10 years after: How Cubs went from lovable losers to 2016 World Series champions

The Red Sox had ended an 86-year drought on Epstein’s watch. The Cubs were mired in an even longer oh-fer. A title on the North Side was baseball’s ultimate white whale.

“I should probably have another press conference right now to resign because my popularity is going to be at an all-time high right now,” Epstein joked. “It’s only going to go downhill.”

Not true, of course. Step by step, Epstein and the Cubs would prove what could happen here, “curses” and missed opportunities and generations of losing — not always lovable at all — be damned. A “high hit rate,” to use his words, on personnel moves. Winning a National League pennant for the first time since 1945. Winning the World Series for the first time since 1908. Looking and playing every bit like the best damn team on the planet in doing so.

If only, alas, just once.

Has it really been 10 years already since the mother of all celebrations in Cubdom? We should look back at 2016 afresh — not merely at the highlights burned into our brains, but at many of the moments, things said and other matters, large and small, we may have forgotten.

We could begin almost anywhere. On the path to that season, the Cubs traded a sign-and-flip arm, Scott Feldman, to land reclamation project Jake Arrieta, with reliever Pedro Strop also in the deal. They found future closer Hector Rondon in the Rule 5 Draft and dealt pitcher Ryan Dempster for Hendricks. They tanked seasons and landed No. 2 draft pick Bryant, then held over unspent millions in budgeted payroll to steal Lester from the lowballing Red Sox.

When the opportunity came after the 2014 season to go after the Rays’ Maddon, Epstein pounced so hard there were tampering allegations. But Maddon, a seasoned winner, arrived in mid-November, boasting that his age, 60, was “the new 40.”

“This moment is an entirely different moment than any moment that’s preceded it,” Maddon said. “It’s up to us to capture this moment. . . .

“I’m going to talk playoffs. I’m going to talk World Series [in 2015]. I promise you, I am — and I’m going to believe it.”

Less than a month later, the Cubs had Lester, too, beating out the Red Sox with a deal for $155 million over six years.

“We’re not selling out for ’15. We care about ’15 — we’re trying to win in ’15 — but we’re not selling out for anything [except] for a long run of hopefully sustained success,” Epstein said.

But a delighted Maddon said the Cubs had “won the baseball lottery” with Lester, who took aim publicly at the sport’s mountaintop.

“I’m not here to screw off,” Lester said. “I’m here to win.”

The 2015 Cubs stood tall in the best division in baseball, winning 97 games, the third-most in the NL Central but also in the majors; no top three had pulled that off since divisional formats started in 1969. With Arrieta in masterly, Cy Young form and Bryant en route to the Rookie of the Year award, the Cubs won a big-league-best 48 road games and improved by 25 wins overall. Not bad for a team whose Opening Day lineup included Tommy La Stella at second base, Mike Olt at third, Chris Coghlan in left, Jorge Soler in right and the highly capable Starlin Castro at shortstop.

“I’m kind of used to it,” Maddon, who’d come from the dog-eat-dog American League East, said about finishing third. “I like it.”

In the winner-take-all wild-card game in Pittsburgh, Arrieta went the distance and rookie phenom Kyle Schwarber hit a bomb off Pirates ace Gerrit Cole and drove in three runs in a 4-0 victory.

“This is a special group that we have here,” Schwarber said.

“We’re bulldogs,” said rookie shortstop Addison Russell, so prized a prospect that he’d bumped three-time All-Star Castro over to second base in August. “We’re going to fight til lthe end.”

A division series against the 100-win Cardinals beckoned. Were the Cubs — a year ahead of schedule, most experts reckoned — ready for this?

“I don’t think it’s early at all,” Bryant said.

They took the Birds down, too, three games to one, with Rondon leaving Stephen Piscotty holding his bat after the final strikeout at Wrigley and Schwarber leaving an all-time special delivery atop the video board in right.

“We’re young,” Schwarber said, “but we’re baseball players. We know what needs to be done.”

Against the Mets in the NL Championship Series, though, the Cubs hit .164 and struck out 37 times in a brutal four-game sweep. The end of the line hit hard. They still had to get better, and the whole world knew it.

The team comes together

Before the Cubs got to 100 wins in 2016 for the first time since 1935, reached an MLB-best 103 for their most since 1910, took the division by an obscene 17½ games and eventually became the first team to win Games 6 and 7 on the road in a World Series since the 1979 Pirates, there was . . . karaoke. Mimes. Magicians. Zoo animals.

