The Tribune waxes rhapsodic about the season that was:
Let's take stock of all that before we start with the wait-till-next-year business.
Let's celebrate this year.
It was awesome. It was unexpected. It was thrilling.
It was a gift to the city of Chicago from a team of overachievers, including four standout rookie starters.
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Cubs all-time postseason home run leader Kyle Schwarber, age 22. Rookie of the year candidate Kris Bryant, 23. Cardinal-killer Jorge Soler, 23. And who knows how this series might have ended if clutch-hitter Addison Russell hadn't been forced to sit out with a pulled hamstring? He's 21.
Sure. Let me put it another way, in October 1918:
Let's take stock of all that before we start with the wait-till-reparations-are-paid business.
Let's celebrate this war.
It was awesome. It was unexpected. It laid waste to Belgium.
It was a gift to the nations of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia—sorry, the Soviet Union (a brand-new country!)—from a team of overconfident aristocrats, including four standout emperors.
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the largest sum ever spent on a war in the history of mankind: $337 billion, which will be $5.3 trillion adjusted for inflation just 97 years from now. Fourteen million dead (equivalent to 56 million in 2015), not including the 20 million who are about to die of influenza. And who knows how this war would have ended had we not attacked American ships in the Atlantic? Maybe we would have held Alscace for another century. And who will ever forget how tanks changed the game entirely? No more endless trench warfare! Huzzah!
No, guys. The Cubs lost. Again. They lost the league for the 70th time in a row. They haven't won the World Series since just after Henry Ford sold his first Model T. They bloodly lost.
So win the damn pennant, and STFU until then.