60 Minutes - Sunday, May 7, 2017

Episode Date: May 8, 2017

Residents of Indiana are speaking out against President Trump's immigration policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. Wendy's most important deal of the day

has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. We have some bad hombres here and we're going to get them out. Under President Trump, immigration arrests are up significantly and people are being deported. I voted for him because he said he was going to get rid of the bad, the bad hombres. Roberto is a good hombre. Roberto is a popular restaurant owner in Indiana with no criminal record, who's recently been deported. Stunning his American family and friends.

Some people say, look, illegal immigrants are coming here and they're taking jobs. That's not even the case with Roberto. He's not taking jobs, he's creating jobs. That's not even the case with Roberto. He's not taking jobs. He's creating jobs. It's not often that you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz. He's 97 years old, barely five feet tall, and he's the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials. Tonight, you'll hear his remarkable story. And I start screaming. I said, look, I got here, mass murder,

mass murder on a parallel scale. And he said, can you do this in addition to your other work? And I said, sure. He said, okay, so you do it. And a base hit. Schwarber's delivered. Joe Maddon told us flat out, without you, the Cubs would not have won the World Series.

I guess that's a compliment. I guess that's a compliment. I don't like to think that way. I like to think that there's always that team effort. And that, right there, is the character this team was built on. You have said that you love your numbers geeks. Yeah. But that's not what won Game 7 of the World Series.

That's right. What did? The heartbeat won the World Series. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. President Trump promised he'd crack down on illegal immigrants, and in his first hundred days has moved quickly to do just that. Since the president took office, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, ICE, says it's arrested 21,000 undocumented immigrants, more than 5,000 of whom have no criminal record.

That's more than twice as many as the year before. The president's supporters argue his tough new policy has led to a dramatic drop in the number of people trying to cross into the U.S. this year, but it's also had a profound effect on communities throughout the country. For the past few weeks, we followed how the new policy has played out in one community in Indiana, where people were surprised to learn that one of those deported was a friend and neighbor, the owner of a popular local restaurant. He'd lived in this country for nearly 20 years, had no criminal record, and his wife and children are all U.S. citizens.

Eddie's Steak Shed in Granger, Indiana, is a local institution. It's a family-run restaurant where generations of Hoosiers have come for conversation and cholesterol. Seems like this is like your local Cheers. It is. But as we spoke with these regulars a few weeks ago, the man they said was the heart of the business. Its longtime cook and new owner, Roberto Beristain, was behind bars, awaiting deportation. Beristain entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 1998, but in recent years he'd been issued a temporary work permit,

a social security number, and a driver's license. It just feels wrong. The community is better for having someone like him. I mean, he showed up here with just the shirt on his back, and he's a restaurant owner 20 years later. I mean, that's, and he worked his butt owner 20 years later. I mean, that's and he worked his butt off to get there. I've seen it. They're all strong supporters of Roberto Beristain, though four out of six of them voted for President Trump. During the primaries, the president said this about

illegal immigrants. They will go out. They will come back. Some will come back the best through a process. And it may not be a very quick process. And later, during the general election, he said this. But we have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out. I voted for him because he said he was going to get rid of the bad, the bad hombres. Roberto is a good hombre. Roberto Beristain's wife, Helen, who also works at the restaurant, was born in Greece and became a U.S. citizen 16 years ago. She met Roberto in 1998 at another restaurant in Fort Wayne,

Indiana. He was a busser and I was a server. He started talking to me a lot and I tried to ignore him. He kept on talking to me, smiling and smiling and smiling. He always smiles. Very positive person. They got married, had three kids, and settled into a comfortable suburban life. Has he ever been in trouble with the law? Never. Never committed a crime? DUI? Definitely not, no.

He's not a criminal? He's not a criminal. The only bad thing he's done is stayed in the United States because he loves this country. That's his only crime. According to most estimates, there are about 11 million people living within the U.S. illegally. About 3% of them have felony convictions. We prioritize criminals. We prioritize gangbangers. For most of his presidency, Barack Obama ordered ICE to focus on deporting people convicted of felonies and serious misdemeanors.

