If you are Cubs president Theo Epstein and your team has just won the World Series for the first time in 108 years, there is just one thing left to do: Eat some goat.
Epstein and the rest of the current Cubs administration never entertained the likelihood that the curse of the billy goat was real or anything, but being baseball people who tend to adhere to routine and respect superstition anyway, it was never entirely dismissed, either.
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So after the Cubs had beaten the Indians for their first title since 1908, Epstein made a request of friends Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz, co-owners of the Boka Restaurant Group: Prepare us some goat. The restaurateurs turned to Stephanie Izard, the “Top Chef” winner from season four who runs Girl & The Goat in Chicago, and asked her to make it happen.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
For Epstein’s executive team, Izard oven-roasted a 9 1/2 pound goat. Boehm, Katz, and Boka Vice President Ian Goldberg delivered it to Epstein.
“They were all sitting in the left-field bleachers in an empty Wrigley Field. They ate it right there,” said Boehm, who described the lunch as one of last week’s many moments of wonder.
Between them, he and Katz attended 23 postseason games, including the championship.
No word from Epstein’s crew on what they thought of lunch.
“They’ve said there are no curses, that it was just a matter of putting together a great baseball team,” Boehm says. “But they were happy to eat that goat.”
Sometimes you eat the goat, and sometimes the goat eats you. After 108 years, it was time to be the diner instead of the entree. Only one question remains: After Boston won the World Series in 2004 and Theo consulted with his restaurant people about celebrating the end of the Babe Ruth curse, what did they do about dinner?
