Maybe the Chicago Cubs will make it to the World Series this year, and maybe the team will win it. The chances are improbable. The Cubs are down two games to none in the National League Championship Series. If the Cubs are eliminated, it will continue the longest championship drought among teams in the four American major professional sports: MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL.

According to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St.:

No team in professional sports has gone longer since a championship victory than the Chicago Cubs. The last time the Cubs won the World Series was over a century ago in 1908. Chicago’s other Major League Baseball team, the White Sox, won its third World Series in 2005.

Many Cubs fans and commentators offer a supernatural explanation for the team’s championship drought. The commonly held belief is that the team was cursed after a man and his pet goat were forced to leave Wrigley Field during a 1945 World Series game. The Cubs did not win a single game in that series and have not made another World Series appearance since.

The methodology for the work:

To identify the teams with the longest playoff droughts, 24/7 Wall St. considered NHL hockey, NBA basketball, MLB baseball, and NFL football teams that have won at least one major championship. Of that group, the 10 teams for which the most time has elapsed since winning again are experiencing the longest championship droughts. To be considered, a franchise needed to have won a championship under the current team name in the current city. Franchise win-loss records, championship wins, and historical player information were obtained from team and league websites, as well as ESPN.com. The total number of listed championship wins for a team are considered only from, and not prior to, the modern era of each league.

There is always next year.

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