Yes, the Chicago Cubs won the National League Pennant last night, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-0, to take the series, four games to two.
This was a huge thing, because of there is one ball club in North American sports that can truly be said to have been cursed, it is the Chicago Cubs. This is a team that seemed to find all sorts of ways not to win, not to succeed, and thus, they have not won a championship in over one hundred year! That is far and away the longest drought of any professional major sports franchise in any sport, and they had not even qualified for the World Series dating back to 1945, until they finally managed to achieve that last night.
How much has the world changed since the last time that the Cubs were there?
Let's take a look:
- World War II had just ended earlier that year.
- Credit cards did not exist. Neither did satellites or microwaves! Super glue and color television were not yet a thing, either.
- Pacemakers did not exist yet. Bar codes had yet to be invented, and neither Alaska nor Hawaii were stated yet. International air travel was not yet something that was available, and it would not be affordable to most people for quite a long time thereafter, either.
- Barbie dolls and Mr. Potato Head were not yet toys, and velcro had yet to be invented. Hula hoops would be invented not long afterwards but, as of when the Cubs last made it to the World Series, had not yet been introduced to the world.
- Los Angeles Dodgers did not exist.
All of that was just from the last time that the Chicago Cubs made it to the World Series! Now, the last time that they won the World Series?
Remember, that was all the way back in 1908, well over a century ago. And if you think things were different in the world the last time that the Cubs simply made it to the World Series, the world was seemingly impossibly different when they won the World Series.
You have to rake back yet more things that cover over the particular ground:
- Neither of the World Wars had been fought yet! The Great Depression had not happened yet, nor the economic recovery from the mixture of preparing for war, as well as putting people to work, through FDR's New Deal. No, none of that had taken place yet.
- Only one of the presidents since JFK (that being his Vice-President and eventual successor, Lyndon B. Johnson) had even been born as of yet.
- Arizona and New Mexico were still territories, and not yet states.
- Prohibition had not yet happened, let alone the end of the Prohibition.
- The Titanic had not yet sunk off the North Atlantic coast. Sorry, Leonardo and Kate, but nothing to make the huge blockbuster motion picture, yet.
- Silent films were still all the rage, although they were still working on how to add sound to it. Some people did not think that the two things went hand in hand, and felt that adding sound would not actually catch on (they were wrong about that).
- Cars were not very common, and most people had barely ever seen one before.
- No one had managed to fly any serious amount of time yet. The first flight over the Atlantic Ocean, by Charles Lindbergh, was still almost a couple of decades to come yet.
Pretty amazing, huh? A lot has changed in the world since then, although let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet, because the Cubs have not won the World Series yet. They are as close as they have gotten in over seven decades, however, and I think it is fair to say that most people would want to see them win. I know I do!
So, let's go Cubs, and let's see if they can finally, FINALLY end this drought, and bring their fans their first ever World Series title in their lifetimes!
No comments:
Post a Comment