“It was definitely a circus at times,” veteran newcomer Ben Zobrist said at the end of a spring training like no other, probably a good thing, “but it was fun.”

A lineup and roster representing tremendous change and an all-out effort to win a championship — with or without a full “wheelbarrow of cash” that had been promised by business-side executive Crane Kenney — had to be put together first.

On that front, the first half of December 2015 was absolutely dizzying. Instead of pushing a wheelbarrow at David Price or Zack Greinke, the Cubs signed veteran free agent John Lackey — coming off a career-best 2.77 ERA with the rival Cardinals — for $32 million over two years to follow Arrieta and Lester in what instantly appeared to be the game’s top rotation.

Next, they traded Castro to the Yankees and — 24 hours later — essentially replaced him by landing the highly respected Zobrist, who’d played more games under Maddon in Tampa than any other player, to a four-year, $56 million deal. A $184 million bombshell came days after that in the form of outfielder Heyward, lured despite the Cardinals’ vigorous efforts to re-sign him.

It represented a thrown-down gauntlet in the division, considering Heyward and Lackey had led Cardinals position players and pitchers, respectively, in WAR in 2015. Heyward and Zobrist each claimed to have passed on even richer offers to link arms with the Cubs, who now were the “it” team in baseball.

“It would be a beautiful thing to win a World Series,” Heyward said.

Talk about an overall upgrade: This Opening Day lineup would include not only Heyward and Zobrist but also Russell, Schwarber and, best of all, Bryant, whom the Cubs had stashed at Triple-A — audaciously — the previous April to delay his service clock by a year.

During that same December flurry, Maddon was quoted in the Sun-Times for the first time using the three-word phrase that would become his slogan for 2016. Well, one of them, anyway.

“The target’s going to be bigger,” he said, building up to it, “and I want us to embrace the target.”

A couple of days before pitchers and catchers were due to report to Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona, Schwarber broke a fan’s car windshield beyond the outfield fence — not to mention the 40-foot-high outfield screen — of a practice field. How far beyond it? A country mile or so, legend quickly had it.

As soon as camp began, backup catcher David Ross — “Grandpa,” as Rizzo and Bryant were just beginning to teasingly call him — confirmed it would be his final season. Just lucky to be there, Ross liked to say, because the talent around him could get him a second ring to go with the one he’d won with Lester and Lackey in Boston.

Ross was right about that, but there was a vital piece not yet in the fold, nor expected to be by hardly anyone. There might have been a hint dropped by the front office when Coghlan was traded on Feb. 25, but that was two days after ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that free agent Dexter Fowler, the Cubs’ center fielder in 2015, was signed, sealed and delivered to the Orioles on a three-year deal.

On the morning of the 26th, Fowler, wearing black jeans, a white T-shirt and white high-tops, strode onto a practice field where all the Cubs had been gathered around the mound to await some sort of surprise. If they didn’t instantly know he was back on the team, his signature smile gave it away. Heyward — his friend since adolescence — was the first to greet him, with a warm embrace. Rizzo came in next with a bear hug and a few playful left hooks to the kidney.

“These guys are my boys,” Fowler, on a one-year contract, said that day. “This is my family.”

This meant Maddon could tell his preferred leadoff man, “You go, we go,” every day for another season, and that put the manager in a fine mood. Come to think of it, was Maddon ever not happy to the point of daffiness that spring?

Maddon in an early 2016 nutshell would be the time he drove his tricked-out 1976 Dodge van around the back of the Cubs’ complex, where most of the team was stretching, and cranked “Earth, Wind & Fire” through the speakers as coaches and players piled out wearing tie-dyed shirts, bandanas, clown wigs and other attire of which Cheech & Chong would have approved. And we know they would have, especially because Maddon and bench coach Davey Martinez climbed out of the front seats in “Cheech & Chong” tees procured by Martinez for the occasion.

Did this sort of thing help put the Cubs in position to win big? One won’t ever know for certain.

But on March 6, shirts bearing another slogan — “Try not to suck” — greeted Cubs players at their lockers. Oddsmakers had the Cubs, Giants and Mets 1-2-3 to win the World Series. The national media were wild for the Cubs, although Sports Illustrated picked them to get to the Fall Classic and lose, understandable given how the magazine’s infamous “Hell Freezes Over” 2004 Cubs cover prediction turned out.

On the eve of the season, Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey wrote: “The Cubs are good enough to win it all this year. They should win it all this year. I don’t think saying that is tempting fate. . . .

“But things happen. These being the Cubs, bad things can and likely will happen. You can’t go a century-plus without a title and then expect childbirth without labor pains.”

