How Ben Zobrist and his family celebrated an epic World Series victory and MVP honor

Outside the visitors clubhouse, where the champagne was still spraying and the beer was still flying, where Bill Murray kept rubbing his eyes and hugging grown men, Julianna Zobrist removed a pair of 6-inch black heels and plopped down on the floor in the bowels of Progressive Field.

It was past 2 a.m. here on Thursday morning, more than an hour after the Chicago Cubs had outlasted the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in an epic Game 7 of the World Series, and now Julianna needed to sit. This was understandable, of course. For close to an hour, as the party raged, she had scrambled through hallways and hustled through concourses, mostly while cradling her nearly 1-year-old baby, Blaise Royal. And as she leaned up against a wall, she had still not talked to her husband Ben, the Most Valuable Player of this 112th World Series.

In the moments after the victory, after Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant had fielded the final ground ball and ended 108 years of waiting with one throw across the diamond, Ben had been on the move. He accepted the MVP trophy on live television, and then he was ushered to a news conference, and then there was utter chaos inside the clubhouse, a champagne-fueled hysteria that was just getting started.

Finally, as rain began to fall at Progressive Field, the Zobrist family ventured out to the first-base dugout and onto the grass infield, where they found Zobrist looking into a camera and cutting a 3-second quick promo for “Good Morning America.” There was enough time for a family photo with Tom and Cindi Zobrist joining their son and his wife, and then it was time for more obligations, so Julianna accounted for all three of her children and returned to the hallway outside the clubhouse. Finally, some rest.

“I need to,” she said.

All around her, people were still processing what had happened here, how the Chicago Cubs had buried a century of futility and won their first World Series championship since 1908, how a team on the brink of elimination just days ago had become the first since the 1985 Royals to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the Fall Classic. How on the second day of November in 2016, in the seventh game of a heart-stopping series, the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians had collided in a winner-take-all game for the ages, a contest that seemed to have it all: A nearly perfect start from the title-hungry Cubs; quirky drama and managerial moves in the middle innings; a game-tying homer in the eighth inning from Cleveland’s Rajai Davis; a crying Chicago closer in Aroldis Chapman; a 17-minute rain delay before the 10th inning began; and finally, an RBI double from Zobrist in the top of the 10th that helped tip the scales.

“This one about made me pass out,” Zobrist said.

Inside the clubhouse, Cubs manager Joe Maddon, a greying, bespectacled zen master of a baseball manager, wore a wet suit and waddled through the maelstrom. A drenched Bill Murray engulfed first baseman Anthony Rizzo in a bearhug and claimed he did not want a ring. In the middle of the scene, Cubs president Theo Epstein found a reporter and asked about going to see Indians manager Terry Francona, his old friend from their days with the Boston Red Sox.

“Where’s my best chance to see Tito?” he said.

The scene was wet and joyous and a little unruly — “It’s gonna get a little wild,” veteran starter John Lackey said — and it was exactly what you would expect for a team that had not done something like this in 108 years. But back outside, Julianna was still thinking about the game.

One year after claiming a World Series championship with the Royals, the Zobrists had moved to Chicago and set about helping the Cubs snap the longest, most infamous title drought in professional sports. And then Zobrist stepped to the plate Wednesday night at Progressive Field in the 10th inning of Game 7. The score was tied, and two men were on base, and Julianna Zobrist almost missed the whole thing.

In the moments before the 10th inning, as a pouring rain began to fall and the tarp was summoned to cover the infield at Progressive Field, Julianna Zobrist carried Blaise Royal to a dry spot in a concourse underneath the lower level seats. This was after the Cubs had sprinted out to a 5-1 lead, the offense getting the better of starter Corey Kluber, and after the Indians had scored two runs on a wild pitch that caromed off the mask of backup catcher David Ross in the fifth. This was after Chapman had buckled in the bottom of the eighth, allowing a two-run homer to Davis, and after Chapman, crushed and teary-eyed, had steadied himself during a scoreless ninth.

Now this classic game had gone into a rain delay, and somebody told Julianna that it would last at least 30 minutes, so she left her seat in Section 150 and decided to take her crying baby somewhere quiet. The problem: The delay lasted just 17 minutes.

“I was downstairs feeding her,” Julianna said, “and all of a sudden, I see that (Kyle) Schwarber is up to bat.”

Schwarber was slotted second in the lineup on Wednesday, which meant that Ben Zobrist would be the fourth man up in the inning, which meant that Julianna had to hightail it back to her seat. So she handed Blaise off to a friend, removed her heels and socks and sprinted barefoot through a hallway and into a concourse. As she reached the family section, Ben was walking into the batter’s box with pinch-runner Albert Almora on second base and Rizzo on first. Julianna stopped in an aisle.

“This is the moment,” she remembered thinking. “Anybody on this team could be the hero.”

Thirty minutes earlier, Ben Zobrist had been thinking something similar, but perhaps not quite in that context. As the rain delay began with the score 6-6, the Cubs had retreated to their clubhouse. Still dazed from Davis’ homer, outfielder Jason Heyward called everybody into the team’s weight room. They had frittered away a four-run lead and squandered a three-run cushion in the eighth. But this was not over, Heyward said.

“We’ve got to forget about it,” Zobrist remembered Heyward saying. “ ‘It’s over. We’re still the best team. We’re going to pull this thing out. We need to pull together and chip away. We’re going to win this game.’ ”

As Zobrist strolled to the plate to face Cleveland reliever Bryan Shaw, the words were still fresh. There were two men on base and one out. Game 7 of the World Series was still tied.