ICE agents were often asked to explain their decision to remove anyone else, particularly those whose family members were U.S. citizens. Thank you for being here. But on his fifth day in office, President Trump signed a new executive order that made it easier to deport people who have no criminal record, including anyone who has what's called a final order of removal against them. It's that wording that changed the Beristain's lives. That's because 17 years ago, Roberto and Helen, who was pregnant with their first child, took a trip to Niagara Falls.

She says they made a wrong turn and ended up near the Canadian border. Roberto was detained for not having any papers. He was released only after he agreed to this immigration court order requiring his voluntary departure from the United States within 60 days. When he didn't leave, he automatically became the subject of a final order of removal, which mandated he be deported. Your husband did break the law, didn't leave the country when he had told a judge that he would. Why should he get special treatment when other people who have been waiting in line are trying to do it the right way?

My husband, first of all, broke the law because at the time when I was pregnant, I was very ill and he was at a high risk, either losing the baby or losing my life. So the decision he had to make was between me and the baby or him going back to Mexico. He chose us. But any other man, what would they do in his shoes? Helen says over the years, they've spent more than $45,000 hiring attorneys to try to legalize Roberto's status. But it wasn't until three years ago that things started looking up for the Berestains. Roberto obtained a temporary deferral of that deportation order, which meant he could get a work permit, a social security number, and a driver's license. All he had to do was check in with the government once a year

and prove he'd been in no trouble with the law. He was excited. He says, I'm all legal now. I'm so good to go. But it was still just a temporary status. He still had to check in with ICE every year. Right, exactly. On February 6, shortly after President Trump signed his new executive order, Roberto Beristain came here to an immigration office in Indianapolis for his annual check-in. Helen was in the parking lot waiting when an ICE officer came to let her know her husband would not be coming home. He said, your husband is being detained because he is a fugitive. I said, my husband is a fugitive? My husband is not running from you.

You did not come knock on my door to look for my husband. He came to you. Why this year he is a fugitive? What happened? Roberto was doing everything he was supposed to do, so he was an easy target. He wasn't hiding. He wasn't living in the shadows. Right. And so they grabbed somebody who was following the rules. Most of you voted for Donald Trump. He said he was going to do this. He's done this. Why are you surprised?

Because this is not the person he said he would deport. And why would you deport somebody like that when you've got so many other bad people out there? It just doesn't make sense to me. ICE declined to give us an interview, but in a statement, the agency said Berestain was detained because of that final order of removal in accordance with federal immigration law. James Carifano, policy expert at the Heritage Foundation and a member of Mr. Trump's transition team, told us the president's new policy is designed to serve as a deterrent. It's not that they're going out and they're looking for people who have done nothing, but that we have an obligation to enforce the law,

and if somebody comes across our path who's broken the law, then you know what? They're probably going to go because the message is there's a new sheriff in town and the law is going to be enforced. You're saying that deporting somebody like Roberto Beristain, it does send a message to others who may be thinking about coming here illegally. I think that's absolutely true. The number of people caught trying to cross the southern border has dropped 60 percent in the first three months of President Trump's administration.

Apprehensions are now at a 17-year low. Analysts we spoke to believe the president's tough new policies have discouraged border crossers, but so have other factors, including an improving job outlook in Mexico. The average cost of deporting someone like Roberto Beristain is about $11,000. His odyssey through the immigration detention system gives you some sense why. Over the course of two months, he was moved from Indianapolis to Brazil, Indiana, Kenosha, Wisconsin, then Kankakee, Illinois, New Orleans, Louisiana, Chaparral, New Mexico, and Sierra Blanca and El Paso, Texas. His family often

didn't know where he was going or why he was being moved there. Tell me something. Did they tell you when they're going to deport you? We were at the house one evening when Roberto called. So wait a minute. They said, no, Roberto, they said they were going to take you to Mexico City. So now they're changing again? Okay. I love you. Be careful. Bye. Sounded scared. I'm not so scared like what's going to happen to me. The irony of what's happened is not lost on Roberto's wife. Like a lot of her friends and relatives, Helen Berestain also voted for President Trump. You voted for him. I voted for him because he said we're going to make our economy better. I did like that idea. And I said to Roberto, I said, you know what? You know, you're getting a small business and that's going to help you with your

taxes. But he said, OK, well, you don't think he's going to deport us, all people? And I said... Roberto actually raised that idea. Yeah, he did. And I said, Roberto, come on now. You got your documents. You obey the law. You haven't done anything bad.

