Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

It began with a covert coffee at Starbucks. It continued with a “shot and a beer” at the Cubby Bear. And for the last three Octobers, the drink of choice has been champagne.

Sure, you could measure the accomplishments of the Ricketts regime in a conventional way — victory totals that surged into triple digits. Or postseason appearances.

But isn’t it more fun to do it by beverages?

The transformation of the organization can be felt in intangible ways too. Fans once flocked to Wrigley Field simply to chug Old Styles and get a tan. Now they come to witness history.

For the longest time, ticket holders walked past a parking lot on their way to the entrance at Clark and Addison. Now they amble through a plaza that doubles as a venue for picnics, yoga and walk-up movies.

A discordant clubhouse with salsa music blaring from a boombox on one end and country twang at the other is now circular and harmonious — with every player viewed equally.

Corked bats have been supplanted by dancing relievers.

This is the Golden Era of Cubs baseball. Not since 1906-08 have the Cubs gone this far, reaching three consecutive National League Championship Series — and, of course, ending their infamous 107-year title drought in 2016.

And it all started, in many ways, with a fellow whose name you probably do not recall.

Noah Pinzur.

‘Are you Theo Epstein?’

Tom Ricketts’ first full season as Cubs chairman looked a lot like the Tribune Co.’s final season, 2009. The 2010 Cubs drew 3 million fans who received no postseason payoff. The 2011 team was horrendous, committing the most errors in baseball.

When Ricketts asked 20 baseball allies to recommend the best man to run his team, all but one replied: Theo Epstein. Boy Wonder had transformed his hometown Boston Red Sox and had a season left on his contract, but Ricketts courted him, saying he knew Epstein was right for the job after 10 minutes of conversation.

Epstein was attending to a caffeine fix on Oct. 8, 2011, when a Lincoln Park resident spotted him at a Starbucks. “Excuse me,” the man asked. “Are you Theo Epstein?”

Epstein replied: “Who is Theo Epstein?”

That only solidified Pinzur’s theory. Epstein confirmed the tale at his first Cubs news conference.

The Yale alum, named for the younger brother of artist Vincent Van Gogh, brought his own lingo to Wrigley Field. An organization that had been run by Jim Hendry, a straight-talking former scout and college coach, now had an Ivy League alumnus who spoke of “parallel fronts” and “information-management systems.”

Epstein’s analytics background made him a quintessential rep of the “Moneyball” generation, but this leader also had a humorous streak more befitting Lucille Ball.

More Top Picks Ratings

“I should probably have another press conference right now to resign because my popularity definitely has to be at an all-time high,” Epstein joked on that October Tuesday. “It has peaked and it’s only going to go downhill because, in baseball, when you make moves, if you do a great job, you’re right 55 percent of the time. So the other 45 percent of the time, you’re going to tick some people off.”

A 55-45 split?

OK, there was the Edwin Jackson signing. The Justin Wilson trade flopped. And a superb glove and stirring rain-delay speech probably can’t justify Jason Heyward’s $184 million contract.

But the trades for Jake Arrieta, Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Hendricks, Addison Russell, Carl Edwards Jr. and Mike Montgomery qualify as outright thievery, and without the signings of Jon Lester, Dexter Fowler, Ben Zobrist and David Ross or the drafting of Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber and Albert Almora Jr., 2016 would have yielded salty tears rather than chilled champagne.

‘Shot and a beer’

The Chicago media’s Nov. 3, 2014 introduction to Joe Maddon would have been memorable enough for lines such as, “Don’t ever permit the pressure to exceed the pleasure.”

But then Maddon outdid himself. Wearing a Cubs jersey over a colorful dress shirt, he grabbed the microphone at the Cubby Bear and asked: “Where’s the bartender? Barkeep? I’ve got the drinks right now. One round’s on me, please … that’s a shot AND a beer. That’s the Hazleton way. Shot and a beer.”

Maddon was a baseball lifer who already had blown out 60 candles, but his new-school vibe was in direct contrast to predecessors such as Dale Sveum, Lou Piniella, Dusty Baker and Don Baylor. Rick Renteria had done a serviceable job in 2014, coaxing 73 wins from a group that hit just .239, and had one year left on his contract.

But Epstein viewed Maddon as “the perfect guy at the perfect time,” according to Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, to boost morale and create a winning environment.

Maddon learned the importance of hard work from his father, Joe “The Plumber,” of Hazleton, Pa.

The former high school quarterback and minor-league catcher brought nine years of experience from Tampa, Fla., where he twice won Manager of the Year with the Rays. He emphasized both the quantifiable — shifting infielders based on spray charts — and the psychological — T-shirt slogans such as “Embrace the Target” and “Do Simple Better.”

