George Ferguson Column: Cubs Win! I'm speechless, almost

The Chicago Cubs are World Series champions. So, because I’m a lifelong Cubs fan, you’ll have to excuse me if this column isn’t my best effort. You’ll have to forgive me, because for once, and maybe only once, I really don’t know what to say.

Cubs fans, young, old and everyone in between, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know it because, like me, you can’t believe it either. Not yet anyway.

And, obviously, Wednesday night’s Game 7 against the Cleveland Indians was pure Cubs. It was agonizing, it was excruciating, right to the very, bittersweet end.

Admit it with me, local Cubs fans, and you know who you are — you thought the Cubs were going to lose when Raidja Davis hit that game-tying homerun in the eighth inning. I’ll stand up and admit I did. I cried when that ball cleared the wall. I went in the backyard and threw a semi-tantrum. I have to be man enough to admit I thought the Cubs were going to lose again, because if I didn’t and my wife reads this, she would know I wasn’t telling the truth anyway.

But that’s the life of Cubs fan, though. Four outs away, and we think it all gets taken away from us. I did, so much so that through the ninth inning I wrote my alternate column for today. The one where I lamented about how miserable it is to be a Cubs fan. The one where I whined profusely that I’m never going to see the Cubs win it all.

I really wrote that column, and I’m man enough to admit it. Fortunately, much later Wednesday night, I got to hit the delete button and start over. That column no longer exists.

Instead, I finally get to write the Cubs have given me my dream-come-true column. And, as I sit here typing these words, I honestly can’t believe it’s finally here. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that the Cubs are World Champions. Again, lifelong Cubs fans like me know exactly what I’m talking about.

So instead of trying to put this amazingly incredible night, this amazingly special moment, into words, I’ll tell all my readers what’s gone through my head in the hours since Kris Bryant threw out Michael Martinez for the last out. What’s gone through my head are the people I know, the people I’m close to and were close to who share this excruciating, painful thing that is being a Cubs fan. I may not mention all of you, but I was definitely thinking about all of you and the Cubs-fan bond we all share.

I am thinking about my mother — a single mother who helped me develop my love for the game of baseball. Tonight it’s kind of funny, too, because my mom tells a story where she got to go to a Cleveland Indians game when she was young and living in Ohio, for getting good grades. I think I’ve heard that story a thousand times. Yet, she’s also a Cubs fan. She was definitely on my mind tonight.

I also think about my brother, Dan, and his then girlfriend, now my sister-in-law for almost 30 years. Carmen, you are a true, blue Cubs fan, and you and my brother took me to Wrigley Field for my first Cubs game ever. Tonight, I cherish that memory, even though the Cubs really stunk in that hot summer of 1987. I was already a Cubs fan then, but when you step inside Wrigley Field for the first time, especially as a 12-year-old boy, that’s when you go from being a Cubs fan, to understanding that you love the Chicago Cubs. So thank you to Dan and Carmen Ferguson. I’ll never forget that day.

Two of my best friends, Eric and Ryan Knudson are also in my thoughts. No one I’ve ever known loves the Cubs more than Eric and Ryan. And that love of the Cubs was instilled in them by their late parents, Jean and Ron. We all know families that love the Cubbies, but for me, that family was what being Cubs fans is all about. To Eric and Ryan, I love you guys, and your parents are smiling tonight, looking down on what the Cubs finally did, and Jean probably laughing at the three of us for how insane we behaved during this last month, watching this whole thing unfold.

Speaking of behavior, I would be remise not mention my wife, Amy. She didn’t grow up a Cubs fan, but she sure as hell is one now. Honestly, Amy watched more innings of the World Series than I did and, back to Davis’ 8th-inning homerun, she is the one who pulled me off the ledge and told me the game wasn’t over. She was the one who still believed even when I didn’t. So, I owe Amy a big thanks, not only for loving the Cubbies right there with me but for putting up with how I behave during moments like Wednesday night.

We celebrated the final out together, and there’s no one I would have rather celebrated it with more than her. She understood my pain as a Cubs fan. She knows the history and the anguish and the heartache. She’s seen it up close with me. So, for me to able to share what I consider the greatest moment in my life as a sports’ fan with her, that means the world to me, and while we’ve hugged and cried together thousands of times over our 17 years of marriage, the embrace with my wife following the Cubs World Series win is one I will definitely cherish forever.

And I could go on and on. I could keep getting mushy about what this all means to me. But, for any Cubs fan reading this, I really don’t have to because you already know exactly what I mean — you’re feeling it too.

Instead, I’ll leave it with a lesson learned. I always like to do that with my columns if I can help it. And that lesson is, if the Cubs can win the World Series after 108 years of pure torture, after over a century of not getting it done, than anything is possible. If the Cubs and their fans can finally make their dreams come true after all these years, then anybody can make their dreams come true.

You just gotta believe, like my wife still did even after the Indians looked like they were going to break our collective hearts. Yes, the Cubs proved anything and everything is possible.

Go Cubs Go.