101-Year-Old Cubs Fan Soaks in NLDS Victory
One-hundred-one-year-old Chicago Cubs Loretta Dolan has seen a lot of things in her life. One thing she's still waiting to see: the Cubbies winning the World Series.
The North Siders took a monster step in that direction on Tuesday when they dispatched the rival St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Division Series to advance to the National League Championship Series.
Dolan, who has been keeping score at Cubs games for decades and even threw out the first pitch before a game when she was a young 90, was a spry 31 years old when the Cubs last made the Fall Classic in 1945. She wasn't even alive when they last won it all, back in 1908.
Dolan is something of a folk hero around Wrigley Field and says watching the Cubs play poorly still eats at her:
Sometimes when they lose at night, I can't even sleep when they lose, so then I get up and make myself a cup of coffee so I can fall back asleep."
The NLDS victory, of course, marked the Cubs first-ever postseason clincher at home. After more than a century of terrible luck, destiny may finally be on their side. Back to the Future Part II famously predicted they'd win the World Series this year and the team's president of baseball operations, Theo Epstein, knows a thing or two about ending World Series droughts, having designed the Boston Red Sox 2004 championship, which put the kibosh on 86 years without winning one.
One thing is for sure: if the Cubs do win it all, you're going to hear a lot more stories about long-suffering fans like Dolan.