Cubs Advances to World Series

The Chicago Cubs attained the National League pennant on Saturday. They beat the the Los Angeles Dodgers with pitching and power on their way to reaching their first World Series in 71 years.

The Cubs trounced Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher of the new generation, in a 5-0 victory that gave them the National League pennant, 4-2.

The only remaining roadblocks to their championship dream is the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Curse of the Billy Goat.

With an opportunity to end the longest title drought in major North American professional sports,standing at 108 years, and wipe off a fabled curse, the long-woeful Cubs travel to Cleveland on Tuesday to start their best-of-seven Major League Baseball championship.

Willson Contreras and Anthony Rizzo blasted home runs to back the two-hit pitching of Aroldis Chapman and Kyle Hendricks that sent Cubs fans into a frenzy. The players rocked the 102-year-old stadium in Chicago and erupted a city-wide celebration.

Following a transformation by a new management led by team president Theo Epstein, the Cubs will enter the 12th Fall Classic as favorites after a major league-leading 103 regular season wins. Epstein is the same person who helped Boston Red Sox get rid of the Curse of Bambino and win their first Series in 86 years.

The Indians, in their own history of sporting futility, have gone without a World Series title since 1948.

But no club even comes close to the ordeal of the Cubs. The teams’s deprived fans have waited four decades longer than their Cleveland equivalent.

The Cubs were a former power in the major leagues. They won their second World Series in a row in the fifth edition of the Fall Classic in 1908.

The Cubs performed as a solid team over the next few decades but kept falling short in the World Series. As a result, they were runners-up in six World Series in the years followed. In 1945, they once again won the National League pennant for another crack at the title.

The current Cubs look well stocked to end the drought.

Dream Team

The team was assembled by a collection of draft choices, shrewd trades and sound spending on the free agent market. This latest edition of the Cubs have a young, power-hitting team boasting first baseman Rizzo, third baseman Kris Bryant and shortstop Addison Russell.

They backstop a veteran starting rotation secured by Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta, John Lackey, National League ERA leader Hendricks and Jon Lester.

Led by manager Joe Maddon, the Cubs went from 101 losses in Epstein’s first season in charge in 2012 to one step from baseball heaven. The team brought in Maddon in the previous season as the last piece of their championship puzzle.

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