The Cubs wouldn’t make it through their third game before pain hit like a truck.

Season begins with a bang — and a crash

An uber-confident Arrieta said a day before the opener at the Angels, “I intend to start quick and fast and not look back.” A scant 89 pitches later, he had seven scoreless innings, two hits allowed and one seemingly effortless win in the books.

Surely, he wasn’t going to outdo his unthinkably great 2015, when his ERA was 0.86 in his last 20 starts, 0.75 after the All-Star break — a major-league record — and 0.41 in the final two months, another record. Or was he? His fourth start — and fourth victory — was a no-hitter in Cincinnati, his second with the Cubs. Bryant, already dropping MVP breadcrumbs, drove in six runs in that 16-0 romp.

Oft forgotten about 2016, when Lester and Hendricks finished second and third in Cy Young voting: Arrieta was 11-2 with a 1.74 ERA through 15 starts, arguably the Cubs’ best player for nearly half the season.

“Regardless of expectations, we all want to get off to a good start,” Arrieta had said before the opener. “Everybody wants to separate themselves from the pack as early as possible.”

The whole Cubs team, it seemed, stood on the gas pedal from the word “go” during a 25-6 start that electrified baseball. That is, except for Schwarber, whose season had been looked forward to by Cubs fans like few others’. In game No. 3, a 14-6 win at the Diamondbacks, Schwarber — a trained catcher still learning the ropes in left field — collided with Fowler on a gapper hit by Jean Segura. While Segura raced around the bases for an inside-the-park home run, Schwarber was face down on the warning track, smacking the dirt with his open right hand. The initial report was an ankle injury, but it was his left knee that was shredded — two major ligament tears.

An exemplary professional, Schwarber — who’d been carted off the field — stood on crutches after the game, waiting for reporters. There would be no role on a potentially great team as an outfielder, as the personal catcher for Jason Hammel or as a home-run swatter for the 23-year-old former No. 4 overall pick, who loved being a Cub palpably. Just like that, the Cubs were down a key player, one who had to be crushed.

“I have no regrets about playing hard and getting hurt,” Schwarber said. “I’m not going to be down in spirits.”

Fortunately, Fowler was, for the most part, OK.

“You feel like you got in a car crash,” Fowler said from across the room. “That’s a big man over there.”

But the Cubs went 5-1 on the opening trip, and hopes and expectations remained exceptionally high. Outside Wrigley Field before the home opener, as a Sun-Times news story put it, “The ballpark’s newly painted ironwork gleamed in the sunlight [as], almost without exception, every fan in Cubdom on Monday night declared, ‘This is the year!’ ”

Fans entered the ballpark through newly installed metal detectors. Inside, in the stadium bowels, Cubs players were blown away by their new clubhouse. The locker room — circular, with blue-tinted mood lighting — was stylish and pristine. There was a sprawling weight room, a sparkling batting-cage area, a Pilates studio, a game room, a party room for postgame celebrations and more. The Cubs had gone from having the smallest, worst clubhouse in baseball to having the second-largest and maybe the best.

Rizzo warned: “Now we’re in a country club. So when we step [inside] those lines, we’d better be ready to play.”

Fowler stayed more than ready, batting above .300 with an on-base percentage above .400 well into June. Bryant sizzled in April — while Rizzo put eight home runs on the board — and nobody could get Zobrist out in May. There sure didn’t seem to be much to worry about.

On April 16, Baez, recently off the disabled list, made his first start, at second base, spelling Zobrist at Wrigley. A former first-round pick, Baez had been the subject of offseason trade rumors, but Maddon was smitten and said the dazzling infielder would start two or three times a week and play different positions.

“He definitely belongs here,” Maddon said that day. “He knows he belongs here.”

During the next series, in St. Louis, Zobrist received the 2015 World Series ring he had won with the Royals. One teammate at a time, the Illinois native stopped at lockers to offer extra-slow fist-bumps showing off the glitzy bauble on his finger. It made a terrific impression in the room. Like Baez, Zobrist would prove his value to the Cubs when it mattered most.

Arrieta’s no-no in Cincinnati was caught by Ross, the receiver’s first such experience in his 15th and final season. Ross also homered in that game.

“It’s been one of my dreams, and [Arrieta’s] stuff made it come true,” Ross said afterward. “I’m on cloud nine. I’m on the moon.”

