If the Cubs make it to the World Series, Ed Liva has a plan: He’s going to sell one of his cars so he can afford tickets.
It’s uncertain yet whether it would be the Saturn or the old Cadillac, says Liva, 40, a warehouse worker for Amazon who lives in Wilmington.
“What do we need two cars for?” he says he told his wife Amber. “Whatever one I’d get more money for, that’s the one I’ll sell. More money means better seats.”
The Cubs are serious business for the Liva family. His 6-year-old son Ryne — named, of course, for all-time Cubs great Ryne Sandberg — has worn the same Anthony Rizzo jersey to school for three weeks now.
“We wash it each night,” Liva says. “But that may stop if they start winning the playoffs.”
Matthew Buxton, a college student from Plainview, Texas, has his own plan to snag tickets if the Cubs manage to make it to the World Series for the first time since 1945. Buxton is among a small number of Cubs fans posting Internet billboards on GoFundMe.Com asking for donations to fund their World Series dreams. He’s asking for a whopping $20,000.
Buxton’s pitch: “I am in the stage of my life where I am just another poor college kid. This literally means the world to me. I don’t think there has been a week in my life where I have gone without wearing a Cubs shirt at least once. The World Series is under a month away, so time is of the essence. I would be eternally grateful for anyone willing to send me and my parents to the World Series. Go Cubs!”
Kim Giles, a teacher from Phoenix, is more modest with her plea. She’s asking for only $5,000: “After considering my options: surrogate, donating a limb to science… (I’m only half kidding here) I thought I would give this a shot.”
So far, like the other pleas being posted, they’re not finding much success.
More fan notes
• Everyone notices the custom Cubs paint job on Maria Rocco’s fingernails, which tap the cash register to ring up Anthony Rizzo when he buys turkey sandwiches at Bari, an Italian deli at 1120 W. Grand Ave. Rocco says she’ll keep the look throughout the playoffs.
And what does Rizzo — whose number 44 graces the fingernail of her left pinky — think of her Cubs fashion statement?
“He smiles,” Rocco says.
• Tim Souers moved to Chicago from Arizona in the 1980s and says he tried to assimilate to his new surroundings footwear-wise but failed.
“I bought Sperry Topsiders and felt like an idiot,” says Souers, a creative director for the advertising agency DDB who lives in Portage Park.
So now, rather than grow a playoff beard, his plan is to show his support by wearing flip-flops throughout the Cubs’ playoff run. He’s praying for cold feet in November.
