A Nunc Dimittis Moment

Irv Leavitt:

A Northbrook woman who waited a 108-year lifetime for a Cubs championship died after it finally happened.

Mabel Ball, born the year the Cubs had last won the World Series, died Tuesday at Covenant Village of Northbrook.

“The cruel irony, the almost unbelievable irony, is that the person who waits and waits and waits, after it happens, says, ‘I’ve done what I’ve got to do, and I’m out of here,'” her son Rich, 75, of Oak Park, said. “It ain’t funny, but it’s funny.”

Ball, who was interviewed by this newspaper and ABC-7 News in Chicago during the World Series, had a heart attack, her son said. He said that the interviews “didn’t add any stress to her life. She seemed fine.”

But it was the beginning of her last days as one of the Cubs’ oldest fans.

As she rested in bed a few days after her heart attack, he said he told her, “Mom, you know, you’ve become a little bit of a low-level celebrity. Your story was in the newspaper, and it was on TV, coast-to-coast. A friend of mine even saw it in Berlin.

“What do you think about being a celebrity?” he asked her.

“It’s a lot of nonsense,” he said she told him.

“That was her, all over,” he laughed. “She was already a great person. You couldn’t make her bigger by calling her a celebrity.”