Chicago Cubs: Just ask the Dodgers – winning a World Series isn’t easy

Chicago Cubs: Change is here- but we can still appreciate the past

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In the last two weeks, we’ve seen the end of an era. As fall descends on the Windy City, change is also in the air.

Joe Maddon is out after perhaps the most successful five-year run for any manager in franchise history. The team’s young core – once viewed as a potential dynasty – might be broken up as Theo Epstein looks to shake up a roster that won just 84 games in 2019.

So, yes, things are going to be different moving forward. But regardless of what the coming offseason and years bring to us, there’s one thing we shouldn’t ever lose focus of: we saw the Chicago Cubs win a World Series. At the time, a lot of us viewed it as a near-guarantee.

The team shocked the baseball world the year prior, eliminating the rival Cardinals in the NLDS and coming within four games of the sport’s biggest stage. For much of the season, it felt like a sort of destiny – despite the Cubs’ longstanding suffering as a franchise.

Chicago then rolled through the regular season and we all just felt like this might, finally, be the year. And indeed it was. Next time you’re sitting there, wallowing in your unjustified self pity as a Cubs fan, try to take a step back and see the bigger picture.

Winning a World Series isn’t easy. It can’t be taken for granted. Whatever trades and moves were made that culminated in Maddon hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy in Grant Park were (clearly) the right call – no matter what has transpired in the years that followed.