97-year-old Cubs fans gets World Series tickets in a real October feel-good story
Talk about your win-win situation when it comes to the World Series. The granddaughter of 97-year-old Everett Schlegel started a GoFundMe campaign to get the Cubs fan to a World Series game against the Cleveland Indians.
No easy feat in this ticket market that has seen secondary prices soar into the thousands.
"He's been a Cubs fan forever. He's always enjoyed the team," Schlegel's daughter, Beverly Capiga told the Chicago Tribune.
Schlegel attended Games 6 and 7 of the 1945 World Series when the Detroit Tigers denied the Cubs' quest to end what was then a 37-year drought. Getting into Wrigley for the 1945 games wasn't easy, but the fact that Schlegel was in the military helped.
"He was standing in a line in his Army uniform when a police officer saw him and asked what he was doing. When my father told him he was looking to get tickets, the policeman took him up to the box office, where they gave him four tickets," Capiga said.
His grand-granddaughter, Helen Schlegel, started the GoFundMe and it quickly went through the goal of $10,000.
The public's generosity proved unnecessary when a good Samaritan saw the story and gave two tickets to Schlegel. That's where the second sweet part of the story comes in: The money raised will now go to the Purple Heart Foundation, which supports a number of programs and services dedicated to helping all veterans and their families.
Schlegel actually was at Pearl Harbor in 1941 when the Japanese attacked.
"I was at Schofield Barracks and there when the Japanese attacked," Schlegel told the Tribune. "The planes were flying so low you could have thrown a rock at them."
