Whether your heart got broken in the playoffs as your favorite team got knocked out, or if you have a deep seeded rivalry with one or both of these two teams, you have to recognize that this World Series will be one of firsts.
The Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians will be throwing their will, talent, passion and everything they’ve got in order be able to call themselves champions. For both of these teams, it will be a title that has since escaped their grasps for quite some time.
The Cleveland Indians would have had a lot more to prove if it wasn’t for the Cleveland Cavaliers winning the NBA Championship this past summer. Prior to LeBron James leading his city to the world title, the drought for a championship across all professional sports teams in Cleveland was 52 years. It had been 52 years since the Cleveland Browns had won the NFL Championship in 1964, and suddenly Cleveland has the chance of crowning two of their professional teams as victors.
The Cleveland Indians have the second longest drought for the awarding of a World Series Title, having last won in 1948. Which team in baseball has an even longer drought of earning a championship title?
Answer: The Chicago Cubs.
The Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908. One hundred and eight years it has been since the Chicago Cubs were able to declare themselves as champions. If you ask any fan, they would attribute this lack of success to the Curse of the Billy Goat.
For those who are not aware of what this dreaded curse has meant for Chicago Cubs fans, the summary goes like this. Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, had brought his pet goat to Wrigley Field for game four of the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers. After being asked to leave the park because the goat’s odor was disturbing other fans, Sianis was angered and exclaimed, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more”. The Chicago Cubs went on to lose the 1945 World Series and have not been back to the World Series stage until now. The curse being an attributable factor to many fans as to why their team has just not seemed to pull themselves together in any post season.
Whether you believe in curses or not, the fact that the two teams in Major League Baseball with the longest droughts of winning a championship title are now competing for it against one another, is something special. Just to prove, yet again, that there’s always magic in the air when it comes to the sports we love.
So check out that magic within the next week and see history be made as the Chicago Cubs or the Cleveland Indians will end their drought and be able to finally say they are champions.
