Wir suchen Dich! » while second elect Rageese ($5) finished

When I was 8 years old in the fall of 1984, my father purchased a bottle of cheap champagne that said Chicago Cubs 1984 NL East Champions. He promised we would pop open the bottle and spray it all over each other when the Cubs won the World Series. But then a ball rolled through Leon Durhams legs. Steve Garvey pumped his fist. And the bottle never got opened.When my parents moved, the bottle went with them. Another shelf. Another layer of dust.It went through Will Clark in 89. The high of Game 163 in 1998, and the low of being swept by the Braves days later. And then 2003. I wont name names. But I watched in utter jealousy as the Red Sox and White Sox ended their tortuous droughts in subsequent years. Someday, I told myself. Someday.A few years back, my oldest daughter asked me why we cheer for a team that always loses -- that hadnt won a World Series since a date that she couldnt even process. I talked to her about loyalty. About belief. And about how amazing it would be when that someday finally happened. I told her the story of the time Theo Epstein walked me through the Cubs training facility in Arizona, pointed at the 1908 and 1945 World Series banners hanging from above and told me to ignore them. Were going to get a couple of those for ourselves, he insisted that day.Epstein knew -- this was about far more than being the best baseball team in the world. This was about family. About generation after generation passing along a love for something while not knowing when the payoff would ever come.This year I believed was the year. But a sobering thing happened before these playoffs even began. I was at the gym when I took the call. The words on the other end were numbing. Open heart surgery. Sooner rather than later. A little less than a year earlier, doctors had discovered an aneurysm on my aorta, the same ailment that killed actor John Ritter. They told me I probably would need surgery at some point in my life. But a cardiac surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, the same one who saved the life of NBA forward Jeff Green, had reviewed my case. He didnt think I should wait. He told me I had a month. Maybe two.Before his nurse could even explain the procedure, before the talk of stopping my heart or putting me on a ventilator, I said four words: After the World Series. She said something about the Indians, how she wasnt sure they would even make the World Series. And I told her no. She didnt get it. This was because of the Cubs. I pulled out a calendar and told her we could schedule the procedure for the first Monday after the World Series: Nov. 7. The doctors agreed.And so did most everyone who knows me well. They got it. Yes, technically, I was walking around with a ticking time bomb in my chest. The aneurysm could rupture at any point -- a potentially fatal occurrence. But the odds were small. One friend texted me, Forget the World Series. Forget the Cubs. This is the World Series of life.I told him I couldnt do it. I had to wait.And so for the past month Ive watched every pitch of every game with an even greater sense of interest. I had been scheduled to cover the Cubs through the postseason for ESPN, but after one day at Wrigley Field before the start of the National League Division Series, I knew I couldnt handle it.A little more than 30 years ago, on the afternoon of May 26, 1986, my grandfather had a stroke at Wrigley Field. His friends said he was heckling Pete Rose when it happened. He spent the rest of his life in a nursing home, unable to use the left side of his body. I had been to Wrigley probably a hundred times since then. Each time I climbed those cement stairs and looked out to the ivy and old scoreboard, I thought about him and how much he loved the Cubs. But on the day before this years division series, a paralyzing fear came over me. What if I was next? I began to sweat. And shake. I tried to talk to colleagues and friends like everything was fine. But inside I was flipping out. I left without writing a word.On the drive home, I decided I would spend this October surrounded by family and friends. If the unthinkable was going to happen, I wanted to have the people I loved by my side. Each victory against the Giants and Dodgers brought the Cubs one step closer to the World Series, and at the same time, brought me one day closer to surgery.When the final opponent ended up being the Cleveland Indians, I had no words. My father had grown up in Cleveland a die-hard Indians fan. He moved to Chicago in his 20s, decided there was no way he could cheer for the rival White Sox and picked the Cubs as his new team. He fell in love with Wrigley and introduced it all to me. I never had a chance.Now, here was his hometown, the same place I would soon visit to help save my life, facing the Cubs in the World Series. In the last week of October, I went to Cleveland for a series of pre-op tests. It just so happened the dates were the same as Games 1 and 2 of the World Series. On the day of Game 1, I bounced from appointment to appointment in a Cubs T-shirt. Most everyone gave me a hard time -- playfully. I threw it right back. When one nurse chucked a wad of paper at me and I dropped it, I quickly replied, My bad. I catch about as well as the Indians. We all laughed. After