No team has failed better over the last century but this extraordinary victory suggests the next World Series will not be far away for history’s glorious losers
Baseball is a game of failures. A hitter with a .300 batting average, the traditional benchmark of a star player, fails seven times out of 10. Errors are given equal billing alongside runs and hits, a naked public accounting of imperfection consistent on scoreboards from Little League diamonds to major league stadiums. The game is a turn-based series of individual conflicts where mistakes are amplified. The difference between good and great, between winning and losing, exists in the management of the inevitable, incremental defeats that unlike other sports are not mere hazards of the trade but its essence.
No team in sports has failed better over the last century than the Chicago Cubs, which makes them the quintessential American sports tale: neither an aspirational brand like the Yankees nor born losers like the Phillies, they are a team for the rest of us. Plenty had transpired in American life since the Cubs had last won the World Series. Mark Twain died and the Ottoman Empire fell. The RMS Titanic was laid down, constructed, sank and was re-discovered. Halley’s Comet passed Earth, twice. Eighteen different US presidents were elected and sworn in.
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