The Cubs went 17-5 in April, the best record in baseball. They won eight straight to get to 25-6, the majors’ best start since the 1984 Tigers. Fans of a certain age might read “1984” and reflexively become wistful and sad, but the 2016 Cubs scoffed at the notion that a history of disappointments had anything whatsoever to do with how much ass they were going to kick. They’d already swept the Angels, Reds, Brewers, Pirates and Nationals. Whether or not they’d come right out and say it, they were smelling blood.

At home against the Nationals on May 13 — Mother’s Day — win No. 24 came via a 13th-inning walk-off homer by Baez, who wore pink shoes and pink sleeves and wielded a pink bat. The ball disappeared into a roiling sea of pink in the bleachers, where fans had been given promotional shirts to raise awareness of breast cancer and in honor of the holiday. It’s still too close to call if the celebration was wilder out there or at home plate as Baez jumped for joy with his teammates.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Maddon said afterward.

Oh, yeah. And it was only the beginning.

The best team in baseball?

By mid-May, it was a mighty struggle at the plate for Heyward. He was at .212 with no home runs and in a brutal 5-for-40 stretch when he was asked if the weight of his contract was making him press and/or messing with his head.

“Man, you could say it’s a little bit of all of the above,” he said, at least being honest.

Aside from Schwarber’s injury, the absence of offense from Heyward was the only big downer so far, the rest being pretty amazing for a team that didn’t lose back-to-back games until the sixth week of the season. Not that it stopped the Pirates’ Cole from opining, after beating the Cubs on May 15 — the Pirates’ first head-to-head win in six tries — that all the buzz about the Cubs was a bit much.

“I don’t really think they’re the best team in baseball,” Cole said.

Aside from the Cubs’ dominant starting pitching, lockdown defense, eruptive offense and already-cartoonish run differential, maybe Cole had a point. Or not.

Arrieta was the NL’s pitcher of the month in April. Lester would win the award twice, for June and September. Hendricks would win it for a truly remarkable August, but he was sneakily outstanding far earlier than that. In the playoffs — and most notably in Game 7 of the World Series — Maddon clearly wouldn’t trust Hendricks to take third spins through lineups, but this is a pitcher who threw multiple complete games and topped 100 pitches commonly in 2016.

The first complete game came on May 28 against the Phillies. An impressed Montero, his catcher that day, said: “When you’ve got your No. 5 and you know he’s going to give you a quality start, that means you’re in pretty good shape.” It had to be one of the last times anyone referred to Hendricks as a fifth starter.

On June 19, Hendricks began a brilliant 18-start streak of allowing two or fewer earned runs that carried him all the way through September. On Aug. 1, he shut out the Marlins at Wrigley, throwing an ace-like 123 pitches. On Sept. 12 in St. Louis, he lost a no-hit bid in the ninth. By the end of the season, he was baseball’s ERA champion.

June 19 turned out to be a major milestone night not only because of Hendricks’ streak, but also because the Cubs completed a sweep of the Pirates — beating future Cub Jameson Taillon — to give themselves a 12½-game lead in the division, the largest on June 19 in the NL since baseball moved to a divisional format in 1969. Oh, but that’s not all: Also that night, call-up Willson Contreras, the Cubs’ top catching prospect, took one over the center-field wall off reliever A.J. Schugel on the first pitch of his first major-league at-bat.

Walking from the on-deck circle to the plate, Contreras got a standing “O” and couldn’t stop looking into the dugout and smiling. After his homer — witnessed by an ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” audience, no less — he received a curtain call. Was this Wrigleyville or Hollywood?

“I don’t have the words to explain how happy I am to be here,” he said that night.

Maddon had a lot to think about with this 24-year-old, whose physical gifts were something different.

“You look into that crystal ball of the future, and you’re going to see a lot more of that,” the manager said. “He’s a game-changer.”

What, you think we’re done with June 19? One more thing: It was the last time the Cubs — 47-20 — would sizzle for quite a while. They lost six of their next seven games, against the Cardinals and the Marlins, before sweeping the Reds in three at Great American Ball Park. Then they dropped nine of 11 games heading into the All-Star break, by which time they had merely the third-most wins — 53 — in the NL, trailing the Giants (57) and Nationals (54). The American League had the Rangers and Cleveland with 54 and 53, respectively. Perhaps Cole really had been on to something.

Bryant’s phenomenal game in Cincinnati on June 27 bears remembering. He walloped three homers — a pair of them into the upper deck in left — added two doubles, drove in six and tallied a franchise-record 16 total bases. Bryant, only 24, became the first major-leaguer since at least 1900 with three homers and two doubles in a game and the youngest Cub to go deep three times, by 10 days over Ernie Banks, who did it for the first time in 1955.

