Kris Bryant cries after learning the Chicago Cubs traded him

This hurts. We just watched the core of one of the greatest stretches in Chicago Cubs history get decimated in less than 24 hours. Faces of the franchise – guys who, five years ago, we assumed would spend their entire careers on the North Side: gone.

Clearly, Kris Bryant – who was traded to the San Francisco Giants just ahead of Friday’s 3 p.m. CT trade deadline – is feeling the same way all of us are after a brutal day.

You see Bryant taking the call, presumably learning of the trade, then hanging up. As he heads toward the visitor’s clubhouse at Nationals Park, where the Cubs kick off a weekend series tonight, he visibly tears up.

This guy left it all on the field. Although some like to call him soft or oft-injured, Bryant constantly played through the grind of a 162-game season, even through injuries we had no idea of until way, way after the fact. He helped erase a 108-year championship drought, arrived on the scene in a big way as a rookie in 2015 and the rest, as they say, is history.

National League Rookie of the Year. NL MVP. World Series champion. Four-time All-Star. The sixth-highest OPS and slugging percentage in Chicago Cubs history. And a memory forever etched into the hearts and minds of fans everywhere – fielding a slow roller on a November night in Cleveland, his back foot sliding just a touch as he lets the ball fly across the diamond.

Thank you for everything, Kris. There’s really nothing more anyone can say.