Chicago Cubs players celebrate after Game 6 of the National League baseball championship series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Saturday, in Chicago. David J. Phillip/APhide caption
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David J. Phillip/AP
Cursed by a Billy Goat, bedeviled by Bartman and crushed by decades of disappointment, the Chicago Cubs are at long last headed back to the World Series.
Kyle Hendricks outpitched Clayton Kershaw, Anthony Rizzo and Willson Contreras homered early and the Cubs won their first pennant since 1945, beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0 Saturday night in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series.
The drought ended when closer Aroldis Chapman got Yasiel Puig to ground into a double play, setting off a wild celebration at Wrigley Field.
Seeking their first title since 1908, the Cubs open the World Series at Cleveland on Tuesday night. The Indians haven’t won since 1948.
“This city deserves it so much,” Rizzo said. “We got four more big ones to go, but we’re going to enjoy this. We’re going to the World Series. I can’t even believe that.”
Manager Joe Maddon’s team, deemed World Series favorites since spring training, topped the majors with 103 wins, then beat the Giants and Dodgers in the playoffs.
The Cubs took their 17th pennant. They had not earned a World Series trip since winning a doubleheader opener 4-3 at Pittsburgh on Sept. 29, 1945, to clinch the pennant on the next-to-last day of the season.
The eternal “wait till next year” is over. No more dwelling on a past history of failure — the future is now.
“We’re too young. We don’t care about it,” star slugger Kris Bryant said. “We don’t look into it. This is a new team. This is a completely different time of our lives. We’re enjoying it and our work’s just getting started.”
Hendricks pitched two-hit ball for 7 1/3 innings. Chapman got the final five outs, then threw both arms in the air and got mobbed by teammates and coaches.
AT&T’s $85.4-billion bid to buy Time Warner is now official, facing what’s expected to be a tough regulatory review, given the reach and impact of the telecom and the media behemoths.
The deal is a large one for both spaces, though each has seen a fair amount of reshuffling in the power rankings over the years. (In fact, both AT&T and Time Warner are themselves results of consolidation and spin-offs.)
The latest in this year’s leadup was Verizon’s bid to buy Yahoo to combine its Internet assets with the telco’s earlier purchase of AOL. It’s a race to reach as many users — and advertisers — with as much content as possible.
Below is a condensed history.
1877
AT&T’s ancestor is born as Bell Telephone Company. Note quite a decade later, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was formed as a subsidiary to create a long-distance network.
Four Warner brothers establish Warner Brothers Pictures, which in 1969 becomes a subsidiary of Warner Communications, created when Kinney National Services buys what by then is Warner Brothers-Seven Arts Inc.
1984
The monopoly Bell System, aka Ma Bell, splits up into eight companies, dubbed Baby Bells, after the Justice Department pursues an antitrust case. Decades later, parts of those companies were eventually subsumed by modern-day AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink.
1989
AT&T is buying Time Warner in a massive merger that would create a mammoth media and telecom company. Richard Levine/Corbis/Getty Imageshide caption
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Richard Levine/Corbis/Getty Images
Time Inc. and Warner Communications announce a merger to create Time Warner Inc., described byThe New York Times as the “largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world” and valued at more than $15 billion.
1995
Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System announce a $7.5-billion merger, uniting brands including CNN, Time magazine, Warner Brothers and the Cartoon Network.
The Walt Disney Company says it will buy Capital Cities/ABC Inc. for $19 billion, creating what The New York Timesonce again describes as ” the world’s most powerful media and entertainment company.”
2000
AOL announces its plan to buy Time Warner for more than $160 billion, at the peak of the dot-com boom.
2004
Comcast drops its bid to buy Disney for $54 billion after a rebuff.
2005
SBC Corporation — formerly known as one of the Baby Bells, Southwestern Bell Corporation — acquires AT&T for more than $16 billion, creating the telecom company we now know under that brand.
2008
Time Warner spins off its cable unit, which becomes Time Warner Cable.
Comcast receives regulatory approval for its $30-billion bid to buy a majority stake in NBC Universal. Comcast completely took over NBC Universal in 2013, when GE divested its stake.
AT&T gives up on its $39-billion attempt to buy T-Mobile after the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission stage forceful opposition to the union of the No. 2 and No. 4 wireless carriers.
2013
Time Warner spins off its Time Inc magazine division.
2014
Verizon buys out Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless for $130 billion, gaining full ownership of the nation’s largest wireless carrier.
Comcast abandons its $45-billion bid to buy Time Warner Cable after the FCC opposes the merger over concerns of creating a cable operator and Internet provider with too much control over what Americans watch and do online.
AT&T gets government approval to buy satellite TV company DirecTV for $48.5 billion, creating one of the largest pay-TV providers to compete with Comcast.
2016
The FCC and DOJ approve the $88-billion merger of Charter Communications with Time Warner Cable and a smaller rival Bright House Networks, creating the second-largest broadband provider and the third-largest video provider.
