Maitland man who saw Cubs at Wrigley in 1945 Series returning 71 years later. David Whitley,
Jay Stine remembers the last time an out was made in a World Series game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. He got up from his grandstand seat, shrugged and figured his Cubs would be back in baseball’s championship soon enough.
“I thought it was going to be the next year,” Stine said. “Guess what — it doesn’t work that way.”
No, but it wasn’t supposed to malfunction quite like it has.
It’s been 71 years since the Chicago Cubs were in the World Series. That streak ends tonight in Cleveland, where the Indians host the Cubs in Game 1 of the Fall Classic. And for Friday’s Game 3, the World Series returns to Wrigley for the first time since 1945 — 25,952 days to be exact.
The universe of long-suffering Cubs fans like Bill Murray, Bob Newhart and Stephen Colbert get misty-eyed at the mere thought. Few have suffered quite like a
retired dentist in Maitland.
“It means a lot having grown up there and suffered through all those seasons of misery,” Stine said. “It means more now than ever because this time, I think they’re going to do it.”
To which most Cubs fans would scream, “We haven’t won a Series since 1908. Don’t jinx it now!”
Stine outranks just about everyone who’s ever had their Cubs heart broken. About 42,000 of them will cram into Wrigley Field on Friday. Few will be able to say they were there the last time the World Series was on the North Side of Chicago.
“I made a promise to myself that if they ever made it back, I’d be there,” Stine said. “So I’ll have two consecutive appearances at Wrigley World Series games, 71 years apart.”
Stine sat in a lawn chair Monday afternoon and wondered where all those years went. His wife, Dale, was next to him. They went to a Cubs game on their first date, and after 60 years of marriage, they still giggle like two love-struck kids.
The Blizzard of 1967 convinced them to move to Orlando, but Stine never left the Cubs. He’d go to a bookstore in the old Winter Park Mall every day and buy a Chicago Tribune to check up on his team.
He can recite the starting lineup of the ’45 Cubs. His brother worked the manual scoreboard at Wrigley Field, dropping in digits that usually reflected another loss by the home team.
“Wait ’til Next Year” became the unofficial team motto as Stine endured the collapse of ’69, when the Cubs blew a 9 1⁄2 game lead in August.
There was the 1984 playoffs, when the Cubs squandered a 2-0 series lead over the San Diego Padres. Then there was the cataclysm in 2003, when Cubs fan Steve Bartman interfered with that foul ball in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series against the Florida Marlins.
Did Stine expect such tortured twists? “Oh, yes,” he said. “But he prayed they wouldn’t happen,” Dale chimed in.
God apparently wasn’t much of a Cubs fan. Or maybe it was the Curse of the Billy Goat.
During the 1945 World Series, the owner of Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern, Billy Sianis, was asked to remove his goat from Wrigley Field because fans were complaining about the odor. Sianis declared the Cubs “ain’t gonna win no more.”
That was at Game 4 of the Series against the Detroit Tigers. The Cubs actually won Game 6 to set up the winner-take-all finale.
The goat odor was gone as 13-year-old Jay Stine showed up at the stadium for Game 7.
There wasn’t much to cheer as the Tigers won the game 9-3 and captured the championship. The countdown to 2016 was on.
Stine’s father paid maybe $8 to $10 for each ticket in 1945. One ticket service said the average price to get into Friday’s game is $10,595.
It will be another Stine father-son outing, only this time, the son will be Jay Jr. His father has held up pretty well since that last World Series appearance.
Well, his kidneys did go bad, and he has dialysis treatments on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But this week, he is cramming them in early.
Stine has a promise to himself to keep. After a lifetime of suffering, he wants to be there when Next Year finally arrives.