The Face-Melting Joy of Your Team Winning a Championship

You’re never quite the same afterward.

As a St. Louis Cardinals, and an avowed hater of our fierce rivals, the Chicago Cubs, I spent most of the first 40 years of my life warning whoever would listen that a Cubs World Series championship would bring about the end of the world. The Cubs won the World Series on November 2, 2016; Donald Trump was elected President on November 8, 2016. I’m just saying.

Still, I did grow up in Central Illinois and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: I know and care about many Cubs fans. (You have to love the people close to you even when they make terrible choices in their lives.) And when their team won that World Series in 2016, something about them changed. They had been carrying a burden their entire lives — a minor burden, but a burden nevertheless. They had feared they would go their entire lives without their team, their beloved Cubs, ever winning a World Series. This fear was well-founded. After all, it had been since 1908 that the Cubs had won a title: Their grandparents had gone their whole lives without winning one. But then the Cubs won. And my friends were so happy. They were so free. It was as if they hadn’t realized how much of a weight they were carrying until they didn’t have to carry it anymore. They really haven’t been the same…