You're not a criminal. Are there times when you feel that you've made a terrible mistake? Like they say, you should read the fine print first before you make a selection. I sort of listened closely to those debates. That was a mistake I made. I didn't listen. The Berestain's children, 8-year-old Dimitri, 14-year-old Jasmine, and 16-year-old Maria, have a difficult time understanding what's happened to their father.

Maria, did you know he wasn't a U.S. citizen? No, I didn't know. He makes this home a home and he makes a family a family because he's, you know, the father. And when he's gone, when you take that away from a family, he's like, it's all going down. Like for my mom, it's very hard. And for us, it's hard, too. What did he say to you when you were talking on the phone? The first thing he said was, you got A's? He was asking about your school. Yeah. I'm like, yeah.

And he's like, okay, good, because I want you to become a lawyer. I was like, yeah, I'm going to become a lawyer. I'm an attorney. I'm going to be an immigration attorney. Since Roberto Beristain's detention has been in the news, the restaurant has received threatening calls and angry letters directed at Helen. Pack your bags and go to Mexico, said one. When you voted for Trump, you were voting for every bigot who's coming after you, said another. You got people hating people left and right.

This is not America. This is not the America dream. And this is how this is not how we're making America great again. On April 4th at 10 p.m., Roberto Beristain was taken to this border crossing and deported to Juarez, Mexico. He spent the night at a shelter run by the Catholic Church. We found him there the next morning. He told us he was praying to be reunited with his family and was still somehow optimistic. Wherever I go, they're going to be with me. Everything's going to be reunited with his family and was still somehow optimistic. Wherever I go, they're going to be with me. Everything's going to be okay.

Either way or other way, we're going to be together. If I was told that peaceful immigrants that are trying, are in the process of becoming an American citizen, would be deported, I would not have voted for Trump. Some people say, look, illegal immigrants are coming here and they're taking jobs. That's not even the case with Roberto. He employs, what, 20 people? He's not taking jobs. He's creating jobs. Is it a good use of resources to deport someone like Roberto Barrister? That is part of the overall public good of demonstrating not just to Americans, but to people around the world that American immigration laws are going to be enforced. That's an important message.

So there's no room for discretion? I mean, look, I don't enforce the law. I don't say there's room for discretion. I'm saying I don't necessarily think that just because somebody was nice in the 20 years they live here, that they have a right to live here. Roberto Beristain's lawyers are challenging the validity of that old order of removal that led to his deportation to Mexico. They may also apply for a special waiver for him to reenter the U.S., but that can take two to three years.

If he's denied, he'll be banned from returning for a decade. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. It's not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz. He's 97 years old, barely five feet tall, and he served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg. The crime, genocide. The defendants, a group of German SS officers,

accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps. More than a million men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in cold blood. Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn't content just to be part of 20th century history. He believes he has something important to offer the world right now. You know, you have seen the ugliest side of humanity. Yes.

You've really seen evil. And look at you. You're the sunniest man I've ever met. The most optimistic. You want to get some more friends? Oh, this is nice. Watching Ben Ferencz during his daily swim, his gym workout,

I'm showing off now. and his morning push-up regimen, is to realize he isn't just the sunniest man we've ever met, he may also be the fittest. How's that? And that's just the beginning. The case we present is a plea of humanity to law. This is Ferencz making his opening statement in the Nuremberg courtroom 70 years ago.

The charges we have brought accuse the defendants of having committed crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg trials after World War II were historic, the first international war crimes tribunals ever held. Hitler's top lieutenants were prosecuted first. Then a series of subsequent trials were mounted against other Nazi leaders, including 22 SS officers responsible for killing more than a million people, not in concentration camps, but in towns and villages across Eastern Europe. They would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz. You look so young.

I was so young. I was 27 years old. Had you prosecuted trials before? Never in my life. I don't recall if I'd ever been in a courtroom, actually. Ferencz had immigrated to the U.S. as a baby, the son of poor Jewish parents from a small town in Romania. He grew up in a tough New York City neighborhood where his father found work as a janitor.