The stands were full of Cubs fans that afternoon, and they wanted a curtain call. The visitors’ dugout wanted one, too, but Bryant refused to oblige on the grounds that it would be too disrespectful to the home team.

“I’m glad my teammates are having fun with it, and I’m glad there’s lots of Cubs fans here, but I’m not that guy,” he said.

When the All-Star Game arrived July 12 in San Diego, the NL’s starting infield was all Cubs — Bryant, Russell, Zobrist and Rizzo — with Lester and Arrieta also on the squad, as well as Fowler, an All-Star for the first and only time at 30. Not everyone looked upon this Cubbie coronation as a good thing because the Cubs were gassed or at least playing like it.

“There’s no question we could use a break,” Zobrist said. “We could have used a break 12, 13 games ago.”

But Rizzo insisted: “We’re going into the break now with our heads up.”

The division lead was down to seven games over the Cardinals, with the Pirates 7½ back. It was a bit close for comfort. The picture brightened a little when Bryant stepped to the plate against White Sox lefty Chris Sale, the AL starter — against whom he’d gone 0-for-6 with six strikeouts — and ripped a first-pitch fastball for a homer. It didn’t add to his season total, but, hey, 25 dingers at the break wasn’t too shabby at all.

Putting the final piece in place

Epstein met the media before the second-half opener, against the Rangers at Wrigley, and sounded unworried. Not only that, but he made sure to put the emphasis back on the “target” — the whole shebang.

“We showed our humanity, our vulnerability as a team,” Epstein said. “But, in the long run, that may be a good thing because we know how hard we have to work and how well we have to play to get where we need to go.

“Now,” he added, “it’s up to us to earn the path we want.”

Arrieta was sliding, barely holding on in the top 10 in ERA in the NL and issuing too many walks in too many five-inning outings. Lester had gotten bombed in back-to-back starts and suddenly was a distant 15th in ERA. But Bryant still led all players in WAR, at 4.6, and in homers, and Rizzo led the NL with an OPS of 1.006. Between them, Bryant and Rizzo had gone deep 46 times and knocked in 128.

As the Cubs and White Sox met for four games, two on each side of town, in late July, the action on the field was overshadowed by a pair of juicy — and highly awkward — developments. One was Sale’s five-day ban for tearing up 1976-style jerseys he didn’t want to wear for his most recent scheduled start and the beef he clearly had with Sox exec Kenny Williams. The other was the huge news made by the Cubs when, on July 25, they traded reliever Adam Warren, top prospect Gleyber Torres and two minor-leaguers for Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman, owner of the biggest fastball ever — 105 mph — as well as serious baggage from a 30-game suspension that year stemming from a domestic-violence allegation.

Chapman’s first encounter with Chicago reporters — with baffled Cubs coach Henry Blanco acting as his translator — was a shambles. Chapman came off as evasive and unserious and the Cubs as having done him zero favors in the PR department.

But the acquisition left no doubts about how complete a team the Cubs now were. After losing twice on the South Side, they won both games at Wrigley to kick off a 14-1 tear during which they reached 30 games over .500 for the first time since 1969. The only loss in that stretch involved a blown save by Chapman in his second Cubs appearance, after Maddon brought him in with two outs in the eighth inning. Chapman didn’t appreciate that early wave-in from the bullpen so much.

“It’s not my favorite thing to do,” he said the next day.

“I didn’t know that,” Maddon admitted.

The word “foreshadowing” comes to mind.

Aug. 12 was the last day of the 14-1 tear and, inarguably, the greatest day of reserve outfielder Matt Szczur’s career. In a 13-2 win against the Cardinals, Szczur — who hit 12 career home runs — went deep twice as the Cubs won their 11th straight game, which still is their longest winning streak of the last quarter-century. It seemed anyone on this team was capable of playing hero, although it was getting harder still at the dish for Heyward, who a week later would become baseball’s priciest benching.

The Cubs were a scintillating 50-23 after the All-Star break. Lester went 3-0 with a 1.71 ERA in five starts in August and saved his best for September, when he won all five starts, struck out 31, walked only four and posted a 0.48 ERA while averaging nearly eight innings. Sun-Times stories mentioned Arrieta and Hendricks in the context of the Cy Young before any about Lester did — there was lots of “Bryant or Rizzo?” MVP talk, too — but after Lester threw seven scoreless innings in Houston on Sept. 9 to get to 16-4, we called him the “clear front-runner.” The Nationals’ Max Scherzer ended up winning the award.

