Corn Flakes: Chicago Cubs Win World Series, Beating Cleveland Indians in Game 7 (Timeout for MLB)

The College Football Playoff committee released their first rankings of the season and I sat down to write some reflections on it last night.

That bit was going like this:

This is what order looks like, apparently, because that’s what we’ve had up until November. Alabama has been #1 throughout the season, Clemson has maintained a top-ranking position, as has Michigan. Washington has been a surprise, but looks like they could easily win the Pac-12 and make the playoff.

The SEC West was a big winner with the Crimson Tide at #1, Texas A&M at #4 (!!!!!), Auburn at #9 and LSU at #13. Include SEC East Florida at #11 and you have to realize that SEC success feeds on itself. The old adage of if “If ‘Bama loses to LSU, it’s not because ‘Bama is weak, it’s because LSU is so much more awesome than expected” is used to justify the rankings.....

And that’s as far as I got. I turned on Game 7 of the 2016 World Series and all the attention turned away from college football and to the amazing bit of sports that was going on at Chicago’s Wrigley field.

I stopped paying attention to Major League Baseball a long time ago. I find the sport boring, honestly, the season too long, and my kids hated playing it so much that I finally gave up trying to get them to enjoy it. (They hated standing around waiting for something to happen. We became a soccer family. I don’t regret it for a minute.)

What I’m trying to say is that I had no skin in the game. I thought it would be more interesting if the Cubs won because then we could stop hearing about the “108-year drought, that the Cubs hadn’t been to the Series since 1908, blaming Steve Bartman or a stupid curse involving goats”. I have no idea what “waving the W” means, nor do I care.

I had little or no idea who the pitchers were, how good they were, or what players I should be watching with the exception of one - Chicago’s Kyle Schwarber. He was a star for Indiana and he was a monster of a baseball player. There was so much swagger in him you felt like if you bottled his sweat and sold it that it really would cure all ails just like those snake oils used to promise.

I was fun watching a game in which I had no emotional attachment, and as much as I’ve bitched about twitter, it was fun watching the reaction of fans as the Cubs took a decent lead, then blew it, and then took it back again.

I understood the excitement of Cubs fans. I had just moved to Minnesota in 1987 when they won a World Series and walked to downtown Minneapolis just to participate in the celebration. It was a lifelong dream come true - to live in a city that won a World Series just to see what it was like, and then the Twins won it again in incredible fashion in 1991.

[I learned during that celebration in 1987 that the dumbest human beings on the planet are those who see the streets filled with people and chose to drive down them anyway. People jumped on their cars and rocked them so hard the tires lifted off the ground. Some of the people inside loved it. Others were sure they were going to die and had looks of indescribable terror on their faces. Sympathy came not from me. Cops came by whacking each of on the arms and shoulders with their clubs to get us away from the cars. It was so cold out, the coats were heavy, and no one felt a thing. I watched a Star Tribune newspaper truck drive off with four or five people on top of it. I always wondered where they ended up.]

Tied at the top of the 9th at 6-6, add in extra innings because no one could get it done in the ninth and then you add in rain. Then a rain delay. Then waiting..... it was a really great Game 7.

The following are tweets offered, really, in not the greatest of orders, but you get the idea.

If you’re not familiar with Nate Silver and the FiveThirtyEight site, well, you should be. Silver did an excellent book, “The Signal and the Noise” and uses statistical analysis to predict everything in politics and sports.

They apparently didn’t get this one right. We love it when the popular, nerdy guys are wrong, right?

This is the sound many humans make when the ship is listing and finally rolls over into the ocean and they realize there aren’t enough life boats for everyone.

Recruiting never sleeps.

The crying Jordan meme... it’s never going to die. It’s never going anywhere. I’d say it’s getting old, but this, this is pretty damned clever. When the rain delay was called, fans were incensed because they had to wait a little longer, but you’d think after 108 years that waiting would be natural.

Thankfully, it wasn’t that much longer.

Because apparently so many of them have cut the cord and have nowhere else to go.

This is so... just bizarre. All this technology we have and it looks like a scene from the 1920s where people are all huddled around the radio.

You’d think they’d have just served free drinks, but no, snotty-ass Starbucks sunsabitches.

Into extra innings, then the Cubs took a two-run lead that was cut to one in the 10th.

Of course, winning brings destruction because humans are the weirdest creatures on the planet.

This is how people react when they’re in the water and they see that other ships have come to rescue them from drowning or being eaten by sharks in the open sea.

This needs little explanation.

Should probably do this just to keep newspapers in business. This one, at least.

See what I mean about that 108-year drought thing? Thank God that’s over with.

You know what all this means, right?

Nebrasketball is going to the NCAA tourney, and they’re going to finally win a game in it.

And finally.....