Like many Cubs fans, Brandon Thomas experienced a wide range of emotions watching the Cubs seesaw game 7 victory in the World Series, jumping up and down when they registered the last out.
“We were waiting for this moment a long time,” he said.
He was talking about fans’ hopes for the team, but he may have been talking about a store. Lids, a sports apparel and specialty hat shop, stood to rack in the dollars, with a new wave of customers looking to buy merchandise with the added World Series patch.
That turned out to be the case. The store opened at 8 a.m. Thursday, and lines formed from the store almost to the outside doors of the Harlem Irving Plaza shopping center on Thursday.
For Anthony Argento, a Melrose Park resident, it was an emotional mission.
“To be honest, my brother passed 10 years ago … Nov. 2 of 2006. His name was Joe Argento, Joseph. It feels like he brought home the World Series to us. On that exact 10-year date they won, Nov. 2, 2016,” he said Thursday of the symmetry.
Argento, accompanied by a friend, carried a bag with close to 50 of the World Series hats. Some of them he bought before arriving at Lids, where he went back in line after his purchase to add to his total. (The store had a two-hat limit for the initial purchase.) He plans to give the bounty out to families, needy kids, friends.
Argento said he was in “in tears to see how close it (the game was), and God gave Chicago world champions, which was much needed.”
Freddie Santiago, from Chicago, had a Javier Baez signature added to a hat his wife Michelle bought him for his birthday on Saturday, taking pride in his Puerto Rican heritage.
“We had two Puerto Ricans on the team, Baez and Jake Arrieta (mother’s side),” he said. “And Cleveland had four Puerto Ricans.”
Santiago is not lacking for Cubs apparel. “I’ve got a ‘W’ flag on my car, my hats are on the back windshield, and my birthday was the other day,” he said of the winning week.
Andrea Estrada, also from Chicago, ended up with the Locker Room champion model. The Harlem Irving Plaza store wasn’t the only place selling the hats, “but it was the one you can get in quickest. We’ve been driving around.”
She and her friends then “got the call,” from a family member in Elmwood Park that hats were available.
But won’t the same hats be sold next week?
“We need it tomorrow, for the parade,” Andrea said Thursday.
Charlene Ayala, a Chicago resident, brought her son, Logan, 4, to buy a hat. Because of the lines, they plan to come back another day so the store can put a goat insignia with a slash through it on the hat, signifying the end of the curse.
Did she watch the game Wednesday night?
“Absolutely. I’ve been waiting to see my husband cry, and it finally happened,” she said.
