CLEVELAND _ In a couple of personalized recruiting videos Theo Epstein produced for Ben Zobrist and Jason Heyward last winter, each prospective free agent is shown leading off the ninth inning of a tie game in Game 7 of the World Series.
On Wednesday night, fiction may become reality.
The Cubs forced a Game 7 on Tuesday with a 9-3 victory against the Indians at Progressive Field, setting up the classic ending you dreamed about as a kid while playing baseball in your backyard.
Spoiler alert: The Cubs won Game 7 at Wrigley Field in Epstein's animated version, and reveling fans turned the city of Chicago upside down.
Beating Indians ace Corey Kluber on the road in the real-life version on Wednesday may have a higher degree of difficulty, but the Cubs have momentum on their side and a budding ace of their own in Kyle Hendricks.
One way or another, one drought will end and one will agonizingly continue.
The pressure will be squarely on the Indians after the Cubs floated to a Game 6 win on Addison Russell's grand slam and Series record-tying six RBIs, a strong outing by Jake Arrieta, and another old-school relief outing by Aroldis Chapman.
The Cubs came into Game 6 with the same kind of joie de vivre they display before every game. They gathered in a circle before pregame stretching and laughed and joked and exchanged hugs like they were on a retreat in Malibu.
When the game began, they pounced on Indians starter Josh Tomlin early, with Kris Bryant cranking a 433-foot, home run on a juicy 0-2 curveball as the appetizer. Two singles later, Addison Russell's fly to center was misplayed by Tyler Naquin into a two-run double as Zobrist crashed into catcher Roberto Perez like he was blocking for Bart Starr on a quarterback sneak.
The Cubs had a 3-0 lead before Arrieta had thrown a pitch, and the stadium sounded like the Wrigley Field watch party that never was.
By the time Russell hit the first grand slam in Cubs World Series history in the third, the champagne the Indians brought in for a potential celebration was as useless as a belly button on a butterfly.
Arrieta wound up allowing two runs in 52/3 innings and now has two of the Cubs' three World Series wins to go along with his two no-hitters and Cy Young Award. Not bad for a guy who immediately was sent to Triple-A Iowa when acquired from the Orioles in the summer of 2013. Before the Series began, Arrieta said it was too soon to savor the journey.
"I think the reflecting is something that's best kept for the offseason," Arrieta said. "Because typically, we don't have much time to do that. Maybe lying in bed with my wife, Brittany, before we go to sleep, we'll talk about the no-hitter, or a big series that we played late in the season, or getting past the Giants in the fashion that we did, finishing that series in San Francisco, little things like that.
"But I think when mid-November, mid-December comes, we'll really have a lot more time for that."
Arrieta cruised through the first innings but began to look vulnerable with a 7-0 lead in the fourth. A double and a one-out RBI single by Mike Napoli broke the shutout, and Jason Heyward was forced to come in and make a nice diving catch of a Jose Ramirez liner for the second out.
After back-to-back walks loaded the bases and got the bullpen stirring, Arrieta struck out Naquin on a 95-mph fastball to end the threat.
All was quiet until Mike Montgomery put two on with two outs in the seventh, forcing Maddon to summon Chapman early again.
Naturally, the baseball gods decreed a sharp ground to Rizzo would test Chapman's reflexes, a virtual rerun of Game 5. After failing to cover first on Sunday, Chapman outraced Francisco Lindor, who was ruled safe until replay showed otherwise.
Maddon felt confident in his team's chances all along, and hoped his dad's old Angels cap, which he has been toting around the country since his father died in 2002, would bring good luck.
"I've had his old Angel hat in my (travel) bag since then," Maddon said. "So it goes everywhere. So that was the one thing I'm relying on today is my dad. So I held onto his hat a little bit this morning, and that's probably the omen, in a sense, going into tonight's game."
Whether it's a treasured old cap or Matt Szczur's bat or any other talisman in their arsenal, the Cubs believe in believing good things will happen.
And now it's on to Game 7, where reality always trumps fiction.
