I want to tell you something about being a Cubs fan before the 2016 World Series. It wasn't just that the Cubs hadn't won in 108 years. It was that most of us had genuinely stopped expecting them to. Not in a bitter way. More like the way you stop expecting the mail to be interesting. You check anyway. You stay invested. But somewhere deep in your nervous system, a circuit breaker trips around October every single year and you brace for the thing that always happens.
In 2016, that circuit breaker got ripped out of the wall. And what replaced it was something I'm still not entirely sure I have the words for.
Ten years on — let's go back through all of it. Because it deserves to be remembered properly. Not just the final out and the celebration. The whole terrifying, beautiful, rain-delayed mess of it.
The Team
The 2016 Cubs were 103-58 in the regular season — the best record in baseball by a comfortable margin. This was not a team that snuck into the postseason and got hot. This was a team built specifically to win a World Series, assembled over several years by Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer through a combination of the draft, international signings, and smart trades that would make any front office jealous.
Kris Bryant at third. Anthony Rizzo at first. Javier Baez doing things at shortstop that made you set down whatever you were eating and just watch. Willson Contreras behind the plate. Ben Zobrist and Addison Russell in the middle. Kyle Schwarber — who had torn his ACL in April and missed nearly the entire regular season — showing up for the World Series like he'd never left. The lineup was stacked top to bottom and everyone knew it.
The rotation was Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, and Jake Arrieta — the 2015 Cy Young winner — with John Lackey as the fourth starter. The bullpen had Aroldis Chapman, who Epstein had traded for at the deadline in a move that raised eyebrows but ultimately proved decisive. This was a complete roster. It was built to go all the way.
Getting There
The Cubs swept the Giants in the NLDS — a five-game series that was tighter than the result suggests — and then dispatched the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the NLCS. Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks were dominant. The offense produced when it needed to. By the time the World Series started, the Cubs felt inevitable. Which, of course, is exactly when Cubs fans should have known to be nervous.
"We've got a good team. But so does Cleveland. I wouldn't assume anything about this series."
— Joe Maddon, Cubs manager, before the 2016 World SeriesThe Cleveland Indians were a different kind of team — built around pitching, defense, and the kind of gritty, low-scoring baseball that wins playoff series. Corey Kluber was their ace and he was as good as anyone in baseball in October. Andrew Miller out of the bullpen was untouchable. Trevor Bauer was erratic but talented. Cleveland was not a pushover and the Cubs should have known it. Most Cubs fans probably did know it but talked themselves out of worrying because 103 wins does a lot to calm the nerves.
The Series Game by Game
The short version: the Cubs fell behind three games to one and had to win three straight to become World Series champions. They did it. But the short version leaves out all the parts that matter. Let's talk about Game 7.
Game 7 — The One That Almost Wasn't
November 2, 2016. Progressive Field, Cleveland. Corey Kluber on the mound for Cleveland. Kyle Hendricks — the professor, the soft-tossing right-hander who had led the NL in ERA during the regular season — starting for the Cubs. The entire baseball world watching. And underneath all of it, 108 years of history pressing down on every Cubs fan who had ever watched a game, rooted for a team, or inherited the curse along with the love of the sport from someone who was now gone.
I'm not going to pretend I watched Game 7 calmly. Nobody watched Game 7 calmly. I know people who turned it off in the eighth inning because they couldn't take it anymore and then had to find out from their phone that the Cubs had come back and won. I almost understand that. Almost. I'm glad I stayed. You had to stay. You owed it to every Cubs fan who didn't make it long enough to see it.
The Cubs jumped out to an early lead and it felt — for a few innings — like this might be clean. Like they might just win a World Series the normal way, with the best team in baseball playing like the best team in baseball. That lasted until the fifth inning when Kluber and the Cleveland lineup reminded everyone that nothing with the Cubs is ever clean or easy.
The Key Moments — Inning by Inning
The Final Out
Cleveland scored once in the bottom of the tenth to make it 8-7. Michael Martinez hit a slow roller to third base. Kris Bryant — grinning, knowing, maybe already crying a little — charged the ball, threw to first, and Anthony Rizzo squeezed it.
World Series Champions
Kris Bryant fielded the final grounder at third base. He was grinning before he even threw it — the kind of grin you can't manufacture, the kind that comes from somewhere deeper than happiness. He threw to Anthony Rizzo at first. Rizzo squeezed it. One hundred and eight years ended in the rain in Cleveland at 12:47 in the morning. The W flag flew.
What It Actually Meant
I've thought a lot about how to write this part. There's a version of it that's purely analytical — the roster construction, the front office decisions, the tactical choices Maddon made across seven games. That version is interesting and I could write it. But it's not really what 2016 was about.
What 2016 was about was something that's hard to explain to someone who doesn't follow baseball or who didn't grow up a Cubs fan. It was about inherited grief. About rooting for a team not just because you like them but because your parents liked them and their parents liked them and somewhere back there is a person who watched the Cubs lose in 1945 and never got to see them win again. That's what 108 years means. It's not just one fanbase — it's generations of the same fanbase, passing down the same hope and the same disappointment, and finally, in November 2016, the same incredible joy.
People ask sometimes if winning in 2016 changed what it means to be a Cubs fan. I think the honest answer is yes and no. It closed something. A chapter that was always going to define the franchise got its ending. But it didn't change the essential thing about being a Cubs fan — which is that you love a team not because they always win but because they're yours. The 2016 Cubs will always be the team that ended it. Nothing changes that. But the next championship matters just as much, and the one after that. That's baseball. That's why we keep watching.
Ten years on, when I watch the highlights from Game 7, the thing that gets me isn't the Zobrist double or Bryant's throw or even Fowler's leadoff homer. It's Bryant's face right before he threw to first. That grin. The one that said he already knew it was over, that they had done it, that 108 years was about to become history. He couldn't help it. Nobody could have.
That's the 2016 World Series. That's what it was. That's what it will always be.
The Cubs won. Finally, completely, and forever.