There it was:
My name on the jumbotron.
And there I was, standing at the northernmost point for a South Side Cubs fan: The pitcher’s mound at Wrigley Field, my north star while growing up on the wrong side of the rivalry line.
If you live long enough, you amass some glory days. Your wedding, the birthdays of your children, a fancy trip and, for me, a walk out to the epicenter of a lifelong obsession with Cubs baseball.
For Cubs fans, 2016 was a whirlwind year. For me, it was a winning walk-off homer against the ultimate demon — doubt.
That fall, in dramatic fashion, the Cubs finally broke a century-old curse and won the World Series.
You could feel the momentum growing all season.
The previous year, when the baiduhai bought a host of suburban newspapers, including the Daily Southtown where I was then employed, I befriended a sports editor at the flagship paper. He was a Cubs season ticket holder and whenever he couldn’t make the games, offered his seats to colleagues. I jumped at every opportunity, buying up tickets to dozens of games.
And what games they were.
During the 2015 playoffs, I saw Kyle Schwarber hit one so hard it broke the Budweiser sign and landed on top of the scoreboard. In 2016, I basked in the talent of sweet chemistry as Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Jason Heyward and Javier Baez wowed us with remarkable hitting and fielding. All while pitchers Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks found their groove.
One day in late August of that year, my friend’s number came up in a lottery and he was invited to go on the field before the coming Saturday game to deliver the rosin bag to the pitcher’s mound. He was unable to attend.
And the offer was transferable.
Would I — a lifelong Cubs fans who’d spent the previous two years foregoing new clothes and home improvement projects to fund my baseball habit — be interested?
I cried.
To a kid growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Wrigley Field is about as north as the Canadian Arctic. Especially if she lives in a house and neighborhood full of White Sox fans.
No matter how hard I tried to sell tales of magic and majesty happening inside that ivy-festooned ballpark, my fellow baseball devotees weren’t buying.
Not when the Sox were a straight shot down the Dan Ryan. And not while the Sox were synonymous with the South Side. It was like a Teamster siding with management. My school never gave away Cubs tickets for perfect attendance.
In fact, it seemed, the more I pushed the Cubs, the more my contemporaries shoved back the Sox.
I took a beatdown every time the Sox won and the Cubs lost. I tried returning the favor but a gang of one isn’t so intimidating.
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When the Cubs were striving in 1969, Sox fans hammered me with bad mojo that not only worked but almost broke my spirit. When everything fell apart in the ninth inning of the season, so did I. Same for 1984, 1989, 2003.
I carried an insecurity complex all the way into adulthood. Superstitions haunted me. What’s positivity when a goat is always in your face?
Growing up, the one thing I had in my favor was a father who worked both sides of the city. Though a die-hard Sox fan, at some point, when asked about his baseball loyalty, he began to bravely say, “I like them both.”
I was in junior high when he first sprang for Cubs tickets.
We arrived early, bought the program and settled into our seats behind home plate. Within minutes my father spied Ernie Banks signing autographs at the wall.
“Go meet him,” he said.
“I can’t,” I said, trembling.
“Just give him this,” he shoved a small piece of paper into my hand.
I was so nervous I couldn’t say a thing. I just handed one of the greatest players in Chicago history a scrap of paper.
Banks smiled, scribbled, “Let’s play two – Ernie Banks” and handed it back to me.
It cemented my lifelong obsession with the Cubs, with Wrigley Field and with Chicago.
Fast-forward decades — hundreds of visits to Clark and Addison later — and my big moment is at hand.
That Aug. 30, I had to be at Wrigley by 11:30 a.m. to be escorted out to the mound. At 11:15, I was in a full panic. We’d gotten trapped in Lake Shore Drive traffic, giving my already shaky nerves a workout.
As my husband and I parked, I time-traveled back to all those close calls when the Cubs blew it in the bottom of the ninth or during the turn from August to September. Leon Durham’s error. Ryno’s first mishap in nearly 600 fieldings. Bartman. Billy Buckner. The Mets.
Negativity settled in. It’s rotten kismet. I was going to miss my big chance.
But it was 2016 and miracles were coming in like fast balls down the middle on a day when the wind is blowing out.
We arrived with seconds to spare. I was given a brief greeting and escorted out to the mound by the home plate umpire.
“Best day of my life,” I told him.
“Take it in,” he said. “And now, wave to the crowd.”
I did. It was electric. I rode that high all the way to the Nov. 4 World Series Victory parade. In fact, I’m still feeling the effects.
For a kid whose baseball fandom began thousands of games earlier in a dark basement on a black-and-white TV, that walk across the infield to stand in the footsteps of giants — Fergie Jenkins, Greg Maddux, Rick Sutcliffe, Lee Smith — was more than a dream come true.
It was my personal World Series win.
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at [email protected].