Holy cowwwwww! Can you believe it?! I honestly still cannot believe the Cubs won the World Series. Sorry I’m a little late on this recap, but the entire city of Chicago has basically shut down this past week to celebrate our Cubbies and I’ve been out celebrating!!
Just when I thought my Post Season experience couldn’t get any better (see my post about Game 3), it did. On Sunday, October 30th at 5:30 pm my husband said, “Let’s head down to Wrigley and see if we can scalp tickets to Game 5.” We threw on some Cubs gear, jumped into an Uber, and made our way up to Wrigleyville.
Wrigleyville was pretty insane. I had to have my bag checked multiple times approaching the stadium. People were everywhere. We went to the first ticket box office we saw and approached the door. Unfortunately, a SOLD OUT sign was posted on their door. On to the next one. Again, we walked in as the LAST two tickets were sold. Gah… we were starting to get nervous. Or, I should say I was getting nervous. My husband never gets nervous about anything. We walked into the third box office and the guy says to us, “Sorry, but we only have good tickets left.” My husband looks at me and then back at the guy and says, “um, perfect!” Haha. Obviously, that’s what we wanted. We ended up getting two tickets in section 34, row 1, right by first base! (Side note: rows A, B, and C were in front of us and the box office neglected to tell us that, but whatevs… we were still ridiculously close!)
This game turned out to be a fan’s dream game. Not only were our seats incredible, but we were sitting a few chairs down from baseball legend, Jim Thome.
We were tossed a ball by Chicago Cubs first baseman, Anthony Rizzo.
We were on TV and our phones blew up with everyone texting us and posting on our Facebook walls.
We were on the Jumbotron twice… but too busy waving to snap a pic of that.
AND the Cubbies won their first World Series game at home!
Chris and I watched Game 6 together at home on Tuesday night. During the 8th inning, Chris says to me, “My friend Nick and I are going to charter a plane to take us to Game 7 tomorrow, but the plane only seats 7 people.” I immediately said not to worry about me as I had a full day planned and no sitter for the dog. I mean, I had already been to two World Series games, so I felt more than lucky to have my epic experiences.
On Wednesday morning, Chris found out there was a mechanical issue with the plane and they were now scrambling to find another plane for their group. Some how, some way they were able to secure a 30 person plane for approximately the same price as the much nicer 7 seater plane. I was officially invited to fly to Cleveland at noon and the flight was to leave at 2:30 pm. THANK GOD my mom was available to dog sit and she met me halfway to shorten my drive. While I was dealing with the dog, Chris ended up inviting my sister and her boyfriend to join us. Other than them, I had no idea who was going or what any of the plans were.
Since a few more people were joining us, they decided to push the plane back to a 3 pm departure. My husband’s cousin, Ryan, met us at our house and we took an Uber to Signature Flight Support at Midway Airport where we met everyone else. While we were all waiting for our flight, the guys were scrambling to buy tickets. That’s right… we were flying private to a game that none of us even had tickets to attend. We were going to scalp them at the game, but since we kept pushing back the flight it was imperative we grab our tickets on Stubhub ASAP. After all 24 people in our group were checked in for the flight, we took a bus to our plane.
We all quickly boarded and immediately cracked open beers. And then… our plane just sat there for an hour. Rumor has it (on Twitter) that Obama was attending the game as well and was holding up all of the air traffic trying to get to Cleveland. All of us were starting to freak out because time was definitely escaping us. Our plane finally took off around 5:15 pm. Now remember, Cleveland is an hour ahead. Are you sweating yet?!
We finally landed at 7:15 pm (Cleveland time) and bolted off that plane. First pitch was scheduled for 8 pm and we were feeling good.
But we had to wait again… for our party bus to pick us up and take us to the game. This airport was about a 30 min drive away from Progressive Field. Luckily we only had to wait about 15 minutes, if that.
We arrived at Progressive Field during the bottom of the first inning. Everyone was kind of annoyed we missed the home run in the top of the first by Dexter Fowler. Even more annoying – the ball was hit in the section our seats were in! Plenty of game left to see though…
Obviously, it is impossible to get 24 seats together last minute, so we were spread throughout the ballpark. There were a good chunk of us that were in the same section which was nice. Our seats were in the center outfield right in front of the bullpen. It was sick. We got to see all the pitchers for both teams warm up. We were so close we could literally talk to them.
The weather was 72°… absolutely perfect for the last game of the season, but definitely unseasonably warm. Progressive Field is a super small, very nice stadium. Their concourse is huge and they have restaurant quality food – at one point we had gourmet chicken tacos. Haha. I did try a hot dog there. It was not even close to as good as the dogs you can get at Wrigley.
The Cubs ended up playing the most epic Game 7 in history. We were winning the majority of the game, then we tied, then there was a rain delay, then extra innings… and then we WON for the first time in 108 years. (I just got chills writing that.) Even though that was such an epic World Series and more specifically Game 7, it was the most epic for the city of Chicago. We have been begging for this for a century. No joke, I think Progressive Field was filled with more Cubs fans than Indians fans. When the game ended, it felt like we were in Wrigley. White and blue W flags (an iconic flag for the Cubs), were flying everywhere. We brought one too!
After hanging out in the ballpark for some time, we finally ended up making our way out of the stadium. It was so sad to see all these street vendors selling ‘Indians World Series Champs’ t-shirts for $1. I overheard one man say he spent his life savings printing those shirts hoping to make a profit. Sad. The Indians put up an excellent fight. We took one last group photo and made our way back to the bus to get back to our plane.
We ended up boarding our plane at 3:18 am (Cleveland time) and made it back to our house by 4:30 am (Chicago time).
This was definitely the most spontaneous trip/experience I have ever had. I am beyond grateful that Chris and I were fortunate enough to participate in such a momentous part of Chicago history.
I tried to participate in the parade and Rally on Friday by sending them off from Wrigley in the morning. The crowd was so big that I could hardly see anything and decided to go home and watch the rally live on tv. What an emotional rally. I definitely teared up a few times. This rally ended up being the 7th largest human gathering of all time with an estimated 5 million people attending. I’m so proud of the city of Chicago for supporting our lovable losers winners! And most of all, I’m so proud of the Chicago Cubs for all of their hard work. Fly the W!
XO, Lauren
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