Written by Tom Verducci at SI.com
Everything you are about to read is true, though at times it may sound too good to be so.
It is true that Kris Bryant was the 2013 College Player of the Year, the 2014 Minor League Player of the Year, the 2015 National League Rookie of the Year and, while playing third base for the first world championship Chicago Cubs team in 108 years, the 2016 NL Most Valuable Player.
It is also true that two months after he secured the last out to clinch the Holy Grail of sports championships, Bryant, 25, married his high school sweetheart, a girl he met in freshman English class.
It is true that he earned all A’s in elementary, middle and high schools with the exception of one B—the result of an 89 average in high school precalculus. Such smarts earned Bryant the No. 2 academic ranking in his graduating class, which carried the honor of speaking at graduation as the salutatorian. Bryant instead yielded that honor to a classmate with a similar GPA, because he wanted her to have the recognition.
It is true that the 6’5”, blue-eyed Bryant is so handsome that he is the rare baseball player to be an out-of-uniform spokesperson. (Clothing retailer Express hired him as a model.)
True, too, is that Bryant does not smoke, drink or use profanity. The Cubs have been known to toast victories in their postgame “party room” at Wrigley Field with shots of whiskey. A clubhouse attendant fills Bryant’s shot glass with apple juice. “Guys,” Bryant told his teammates midway through last season, “let’s win the World Series. And when we do, I’ll have my first sip of alcohol.”
Says Bryant’s wife, Jess, “Then it became the running joke in the clubhouse: ‘We have to win just for Kris!’”
About an hour after Chicago won Game 7 of the World Series, with most of the Cubs wearing only a bit more champagne and beer than they drank, first baseman Anthony Rizzo stood next to a refrigerator in the clubhouse when a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“Kris!” he said. “I’ve got to find out if he drank tonight.”
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