my final test that day, my wife and I headed straight to Progressive Field for Game 1. It was surreal. The Cubs. The Indians. My team. My dads team. The World Series. And in the left-field corner, a massive ad for the Cleveland Clinic.For most of the postseason, I had managed to stay relatively calm during games. I watched my wife roll herself into a ball on the couch. There were friends who refused to move an inch when something good happened. And others who admitted to wearing the same underwear after a Cubs win. But I stayed relatively sane, taking a rational approach to the highs and lows of the postseason. Until Game 7, that is. I spent all of Wednesday unsure what to do with myself. I cleaned the house. I took out the garbage. Then my wife reminded me it wasnt garbage day.For my entire life I had wondered what this moment would be like. The Cubs, one win away from the World Series. Where would I watch the final game? In the stadium? The press box? A bar? The streets of Wrigleyville? But now that the biggest Cubs game of my life was here, I was home. On the couch.Throughout the night, I listened to my 2-year-old repeat the chorus to Go Cubs Go over and over and over again. I chuckled when she pointed to the TV and yelled KRIS BRYANT! and then danced maniacally to one of?Anthony Rizzos walk-up songs, Intoxicated. But perhaps I was most touched by a moment in the eighth inning, when Rajai Davis hit his tying home run and my older daughter turned to me, probably reading the pain, fear and anguish on my face and said, Dad, its going to be OK. We got this.From then on, its all a bit of a blur. When Ben Zobrist doubled home Albert Almora Jr. to give the Cubs the lead in the 10th, I know I high-fived my neighbor so hard he thought I broke his hand. And when the final ground ball rolled into Bryants glove and he threw it to Rizzo, I know I grabbed my daughter, held her as tightly as I could and whispered in her ear, This is why we believe.From there, I thought about my father. My mother. My grandparents. I thought about Richard Savage, Betty Maute, Helen Keiling and so many other older Cubs fans I had met over the years who were no longer with us. There was champagne. No, it wasnt that same bottle from 1984. At some point, in some move after Dad died, that bottle disappeared. But the moment was just as special. I dont remember what time I went to bed. But when I woke up Thursday morning, the TV in my bedroom was still on. My daughter was sleeping next to me, and the first thing my eyes saw was a replay of Epstein being doused with champagne. It wasnt a dream.Early Monday morning, around the time the people in Chicago begin waking up to get back to their normal lives, a team of doctors will roll me into an operating room in Cleveland for the six-hour surgery that will save my life. As the anesthesia kicks in and my thoughts begin to drift to a calming place, Ill see a bunch of grown men in blue jerseys jumping up and down in an infield. Ill see a 39-year-old backup catcher ending his career in the most unimaginable way possible.Ill picture that bottle of champagne, cork popped, sitting empty on my kitchen counter. Deep inside there will be smiles. For the Chicago Cubs just won the World Series.And I was alive to see it. Cheap Custom Reds Jersey . 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The race morning scratching of pre-post favourite and likely leader Religify has paved the way for Sweet Redemption to claim her biggest win in the Group Three Festival Stakes at Rosehill.Her rider Brenton Avdulla said the race had panned out perfectly for Sweet Redemption, runner-up at her past two starts in the Summoned Stakes at Sandown and the Goulburn Cup.With Religify out I was confident I could get complete control and it worked out perfectly, Avdulla said.In the straight they got to within half a length of me but she lifted again.Shes a very tough mare.Trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, Sweet Redemption was supported late from $9 to start $5.50.Avdulla bounced her to the front and she rolled along at her own pace with enough in reserve to to hold off Melbourne visitor Hazzabeel ($6) by a short neck with Red Excitement ($11) another long neck third.The Peter and Paul Snowden-trained Extensible started the $4.80 favourite but could only manage fifth while second elect Rageese ($5) finished ninth with premier Melbourne trainerr Darren Weir still chasing a winner in Sydney.ddddddddddddThe Festival Stakes (1500m) is a lead-up to Sydneys summer showpeice, the Group Two Villiers Stakes (1600m) in two weeks but Waterhouse said there were other options for Sweet Redeemotion.Well see how she pulls up but she is a Magic Millions horse so the fillies and mares race is where shell head, she said.How she gets there we cont yet know but theres more chance she will go north for one of those Listed races in Brisbane than the Villiers.She is lovely mare and keeps improving. But she has been up a while.The Magic Millions carnlval is on January 14 with all races worth a minimum $1 million.The Chris Waller-trained Religify was found to be lame after trackwork on Saturday morning putting his Villiers campaign in doubt.After a treble to Tim Clark at Rosehill, Avdullas win puts him back on level pegging in both the Sydney and state jockeys premierships. ' ' '