CHICAGO — “Hope springs eternal …” is the caption of an editorial cartoon that appeared at the top of the Chicago Tribune sports section after Game 5 of the 1982 World Series.

The rendering portrayed a smiling baseball fan wearing a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and Chicago Cubs cap surrounded in the stands by big, beefy Milwaukee Brewers fans bundled up in parkas at old County Stadium.

It had nothing to do with the actual game, which the Brewers won to take a 3-2 lead in the Series, and only tangentially was linked to the team.

But 44 years later, as the Brewers won Game 5 of the 2026 World Series on Wednesday at Tropicana Field to earn the franchise’s first championship, the same message of hope and eternal optimism resonated.

Using a timeless piece of prose, the cartoon portrays a typical Cubs fan as the kind of optimist who sees a 35-degree forecast and decides it’s time to break out his summer clothing for the game. Oblivious but happy, nonetheless.

It just as easily could’ve depicted an oblivious fan in short sleeves wearing a cap of the Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians or any other down-on-its-luck franchise from the early 1980s. But Tribune editorial cartoonist Jeff MacNelly chose the Cubs, who were owned by Tribune Co. and had finished as one of the worst teams in the majors that season.

It was his subtle way of biting the hand that fed him while giving a shout-out to Cubs fans.

The Cubs were still years away from becoming the Brewers’ archrivals — they played in different leagues at the time — so there would be no real reason for a Cubs fan to be trekking to Milwaukee to watch the Brewers play a World Series game. But that didn’t matter to MacNelly. The Cubs’ reputation as lovable losers was well-earned after 37 years without a National League pennant and 74 years removed from their last World Series title.

The Cubs were losers with a capital “L,” and MacNelly no doubt enjoyed reminding readers that the company he worked for was inept at running a baseball team.

For Tribune readers in 1982, it was a little odd to see a cartoon as the lead art of a major sports story. They were more used to seeing the vanilla “Gil Thorp” comic strip inside. But no one at the paper was too surprised. Then-Tribune editor Jim Squires liked to put his staff in unfamiliar situations, so sending a political cartoonist to Milwaukee to illustrate a World Series game wasn’t deemed too crazy.

And this was no ordinary cartoonist, but MacNelly, who had already won two of his three Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning. He was simply the Babe Ruth of political cartoonists and, 26 years after his death, remains one of the most influential of all time.

I got to know MacNelly a little during the paper’s coverage of the Bears’ January 1986 Super Bowl in New Orleans, where many of us stayed in a big house in the French Quarter. We learned he could turn anything into a cartoon at a moment’s notice, and he made us all souvenir T-shirts with a cartoon Bear wearing a headband that said “Woof,” referring to the barking Bears’ 46 defense.

MacNelly died of lymphoma in 2000 at age 53 and was called “the most brilliant political cartoonist of the time” in his obituary.

In spite of the Brewers’ loss in seven games in the ’82 Series, “Hope springs eternal …” became an instant classic and would be replicated on T-shirts for years. I’m not sure if MacNelly got any royalties from the sales, but I doubt it. He was not in it for the money but enjoyed making people laugh.

A second MacNelly cartoon from that day’s edition, which depicted a tailgating scene at County Stadium, was a perfect representation of Milwaukee fans. It showed them sitting in the parking lot with old speakers stacked high next to their cars, with music blasting so loud that one fan’s hair blew sideways from the vibrations. Another fan was portrayed cooking a sausage on a stick over his car engine. It ran on Page 3 of the sports section and didn’t get as much attention.

The Brewers went on to lose the final two games of that Series and had to wait 44 years to get back to the Fall Classic. The Cubs ended their title drought in 2016 and have spent the last several years chasing the small-market team from Milwaukee in the National League Central.

Hope still springs eternal, but now it’s Wisconsinites instead of Cubs fans in the role of eternal optimists, trying to will their Brewers to their first-ever title against the Rays. Thousands trekked to St. Petersburg, Fla., to support the team, making Tropicana Field their dome away from home.

The Brewers were on the verge of a sweep Tuesday night before blowing a one-run lead in the 12th inning in a 4-3 loss in Game 4. But no one was panicking. This was not the Brewers of old, and no team in history had ever blown a 3-0 lead in the World Series.

Surely it would not happen to them … right? Right?

The anxiety was palpable in the land of the Cheeseheads, with fans waiting to explode but nervous to the core.

But that’s what hope is all about, and that’s why MacNelly’s cartoon remains as relevant today as it was in 1982.

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