When I was taking the school at the age of seven, I couldn't speak English. I spoke Yiddish at home, and I was very small, and so they wouldn't let me in. So you didn't speak English till you were eight? That's correct. Could you read? No, on the contrary. The silent movies always had writing on it,

and I would ask my father, what does it say? He couldn't read it either. But Ferencz learned quickly. He became the first in his family to go to college, then got a scholarship to Harvard Law School. But during his first semester, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and he, like many classmates, raced to enlist. He wanted to be a pilot, but the Army Air Corps wouldn't take him. And they said, you know, you're too short. Your legs won't reach the pedals. The Marines, they just looked at me and said, forget it, kid. So he finished at Harvard, then enlisted as a private in the Army.

Part of an artillery battalion, he landed on the beach at Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Toward the end of the war, because of his legal training, he was transferred to a brand new unit in General Patton's 3rd Army, created to investigate war crimes. As U.S. forces liberated concentration camps, his job was to rush in and gather evidence. Ferencz told us he is still haunted by the things he saw

and the stories he heard in those camps. A father who, his son told me the story, his father had died just as we were entering the camp, and the father had routinely saved a piece of his bread for his son, and he kept it under his arm at night. He kept it under his arm at night so the other inmates wouldn't steal it, you know. So you see these human stories, which are not, they're not real, they're not real, but they were real. Ferencz came home, married his childhood sweetheart, and vowed never to set foot in Germany again. But that didn't last long. General Telford Taylor, in charge of the Nuremberg trials, asked him to direct a team of researchers in Berlin, one of whom found a cache of top-secret

documents in the ruins of the German foreign ministry. He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders, and these were daily reports from the Eastern Front, which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It's classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others. Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job had been to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill communists, gypsies, and especially Jews.

There were 3,000 SS officers trained for the purpose and directed to kill, without pity or remorse, every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on. So they went right in after the troops. That was their assignment, come up behind the troop, round up the Jews, kill them all. Only one piece of film is known to exist of the Einsatzgruppen at work. It isn't easy to watch. Well, this is a typical operation. Well, see here, they rounded them up. They all have already tags on them. It isn't easy to watch.

This footage came to light years later. At the time, Ferencz just had the documents, and he started adding up the numbers. When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people. It's more people than you've ever seen in your life. I took a sample. I got on the next plane, flew from Berlin down to Nuremberg. And I said to Taylor, General, we've got to put on a new trial. But the trials were already underway, and prosecution staff was stretched thin. Taylor told Ferencz adding another trial was impossible.

And I started screaming. I said, look, I've got here mass murder, mass murder on a parallel scale. And he said, can you do this in addition to your other work? And I said, sure. He said, okay, so you do it. And that's how 27-year-old Ben Ferencz became the chief prosecutor of 22 Einsatzgruppen commanders at trial number nine at Nuremberg. How do you plead to this indictment? Guilty or not guilty? Standard routine. Not guilty. Guilty or not guilty? Nischulich. They all say not guilty. Same thing, not guilty.

But Ferencz knew they were guilty and could prove it. Without calling a single witness, he entered into evidence the defendants' own reports of what they had done. Exhibit 111. In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews. Exhibit 179, from Kiev, in 1941. The Jews of the city were ordered to present themselves. About 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days.

Exhibit 84 from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942, total number executed so far, 91,678. Einsatzgruppen D was the unit of Forenz' lead defendant Otto Ohlendorf. He didn't deny the killings. He had the gall to claim they were done in self-defense. He was not ashamed of that. He was proud of that. He was carrying out his government's instructions. How did you not hit him? There was only one time I wanted to hit him, really. One of these, my defendants, he gets up and he says, Was, you nashosen, das Hirsch hier zum Echtemal. Which is, what, the Jews were shot? I hear it here for the first time. Boy, I felt if I'd had a bayonet, I would have jumped over the thing,

I'd put a bayonet right through one ear and let it come out the other. You know? Yeah. You know? Son of a bitch. And you had his name down on a piece of paper. I've got his reports of how many he killed, you know. Innocent lamb.

