THERE’S a reason movies about sports are such a Hollywood staple: they offer guaranteed suspense, climax and denouement. In real life, by contrast, such taut athletic narratives are hard to come by. The best team usually wins, and most games aren’t close. It’s a remarkable testament to fans’ capacity for self-delusion that they are routinely willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for entertainment whose outcome is frequently determined within 15 minutes. But when the drama is real, it’s incomparably sweeter—both because scarcity and intermittent reinforcement set the animalistic depths of our collective psyche aflame, and because even, say, Kevin Costner in “Bull Durham” or “Field of Dreams” could not fully capture the spectacle of the world’s most physically imposing specimens experiencing childlike joy and despair on the grandest possible stage.

Before last night, the Chicago Cubs had last won Major League Baseball’s (MLB) World Series in 1908, when (to cite a few arbitrary examples) the Romanovs ruled Russia, American women could not vote and the very first Model-T rolled off the production line. Although the curse of the Boston Red Sox, who went 86 years without a title, was more widely known and had a better back story, it is the Cubs who were the longest-suffering franchise in American sports. And although the hoary tale of the billy goat that purportedly laid a hex on the club never quite caught on, the Northsiders’ 108-year drought took on star-crossed proportions of its own in 2003. With the team five outs away from reaching the World Series, a fan named Steve Bartman reached over a rail to grab a foul ball that would otherwise have been corralled by a Cub outfielder. Inevitably, Chicago went on to blow a three-run lead, and subsequently its season, while Mr Bartman had to receive police protection after his home address was published online.

The 2016 edition of this 140-year-old club was the clear pre-season betting-market favourite to win the championship. The Cubs duly steamrollered through the regular season, with the best record of any team since 2004. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, they overcame some adversity—and staged one comeback for the ages—but never faced an elimination game. Moreover, they had the good fortune to be paired in the World Series against an overachieving Cleveland Indians squad. Just like the 2004 Boston Red Sox, whose World Series win was an anticlimactic sweep, the stage seemed set for a drab Cubs romp. The odds that the baseball gods, having cursed the franchise for so long, would not only allow them to win at last, but also to do so in a fashion worthy of their legacy of heartbreak, had to be slim.

Instead, the 2016 Fall Classic turned into an object lesson in why so many millions of people can find nothing better to do for a few hours than watch a bunch of guys they’ve never met throw and bop a ball around. The underdog Indians—themselves afflicted with the second-longest championship drought in American sports, at 68 years—jumped out to a convincing win in the first game. After dropping the second, they managed to take both the third and fourth on the road at hostile Wrigley Field. Just four teams in major-league history had ever come back from a three-games-to-one deficit to win the best-of-seven World Series, and none since 1985. But Chicago battled back, with a crisp, close victory in Game Five and a blowout win on the road two days later. That set the stage for a single winner-take-all match, which would determine which city’s curse would be expunged.

One for the ages
The Indians had the privilege of sending Corey Kluber, their staff ace and one of the sport’s finest pitchers, to the mound in the decisive game. However, pitching on short rest for the second consecutive start, Mr Kluber was less effective than he is at full strength. He surrendered solo home runs to the first and last batters he faced, and gave up two more runs in between. Cleveland yanked him from the game in the fifth inning, trailing 4-1.

The Cubs similarly pulled their starter in the fifth in favour of Jon Lester, a starter himself, who had just two days’ rest—half the usual amount—before making his first relief appearance since 2007. Along for the ride came David Ross, a 39-year-old graybeard of a catcher, whose primary role on the team is to play whenever Mr Lester is on the mound. To the slim extent he is renowned at all, it is more for his glove and arm than his bat. But Mr Ross promptly defied all expectations. First, he made two defensive miscues, allowing two Indians to score. Then, he made up for half the damage he had inflicted by launching a homer, which give Chicago a 6-3 lead. They would hold that advantage until there were two outs in the eighth inning, when they had a whopping 96% chance to win.

Then, as would only befit a doomed franchise, the Northsiders blew it. With four outs left and one man on base, they summoned Aroldis Chapman, their fireballing closer. After pitching the previous night in a game the Cubs probably should have let him skip, Mr Chapman still lit up the radar gun with ease: he unleashed multiple fastballs at over 100 miles (161 km) per hour. Nonetheless, the Indians had his pitches squared up, and immediately erased their deficit by hitting a double and a two-run homer. The Cubs were held scoreless in the ninth, and when the tottering Mr Chapman trotted to the mound for a second inning of work, the Indians needed to score only a single run to claim the championship. Chicago’s win probability had plummeted to 36%.

Of course, the Indians themselves, having not won a title since 1948, were no strangers to missed opportunities either. Mr Chapman breezed through the ninth, bringing a World Series Game Seven to extra innings for only the third time in MLB history. Adding to the suspense, the skies then opened, leaving the crowd shivering through a rain delay as they awaited the highest-pressure inning in the history of both franchises.

