November 18, 2020: Say It Ain’t So Theo

Nine years? Wow. When I was reading about Theo Epstein stepping away, I didn’t realize it had been 9 fricking years. I remember the day he got hired. I remember watching that press conference. I remember believing what he was saying… really believing it. We didn’t win multiple World Series championships like we had all hoped for, but we did win THE one. I experienced the best Cubs era in my lifetime. We went from being glad to finish 500 to expecting to make the playoffs. We got to a place where not winning the World Series was a failure. Imagine that? Who do we have to thank for all of that? It was bad enough Tuesday… coming off another brutal Bears loss. Then to hear this… It was kind of like hearing the vet talking about my dog dying when we took her in to check out one of her hind legs; I wasn’t ready to hear that. I wasn’t ready for this news either. I knew he had one year left. We had heard rumblings about him leaving early. But when this became official, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The last 9 years flashed before my eyes…

My wife was pregnant when he was hired; my son is now 8 years old. We were living in a condo at the time; we have moved into our house since then. The Cubs had the longest championship drought in sports history; now we have marked off the biggest item on most of our sports bucket lists. Shit… life moves pretty fast around here.

Where do we start? How do we say goodbye? I’m still tripping that he was hired 9 years ago. There are days that I still can’t believe that the Cubs actually won it all in my lifetime too. Just to think about where we came from and where we are now, as Cubs fans… the journey from bottom of the standing regulars to perennial playoff contenders… the shedding of the loveable losers/choker label… the expectations, the way the bar has been raised. This was all because of Theo. Yes, he had plenty of help; he made plenty of great decisions. As with everybody, he wasn’t perfect; from reading what he said, he’s more passionate about building something vs maintaining it… he’s better at that too I guess. Did he hold onto the core for too long? In retrospect, you can argue that; in reality, up until the playoff series against the Marlins this year, I still thought our core COULD do it again. It’s tough to explain why they haven’t; that’s somebody else’s problem now. Yet, like I’ve said before, the fact that we DID win it all outweighs anything that hasn’t happened these past 4 years. I will die on that hill.

There’s so much running through my head, many more brain dumps coming. At the end of the day, thank you Theo. In this way, he’s similar to Michael Jordan in my mind. The first thing I would say to him if I ever met him is, thank you. Not sure if that will happen, so I will say it here: THANK YOU! Good luck in whatever future role you take on, so as long as your business doesn’t interfere with our business… haha. But seriously, the guy gets it; he’ll be an asset wherever he goes… hopefully in the American League, although he did hint at working with the MLB offices, which would be a very good thing for baseball overall. I think that’s it for now… not sure what news is around the corner for my teams… the Bulls do have a draft pick to make on Wednesday… but this one hurts. We will definitely miss Theo. I am glad the transition is to Jed; I know he’ll have a lot of hard decisions to make. So good luck to Theo, and Jed; we can only hope to duplicate the success one day in the future that we experienced with Theo. Thanks again…