Did you look at the defendant's faces? Defendant's face were blank all the time. Defendant's absolutely blank. They could like, they're waiting and waiting for a bus. What was going on inside of you? Of me? Yeah. I'm still churning. To this minute. I'm still churning. All 22

defendants were found guilty and four of them, including Ohlendorf, were hanged. Foren says his goal from the beginning was to affirm the rule of law and deter similar crimes from ever being committed again. Did you meet a lot of people who perpetrated war crimes who would otherwise, in your opinion, have been just a normal, upstanding citizen? Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite. What turns a man into a savage beast like that? He's not a savage.

He's an intelligent, patriotic human being. He's a savage when he does the murder, though. No, he's a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country in his mind. You don't think they turn into savages even for the act? Do you think the man who dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars and all decent people. So Ferencz has spent the rest of his life trying to deter war and war crimes by establishing an

international court like Nuremberg. He scored a victory when the International Criminal Court in The Hague was created in 1998. May it please your honors. He delivered the closing argument in the court's first case. Now, you've been at this for 50 years, if not more. We've had genocide since then. Yes, going on right this minute. Going on right this minute in Sudan. We've had Rwanda.

We've had Bosnia. You're not getting very far. Well, don't say that. People get discouraged. They should remember from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged. Did anybody ever say that you're naive? Of course. Are you naive here?

Well, if it's naive to want peace instead of war, let them make sure they say I'm naive. Because I want peace instead of war. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don't say they're naive. I say they're stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don't even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That's insane. Thank you very much. For Renz is legendary in the world of international law, and he's still at it. Are you going to help me save the world? I hope so.

It's up to you. He never stops pushing his message. War, not war. Never give up. And he's donating his life savings to a genocide prevention initiative at the Holocaust Museum. He says he's grateful for the life he's lived in this country, and it's his turn to give back. You are such an idealist. I don't think I'm an idealist. I'm a realist. And I see the progress. The progress has been remarkable. Look at the emancipation of women in my lifetime.

You're sitting here as a female. Look what's happened to the same-sex marriages. To tell somebody a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man, and a man can marry a man, they would have said, you're crazy. But it's a reality today. So the world is changing, and you shouldn't, you know, be despairing because it's never happened before. Nothing new ever happened before. We're on a roll. We're marching forward. Ben, I'm sitting here listening to you, and you're very wise,

and you're full of energy and passion, and I can't believe you're 97 years old. Well, I'm still a young man. Clearly. And I'm still in there fighting, and you know what keeps me going? I know I'm right. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it.

The new baseball season is underway, but Chicago Cubs fans are still savoring the last one, thanks to team president Theo Epstein and manager Joe Maddon. They made history together, taking the Cubs to their first championship in 108 years. Epstein built the team from scratch, choosing players based on statistics and something more, their character. Take a look at what Theo and Joe and the Cubs unleashed in Chicago. The Cubs victory parade attracted more than a million, the biggest turnout Chicago had ever

seen for what no living Chicagoan can remember seeing, a Cubs championship. Manager Joe Maddon said the giant sea of joy reminded him of Woodstock. Welcome to Cubs Stock 2016. Look at this thing. You're looking at literally this horizon of people. It was spectacular. Go Cubs, go! It's spectacular because they'd ended the longest championship drought in professional sports. The Cubs' turnaround began five years ago when the team's new owner, Tom Ricketts, hired a miracle worker. Theo Epstein had already helped break an 86-year championship drought by bringing a World Series title to Boston.

When the savior arrived in Chicago, one paper had him walking on water. But in his first season, the Cubs lost 101 games. By the end, only his head was above water. I thought it was funny. The 2011 Cubs were the oldest team in the division, the most expensive team in the division, and the worst team in the division, and you really needed to start over. And they're expecting you to deliver. Yeah. Epstein devised a five-year plan to go all the way from worst to first, starting with the draft. Most teams take young pitchers, but Epstein chose hitters.