Maddon repeatedly said he wouldn’t divulge his Game 1 starter for the postseason until after the Cubs had clinched the division, though he did allow after Lester’s win in Houston that “that’s why you sign a guy like this, for these particular moments.”

The Cubs closed August with a 15-game division lead, the majors’ largest entering September in eight years. And on Sept. 15 — despite losing to the Brewers at Wrigley that night — they clinched. Some players hung around in the clubhouse to watch the Cardinals lose to the Giants, sealing the deal. Others didn’t. But the next afternoon, Epstein — wearing a fake mustache — sat in the left-field bleachers with a group from the front office and watched the Cubs win 5-4, Montero walking it off with an opposite-field homer in the 10th.

The Cubs celebrated with water at home plate, then with champagne and beer in the clubhouse.

“We have much larger baseball fish to fry,” Maddon cautioned.

No doubt, that was true.

But Hendricks was on his way to becoming the first Cub since Bill Lee in 1930 to lead baseball in ERA. No, not “Spaceman.” Just Bill.

Hammel would finish with 15 wins, then be left out of the pitching mix at playoff time. It had to be hard as hell to accept that.

Baez’s tags — his tags! — had achieved meme status. Bryant had torched and tortured the Reds with 10 homers out of his 39. The 103 wins gave Maddon 200 in his first two seasons, making him a true superstar. It was a team of superstars that season, wasn’t it?

So many things had gone according to plan — or better.

Arrieta gave up seven runs and 10 hits in his final regular-season start, in Pittsburgh. Lester’s last start, Oct. 1 in Cincinnati in the team’s penultimate game, wasn’t much better: five runs allowed and 111 pitches thrown in only five innings, possibly costing him the Cy Young. Then Hendricks took the mound for the finale and gave up four earned runs for the first time since May. The Cubs nevertheless won two of three at Great American Ball Park, where blue-clad fans did the wave during the late innings. They were ready for some playoff ball.

Not to worry, the Cubs — even their starting pitchers, still kind of good — were ready, too.

The best rotation, best middle of the order, best collection of fielders and now one of the best closers, too? Come on, people, this was going to be fun.

“I don’t want to sound like (a jerk0 or anything, but we haven’t really done anything yet,” Lester cautioned.

Arrieta took a wee bit cockier tone, asking, “Who gives a (bleep) who we play?”

Cubs capture the flag

Legendary Cub Billy Williams threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Legendary Bear Mike Ditka delivered — well, yelled — the ceremonial “Play ball!”

Lester, back in the form he’d exhibited all September, scattered five hits in eight scoreless innings, aided by a strong wind blowing in and the strong arm of Ross, who gunned down the Giants’ Gorkys Hernandez on an attempted steal in the first and picked off Conor Gillaspie in the third.

In the eighth, Giants ace Johnny Cueto still working, Baez swung from the heels and hit one to Waukegan — or so it appeared off the bat. The wind knocked it down and into the left-field basket, which was perfectly peachy as far as the Cubs were concerned. Chapman handled the ninth, and Game 1 of the teams’ division series was official.

Ex-Cub Jeff Samardzija got jumped quickly in Game 2, giving up four runs — two of them, rather hilariously, driven in by the lighter-than-light-hitting Hendricks — in two innings before being yanked. The Cubs took a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series to the West Coast, something a Cubs team hadn’t done since — gee, when could it have been? — 1984.

Panic? Of course not, not even after the Giants’ Joe Panik slammed one off the wall against Mike Montgomery to score Brandon Crawford in the 13th inning of what had been a truly great Game 3. It looked like the Cubs would sweep when Arrieta belted an early three-run homer off Giants ace Madison Bumgarner for a 3-0 lead. But the Giants took command when Chapman was summoned in the eighth inning of a tie game (are we still foreshadowing here?) and let in two runs. But Bryant tied it with a long ball in the ninth, Albert Almora Jr. made a jaw-dropping play in right field in the bottom of the ninth to send it to extras and, oh, by the way, these were the Giants, who knew a thing or two about winning in October.

The point is, it wasn’t supposed to be easy.

Giants teams had won their last 10 postseason elimination games, and a night later the Cubs trailed 5-2 entering the ninth. AT&T Park was a zoo. It was going to be Lester in Game 5 at Wrigley, unless . . . Bryant singled, Rizzo walked, Zobrist doubled, Contreras got a hit and Baez did, too. Goodness, it was something. After driving in the go-ahead run in Game 4, Baez rounded first, pounded his heart with his open right hand and snarled just long enough to stick something extra to the Giants, whose pitchers had buzzed him, yapped at him and tried to intimidate him all series.

