As Game 6 of the World Series approaches, Frankfort’s Jeff Modjeski has found a relative sense of calm.
A Cubs fan for roughly half the time the team has had its last World Series title, the 53-year-old Calumet City native has already survived his postseason crisis of confidence, which crested in the wee hours of Friday morning in an airport terminal in San Francisco.
Now, he’s nearly Zen about the likelihood of the Cubs winning in Game 7, though the Cubs trail 3-2 and the Indians have a shot to wrap things up Tuesday night.
“I have hope,” Modjeski said. “I like our starting pitching matchup Tuesday, and I think we can get (Indians ace Corey) Kluber the third time (in Game 7).”
Then, though, he was half a country away from Wrigley Field, a ticket to the first World Series game to be played on that hallowed ground since 1945 waiting for him in Chicago. Given his flight to the coast had been delayed 2 1/2 hours, Modjeski was uncomfortable with the return scheduled to arrive barely three hours before game time.
“I was petrified — which is why I was scrambling like an idiot Thursday night, trying to get a flight home,” he said.
Somewhere amid the scramble, Modjeski, an IBM project manager on assignment in San Francisco and not a particularly devout man, posted this to Facebook:
“Oh dear sweet baby Jesus, please let me get on a red-eye flight tonight, as American has oversold it. If I can’t fly standby on that, dear baby Jesus, please let me get on the sold out flight tomorrow at 7 a.m. And if that doesn’t work, baby Jesus, please don’t let my original flight at 9:15 tomorrow morning be delayed, as I have a World Series ticket waiting for me when I get to Chicago. Amen.”
Modjeski first went to a Cubs game with his dad on a tavern bus trip in 1969. He went to a Cubs fantasy camp in 2005, noting, “That was the most important thing that happened that year.”
(Not if you ask Paul Konerko.)
He’d proved his Cubs bona fides to his ticket benefactor, work buddy and season ticket holder Don McBride, years ago.
“We’d shoot out of work on a Friday afternoon and go sit in the bleachers on a $10 ticket,” Modjeski said. “That was back in the days when I’d get all hammered and fall asleep on the train ride home. I always say, Don was a big part of my divorce.”
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Getting the ticket was cause for even greater celebration.
“You start thinking about all your Cubs fan buddies — and certainly my dad, and all my cousins,” Modjeski said. “You start thinking, ‘How lucky am I to be going to the first World Series game at Wrigley Field in 71 years?”
He’d need a little more luck. The red-eye, with $620 in change fees, was out. But there was another standby shot, at 5 a.m.
At the airport by 4 a.m., Modjeski was dismayed to discover, “they wouldn’t even put me on the standby list.”
“Strike One,” he reported to his Facebook audience.
Strike Two never came. By the time Modjeski got to the gate for the 7 a.m. flight, he discovered he was No. 1 on the standby list. Fifteen minutes before the flight, his name was called.
“I think Ron Santo hacked into the system and moved my name up,” Modjeski said.
Modjeski never had to risk getting delayed on his scheduled flight — fortunately.
“That was the day that plane caught on fire at O’Hare — if I was on my original flight I would have been re-routed to Detroit,” he said. “But the best part of the story is on the 7 a.m. I got seated next to an Indians fan who was flying out just to go to Wrigleyville and hang out in the bars with a friend.”
Upon landing, the Indians fan, known only to Modjeski as “Wick,” asked for recommendations on getting to Wrigley. Modjeski said, “Jump in the car with me.”
Armed with a neighborhood parking pass, Modjeski drove around for 45 minutes — he dropped Wick off after half an hour — before finding a spot. But, eventually, he got into the ballpark.
Along the way, he missed a magical moment in a friend’s family. The daughter of his frequent golfing companion, Terry Biondo of Homer Glen, got engaged in front of the Harry Caray statue outside of Wrigley shortly before the game. Alison Biondo, a Lockport High School graduate, accepted the proposal of Orland Park native Wally Bafia — who convinced another fan to shoot video of the moment.
“She says ‘yes,'” Modjeski said. “Then she just blurts out, ‘Holy cow!'”
Perfect. Not unlike the moment Modjeski laid eyes on the diamond.
“The coolest thing was just walking up the stairs,” he said. “Seeing the bunting, the huge crowd, the rooftops packed, the vines turning a different color — it was like going to Wrigley for the first time, because I’d never seen it like that before.”
The game, a 1-0 Cubs loss, didn’t work out as he’d hoped. After Saturday’s loss dropped the Cubs to the brink of elimination, Modjeski, a realist among the eternally optimistic Cubs faithful, offered a Sunday post:
“What should I watch tonight: The Walking Dead, Episode 2; or The Walking Dead, Game 5?”
He went with Game 5, but continued the theme, saying, “I watched that game like a zombie — all by myself, in the living room, no cheering. I didn’t even have a beer. I was sick to my stomach through the whole thing.”
The question I come back to is, why? After all, these ballplayers aren’t fretting about us, they’re not really Chicagoans…
“I had that talk with my wife (Pauline) the other day,” Modjeski said. “In the end, there’s something primal about being a Cubs fan. It’s in your bones.”
This is where I’m supposed to write something like, “As bones break, so do hearts. And Cubs fans are poised now for heartbreak of the highest order.”
Even Modjeski, not one to go in for goats and such, said, “They’re the best team in baseball, by far. If they don’t win, maybe they really are cursed.”
Don’t believe it. If they don’t win, they’ll be back to try again, often. In fact, for the next few years, Modjeski just might want to start scheduling his vacations for late October.
The effectiveness of Facebook prayers aside, why risk it?
Phil Arvia is a freelancer for the Daily Southtown.