He said hitters don't get hurt as much. Not only were they safer bets, but we also felt we could change the culture a little bit easier by building around talented position players with high character. So you're looking for more than just their skills. You're looking for character. Yeah, because baseball is a game with a ton of adversity inherent in it, and players who tend to respond to adversity the right way

and triumph in the end are players with strong character. If you have enough guys like that in the clubhouse, you have an edge on the other team. You said, I used to scoff at character. What changed? I just saw over the years that the times that we did remarkable things, it was always because players didn't want to let each other down. Players wanted to lift each other up. So how do you determine which player has the character traits you're looking for? Find out how he treats people when no one's looking. You go talk to

their girlfriend. You go talk to their ex-girlfriends. You go talk to their friends. You talk to their enemies. Kyle Schwarber was a promising young hitter at Indiana University. Many teams had their local scouts interview him. But for the Cubs, Theo Epstein did the interview. Then made Schwarber his top draft pick. What was it about his character that impressed you? Kyle played baseball with a football mentality. What do you mean?

He would run through a wall in order to catch a ball and he would attack any obstacle that faced the team. But running flat out, chasing a fly ball in the first week of his second season, disaster. Schwarber tore his knee ligament so badly that doctors said he would be out for the entire season. He believed them, but he still attacked his rehab relentlessly. I wanted to challenge myself, and I wanted to get back as soon as possible. And, you know, I was like, okay, I'm going to push myself. While Schwarber was rehabbing, the Cubs were dominating. Grand slam time! The pressure kept building, pressure that could have crushed this young team.

Manager Joe Madden had the antidote for pressure. I talked about pressure and expectations as being positives, and they are. Embrace it, embrace the target, embrace the pressure, embrace expectations, because if you do, you could end up winning the first World Series in 108 years in Chicago. Madden came to the Cubs two years ago after managing in Tampa. Once, when Tampa got off to a terrible start, what Madden did shows why everyone would want to work for him. Your team lost the first six games. Oh, yeah. You're flying off to the seventh.

Yep. And you go through the plane and you pour a drink for each one of your players. And they have no idea why you're doing this. I had this really good bottle of whiskey. Pour a little shot in each guy, and I went up to the front, got the PA system, and I announced, to the best 0-6 team in the history of Major League Baseball. So what was the lesson from that? What did that do? It's about never quitting. It's just to break the tension. So burden lifted, pressure eased,

and I could play baseball again. Madden puts his own motivational sayings on t-shirts, which he gives to all his players. You have a favorite? Try not to suck. That's pretty good. I think that'll endure the test of time. Joe's the best I've ever seen at getting players to just relax, be themselves, have fun, and prioritize winning. In modern baseball, all teams mine statistics to gain an advantage. By last season, the fifth of Epstein's five-year plan, the Cubs had taken it a step further, scouting the opposition in minute detail to know how to get opposing hitters out. We try to do a great job of understanding the opposing hitter and his tendencies,

maybe understand the hitter better than he knows himself. You said that having all of this information was almost like having a cheat code. It almost feels like cheating. You give your pitcher so much confidence. They know that we're calling the right pitch because you've broken down the opposing hitter so well. We're really good at it. We're good at it. Pitcher's got the ball. He knows what he wants to do. Defense is being set based on, like, I don't know, 250 at-bats or plate appearances.

It's really solid stuff. Here comes the 2-2! Using those stats, Cubs pitchers allowed the fewest runs in the league. It's a no-hitter! And the Cubs position their defense so well... Diving, grab Hayward, he caught it! ...that they turned more than 70% of balls hit in play into outs. The highest percentage in the majors in more than 25 years.

It's all about defense. We're going to go back to the World Series because we play the same level of defense. And Cubs defenders are so versatile that catchers, infielders, and sometimes pitchers also play in the outfield. Here's pitcher Travis Wood in left. That versatility allows the team to carry an extra pitcher instead of a backup fielder. When we move guys around, we're still really solid on defense. Lenton's the bench, more maneuverability, and also, again, giving guys days off. But there's also the component that some guys like it. Well, you have said that fun is a big part of success. Why is fun so important? I've never done anything well that I didn't have fun doing.

I believe the more freedom in a sense that we give our players, the greater respect and discipline we get in return. Thus, you get a better player. And one of their best, Kyle Schwarber, kept rushing through rehab. Then, to everyone's surprise, his doctor cleared him just in time to play in the World Series. He's like, I'm not going to hold you back, but I could blow out a hamstring or an oblique by trying to do it. So I was like, that's fine. I got the whole offseason to take care of it. I'll worry about that later.

