March 29--Julia Bertucci was really surprised to get a proposal from Kris Bryant.
Of course, the Cubs star was simply asking her to go to the prom, and he was doing it on behalf of Bertucci's boyfriend, Vince Santoria. Bryant held up a homemade sign asking Bertucci if she would be his prom date, and Santoria tagged her in a tweet for all the world to see.
"It was Friday around 4:30 (p.m.), I got off work (from Chick-fil-A in Oswego) and I looked at my phone and it was blowing up," said Bertucci, a 17-year-old junior at Yorkville High School. "Well, my boyfriend was texting me how he was getting pretty popular. And then basically people were just retweeting and favoriting and people were commenting and it went on and I was just shocked. Like, I cried, I was that shocked."
It started when Bertucci and Santoria, a junior at Oswego East, debated which one of them should ask the other to the prom: He's the man but it's her prom.
"I just told her I'm going to come up with this incredible idea, it's going to get really famous and you just have to accept it," Santoria said. "And she's like, 'OK, if you do something super famous I'll accept it. And then I had to come up with the idea."
Santoria struggled to come up with something unique that he could pull off, especially with him about to go on spring break. But then decided he could try to get a Cubs player involved while he and family members were in Mesa, Ariz., for Cubs spring training.
Santoria thought his best bet would be Bryant, who took a selfie with him last year that Santoria uses as his profile picture on Twitter. And he insists Bryant is Bertucci's favorite Cub -- contrary to her claim to not having a favorite.
"She knows very few of them," Santoria said. "She knows Bryant, (Anthony) Rizzo, (Dexter) Fowler. ... I did the whole pick your favorite player just by showing her pictures of them, and she said Bryant, 'Because he's the cutest.' My reaction to that was the whole, 'so he's cuter than me?' thing."
At Sloan Park on Friday, Santoria waited in an autograph line after the players stretched for a chance to meet Bryant and get his help. But it looked like the game was about to start before Santoria could get to him.
"He actually almost wasn't able to," Bertucci said. "But then everyone around him was like, 'Kris, hold the sign, hold the sign.' And Kris was like, 'Oh yeah, sure.' He did it with a smile, like Vince said."
The sign read: "Julia, will you go to prom with Vince? Check one," with boxes underneath for "yes" and "no." Santoria then tweeted to Bertucci, "Hey @Juliabertucci13 I think Kris Bryant has a question for you."
"I commented and I said in all caps, 'Yes I'll go with you,' " Bertucci said. "My friends were completely shocked. My whole family was completely shocked. They all thought it was the coolest things because my whole family's Cubs fans."
So are Santoria's relatives.
Fans at Sloan Park were hooked on the story, too, and many asked to see Santoria's sign. Like Bertucci said, it also was catching fire on social media.
"One girl said she would marry me," Santoria said. "That's when I knew it was no longer in my hands."
Santoria got Bryant to autograph his game ticket -- "because me and Kris Bryant are best friends"-- and bought a Cubs tank top for Bertucci, which he planned to give to her, along with the prom sign, Monday night after flying back from Arizona in the afternoon.
Both students plan to go to junior prom at her school on May 7, then sit in the bleachers at a Cubs game against the Washington Nationals the next day.
plthompson@tribpub.com
