Sean Henry

Before the Cubs played their last home game of the regular season today, Ian Happ walked out to left field and threw a baseball into the bleachers. There was money wrapped around it. The money was for beer. He has done some version of this every year since 2022. It started when he got mic'd up during a game and used part of it to give a shoutout to a guy in the left field bleachers. At the end of that season he threw the guy a ball with a thank you note on it. The guy is Jeff Gorski. Everybody at Wrigley calls him Bleacher Jeff. He plays lead guitar in something called the Bleacher Bum Band. He has been coming to Cubs games since 1988, the first year Wrigley Field had lights. His family spent twenty years on the season ticket waiting list and finally got them in 2013, mostly so his grandmother could go. She is gone now. He still sits in the same spot. In 2023, Happ threw him a signed ball with a $100 bill wrapped around it. "Thanks for the support all season. You guys are the best in baseball! Enjoy this one on me." In 2024 he did it for the whole section. "Thanks for the support all season! Beers for the left field crew on me!" Somebody asked him why. "It's amazing just how much support I get from them, looking up and seeing the same faces every day." That is the actual reason. He stands in front of those people 81 days a year and he learned their faces. Gorski put it better than anybody. "It's humanizing. We're all people out here and we want the same thing: For the Cubs to win." Today was different, because today might have been the end of it. The Cubs drafted Happ ninth overall in 2015. He has been theirs ever since. Ten seasons, an All-Star year, and four straight Gold Gloves in that exact patch of left field. His contract expires after this season. He will be a free agent, and so will Seiya Suzuki and Matthew Boyd, who both played in that game. Nobody knows if any of them are coming back. Happ knew it walking in. "This is the last controllable day here. I'll take it in. It's crazy. 10 years of memories. There will be emotions. I want to savor it." So he threw the ball, and then he went to work. In the sixth inning he hit a triple and came around to score the go ahead run. The Cubs beat Miami 2-1 and clinched a playoff spot with it. Afterward he stood out on the field and tried not to cry while a full ballpark yelled at him. And then he said this about them. "There's no fanbase more supportive of its players." Which is a strange thing to hear from the guy who keeps buying their beer.