Fansided

Cubs fan who skipped school for a game ran into his principal at Wrigley

By Josh Hill

CHICAGO, IL - OCTOBER 19: A young fan looks on before game five of the National League Championship Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on October 19, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
CHICAGO, IL - OCTOBER 19: A young fan looks on before game five of the National League Championship Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on October 19, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images) /
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We won’t ever get a sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but a Chicago fourth-grader gave us the next best thing.

A common cliche in sports is when something unexpected happens we declare it’s something we couldn’t have scripted. A Chicago Cubs fan has put a fan twist on that old adage, living out a story straight out of a John Hughes movie script.

Sequels are usually lame and unnecessary, but a good one takes the original story and builds on it. That’s what fourth-grader Tucker Steckman and his principal Pat Versluis gave us this week.

Tucker Steckman went viral this week when he brought a sign with him to the Chicago Cubs home opener declaring he’d skipped school to be there. He mentioned his principal by name and pleaded to the general public to not tell anyone and get him in trouble.

The story was good enough to end there. A kid skipping school for a Cubs opener is textbook Fandom 250 behavior, and one of the reasons we ranked Cubs fans in the Top 10 the last two years.

But the plot for Tucker thickened after that photo was taken. As it turns out, Principal Versluis was actually at the game and was similarly trying to lay low after calling in sick himself. Pat Versluis spoke with the Chicago Sun-Times and told a story of trying to avoid Tucker the same way Tucker was trying to avoid him.

"“I saw him and I was kind of ducking down,” Versluis said with a laugh during a cell phone call from inside Wrigley Field.“I didn’t want him to see me either,” he said. “I’m here with my son, Aiden, who’s in fifth grade and I called out sick for the day!”"

Chicago lost the home opener, but for Tucker and his principal, the outcome was secondary to the experience. That’s what fandom is all about, the experience of being there and having a story to tell.

Here we have two generations of Cubs fans with the same goal: Skipping school to catch the first game of the season at Wrigley. That’s a story which will extend far beyond the box score for Tucker and Pat.

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