LEADING OFF: Cubs face Kershaw, try to end Series drought

The Cubs won Saturday night’s game the hard way, knocking out Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw. The current roster began to take shape following the 2011 season and it has evolved to where they are now, four wins away from a World Series championship. But throughout the season, this looked like it might be the year the Cubs could do it. We did so you don’t have to.

Pop star Rachel Platten will sing the national anthem before Game 1 of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs. “Guys split up and saw the fans, which is what they should have done”.

“For me, personally I had tears in my eyes”.

The Chicago Sun-Times caught up with the fan who was in the “Bartman seat” for Game 6 of the 2016 NLCS.

“Obviously we know that it’s something that’s going to be talked about with the history of the organization”, pitcher Jake Arrieta said. “I think about the fans and their parents and their grandparents and great-grandparents and everything that’s been going on here for a while”. The New York Mets won their season series over the Cubs by taking five of seven games.

Even Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who grew up in a Chicago suburb, was seen in a photo posted online by her press secretary with mouth agape in excitement as the Cubs clinched the pennant. “He’d be so proud!”

But during Saturday’s game, the Cubs gave fans some breathing room.

For some, all the heartache can be traced back to that last World Series appearance in 1945 and the “Curse of the Billy Goat”, when Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, cursed the club when asked to take his pet goat from the ballpark. Blizzard-hardened folk, their befuddling loyalty encompasses decades of frustration, disillusionment and too many sigh-filled pangs for “next year”. “Why not? That’s what the players were saying last night”.

They’re often pressed to explain their loyalty.

That pent-up desire might explain why more than 2.6 million people – about the population of Chicago – signed up for a drawing for a chance to buy the few thousand tickets the Cubs are now selling themselves. He then played on the Junior College World Series champion Grayson County College in Denison, where he went 10-3 with 88 strikeouts. But as far as is pitching, I believe as I got done saying, it’s a cookie-cutter answer, but you execute your fastball, you execute your pitches.

Cubs fans have always been conditioned to expect the worst through decades of team misery.

The Cubs advanced to the World Series for the first time since 1945 on Saturday. And some officers were seen giving high-fives to fans as they walked by. Maddon served as Mike Scioscia’s bench coach from 2000 to 2005, winning a 2002 World Series ring in the Los Angeles Angels’ only title.

Kenta Maeda, who won 16 games during his rookie season, struggled in the playoffs, and 20-year-old Julio Urias was knocked out in the fourth inning of his first postseason start in Game 4 on Wednesday night. “I love the city”, he said.