Events

Excellent:

You couldn't script the game better: tied at 6 going into the 9th, then the 10th, then a rain delay, then a 2-run homer top of 10 followed by a nail-biting run and out to end the game. The Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. And Chicago went nuts. There are, as you can imagine, a ton of stories about it. The best I thought came from the Guardian, but of course the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Chicago Public Media all had things...

Before discussing the most important sports story in North America since...well, since the States were United, let me highlight some of the political and professional stories percolating: The Economist has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. "This choice is not hard." Meanwhile, the High Court in London ruled today that Parliament must actually vote to trigger Brexit, which gives MPs another crack at the piñata and perhaps a way out. No telling when Teresa May plans to schedule this vote as the UK...

I'm having trouble typing these words: The Cubs have won the World Series. I'm sure I'll have more to say later. But: the Cubs have won the World Series. Where do you go from there? A woman president, maybe? Holy fuck. I hope against all the evidence I see that 2016 isn't the best year of my life. And I will sweat day and night to ensure this is merely the landing on the staircase. Meanwhile, my neighborhood is all sirens and shouting, so...I'll leave the wordsmithing until later. But the Cubs have won...

The Cubs' World Series Game 7 tonight in Cleveland may be "the biggest game in Chicago sports history," according to Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville. I agree. But still, I'm trying to maintain perspective: This is the only the second time in franchise history they've played in November. Last night was the first. They won the National League pennant after a 71-year drought. That's not trivial. If Cleveland wins, maybe they'll be so happy there it will tip Ohio into Hillary Clinton's column. They have...

It's going to be a nerve-wracking week. Tonight, the Cubs play Game 7 of the World Series against the Indians, after some truly wonderful baseball list night: The first-inning sequence in a 9-3 victory at Progressive Field stunned a nervous crowd of 38,116 into silence and announced, loudly, that the Cubs had come ready to rise to the occasion. Facing a win-or-go-home scenario, the Cubs arrived with an intensity the Indians failed to match. Zobrist smacking Anthony Rizzo's hand with more emotion than he...

In between meetings and client visits, I've been paging through New York Magazine's article from last week, "The Final Days of the Trump Campaign:" Perhaps the most surprising thing to ponder at this late stage in the election is just how close the race could have been had he taken nearly any of the advice offered to him by advisers. “This thing was doable if we did it the right way,” one adviser told me. When Paul Manafort, a veteran Republican lobbyist and operative cut from Establishment cloth — he’d...

Here's hoping for a Game 7.

It looks like I'm slowing down Daily Parker posts over the past year. Including this post, I've published 477 items in the past 12 calendar months, for an average of 39.75 per month or 1.3 per day. The long-term average is 40.2 per month or 1.33 per day. This means October 2016 is the first month since July 2011 in which the moving 12-month average dipped below the all-time average. Here's the chart: I'm not sure why the count has dropped off, or why this month was especially slow, but there are some...

The Cubs won last night's game so they get to play Game 6 tomorrow night in Cleveland. Whew! Last night also set a few records: It was the latest Cubs home game ever (October 30th). It ended the longest period in Major League Baseball that a team went between World Series home-game wins (25,955 days). It set the record for highest attendance at Wrigley Field in a season (3,232,420). The Cubs are still favored to win the series, but it'll be tough. I'll be watching.