On one hand, the Chicago Cubs are due not only to make the World Series but to win it. The number of years since they achieved the first is 71. The second number is 108 and counting.
But, in another very real sense, history is not on the Cubs’ side. Since baseball’s three-tiered playoff format began in 1995, only four of the 21 teams that finished with the best record in the majors in a particular season, as the Cubs will do this year, have managed to win the World Series. That covers the 1998 New York Yankees, the 2009 Yankees and Boston teams of 2007 and 2013, both of which tied for the best record in the majors.