“I had my reasons,” Baez said under a champagne shower.

It would be the Nationals or the Dodgers in the NLCS.

Said a goggled Bryant: “We’ll be ready [either way] and can’t wait.”

Into Wrigley came the 91-win Dodgers, who’d won the NL West four years in a row. As experienced as they were, the second inning had to throw them for a loop. Kenta Maeda served up a triple to Heyward, who scored on Baez’s bloop double. A wild pitch sent Baez to third, where he then danced far off the bag with Lester squaring to bunt. Catcher Carlos Ruiz threw to third, but instead of lurching back to the base, Baez instantly took off for the plate and became the first Cub to steal home in a postseason game in a mere 109 years.

But Game 1 is remembered for Montero’s grand slam in the eighth off Joe Blanton. What that swing did, apart from simply busting open a tie game and sending the Cubs to a 1-0 series lead, was take Maddon off the hook for his unflinching stubbornness. Again, Maddon had gone to Chapman in the eighth. Again, Chapman had failed to deliver, giving up a two-run single to Adrian Gonzalez.

The Dodgers then shut out the Cubs twice in a row, with superstar lefty Clayton Kershaw announcing his presence loudly in Game 2 and Arrieta laying an egg in Game 3.

“I’ll pitch again,” Arrieta promised, bold until the end.

Most concerning was the quiet from the Cubs’ bats, Rizzo’s and Russell’s in particular. Russell had ended the regular season in a 3-for-31 slump and was 1-for-24 in the playoffs. Rizzo was 2-for-28 in the playoffs. But each homered in Game 4 — Rizzo after borrowing one of Szczur’s bats — and the Cubs romped 10-2. They were back in business.

Lester dominated over seven innings of the Cubs’ 8-4 win in Game 5, sending them home with a 3-2 lead and setting the stage for another Hendricks-Kershaw duel. It was cold that night at Wrigley, but the energy in the ballpark was, to use one of Maddon’s favorite words, “spectacular” — and so was Hendricks, who stole the show in a 5-0 win that clinched the pennant and filled Cubdom with elation and awe.

At 9:45 p.m., Baez’s double-play relay throw popped into Rizzo’s mitt, and Wrigley was the happiest place on Earth. An additional 300,000 fans went wild outside the ballpark. The pennant! For the first time since 1945.

“We don’t care about history,” Bryant said in a clubhouse of all-out chaos.

“Best group of guys in the world,” Lester said. “Closest team in the world.”

On the field, Epstein noted: “There’s another trophy we want.”

Smiling into the night, Hendricks said: “We’re not done. We’re still going.”

Hendricks’ mother took his face in her hands.

“Oh, baby,” she said, “you did it!”

The celebration of the century

The Schwarber buzz started toward the end of the NLCS with a tweet from the Mesa Solar Sox that said he’d been added to their Arizona Fall League taxi squad. It intensified with reports he would DH in their game the night of Game 6. Epstein said the Cubs weren’t “ruling anything out,” but those covering the team considered Schwarber in the World Series a huge long shot.

Sun-Times beat writer Gordon Wittenmyer sized up the matchup against Cleveland, giving the Cubs edges in starting pitching, fielding and hitting and Cleveland edges in relief pitching, managing and intangibles. He picked the Cubs to win it in seven games.

“We’ve envisioned this since last year, since spring training this year, every bus ride we take,” Rizzo said going in. “We envision it. We talk about it. When you’re so wrapped up in it, good things happen.”

Almost miraculously, Schwarber — less than a week since he first thought it might be possible — was in the lineup at DH for Game 1 at Progressive Field, before which he said, “I’ll probably cry at some point today.” Eleven months after signing the biggest contract in Cubs history, Heyward was on the bench, with Coghlan — who’d been reacquired in June — starting in right.

The Cubs outhit Cleveland 10-7 but lost 6-0, a not-so-neat math trick. Zobrist had three hits and Schwarber doubled off the top of the wall in right-center, but the Cubs couldn’t make ace Corey Kluber pay when it counted. The Cubs took strike three six times, Coghlan doing it twice. Jeez, Heyward could’ve managed that.

But Game 2 was a 5-1 clapback, with the Cubs jumping on top in the first with a single by Bryant and an RBI double by Rizzo. The Cubs totaled nine hits and eight walks against Trevor Bauer and Cleveland’s vaunted bullpen. Arrieta came through, Montgomery gave the Cubs two shutdown innings and Chapman — again coming on in the eighth — finished it. Next stop: Wrigley.