Yeah, exactly. I can worry about that stuff later. But Schwarber hadn't batted for the entire season. Hitters need weeks to retrain their eyes to face 100-mile-an-hour Major League pitching. Schwarber only had a few days and medical restrictions. Your doctors, I think, had told you you should only swing like 60 times a day. So how in the world did you get your batting eye back so fast? I want to set up a pitching machine. I want to set the, you know, fastball sliders and curveballs where I can just stand at the plate, you know, in a batter's box and watch these pitches go by.

Just so you can see it. Yeah, just so I could see it and train my eyes all over again. Each day, he spent two hours focusing in on more than 300 pitches. Schwarber's long road back. Schwarber told us he knew of no one who had ever done that before, so he wasn't sure it would work. I just tell myself over and over again that, you know, I'm a good hitter. Like, I can do this.

And a base hit. Schwarber's delivered to nothing. In the World Series, you hit over 400. A lot of luck, I guess. A lot of luck. Schwarber to left. But in Game 7 of the World Series, just four outs from victory, the Cubs blew a three-run lead.

Tie game. The Tarp is on the field. Tied 6-6 after nine innings, a rain delay stopped play. It turned out to be a godsend. The Cubs were dejected, shocked, stunned. Then another triumph of character. Outfielder Jason Hayward, who batted terribly all series, suddenly called a team meeting.

It really stands out to you that Jason Hayward, who had the toughest season, really, of any of the individuals in that room, would have the courage to stand up and call that meeting. So how many times in the season had a player called a full meeting? We didn't have any. Didn't have any player meetings. Never? Because we never needed one. Hayward told us during the season if a player got down, the other players would pick him up. But this time... We all need to be picked up at the same time. We all felt frustrated. We all felt confused. So how did you know what to say? I didn't know

what to say. I just told them that I loved them. I said, we are the best team in the game. We're going to win this game. And guys started saying fight the fight. We got them right where we want them. Let's go do what we do. You can feel that energy in that room to where it shifted from, you know, being dead to being, you know, we're going to win this game. After that meeting, you said, I'm going to get on base. It's just you get that gut feeling, like, you know, you feel really good before you go up to the plate, and, you know, you know you're going to do something.

And I could have been just talking a lot of crap too, but, you know, I really believed it. Hard hit, base hit. Schwarber's single started the rally that won the World Series. The Cubs scored twice. Then pitching and defense did the rest. Here's the 0-1. This is going to be a tough play.

Bryant, the Cubs win the World Series! It's over! And the Cubs have finally won it all! They all shared the joy, but on this team, no one wanted the credit. Joe Maddon told us flat out, without you, the Cubs would not have won the World Series. I guess that's a compliment. I guess that's a compliment. I don't like to think that way.

I like to think that there's always, there's always that team effort. And that, right there, is the character this team was built on. You have said that you love your numbers geeks. Yeah. But that's not what won Game 7 of the World Series. That's right. What did? The heart.

The heartbeat won the World Series. But at the end of the day, man, it was a group of guys getting together during a rain delay, and they rallied around one another. It had nothing to do with math whatsoever. Not a thing to do with math. Team owner Tom Ricketts has become a rock star in Chicago. Ricketts hopes the championship will be transformational. Our C, our logo, it used to stand for lovable loser or just loser. I want that to stand for excellence,

for players to do things the right way, and I want that to stand for winning. We have one of the youngest teams in baseball. Almost all of them are going to be together through 2021 at the least. It gives them a chance to try to be the type of team that shows up and plays well in October year after year after year. I think everyone deserves more than one World Series every 108 years, so we have some making up to do. Now an update on a February story we call the North Korean threat, which has grown since then. While North Korea continues to test ballistic missiles and rattle its nuclear saber, U.S. warships have repositioned nearby. This past week, President Trump surprised many by saying if circumstances are right, he's willing to meet with the country's dictator, Kim Jong-un.

General Vincent Brooks, whom we met at the demilitarized zone, commands U.S. forces in Korea. Is this the hottest spot on the planet? The planet's a pretty hot place right now, but this is one that can go very, very quickly. This is for real. I don't think people at home know how tense this line is. What it takes to go from the condition we're in at this moment to hostilities again is literally the matter of a decision on North Korea's side to say fire. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.