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player ready...For Tom Paesel and Steven Rydberg, being diehard Cubs fans in the southwest suburbs has been a tough road through the years.
The two friends and Orland Park residents have had to endure many taunts and jeers deep in White Sox Territory as their beloved team continued to struggle in its century-plus quest to win the World Series.
“I am 63 years old, and I have to put up with the ridicule time and again,” Paesel said. “And in 2005 it was relentless (when the White Sox broke an 88-year drought and won the World Series).”
In 2014, after another dismal season and another October without his beloved Cubs playing baseball, Paesel decided he needed to take a more active role in getting the Cubs to succeed.
He and Rydberg created their own wine, called “Rue the Goat,” in an attempt to ward off any lingering effects of the legendary curse applied to the team in 1945 (the last time the Cubs participated in the World Series) by a restaurateur and his goat who were removed from the game at Wrigley Field.
“I’ve lived my whole life loving the Cubs, and I’m passionate enough to do something to overturn the curse,” Paesel said.
The pair took their endeavor seriously. Telling friends of their resolve, one of the friends came up with the name “Rue the Goat” with the intent of overturning the curse. They made 35 bottles, complete with label and artwork depicting the banished goat and dismissing its effects.
The pinot noir made with Peruvian grapes was reserved solely for other rabid Cubs fans. To date, they have five bottles left.
“I am somewhat superstitious. Look where they are. They are in the playoffs,” Paesel said. “At the beginning of the year, no one picked the Cubs to go to the playoffs. They were 50 to 1 in Vegas to win the World Series.
“I like to think the wine we created helped,” he said.
Rydberg, a trader at the Chicago Board of Trade, and Paesel, a real estate broker with Coldwell Banker in Orland Park, have been friends for 10 years with a shared love for the Cubs and wine.
It was Rydberg’s wine-making supplies that were used along with Paesel’s vision of warding off the dreaded curse.
“It was our first attempt (at making wine together), and everyone seems to like it,” Rydberg said.
One of the lucky few who received a bottle was Gregory Byron, of Flossmoor, who grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Chicago Heights where wine making was a given. Byron, who passed the litmus test of a lifelong suffering Cubs fan, said the wine is “actually wonderful. “
Byron was not only happy to take the wine but also to do whatever it takes to help the Cubs.
“We will take anything. I’m not picky. They are in the playoffs, it had to be the wine,” he said with a laugh.
Patricia Trebe is a freelance reporter.