PORTLAND, OR — Tyler Phillips, a 27-year-old dude who ate deep-dish pizza once, took to Facebook on Saturday to tell his friends how “deeply, truly, unbelievably proud I am of my Cubbies.” He added, “They are not just my Cubbies. They are our Cubbies. They are Chicago’s Cubbies. They are America’s Cubbies.”

Phillips did not watch the World Series, has never visited Illinois, and refers to baseballs as pucks. But he did drunkenly eat an entire deep-dish pizza at a Pizzeria Uno off a highway exit in 2009. “I am one with my brothers and sisters in Chicago,” he wrote.

Exclamatory posts flooded Phillips’ newsfeed after the Chicago Cubs clinched their first World Series title in 108 years. His coworker lamented that his mother’s dying wish had been to watch a Cubs victory. A buddy from high school remarked that he grew up at Wrigley Field. A cousin shared that she fell in love with her fiancé at a Cubs game. “I realized that I, too, had a really important story to share,” Phillips explained. “That pizza was damn good. Until I threw up a couple minutes later. The mushrooms sort of hurt coming up the other way.”

The game of baseball means a great deal to Phillips: “It’s as American as pizza, you know? When that guy threw that puck to that guy standing on that white pancake and that second guy caught that puck with that leather hand—I’d been waiting seven whole years for that moment.”