“You feel like it’s on,” Zobrist would say, “and we’re going to do this.”

Benjamin Thomas Zobrist grew up in Eureka, Ill., a town of about 5,000 people that sits 2 hours southwest of the heart of Chicago. The son of a pastor, Zobrist grew up playing baseball in central Illinois and figured his career would end after high school. This was not particularly shocking. He was hardly recruited by any colleges, even small ones. He had plans to attend Calvary Bible College in Kansas City and become a pastor like his father. But a $50 tryout camp turned into an offer from Olivet Nazarene in Bourbonnais, Ill., which turned into a transfer opportunity at Dallas Baptist, which turned into a sterling big-league career, which turned the story of Zobrist into a celebrated one. For years, he would haunt opponents as a super-utility weapon for the Tampa Bay Rays, making two All-Star Games and helping the Rays to four playoff appearances, cultivating respect throughout the game.

“He just probably exemplifies exactly how we want to play the game,” said Maddon, who managed Zobrist in Tampa Bay.

If Zobrist was cherished by baseball men and statheads, beloved for his versatility, plate discipline and freakishly good Wins Above Replacement numbers, he was perhaps undervalued among casual fans. That changed last postseason, when he helped the Royals to their first World Series championship since 1985. In 16 postseason games, Zobrist was a load, hitting .303 with a .365 on-base percentage. In the days after the series, Julianna gave birth and the Zobrists named their baby daughter Blaise Royal, an homage to their temporary home.

Yet as the offseason began, Zobrist set out to find a new challenge. Julianna says the location of Chicago was perfect; Zobrist’s parents are 2 hours away and her parents aren’t much further. Tom Zobrist says his son loved the idea of reuniting with Maddon. Yet the real allure, Julianna says, came in the history of the Cubs.

“My husband is so incredibly goal-driven,” Julianna said. “So to walk into a team, who has been defined as the lovable losers, and to have that challenge of re-defining that.”

The Cubs locked up Zobrist for four years, $56 million. And as the family settled into Chicago, Zobrist set a goal of winning a World Series, of ending 108 years of frustration. It was a simple goal, made realistic by the talent level on the Cubs. But even then, Julianna says, it took a while to truly understand the psychology of the place. Zobrist had spent much of his career on winning teams. Just months earlier, he had lifted the World Series trophy on a November night in New York. In Julianna’s words, they kind of felt “spoiled.”

So the Cubs indoctrination began slowly, day by day, lesson by lesson, before it was crystallized during the World Series’ three-game run at Wrigley Field. While attending the games, Julianna met a pair of 82-year-old men, Cubs fans who had grown up in Chicago. In 1945, the last time the team was in the World Series, they had been just 11 years old. Now they were back.

“To look at them, sitting in their seats, tears in their eyes, it was a picture for me of what it has meant to this city,” Julianna said. “And what it has meant just for families.”

The first pitch Ben Zobrist saw in the 10th inning Wednesday was a cutter, and then he saw another one. As he crouched into his left-handed stance, he told himself to be ready for the cutter, the pitch du jour from Indians reliever Bryan Shaw.

“He throws a really tough pitch to hit,” Zobrist said. “And I was trying to stay inside of it.”

After taking a cutter for ball one, Zobrist fell behind in the count 1-2, watching two straight cutters in the zone. On the fourth pitch, Zobrist wasted a strong offering, fouling off a pitch. And on the fifth, as thousands of Cubs fans inside Progressive Field came to their feet, Zobrist slashed his bat across the hitting zone, slapping a double down the left-field line. When the play was over, Zobrist stood on second base and pumped his fists. The Cubs led 7-6.

“That last one he left over the plate and up, to where I could just slap it down the line,” Zobrist said. “And that’s all I was trying to do.”

The Cubs would tack on another piece of insurance on an RBI single from Miguel Montero. The run would stand up as the winning one when the Indians scored again in the bottom of the 10th. But when Mike Montgomery, a former Royals prospect, entered the game and coaxed a grounder to third from the bat of Michael Martinez with two out, the party was on.

“It was like a heavyweight fight, man,” said Zobrist, who batted .357 (10 for 28) in the World Series with two doubles, a triple and five runs scored. “Just blow for blow, everybody playing their heart out. The Indians never gave up either, and I can’t believe we’re finally standing, after 108 years, finally able to hoist the trophy.”

Nearly 35 minutes after the victory, a large horde of Cubs players, staff and families made their way back to the first-base dugout. Tom Zobrist was one of them. He described the night as “overwhelming.” Julianna called it “magical.” Ben Zobrist preferred “epic.” And in the end, there were no words to describe this night of baseball, no proper way to contextualize what happened inside Progressive Field. It was historic and beautiful and painful, and to fully understand it, you had to experience it, whether you were at home, with the masses in Wrigleyville or sitting in Section 150 with the Zobrist family.

By the end, all Julianna Zobrist wanted to do was take off her shoes and sit down. A year ago, she reminded, she had celebrated a championship in the final days of her pregnancy. Now this was different. The Cubs were World Series champions for the first time in 108 years, and her husband was the MVP, and nobody wanted the night to end.

“I’m just grateful I get to party,” Julianna said, “and not be pregnant.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2016 at 8:19 AM with the headline "How Ben Zobrist and his family celebrated an epic World Series victory and MVP honor."