SAN MARCOS — October is where baseball legends are made.
The Major League Baseball playoffs are here, and for Rick Rungaitis, it means his beloved Chicago Cubs have hope. But in his adopted hometown of San Marcos, the San Diego Padres rule supreme and the two clubs square up in the first round of the playoffs on Tuesday.
Rungaitis, a Joliet, Ill., is a baseball man through and through. He is a die-hard Cubs fan, so were his parents and grandparents. He learned how to swear from his grandmother, who would call him after every Cubs game, usually a loss, and unleash on the Loveable Losers, Rungaitis said, laughing.
His grandparents were so die-hard they had radios in every room of the house tuned into the Cubs so they wouldn’t miss a pitch when they left a room. It’s a lifetime of memories, stories, and bonding, the lows and the ultimate highs, which bind the Rungaitis’ together.
“She would call me and say, ‘those dirty, rotten bastards,’ and she would get so upset,” Rungaitis explained. “My grandma was a huge Cubs fan.”
Although he is now the chief executive officer of the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce, Rungaitis was once the director of media relations for the Iowa Cubs, the Triple-A affiliate of Chicago, and the former general manager of the Schaumburg Flyers, an independent club outside of the Windy City.
