Barack Obama and the Chicago Cubs shared a historic day nobody saw coming

WASHINGTON — As you enter the East Room, Marines are playing folksy elevator music that they’re trying to pass off as jazz. A few men standing in the corner snuck in Cubs jerseys and tied them on over their suits.

The president is late. Attendees joke that he’s putting the big arms of Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo to use for last-minute packing. The room is humming without him. Hundreds of Cubbies. Dozens came with Cubs swag — the “W” flag, the hats, the pinstripe pullovers.

The president’s Chicago contingent and faces that’ve propelled him to two election victories are littered throughout the room. Chicago mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is tucked in the front near Cubs fan Frank Alschuler, a 92-year-old making his first visit to the White House. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior advisor, parades around the room. There’s David Axelrod, the former senior advisor, strolling the room in a shirt that reads “Bryant-Rizzo 2020, Make Chicago Great Again.” Then, of course, there’s the Commissioner’s Trophy by a podium, glistening under fluorescent lights.

Strands of history rarely intertwine like this. The curse of the billy goat, the 108-year Cubs championship drought, shattered in an epic Game 7 after a World Series Chicagoans can, truthfully, tell their kids was one for ages. And they waited to be welcomed to the White House by one of Chicago’s favorite sons — a black man with Kenyan roots and a Kansan mother, raised in Hawaii and Jakarta — the most unlikely president to ever have taken the nation’s highest office.

The East Room room goes silent, except for camera snaps which flutter any time it even seems the president is about to enter. The room barks then shushes every other minute. Wait, can somebody quiet their crying kid? Miss, you can’t blow your nose that close to his face. Sir, move your hat these people want to speak with the Ricketts.

There is an announcement over the loud speaker. Here come the Cubs. And here comes Barack Obama. The people gathered erupt. Obama conducts business per usual. When a sports team comes to town, he traditionally starts with a dad joke.

“They said this day would never come,” he says to immediate laughs. “I will say to the Cubs: It took you long enough. I mean, I’ve only got four days left. You’re just making it over the line.”

Obama tries to talk about the “audacity of hope” but he gets showered with “Yes We Can” and “Yes We Did” chants. He tries to talk about his love for the White Sox, but then he switches and just talks about his wife, Michelle.

In eight years in the White House, the Obamas have hosted nearly 50 teams, and FLOTUS had never come to an event as a fan until now, when the Cubs are being feted. Behind closed doors, she told Cubs players how she used to come home from school to see her South Side-native father watching games at Wrigley on the tube.

Like with so many Cubs fans, the team had been a connection to her father and their World Series title sparked a wave of nostalgia that hadn’t ebbed by the time the team made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It chokes up President Obama two and a half months after the final out.

“It’s more than just sports,” he says.

The president’s longest serving aide, Deputy Chief of Staff Anita Decker Breckenridge, is a Cubs superfan. When they won, she said the next day was the “best day of her life.” Obama countered, “What about me winning the presidency?” There were a lot of sick days during the playoffs in the White House. One Obama staffer was interviewed outside of a bar at Wrigley. Obama said he watched the interview and wondered why he wasn’t at the office.

Those jokes brought smiles to Ryne Sandberg, Jose Cardenal, and Billy Williams in the crowd, all Cubs greats. Dexter Fowler, the first black Cub to play in the World Series, brought Obama a custom pair of Jordan 4’s with Obama’s name engraved in the sole. Theo Epstein, the one-man drought killer, called Obama’s presidency “tremendous” and gave him a lifetime pass to Wrigley.

“Thank you for the dignity and integrity you served this country with,” Epstein said, handing Obama a large ticket. “I love how it says ‘non-transferable!’ Can you imagine if someone walks up ...” Obama cuts himself off with his own laughter.

This was Obama’s last hurrah, and Chicago watched him. His last public event, he claimed, as the leader of the free world was about baseball. It took place because of another piece of history that was thought impossible for nearly a century.

Obama stood there as a marker of progress. Many of us had the same reaction to that championship run as we did to Obama’s 2008 victory. If you told us a black man would be leading this nation, if you told us the Cubs would kill the curse, we would have given the same answer: “There’s no way.”

Before he leaves, Obama gets a final thought across.

“It is worth remembering, because sometimes people wonder, ‘Well why’re you spending time on sports there’s other stuff going on,’” Obama says. “Throughout our history, sports has had this power to bring us together, even when the country is divided. Sports has changed attitudes and culture in ways that seem subtle, but, ultimately, made us think differently about ourselves and who we were.”

The room grows noticeably quiet. That baby finally quit crying. David Ross and Joe Maddon are focused on Obama.

“It is a game. It is celebration. But, there’s a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me standing here. There’s a direct line between people loving Ernie Banks and then the city being able to come together and work together in one spirit,” Obama says.

In his hometown of Chicago last week for his farewell address, Obama mused that “sometimes it’s not enough just to change laws, you gotta change hearts.” Those words echoed in the East Room.

“Sports has a way sometimes of changing hearts in a way that politics or business doesn’t,” Obama says. “Sometimes, it’s just a matter of us being able to escape and relax from the difficulty of our days, but, sometimes it also speaks to something better in us.”

Obama points out the differences among the Cubs. That there is a Jason Heyward, a Javy Baez, and a Kyle Schwarber on this team. That baseball isn’t as white as it was the last time the Cubs were cracking homers in the World Series in 1945. That they overcame obstacles that would have been much bigger in another era.

Hell, they even looked like they had fun doing it.

“That tells us a little something about what America is, and what America can be,” Obama says, noting how appropriate it is to celebrate the Cubs and the makings of their championship on a day remembering Martin Luther King Jr.’s calls for equality. “It helps direct us in terms of where this country has been and what it can be in the future.”