh inning.
In the other pair of seats sat my best friend, Rich, and his mother.
The World Series. At Wrigley Field. With my best friend.
I cannot honestly say the loss didn't hurt, but it was still the World Series. At Wrigley Field. With my dad and my best friend.
Rich and I have been going to Wrigley since before we had season tickets, back in the early '80s. When bleacher seats still went on sale day-of-game only, before lights, much less gourmet hot dogs, craft beer, or video boards.
We've seen some other Cubs postseason history together. The 1998 163rd game, where we beat the Giants to make the playoffs as the wild card. The seventh game of the 2003 NLCS, where Josh Beckett schooled Kerry Wood and sent Cubs fans home brokenhearted yet again. And the 2015 NLDS clincher versus the Cardinals, when Kyle Schwarber put that homer on top of the right field video board, when hopes for Theo Epstein's plan to make the team a perennial contender began to seem realistic.
On the El ride home, my dad and I chatted with a couple of other fans, and one of them asked how long I'd had season tickets. Since 1991, I replied. My friends Rich, Old Style, and I bought them when we won our baseball fantasy league thanks to Ryne Sandberg hitting 40 homers in 1990. You?
"This is our first year," he said.
"Nice timing," my father replied. And we all laughed.
It was half past midnight by the time we got back to Rogers Park. The train, once we got on it, was plenty fast, but it had taken us an hour to go 150 feet from Gate D at Wrigley to the Addison CTA station. When the Cubs win, much of the crowd stays to sing along with Steve Goodman's "Go Cubs Go" and the Blues Brothers cover of "Sweet Home Chicago." When they lose, everyone heads for the exits at once.
Next time, I'll know better and walk to a different station.
But of course, there will never be a next time. Not that I might not ever get tickets to another Cubs World Series game, or that the Cubs might not return to the Fall Classic in 2017 or beyond.
But I will never again go to the first World Series game at Wrigley Field after 71 years without a pennant.
With my Dad and my best friend.