“It’s going to be insane,” Rizzo said. “It’s going to be a lot of emotions for a lot of people.”

Could the Cubs win three more in a row there and finish it? They’d won the whole thing at Wrigley only two years earlier, after all, right in front of Lester’s face in a video created for him by Epstein that showed the big lefty on the hill for the final out.

Cleveland shortstop Francisco Lindor laughed at the idea.

“I’m sure we can bounce back,” he said. “We’ve got a good team, too.”

Lindor was right. In Game 3, Coco Crisp singled off Carl Edwards Jr. for the only run in a 1-0 win. The Cubs couldn’t get to Cleveland’s weakest World Series starter, Josh Tomlin, before Andrew Miller and that bullpen took over. It ended with Cody Allen striking out Baez with runners on second and third in the ninth.

Game 4 was a 7-2 cakewalk for the visitors, Kluber outclassing Lackey. Cleveland had its own championship drought — going on 68 years — and it undoubtedly felt to most observers like that was about to end.

At least the Cubs had their pitching lined up. Yours truly wrote that night: “Lester, Arrieta, Hendricks. Go on, chant those names a few times and see if it doesn’t make you feel a little better. This thing isn’t over yet.”

Maddon just wanted to find a way in Game 5.

“If we do that, I really think, based on what they have left pitching-wise and what we have, I kind of like our chances,” he said.

Lester poured out everything he had for six innings, allowing a run in the second and another in the sixth. Bryant tied the score at 1 in the Cubs’ three-run fourth, Russell adding an RBI infield single and Ross a sacrifice fly that held up as the winning run in a 3-2 decision.

With one out and a man on in the seventh — the seventh! — Maddon went to Chapman, who answered the call with 2⅔ scoreless innings, striking out four, including the dangerous Jose Ramirez to end it. But it took Chapman 42 pitches to get to the finish line.

Yours truly wrote then: “Let the record show that Aroldis Chapman’s entrance into the game in the top of the seventh inning was bat-out-of-hell nuts and — without a doubt — the most dramatic move Broadway Joe Maddon has made as manager of the Cubs.”

But the dream was still alive, and Game 6 was the laugher — 9-3 — the Cubs needed. They jumped all over Tomlin this time, while Arrieta again delivered. With two gone in the first, Bryant crushed a solo homer. Rizzo and Zobrist then singled back-to-back before Russell blooped one to right-center that outfielders Tyler Naquin and Lonnie Chisenhall somehow let fall, a massive two-run gaffe. Russell, only 22, later smoked a grand slam, becoming the second-youngest player — after Mickey Mantle — to hit a Fall Classic granny and the first since the White Sox’ Paul Konerko in 2005. His six RBI tied the World Series record.

“It’s a kid’s dream,” Russell said.

All of Cubdom was dreaming. And also was in disbelief that Maddon had called on Chapman again in a 7-2 game.

“All I know is I’m going to be ready tomorrow,” Chapman said after his 1⅓ innings, “and we’ll see what happens.”

But you know what happened in Game 7, don’t you? If you’re anything like any other fan who has lived and breathed the Cubs, you have the details of Nov. 2 — the best damn night in Cubs history — down pat.

Fowler’s homer off Kluber leading off the game. Carlos Santana’s game-tying single off Hendricks in the third. Russell’s and Contreras’ RBI in the fourth. Baez’s homer and Rizzo’s RBI single — for a 5-1 lead — in the fifth. Maddon’s hook — premature? — with Hendricks in the fifth, when Lester came in and spiked a wild pitch off Ross’ mask, allowing two to score to make it 5-3. Ross’ improbable home run off Miller. Rajai Davis tying it at 6 with a homer off Chapman in the eighth. An exhausted Chapman somehow getting through the ninth before dissolving in tears in the dugout. A rain delay and Heyward’s speech. Schwarber’s hit to start the 10th, and Zobrist’s and Montero’s all-time-clutch hits for a two-run lead. Montgomery’s finishing touch for his first professional save.

Rizzo pocketing the ball.

The greatest celebration ever on the infield.

“W” flags everywhere.

“Go, Cubs, Go” from the stands.

Ross carried from the field.

Contreras cried throughout the game and wept at his locker afterward, in case it matters to anyone 10 years later.

“What a bunch of professionals,” Maddon said. “We never quit.”

“It’s the best feeling in the world,” Rizzo said.

Said Epstein: “It’s fitting it had to be done with one of the best games of all time.”

That it was, indeed.