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 great-granddaughter, Helen Schlegel, started the GoFundMe account 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 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."
Tsunami tip
Rory McIlroy fell into some serious green over the weekend, winning the FedEx Cup and the $10 million that comes with it.
Possibly only one person was happier about that payday: His caddie, J.P. Fitzgerald, gleefully fired off a text message when his boss's gratuity got to him.
"I think his words were, 'A tsunami just hit my bank account, so thank you very much,' " McIlroy said Wednesday as he prepared to play in the HSBC Champions in Shanghai. "J.P. got a nice percentage of that, so I knew at that point it was already there."
What, exactly, constitutes a nice percentage? Weeeeeellll, the winning player in the bonus pool receives $9 million in cash, with $1 million deferred into a retirement account because, really, everyone should have a solid retirement plan. McIlroy also pocketed $1.53 million from winning the Tour Championship, which gave him the FedEx Cup, over the weekend.
McIlroy said he is a 10-percent tipper, "so the total was $1.05 million," he said. If 10 percent seems a wee bit cheap, note that golfers have debated whether caddies should get a share of bonus money beyond tournament winnings. Not McIlroy. Fitzgerald, he pointed out, is "a big part of what we do. He was with me when I was number 210 in the world and when I was number one."
So hurray for that tsunami.
"I think," McIlroy added, "he was quite happy."
Warrior letdown
"So maybe Golden State Warriors don't want pressure of an undefeated season?" wrote Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com of the Warriors' 129-100 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on opening night. "Or maybe Greg Popovich is a very, very good coach."
Sports on 10/27/2016