I believe that the Cubs will win a World Series within the next five years. There, I said it. Now I can hear all you baseball fans (*cough* Cardinals *cough* White Sox) saying, “Ha, the Ottoman Empire existed the last time the Cubs won a World Series, you’re delusional." First of all, that’s enough from you Sox fans. Cool, you guys won 10 years ago; I wish we had one World Series to brag about. But keep in mind that you guys had gone almost a century without winning as well, so get off your high horse. Cardinals fans, no comment.

Back to what I was saying, the Cubs have one of the brightest futures in baseball. They have plenty of young talent on the major league roster, and they would be in the playoffs if the season ended today. They even have quite a few more top prospects waiting to be called up. I truly believe that this is the group of players that will end this horrific streak. However, whenever I try to bring this up to fans of other teams, they respond with, “Yeah but, 1908 though." Unless the same team has been playing for 107 years, that doesn’t matter. It’s one thing when the same group of players choke year in and year out, then you can use past failures to predict future ones. That’s not the case here. The longest-tenured player on the Cubs roster is shortstop Starlin Castro, and he’s only been with the team since 2010. No one was on the team that collapsed in 2003, or the ones that got swept out of the first round in 2007 and 2008.

The point is we don’t know how this young core will perform under pressure. They could be capable of rising to the challenge, and give Cubs fans what we have waited more than a century for. Sure, this also means maybe they won’t live up to the hype, and the Cubs will go 100 more years without winning a series. However, if they don’t win, it won’t be because of some curse, it will be because of the tremendous amount of young talent that is currently playing in Major League Baseball. This past All-star game, a record 20 of the players were younger than 25. That’s incredible. There is more young talent in baseball than ever before. If the Cubs don’t win, it will be because Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, or some other young star will put up monster performances. Or because the Cardinals hack their database (sorry, I just had to). It won’t be because 70 years ago some guy couldn’t bring his goat into the game. If the curse of the Bambino can end, so can the Billy Goat.