Maddon said yes to the Cubs after Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer romanced him and wife Jaye over a $10 bottle of wine (the most expensive they could find at a Publix) at an RV park near Pensacola, Fla. Maddon left a $2 million-a-year job with the Rays to sign for $25million over five years with the Cubs.

Ricketts began to get his money’s worth at that first news conference. Maddon called Wrigley Field a “cathedral” and said his first experience there, as manager of the Rays, made him think of “Gladiator”: “I’m walking out to the mound to get the ball and give it to the next guy. I’m walking back in and I’m looking up at the sky, and it’s perfectly blue. Not kind of blue, perfectly blue. … You have to understand something about your ballpark. It is magical.”

Maddon would immediately become part of the community rather than seeking a fortress in the suburbs.

“I want to live somewhere downtown,” he said. “I love the energy, the vibe. I’m not going to hide. I don’t want a gated community. I don’t want a country club. I want to be right in the middle of everything. I want to feel everything.”

‘Try not to suck’

Long before we witnessed Arrieta throw a no-hitter, Javy Baez blow a home-run bubble, Rizzo scream for respect, Lester lob one to first, Schwarber dent a wall, Bryant go into the souvenir baseball business, Hendricks work the corners, Aroldis Chapman hit 103 mph and Zobrist go “oppo” in Game 7, the Cubs were like most corporate-run franchises. They wanted to win … but at a price.

Andy MacPhail began working for the Cubs while still in college, hawking tickets for their minor-league affiliate in Bradenton, Fla. The Tribune Company purchased the team in 1981 and lured him back in 1994, after MacPhail engineered the deals that brought two World Series titles to Minnesota.

Now president of the Phillies, MacPhail admires how Ricketts, Epstein & Co. ended a century of frustration and failure.

“The way they’ve invested has been flawless — everything on and off the field,” MacPhail said in a telephone interview. “The ballpark itself. The green space. The offices. The baseball facilities, whether they be in Mesa or the Dominican Republic or the clubhouse in Wrigley Field. They had a game plan, they articulated the plan and they followed the plan. It worked.”

After paying $845 million for the club, the Ricketts family has poured a reported $750 million into the ballpark and area development. The boutique Hotel Zachary will open next year, affording views of a charming, triangular-shaped park that hosts outdoor concerts, farmers markets and an ice skating rink in the winter.

Inside the walls of the 103-year-old building is beyond what MacPhail could have imagined.

During his tenure as team president from 1994-2006, the Cubs’ domino-shaped clubhouse was cramped, with players and media members practically stepping over one another after games. The weight room would have merited a two-star Yelp review and there were dents in the walls as a result of pinch hitters taking cuts to stay loose.

“Our players suffered for a long time with that clubhouse,” MacPhail said. “There were real-life limitations. We had been under the impression that it wasn’t practical to expand below the road. They went ahead and made that investment, albeit as a cost. They created an outstanding space.”

A publicly held company like Tribune, MacPhail believes, would not have been able to justify an investment in the hundreds of millions. The Ricketts family members answer only to themselves.

The Cubs lost big during Epstein’s first three years, trading away assets and securing higher draft picks.

At an instructional-league fall camp in 2013, coaches began to laud good plays by shouting, “That’s Cub!”

Epstein added it to the team manual, turning it into an acronym for C “the Courage to do the right thing,” U “the Urgency to do the right thing right now” and B “the Belief that we can do it.”

Among those catchphrases that have been flushed: “Lovable Losers” and “Cubby Occurrence,” coined by Piniella to capture things such as Sammy Sosa injuring his back on a sneeze or a Kerry Wood hot-tub flub.

The ultimate Maddonism came to light during the 2016 Cubs Convention, when Baez was asked what advice his manager gave him after getting promoted to the big leagues.

Replied Baez: “Try not to suck.”

They have not sucked since 2014.

This season ended in sober fashion, of course, after a blowout loss to the Dodgers.

But we’re here to enjoy the back-to-back-to-back 90-plus-win seasons, the dominance/survival of the division series, the three consecutive trips to the NLCS. And the fact the Cubs are going nowhere. Their average position player, weighted by at-bats and games played, was 27.1 years of age.

More Top Picks Best Grab Bars For Bathroom Safety

And thanks to the Rickettses’ long-term vision and you — the ticket-buying, TV-watching and jersey-purchasing fan — the Cubs promise to have upper-echelon resources for the long haul.

“Bizarro world,” Maddon said.

He was talking about the Cubs’ 9-8 series-clinching victory over the Nationals, which featured two errors, a passed ball, a catcher’s interference and a run-scoring hit-by-pitch — all in the same inning.

Drenched in celebratory champagne, Maddon also might have created a slogan that befits the transformation of the Cubs.

BIZARRO WORLD.

Put that on a T-shirt.

[email protected]

Twitter @TeddyGreenstein