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Did you cry when the Cubs won the pennant? You weren't alone

CHICAGO — The thing that struck you were the tears.

They started rolling as the ninth inning, the Fox cameras catching Cubs fans at Wrigley Field as decades of emotions welled in the corner of their eyes before bursting through. The moment many thought would never came claimed so many people. Not even Bill Murray was immune.

After 71 years, the Chicago Cubs were finally going to the World Series again.

“This is as special as it gets in sports,” Anthony Rizzo said about 10 minutes after squeezing a double-play throw from Javier Baez to seal the 5-0 Game 6 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I know my parents are crying. I know my girlfriend is crying. Everyone’s crying.”

About 20 minutes later, Jon Lester’s mother found him on the field. She was sobbing.

“C’mon ma,” Lester said as he hugged her tight. “Stop.”

She didn’t. She couldn’t.

The tears were for so many things. They were for the achievement, of course. After 103 regular-season wins, this young Cubs team had won its second straight playoff series to punch its ticket to the World Series, which begins on Tuesday in Cleveland. The group is so tight-knit and it plays such a beautiful brand of baseball that you can see why it moved so many close to the team.

But for for the fans, the tears were also for so many other things.

It was for relatives no longer with us. One man waved a posterboard sign that said “Best fan in heaven: Mom” with a picture of a woman wearing a Cubs hat in a hospital bed. “I wish my dad was alive” trended on Facebook because so many people were posting that phrase in relation to the Cubs.

It was for people no longer near us, too. Fans texted and called others from the stands when they could catch a signal. When’s the last time so many sons and daughters called their mothers and fathers that late on a Saturday night?

And it was for the fans themselves. All of the ones who filed into Wrigley game after game on frigid April days and scorching afternoons in July. The ones who became fans once WGN TV’s signal went wide and those who were drawn to the team because their father was into the Cubs and his father was, too. Being a baseball fan means tolerating so many disappointments, as many as 100 a season, while waiting for the occasional triumphs.

And who has known that better than Cubs fans, who saw their team lose four NLCS rounds before exulting after its fifth? It’s been 25,945 days since the Cubs last played in a World Series game. In that time, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, the Dodgers moved out of Brooklyn and the National League grew from eight teams. Every player who played in that 1945 World Series for the Cubs is now dead, Lennie Merullo being the last to pass in May of 2015 at the age of 98.

Cubs fans celebrate the NL pennant. (AP)
Cubs fans celebrate the NL pennant. (AP)

Think of how many people you know. How many were around in 1945? Neither presidential candidate was. Donald Trump would be born the following summer and it’d be another two years until Hillary Clinton was born at Edgewater Hospital, a now-defunct facility just a short drive from Wrigley on Chicago’s North Side.

To use more Cubs-centric examples, Ernie Banks was 14 in 1945, Ron Santo was 7. Harry Caray had just wrapped his first season in broadcasting, calling games for both the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns. That late trio was first among Cubs fans minds on Saturday night.

Meanwhile, Billy Williams, a Hall of Famer and the most revered living Cub, was only three. He celebrated along with current players on Saturday, donning ski goggles and cradling a bottle of champagne.

So many people feel part of this. Former Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster, who was traded for Game 6 winner Kyle Hendricks in 2012 and is now a special assistant for the team, made sure to credit Theo Epstein’s predecessor, who delivered series co-MVP Javier Baez, among others: “I’m happy for Jim Hendry, everybody,” Dempster shouted to another member of Hendry’s front office as the crowd roared.

Down in the clubhouse, Cubs players danced and sprayed each other with bubbly. Hendricks took questions from reporters and said he couldn’t quite understand what this meant to Cubs fans, having grown up elsewhere. But all he had to do was go back out onto the field to see the crowds that still thronged the dugouts more than 90 minutes after the final out. All he had to do was try to move his car out of the players parking lot, where the exit was lined with fans screaming each player’s name as he wheeled his car out and headed into the packed streets of Wrigleyville.

The scene was so frenetic, so emotional that you had to occasionally pause and remind yourself that the Cubs still have four more games to win to rid themselves of the 108-year title drought, something that no one on Earth is capable of remembering.

But make no mistake, this Cubs’ pennant is a milestone for the many who were repeatedly taught the World Series was for fans of other teams, but never lost hope that one day it’d be Wrigley lit up on the sport’s biggest stage.

That night finally arrives on Friday for Game 3.

“You stand out on that platform afterwards and you’re looking at the ballpark and the fans and the W flags everywhere, and truthfully I do think about everybody,” Maddon said in his postgame press conference. “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.”

After the game, Maddon was approached on the field by rock star Eddie Vedder, who grew up a Cubs fan in nearby Evanston, struggling through the days when the only highlight might be a good day at the plate from Jose Cardenal. Vedder’s eyes were moist and he’d consumed his share of champagne. He thanked Maddon for what he had just done and said he’d see them in Cleveland.

As Vedder wandered toward second base, he was asked what reaching the World Series meant to him after decades of disappointment of being a Cubs fan.

“There’s too much to say,” Vedder said in his trademark mumble. “There’s too much to say.”

All that was left to do was cry.

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Kevin Kaduk is a writer for Yahoo Sports.. Have a tip? Email him at kevinkaduk@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!