Managers don’t tend to matter much in baseball, but in the end, it may have been a pair of questionable decisions by the Indians’ Terry Francona that cost his club a championship. First, he burned both of his top relievers, Andrew Miller and Cody Allen, early in the game. In general, managers tend to hold back their closers too often, saving them in the hopes of preserving a lead that may never materialise. And in the season’s final game, it made sense for Cleveland to ensure that their best arms would not rot on the bench. However, Mr Francona may have pushed that sound logic too far. He brought in Mr Miller when trailing by three runs in the fifth inning—a situation whose leverage index (LI), a measure of its importance, was just 0.45, meaning it was just under half as consequential as an average plate appearance. The LI was virtually the same, 0.44, when he turned to Mr Allen two innings later. That meant that by the time the Indians had completed their stunning comeback against the normally dominant Mr Chapman, both star relievers were done for the night. As a result, Cleveland was forced to turn to Bryan Shaw—an effective but eminently hittable pitcher—to open the tenth inning, when the LI spiked to 2.28.

Sure enough, Mr Shaw coughed up a leadoff single. The speedy Albert Almora was called in to pinch-run, and boldly advanced to second base on a fly ball to centre field. That set the stage for another dubious choice by Mr Francona. With Anthony Rizzo, a superstar slugger, due up next, the Indians opted to issue an intentional walk. The thinking behind the move was easy to understand. First, Mr Rizzo is a far better hitter than the batters set to follow him. Mr Francona clearly preferred to take his chances with a weaker opponent at the plate. Moreover, putting Mr Rizzo on base created the possibility of an inning-ending double play, which would have kept the game tied. And finally, if Mr Rizzo were to go on to score, it would be rather unlikely to matter, since he would only represent the difference between a hypothetical one- or two-run deficit.

Nonetheless, Mr Francona gave his rivals a free baserunner. That is a risk in any situation, but was particularly fraught here. There was only one out rather than two, meaning that Chicago would have at least two chances to drive Mr Rizzo in. Moreover, while Ben Zobrist, the batter up next, is no Anthony Rizzo, he is no slouch either.

Sure enough, Mr Zobrist made the Indians pay for disrespecting him. He scorched a double to left field, plating Mr Almora. And after another intentional walk, Miguel Montero followed with a groundball single of his own, which scored Mr Rizzo from third. As a result, the Cubs entered the bottom of the tenth with a two-run lead. That made them 91% favourites, rather than the “mere” 80% they would have had with a cushion half as big.

By this point, the Cubs were out of elite relievers, just as the Indians were. For their most crucial pitches in a century, they trotted out the unproven Carl Edwards Jr. He coolly secured the first two outs. One out away from a championship, however, he walked Brandon Guyer, let him steal second, and then gave up a single to score him. That run would have tied the game—were it not for Mr Rizzo’s free pass. Instead, thanks to the insurance run Mr Francona bestowed upon them, the Cubs remained on top. With one final meek ground ball, the Indians went gently into that good night, and the Cubs erupted in a celebration 108 years in the making.

The end of the beginning
The finale, and the entire World Series, was a boon to a sport often mischaracterised as on the decline. Bucking the recent trend of falling viewership that has afflicted America’s National Football League, the 2016 Fall Classic was the most-watched since 2004. Game Seven achieved a massive 27.0 Nielsen rating, easily outpacing the equally riveting Game Seven of this year’s National Basketball Association finals. Of every five people in the country watching television last night, two were tuned in to the game. In Cleveland and Chicago, the figure was three-fourths. On Facebook and Twitter, the roller-coaster game and Chicago’s ultimate triumph temporarily dislodged furious discussion over Donald Trump’s narrowing his polling deficit against Hillary Clinton. It even scored a pair of congratulatory tweets from Barack Obama—no small achievement, given that the president roots for the victors’ crosstown-rival Chicago White Sox.

The Cubs’ first title in over a century is unlikely to be their last. Theo Epstein, their general manager, took over a decrepit franchise in 2011, seven years after he built the Red Sox club that busted their curse. He patiently endured three seasons’ worth of incompetent performance while he stockpiled young talent. (One advantage of running the Cubs is that fans accustomed to failure are unusually willing to tolerate a grim “rebuilding” period.) In 2015, those investments came to fruition, and the club blossomed into a contender. Now, Mr Epstein’s svelte roster looks set to remain elite for years to come.

Chicago’s entire core is young, still improving and dirt cheap. Kris Bryant, who will probably win the National League’s Most Valuable Player award, is just 24. He will earn near the league’s minimum salary for two more years, and sub-market wages for three more after that. The same is true of Addison Russell, Kyle Schwarber and Javier Báez, all budding stars just starting their careers. Kyle Hendricks, a leading contender for the Cy Young award given to the league’s best pitcher, is locked up for four more seasons; Willson Contreras, an outstanding rookie catcher, is under team control for six. Mr Zobrist has three years left on an affordable contract. And Mr Rizzo has inked an astonishingly team-friendly deal, which can keep him in a Cubs uniform until 2021 for a paltry total of $54m. Were he a free agent, he could easily earn $30m a year on the open market. As a result, Chicago enjoys remarkable financial flexibility, and should easily be able to afford free agents to plug any holes that arise in the future. This is even more true now that the club has won a championship: World Series victors invariably enjoy a surge of fan enthusiasm, which could increase the Cubs’ revenue by a total of $100m or so over the coming seasons.

Red Sox fans occasionally lament that after winning the 2004 title—and then the 2007 and 2013 World Series as well—Boston became just another big-market juggernaut, and rooting for them more of a bandwagon experience than a band of brothers. But great teams in great baseball cities are what the sport needs. And given the Cubs’ historic futility, it would take quite a prolonged dynasty for the novelty of their success to wear off. Of course, there will never be anything like your first time. Nonetheless, Cubs fans should have little trouble getting used to this.