TERRY COLUMN: Experience of a Lifetime

A young baseball fan enamored with the sport, Ian Paisley asked his dad, Jim, if they could make a trip to the World Series when his favorite team finally made the highest pinnacle of the sport.

By that time a veteran of disappointment in his hometown Chicago Cubs, Jim, who was born and raised in Chicago before eventually starting a dental practice in Kalispell, had no problem making that promise. The Cubs had only been to the playoffs once in his life, getting a game away from the World Series in 1984 only to lose the next three games and reaffirm the feeling the team was cursed.

Why weary his son with the burden of that record? With the well-known statistical anomally that was the decades-long drought since a World Series appearance, let alone a title.

His dad was a Cubs fan and they hadn’t won. His grandpa was a Cubs fan and they hadn’t won in ages.

It had been 82 years since the last championship at that point. Radio wasn’t invented when they last won and the stadium Jim and Ian sat in, Wrigley Field, already among the oldest and most storied in baseball, was still a decade from being built and years still from being owned by the namesake chewing gum magnate.

It was nearly four years before the Titanic sunk.

Yet, when you walk into Wrigley, the atmosphere is instant. The stadium itself appears almost from nowhere on the drive in and once you get through the concourse the bright green field pops from outside of the shadowy overhangs and everything sounds and smells like baseball. There’s ivy-covered brick walls, dark red dirt and a raucous rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” that gets every fan out of its seat.

Earlier in the day Ian got a baseball during batting practice and like three generations before him, Ian was caught for good.

“It instantly sucked me into a lifelong relationship with the Cubs,” Ian said.

Why be the kill joy of all that good feeling because history, of all things, said it wouldn’t last?

So, feeling it was a pretty safe bet, Jim agreed. When the Cubs went to the World Series, so would they.

“I was thinking to myself, what’s the chances that will ever happen?,” Jim said.

It took awhile.

The Cubs got to the National League Championship Series in 1989 only to lose in five games.

“I got my first real kick in the stomach, they really broke my heart that year,” Ian said.

At a game the next season, the two had just gotten their poster shown on the national broadcast on WGN as Harry Caray called a 7-0 shut out win over the Atlanta Braves, with friends at home eagerly capturing their smiling faces holding a sign with Kalispell written on a Montana outline. The Cubs would finish the season below .500 and begin another period of down seasons.

Even with Sammy Sosa smashing dingers onto Sheffield Avenue throughout the 1990s, the closest the Cubs got was a wild card bid and a first-round loss in the home-run chase year of 1998.

There was more torture in 2003, when the Cubs rode the best pitching staff in baseball and a scapegoat named Steve Bartman to two heart-wrenching losses in the National League Championship Series.

In 2007 and 2008 the Cubs were swept out of the playoffs before they could muster any talk of curses.

In between there was a lot of waiting for next year.

“Over the years, the near misses, I always kind of reminded him about that (promise),” Ian said. “I never forgot.”

Ian graduated Flathead High School and left for the North side of Chicago to study dentistry at Northwestern University, at least in part to get a chance to watch the Cubs on a regular basis. Even after a move to Denver after college, he still made trips back to watch.

At Ian’s wedding, Jim poked fun in his speech about the promise, to the hearty chuckle of the crowd in attendance.

The Cubs going to the World Series would take either a lot more talent or a lot more luck.

Both came to the Cubs in 2012. Chicago lucked out that one of the best personnel men in baseball was looking for a change of scenery after breaking Boston out of an 86-year drought and leading the Red Sox to two World Series titles.

Despite losing a lot the next two years, the Cubs were also aquiring talent, and lots of it. Top draft picks, top prospects from other teams looking for a playoff boost of their own and, eventually, the best manager in baseball from a team unwilling to give him big money.

By last year, it looked like the Cubs may actually get there. They beat the rival Cardinals in the division series and were matched up with an equally young team in the New York Mets.

Ian was more than ready to return the ribbing and remind his dad of his promise. His dad, however, would be in Europe during the World Series.

In a continuation of 108 years of misery, or perhaps a twist of fate, the Cubs were swept out of the series and back to waiting for their first pennant in a lifetime.

That close call meant no more trips scheduled in late October, unless that trip was to Chicago.

“He said, ‘Next year, I’ll be ready. If (Cubs fan and Pearl Jam frontman) Eddie Vedder’s not planning any tours, I’m not planning any trips’,” Ian said.

As the Cubs romped to the best record in baseball, Ian began his planning for the far away dream. Tickets to the World Series, Game 4, just in case of a sweep. You wouldn’t want to miss that party because you bought tickets for Game 5. Just in case, everything was refundable.

When it finally happened, when the Cubs won the NLCS against the Dodgers and made that trip real, wrapping up two lifetimes of heartache is a bit of a shock to the system.

“I couldn’t believe that this was going to manifest,” Ian said. “It kind of felt like reaching a false summit on Mount Everest. Getting to the World Series was also a tremendous breakthrough.

“I couldn’t sleep the rest of the week.”

They weren’t able to get the same seats they did the first time. Ticket prices were a little steep for behind the third-base dugout, dipping into seven figures per seat. Instead, they settled for a few sections back, along the third base line and from the steel pillars that cause obstructed view.

“I was feeling like I was nine years old again,” Ian said. “A wave just came over me like, ‘I just can’t believe this is going to happen.’

The Cubs weren’t set up for the sweep like planned. They entered Chicago tied 1-1 in the series and lost Game 3 as the Paisleys watched in a bar after landing in Chicago. They would eventually lose Game 4 too with the pair in the stadium, falling behind 3-1 in the series and bringing back every sense of impending doom that the city had felt before. The two stayed to watch Game 5 at a bar in Wrigleyville, a 3-2 win that kept hope alive as they flew back to the Rocky Mountains.

“It was exactly what we hoped,” Ian said. “The bar was out of this world. The guy next to me was from Sweden. We poured out of the bar at the end to thousands of people singing and chanting. It was elation. Even though we were down 3-2 at that time it felt like a different type of team.”

After the Cubs romped in Game 6, Ian made sure he was home with his son, Michael, to watch Game 7.

“I wanted to be at home with my son,” Ian said. “He’s too young to know what’s going on exactly. It felt right to be there.”

When the Cubs made the final out, it didn’t take too long for the two to make sure it was real.

“I picked myself up off the floor, dried my eye a little bit and called him up, just two people wide-eyed, screaming,” Ian said. “It actually happened.”

It was a feeling felt around the country from Cleveland and Chicago to Kalispell and Denver.

“It’s one of those moments where we wish we didn’t live so far away (from each other),” Ian said. “It just kind of immediately brought back the feelings and fun we had from the weekend in Chicago. Just knowing this is going to be one of the most monumental bonds of our life.”

“It wasn’t so much about what was going on with the score,” Jim said. “It was a real bonding experience between the two of us. This promise that had been floated out there about 30 years ago that came to fruition. That’s what it was all about. It was wonderful. It was just a great trip.”