Hlas: Cubs are real, and they’re spectacular

We're surprised and even shocked at various points in life, but some things stop seeming possible after a while.

Time slips away. Dreams get further and further out of reach until they seem like nothing but, well, dreams.

But on a Saturday October night in the year 2016, the impossible happened. Millions of us witnessed it on television. It appears it wasn't a brilliantly orchestrated hoax, like those moon-landings of yore. Independent experts have verified it. It's real, and it's spectacular.

The Chicago Cubs won the National League pennant.

I never thought I'd type those words. Did you ever think you'd read them? I'm looking at them on my laptop right now, and they still seem preposterous.

Even if you aren't a Cubs fan, you know people who are, and who were long before Theo Epstein arrived as general manager to turn a chronic also-ran into a baseball machine. It's going to take time to accept this.

In the winning-is-everything sports and culture mentality, the Cubs were the oasis. People pledged allegiance to a franchise that was an artistic failure.

In this one spot of American life, being a front-runner wasn't the thing. People were Cubs fans because of family ties. Or because they felt an attraction to a quaint ballpark plopped squarely in an urban neighborhood while every other team seemed to build itself antiseptic stadiums with phony charm. Or because a half-crazy coot named Harry Caray made everything in Wrigleyville seem like so much fun on Cubs telecasts.

Maybe for some, it was because Bill Murray was a Cubs fan to his core. Who is anyone to argue with Bill Murray? When Bill Murray shared moments with Harry Caray on WGN, no amount of winning could make another team more enticing.

Especially when the winning was done by the New York Yankees. Yecch.

But the earth has changed its axis, or something. The Cubs of 2016 have no sense of history, no irrational fears of goats or black cats. Who can figure out millennials, eh?

Besides being loaded with talent, for the first time in our lives we're seeing a Cubs team that seems to ignore the past. The Los Angeles Dodgers were up 2 games to 1 with back-to-back shutouts, and many Cubs followers were looking for a blanket to hide under. But their team just came back out the next night and smacked the ball all over Dodger Stadium.

Then they did it again the next night. Then they came home and jumped on Clayton Kershaw from their first batter of the first inning until the great and accomplished Kershaw left the mound with a dazed look on his face.

It was a Cub pitcher who picked a Dodger runner off first base in a Game 6 of an NLCS, not the other way around. It was a Dodger outfielder dropping a line drive that hit him square in the glove, not a Cub.

It was the Cubs infield smoothly executing three double plays. It was the Dodgers sending only the minimum 27 batters to the plate.

This wasn't real. Except that it was. The Cubs played a nearly perfect game to win the pennant. Millions of people traded calls and texts to make sure they had just seen what they had just seen. Millions of tears of joy were shed. The best plastic surgeons couldn't have removed grins from millions of faces.

For a night, football might as well have been Foosball. For another week or 10 days, actually. Because a World Series starts Tuesday, and the Chicago Cubs are in it. Seriously.