Why 19 days in January wrote final chapter of Cubs storybook

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Cubs All-Stars Kris Bryant, Javy Báez and Anthony Rizzo suddenly gone after the season?

Even Jon Lester, the hardened veteran twice burned and spurned by the business of baseball, has trouble imagining that.

“It’ll be weird if all three of those guys leave and become free agents and go somewhere else,” the former Cubs rotation ace said. “It’ll definitely be weird seeing them in different uniforms.”

Weird, maybe. Plausible, certainly.

But it won’t mark the end of the Cubs’ championship era that many will proclaim if that extreme scenario plays out in a few months.

It won’t mark even the final chapter of the Cubs’ storybook championship tale.

Because that chapter was written during 19 days in January. That’s when the great free agent hero of the story and the mythical slugger who gave it its legendary dimensions got written off the page by Cubs business decisions — slugger Kyle Schwarber signing with the Nationals Jan. 9 after being non-tendered by the Cubs and Lester signing Jan. 27 with the same team after the Cubs rejected his steeply discounted offer on a one-year deal.

When they return to Wrigley Field for Monday’s opener of a four-game series they will almost certainly be received with the hero’s welcome from fans and the organization that their roles in the 2015-16 rise of the franchise deserve.

Expect a video montage sure to include Schwarber’s franchise-record five postseason home runs in 2015, including the one that landed on top of the right-field video board, his shocking return from a “season-ending” knee injury to rake as the DH in four World Series games in 2016, and Lester’s start after start of postseason success — and his epic relief performance in Game 7 of the World Series.

They also will be living reminders that even if Rizzo, Bryant and Báez all remain with the Cubs, their continued efforts will be about the franchise’s next story.

Ownership and the front office signaled that much with a flurry of cost-cutting moves over the winter and their failures to reach agreement with any of the three on extensions.

Lester’s departure was a byproduct of the payroll cuts, admittedly stirring emotions in him and his family after spending the last six years in Chicago.

“It’s only natural,” he said. “You invest in a city — your heart, your mind, your soul. … The hard part about this game is the business side, and you have to separate your heart and the business. Sometimes that can be difficult; sometimes it’s easy; sometimes your heart makes decisions for you.”

Lester, who puts his 2.25 ERA on the line against the Cubs when he starts Monday’s series opener for the Nats, said he’s not sure what to expect for a reception Monday or what to expect emotionally — eight months after getting emotional when he made his final start as a Cub with no fans in attendance.

But he grasps the magnitude of the team’s accomplishments of 2015 and ’16 in particular as well as anyone — as the man who won two rings in Boston before signing in December 2014 as the top-choice, signature free agent to lend credibility to the Cubs’ rebuild and lead the assault on a century of failure.

“To get there and kind of have everything click from Day 1 was awesome,” Lester said. “I think it really helped the younger guys. It helped me personally. Coming in there you have all this stuff on your back, like you’re the guy that’s supposed to come and help win a World Series and carry the team. That can be a lot of anxiety and a lot of pressure.”

Jake Arrieta’s emergence as a Cy Young winner in 2015 helped ease that pressure, Lester said, along with the success of Kyle Hendricks.

“And then to go to the playoffs and realize that we are good,” he added of beating the Pirates and Cardinals in the playoffs to reach the 2015 National League Championship Series. “Doing that in ’15 really opened a lot of guys’ eyes, especially some of the guys that had never won in Chicago, being on those losing seasons the three or four years prior to when I got there.

“To see that lightbulb go off in those guys’ eyes and realize that, ‘Hey, we’re good, this is something special.’ When we lost in ’15 everybody knew [and were], like, ‘I can’t wait to get to spring training because we’re going to win next year.’ “

Schwarber, the 2014 first-round draft pick who hit from the moment he broke in as a DH for a week in 2015 between Double-A and Triple-A assignments, was back for the stretch run — and Ruthian in the postseason.

And when he returned far ahead of schedule from a knee injury to DH in the World Series after missing all but one game of 2016 because of a knee injury, it added the storybook level to an already epic tale.

“For me personally,” Lester said of winning so big so fast those first two years, “it took a lot of pressure off of me. And then it was kind of like we fulfilled the contract I guess.”

By the time his six-year, $155 million deal expired he was considered the greatest free agent signing in Cubs history — and earned a place in the debate for greatest in Chicago sports history.

Whether that part of the increasingly ugly business of Cubs baseball has been forgotten by the owners who benefitted from revenues of biblical proportions for a decade, it won’t be lost on fans, former teammates or even Lester as he finally gets his moment to bask with fans in the history he shared with them in Chicago.

As for Rizzo, Báez and Bryant?

“The Cubs have a business to run, and they have to do what they feel is necessary to set them up for the future, whether it be financially or guys on the field,” Lester said. “It’s a hard thing to separate, but hopefully those guys are all there, and it’s a moot question, and they continue to have that core and move forward. But I’m sure it’ll be hard to keep all three of them there.”

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