CHICAGO — The beer, preferably Old Style, and tears of World Series joy flowed.
The Magnificent Mile never looked better. Wrigleyville was bedlam.
Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse was the site of the ultimate party, and over at the Billy Goat Tavern, five hours after that goat had been paraded around, the curse came to an end. The historic 8-7, 10-inning win over the Indians in Game 7 Wednesday night at Progressive Field in Cleveland gave the Cubs their fist World Series championship in 108 years.
The Curse of the Billy Goat is broken.
As the final out was made, Gabriella Caldarone fell to the floor in tears at Harry Caray’s. In her right hand she held a Mass card from her late grandmother Angela. She held the card up to the row of televisions so her grandmother could see Michael Martinez ground out to Kris Bryant at third base for the final out.
Cubs win! Cubs win!
“This means everything to her, everything to us,’’ Gabriella said through her tears.
Across from her sat Phillip Katz with his 6-year-old son, Nathan. The two of them, along with Phillip’s wife, Melissa, traveled from Columbus, Ohio. Phillip’s dad passed away nine years ago.
“He was a lifelong Cubs fan and he said you must go to a World Series game. I went to Games 3 and 4 and stayed in town,’’ Phillip, 42, said.
There were stories of joy everywhere after so many years of Cubs’ heartache.
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“We grew up on a farm in Iowa, and my dad played Triple-A ball for the Cubs,’’ explained a joyous Judy Kramer, 52, as she stood under the Ron Santo statue at Wrigley Field. “For me, to be here now is my way of paying homage to a generation of Cubs fans.’’
She was there with a family friend, Alex Schneidecker, 19, a freshman at Loyola.
“It’s surreal,’’ Alex said. “This was meant to be.’’
A few feet away stood Adam Russell, 21, with three friends, Ruairi Burke, Kyle Fitzgerald and Nick Kota.
Russell’s mom and dad met across the way at Murphy’s Bleachers.
“They both grew up in Wrigleyville,” Russell said, “I’m a child of the Cubs.’’
What does this victory mean for Chicago?
“It means hell [expletive] yes,’’ Fitzgerald said.
Back at Harry Caray’s, Harry’s widow, Dutchie, sat and watched all the cheers and hugging and tears. When asked what Harry would say about all this, she did not hesitate: “Holy Cow! His best ‘Holy Cow!’ ever.’’
Grant DePorter, CEO of the Harry Caray Restaurant Group, put the night in perspective.
“This,’’ he said, overlooking the mature crowd of fans, “is the biggest event in sports history over the whole world. And you can say that’s an understatement.’’
Everyone in this city from the mosh pit of Wrigleyville to the Loop to Old Town to River North to the Gold Coast celebrated.
This also was a day sons of Chicago found their way home.
George Khoury, 34, and his lovely wife Marie, 32, who live in North Jersey, caught a late-afternoon flight from Newark Airport to be with friends and family here.
They proudly wore their Cub jerseys — one blue, one white pinstriped — both with the family name on the back.
George, a former Marine who spent five tours, yes five, in Iraq working as a translator and interrogator, had to come home on this day for Game 7. Marie is six months pregnant.
His father drove a bus for 31 years for the Chicago Transit Authority. His route was Wrigleyville.
“A dream come true,” George said.
“I’ve been on the waiting list for season tickets since I was 17. They said I should have them by the time I’m 46.”
George, a corporate engineer, had a question for me.
“What were the Yankees thinking trading [Aroldis] Chapman?”
I told him something a Cub fan would understand. It’s about next year.
Back at the Billy Goat, home of “Cheezborger, Cheezborger, Cheezborger’’ of SNL fame and more importantly the spiritual below-ground residence of the curse.
The founder of the joint, William “Billy Goat” Sianis supposedly made all this Cubs misery epic when he and his goat got tossed from Wrigley in 1945 before Game 4 of the World Series, the previous Cubs World Series, and he proclaimed on his way out the gate, “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.”
When it was over, when these Cubs finally had won, on the corner of Grand and Dearborn, as horns blared as if it were New Year’s Eve, one excited fan yelled to the pleasure of the building crowd, “[Expletive] Cleveland and [expletive] LeBron James!’’
Go, Cubs, Go.
