Chicago government joins in celebrating Cubs’ World Series win

As Chicagoans celebrated the Cubs’ first World Series Championship in 108 years, the Chicago and Illinois governments showed their spirit and participated in the festivities.

As the team was building steam in the division playoffs, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel bet San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee that the Cubs would beat the San Francisco Giants in the teams’ Division Series playoff matchup in October, NBC News reports.

“The Cubs are the best team in baseball, and I fully expect Chicago to Fly the W. In the unlikely event that things don’t go our way, I am prepared to send a variety of Chicago delicacies to San Francisco,” Emanuel said in a statement at the time. Emmanuel also offered to make a donation to a charity of Lee’s choosing.

Emmanuel ended up winning two bottles of local whiskey from Lee, who also donated to the Becoming a Man program.

Illinois and Ohio governors Bruce Rauner and John Kasich in turn bet on the World Series once the Cubs and the Cleveland Indians made it to the final showdown, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. As part of the deal, Kasich is sending Rauner some Great Lakes Brewing Co. beer and Bertman Original Ball Park Mustard, both local to Cleveland.

Fan fever broke out between Chicago aldermen during a Chicago city council meeting hours before game 7 of the World Series, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Three alderman mentioned the Cubs during the meeting, while Ald. Roberto Maldonado proposed naming a street near Little Cubs Field in honor of Cub Javier Baez.

When the Cubs finally won and broke the curse on Wednesday, pandemonium broke out in the streets of Chicago’s Wrigleyville area as police swarmed the streets to uphold the peace, Chicago TV station WLS-TV reports. The celebrations were mostly peaceful, with many fans giving high fives to police officers. Still, police officers set up checkpoints and a perimeter inside the city, while a fleet of vans were readied to dispatch a deployment in the city were it deemed necessary. 

Altogether, Chicago police made 14 arrests on disorderly conduct and recklessness-related charges, while 35 people were transported to area hospitals, mostly with minor injuries.

In honor of the win, the city held a massive parade and dyed the Chicago River blue on Friday, the Chicago Tribune reports. The parade followed the Cubs as they left Wrigley Field and walked to Grant Park, where a rally was held. The city estimated that 5 million attended the celebration, which would make it the seventh largest gathering in human history, according to Chicago TV station FOX 32 News. Chicago had a 2015 population of about 2.7 million, per U.S. Census data.  

"It will be a parade that 108 years have waited for," Emanuel told reporters the day before the parade. "It will be a parade and a celebration that all of Chicago for 108 years in their mind's eye, have been envisioning. We're going to make it a reality in the city of Chicago."

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