Time always puts things in perspective.
Ten years have passed since the Chicago Cubs ended a 108-year World Series title drought with their Game 7 extra-innings victory on Nov. 2, 2016, in Cleveland. Only seven players from the championship team were still with a big-league franchise this season, while left-hander Jon Lester could be elected to the Hall of Fame in January as a first-timer on the ballot.
Lester remembers his oldest son was 6 when the Cubs won in 2016. When the team reunited in July for a 10-year celebration at Wrigley Field, it was the first time in a decade that a lot of those players’ kids had seen each other.
“They picked up right where they left off in the family room, and they’re bumming around, walking around Wrigley and hanging out, and it’s just like a family again,” Lester said then.
The 2016 group came together in mid-July for a 10-year reunion and the unveiling of the champions gate at the Clark Street entrance of Gallagher Way outside Wrigley. The archway features plaques for each of the organization’s three championship teams — 1907, 1908 and 2016 — with the expectation and space for others to be added.
“In the back of your mind, you knew it was always there and it was always kind of hanging over your head,” Lester said. “But at the same time, it was an opportunity to break it and end it. So I think all the guys took that and ran with it and embraced it, embraced the target, and luckily we were able to pull it off there in the end.”
“I don’t really know if it still to this day has sunk in that we did it.”
More than 20 players and coaches from the 2016 squad participated in the champions gate festivities, part of a larger weekend celebration that included a private gathering with nearly all players, coaches and staff from the title team. Theo Epstein, hired to be the architect of the eventual World Series champions when brought in as the president of baseball operations before the 2012 season, appreciated the perspective gained over the 10 years for what they accomplished.
While acknowledging nothing ever goes perfectly according to plan — “there were plenty of missteps and errors in judgment by me along the way” — the last 10 years have reminded Epstein how hard it is to win it all. Epstein said he wouldn’t have left the organization voluntarily, as he did after the 2020 season with then-general manager Jed Hoyer promoted to his position, had the Cubs fallen short in 2016.
While reminiscing during the July reunion, a reflective Epstein described feeling liberated after the Cubs returned from Cleveland with the World Series trophy in hand.
“We were all here to do one thing. We got it accomplished,” Epstein said. “Everyone was in it together. Everyone can die happy, and we have more work to do, but that’s when it sunk in for me. So it was a feeling of knowing that I could choose my path going forward. I wasn’t going to leave without getting the job done.
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“It’s one thing to assemble a bunch of talent. It’s another thing to have that group turn into a championship team that stands up in the face of adversity at the most important times. It was a fearless group. It’s not like they walked around saying like, ‘Oh, no, we have to do it, it’s been 108 years.’ This is an unbelievable opportunity. We’re really freaking good. Like, let’s go do this for each other and have each other’s back. It wasn’t a wait, it was more an opportunity.”
Beyond attaining eternal beloved status by Cubs fans for finally bringing a World Series title back to the North Side, their run to immortality had a profound impact on multiple levels. Those who have returned for the annual Cubs Convention routinely receive the largest cheers in the room from fans. David Ross joked he’d be a lot poorer if they hadn’t won that year, noting how it led to opportunities to be on “Dancing With the Stars” and becoming a TV analyst for ESPN, then taking over as Cubs manager in 2020, a job he held for four seasons. Ross now teams up with Anthony Rizzo for a weekly baseball podcast.
“Winning does change everything for you,” Rizzo said. “Winning in Chicago, the magnitude of what we won has elevated our careers and lives and brotherhood tremendously. It has changed our lives big-time. But this place is so special that win or lose, everyone loves you as a Cubs player. But winning the big one is the best one there is.”
Team chemistry was the starting point.
Ben Zobrist had seen the importance of that a year earlier when he won a World Series title with the Kansas City Royals as a trade-deadline acquisition. The Cubs’ World Series MVP praised the mix of hungry veterans and young guys looking to win their first title.
“Even at the end of spring training, we were the team to beat, and we didn’t care that that was the focus,” Zobrist said. “And the league knew that we were going to win. We knew we were going to get everybody’s best, so we felt like we were prepared for that.”
The rotation often set the tone. The five starters combined to throw 64.8% of the pitching staff’s total innings and were dominant, too, led by Lester (2.44 ERA), Kyle Hendricks (2.13) and Jake Arrieta (3.10). The 2016 Cubs, along with the Toronto Blue Jays that year, are the last to have five pitchers each make at least 29 starts during a regular season.
“It’s pitching and defense and timely hitting, which is what wins championships,” Arrieta said during the reunion weekend. “It was the collective. It wasn’t like, hey, I’m the guy or he’s the guy. We were all that guy, and without that, we potentially don’t get to that point.
“It was a perfect cocktail and all the right ingredients to do what we did in 2016.”
Ten years later, the Cubs have a lot of work to do to win another title.
For as lauded and historic as the 2016 team became, the Cubs have won only one postseason series since 2017, in last year’s wild-card round. The best team in baseball and World Series champion Milwaukee Brewers have had a stranglehold on the division and are likely to remain one of MLB’s best teams in the coming years. Hoyer and the Cubs built the best defense and offense in the majors, but the pitching shortcomings proved too much to overcome this year, creating more questions about how the organization can get the pitching infrastructure needed to take a step forward with development.
“Jed and his group have brought in a ton of talent, and they’re on their own journey — it’s never easy,” Epstein said. “This is a special franchise. It continues to be. It will be. And there’s no doubt they’re going to add more championships.”