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Photo by Ellen MillerPhoto by Ellen Miller

By now everyone knows the Cubs won the World Series last night, this morning actually, and they ended 108 years of not doing so.

But the winners are the fans.

Certainly, all those, dead and alive, who have followed the Cubbies for however many years they attended, cheered, cried, hoped, dispaired, gave up, came back, hung on, are the actual winners.

But they are not the only winners.

All baseball fans are the winners of this 2016, seven game, knock down, drag out, fight to the finish between the Cubs and Indians.

After all, baseball, in my humble opinion, is first and foremost about the fans. Yes. the players and the management are important. But they come and go.

(In fact, not to denigrate the Cubs win in any fashion, but the 2016 World Champions have not been Cubs players for very long. The team is comprised of an exciting group of very young players, a handful of recent, veteran players, purchased precisely for what they added to the team’s chances to win. Credit them all, plus the owner and management, especial Theo. But know that the players who just won have not been long suffering Cubbies. Their fans, however, are the ones who have been there a long time, as in 108+ years.)

It is the fan’s first and foremost who make baseball what it is. And the entire 2016 playoffs, from the two wonderful Wild Card games thru the extra inning game last night, rewarded those who follow baseball, whether they have done so all their lives, have come to it recently, or just tuned in these last few games.

And as a friend emailed me this morning, in baseball, as Bob Feller has said,

Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.

But never forget, it’s the fans that make baseball what it is. To misquote The Little Prince, “It’s the time we spend for our team that makes our team, and the game, so important.”

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