I had a huge epiphany last night as I was watched the Tampa Bay Rays (née Devil) defeat the Boston Red Sox in Game 7 of ALCS: the Chicago Cubs will not win the World Series until 2021. Mark it on your future calendar. If you are a Cubs fan, just take it easy for the next twelve seasons after the Phillies or Rays win this current World Series. Here is how I know why it will be the year 2021 that will see Sheffield and Addison ablaze in celebration, burning buildings, and countless metric tons of consumed booze. It is actually very simple.
In 2003, both the Cubs and Red Sox were one win away from reaching the World Series. A World Series that would have shattered the “most watched TV program of all-time” record held by the series finale of M.A.S.H. Winner take all, winner finally gets the curse monkey off its back. Instead, both teams lost heartbreaking games and we were subjected to a Marlins-Yankees World Series that brought in ratings that barely beat out the series finale of Small Wonder, which is to say that it was roughly the 9,856,312th most watched program of all-time.
Here is what has unfolded since 2003: the Red Sox finally won a World Series in 2004; the following year the White Sox broke their streak of futility; the following year the St. Louis Cardinals, the biggest rivals of the Cubs, won it all with so many smoke and mirrors that the porn industry and KISS almost filed a class action lawsuit against them; then, last year the Red Sox won another title. This year pits the Rays against the Phillies. Though the Rays have not been in existence for very long they have been so futile since their inception it was laughable, whereas the Phillies, though they won a title in 1980, are based in a city that is currently in the midst of the longest championship drought that has a team from each of the four major sports (the 76′ers won the last Philly title in 1983). See where I’m going here?
It would seem that all of the other horrible and/or cursed teams have to win a World Series before the Cubs do. This means that the following twelve teams will win before the Cubs do because either A) God really does hate the team (as seen by allowing Satan’s team, the White Sox, to claim a title first) or B) the Cubs are like Andy Dufresne and in order to share in their redemption we must watch every other team celebrate first. We Cubs fans have had to keep fending off The Sisters in the laundry room, read Brooks’ suicide note, have our only ticket out of jail be murdered by the warden, and spend a month in solitary confinement before we can be free to work on that boat and meet up with Morgan Freeman on the beach. So, in no particular order, here are your next World Series winners:
— Cleveland Indians (longest championship drought in baseball other than the Cubs)
— Kansas City Royals (won the title in 1985 but have been a consistent laughingstock of the league since)
— Seattle Mariners (have never been to the World Series)
— Texas Rangers (ditto)
— Colorado Rockies (never won a title)
— Houston Astros (ditto)
— Milwaukee Brewers (ditto)
— Philadelphia Phillies (if they lose to the Rays, their fan base will be more tortured than they are now)
— Tampa Bay Rays (if they lose to the Phillies, they will be in the “never won a title” category)
— Pittsburgh Pirates (won a title in 1979 but the organization has been in total disarray since Barry Bonds left in 1992)
— San Diego Padres (never won a title)
— San Francisco Giants (haven’t won a title since moving to California)
— Washington Nationals (used to be the Montreal Expos—enough said)
Add it all up and you can pencil in the Cubs in the 2021 World Series. Of course, because they are the Cubs, they’ll probably win it all against the expansion Topeka Tornadoes or something and they’ll win Game 7 on a blown call. But, what are you gonna do? I’ve already seen enough celebrating done by teams that should have been us.
Only 4,748 days until the 2021 World Series! (This assumes that the World Series will start on October 20, 2021 and that frogs aren’t raining down from the sky, killing all of the nonbelievers while Kirk Cameron and the writers of the Left Behind series laugh heartily in the background.)