One of the best things about baseball is the history of the game. All the things that have happened in baseball are amazing to me. There are no other sports like it. No other sport has the Black Sox scandal or the breaking of the color barrier. Baseball is unique in many ways. However, my favorite piece of baseball history is the curses. Aside from the Madden curse, baseball is the only sport that has legitimate well-known curses. One of the most famous being the curse of the Bambino. The premise being that when the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees, they were then cursed to never win a World Series ever again. It was something that haunted the Red Sox franchise for a little over 80 years until they finally broke the curse in 2004.

But once that curse was lifted, all of a sudden everyone’s attention turned to the next superstition -the currently ongoing curse of the Billy goat. Long story short, in 1908 a fan was kicked out of a Cubs game for bringing his pet Billy goat with him - he then said the Cubs would never win again. The curse has lasted over 100 years. And yet, here we are in June 2016, and the Cubs currently hold the best record in baseball. With a very young and extremely talented team, many people believe this is their year.

As much as I want to believe the Cubs can break this curse, and as much as I want to believe that there is no such thing as a “curse,” I just can’t pick them to win. I believe they will get to the playoffs, maybe even the World Series. But I’m just expecting something like the Steve Bartman incident to pop up again, because that’s just how things have gone for the Cubs. I can guarantee Steve Bartman won’t be there when it happens, but something will happen.

And it’s not like they haven’t tried to break the curse. They have tried everything from inviting the man’s relatives to the stadium, to having a priest spray holy water around the mound. They have done everything short of sacrificing a goat to the baseball gods.

Now on a real note, winning the World Series at all is a tough task for anyone not named the New York Yankees. After the Cubs, the Cleveland Indians have the second longest drought, at 67 years. I know it’s not 100 years, but it’s still a significant amount of time. So you can’t really say it’s the curse when other teams also haven’t won in over half a century. But then again, it’s always fun to believe that a team is truly cursed.