[Mr KLC]

One lifelong Cubs fan lived just long enough to see his favorite team win a title. According to Mike Kilen of the Des Moines Register, 85-year-old Darel Sterner of West Liberty, Iowa, was in hospice care surrounded by his family Wednesday night when the Cubs won their first championship in 108 years. He died three hours later.

Here's some more from Kilen:

His health faded as the playoffs wore on, and the family gathered in his home as he took hospice care. By Game 7 of the World Series, he was drifting in and out.

Donna Sterner, his wife of 62 years, was there to watch the deciding game, as were children Durk and Darla, Durk's wife Jill and their two adult children, Holli and Nick. A few feet away in the bedroom, Darel had his own TV near the bed, the Cubs game against the Cleveland Indians roaring in his ears.

The broadcast on his TV was delayed a few seconds, so the family silently cheered each pitch in the next room. They checked on Sterner as he drifted out, whispering the score in his ear. Hospice workers told them that hearing was the last thing to go.

Sterner was a well-known barber in downtown West Liberty, and his son called him "an ornery cuss" who loved to play pranks on people. The family would take trips to see the Cubs at Wrigley Field, and when Sterner closed down his shop, he took his antique barber chair and Cubs banner home.

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/85...-series/?zoJYY

[Mr KLC]

Mabel Ball waited her whole life to see the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. As it happened, she lived just long enough.

Ball — who was born in 1908, the year the Cubs last won Major League Baseball's ultimate prize — died Tuesday at her home in Northbrook, Ill. Her 75-year-old son, Rich Ball, told the Chicago Tribune that his mother had suffered a heart attack.

"The cruel irony, the almost unbelievable irony, is that the person who waits and waits and waits, after it happens, says, 'I've done what I've got to do, and I'm out of here,'" Rich Ball told the paper. "It ain't funny, but it's funny.

Mabel Ball passed away six days after the Cubs won the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians in seven games. The series was capped by a dramatic Game 7, which the Cubs won in 10 innings.

Rich Ball said his mother didn't get to see the Cubs' clinching victory. He told the Tribune she listened to the team's games on the radio, but had only made to Wrigley Field once, on her 96th birthday.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/12...ld-series.html