http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/03/opinions/cubs-win-world-series-pearlman/index.html

I'm your typical American citizen in the month of November in the year 2016, trying to hang on as this awful presidential election—historic by all measures of irredeemable awfulness—sucks out every ounce of my contaminated soul.

In other words ...

Thank God for the Chicago Cubs.

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In the coming days, I suspect this World Series—with its historic conclusion and parallel timing with a nation-altering event—will draw some comparisons to the 2001 Fall Classic, when the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in the shadow of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

At the time it was said, correctly, that the country needed baseball as a balm to heal its awful wounds. Fifteen years later, we are not living in mourning, but merely in a pained and ugly time for our people.

By winning its first World Series since the birth year of Thurgood Marshall and Lyndon Johnson, the Cubs won't (sadly) change the tone of our country's dialogue.

They will, however, remind us that it's OK to be happy and hopeful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_in_the_United_States

American political climate, early 1964

Eleven weeks before the Beatles' arrival in the U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The nation was in mourning, in fear, and in disbelief.[11] The assassination came after a fifteen-year build-up of Cold War tension. The motivation and identity of the assassin would be doubted by many Americans for decades, despite the Warren Commission's issued report in September 1964.[12] As the United States tried to restore a sense of normality, teenagers in particular struggled to cope, as their disbelief began to be replaced by a personal reaction to what had happened: in school essays, teenagers wrote that "then it became real", and "I was feeling the whole world is going to collapse on me", and "I never felt so empty in all my life".[13]

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February 1964 – First U.S. Concerts

An estimated four thousand Beatles' fans were present on 7 February 1964 as Pan Am Flight 101 left Heathrow Airport.[1] Among the passengers were the Beatles, on their first trip to the United States as a band, with their entourage of photographers and journalists, and Phil Spector.[24] When the group arrived at New York's newly renamed John F. Kennedy Airport, they were greeted by a second large crowd, with Beatles fans again estimated to number four thousand, and journalists, two hundred.[25] From having so many people packed in a little space, a few people in the crowd got injured. The airport had not previously experienced such a large crowd.