Over the last year or two it seems like there’s been a trend emerging. LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers brought the first major championship to that city in over 50 years. Leicester City won the English Premier League. Portugal won the European Champs for their first ever continental title. The Seattle Seahawks won their first Super Bowl. Down under we’ve had first time champs in the NRL in back to back seasons, the North Queensland Cowboys followed by the Cronulla Sharks. Even the Kansas City Royals, winning a World Series last season for the first time in 30 years.

Of course, this is all misleading. In that same time we’ve also seen Barcelona and Real Madrid winning Champions Leagues. The Carolina Panthers made the Super Bowl looking for their first ever rings but they lost to Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. Pittsburgh and Chicago are winning Stanley Cups and the All Blacks defended their Rugby World Cup and so on, so forth. If you want, you can find a trend on either side – humans are shifty like that.

What isn’t a projection is the Chicago Cubs these days. For years they’d been a team in the rebuild, collecting assets and hoarding young talent. Just recently, that talent has begun to find its way into the majors – guys like Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Jorge Soler and Anthony Rizzo. Add to that the emergence of Jake Arrieta as one of the finest starting pitchers in the game and they won 97 games in 2015. The Cubs had moved out of the rebuild and into Win Now territory. Joe Madden won Manager of the Year in his first campaign with the club. Arrieta won the Cy Young.

If you’re looking for good omens, how about the fact that the film Back to the Future II had projected a 2015 Cubs World Series win decades earlier? Jake Arrieta pitched a complete game shutout in a 4-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Wildcard game and then a barrage of home runs took the Cubbies to a 3-1 series triumph over the St Louis Cardinals in the Division Series. The omens were good, the momentum almost perfect. But they were swept in the Championship Series by the New York Mets.

See, the Cubs haven’t made the World Series since 1945. Their playoff appearance in 2015 came after five consecutive last place finishes in their NL Central division and after that 1945 WS it was 39 years before they even made the playoffs again. This is a franchise that has existed since 1876 and in that time it has mostly been disappointment after predictable disappointment. They won the World Series in 1907 and 1908 and that was it. 107 seasons and counting since the Cubs were last crowned baseball’s finest.

Superstition is relevant to the Cubs. Superstition matters to them. When you’re a hard luck team it’s only human nature to feel like there’s something greater holding you down. It’s statistically unlikely that a team can be bad for 80 years in a row, right? And everyone wins a title every century or so.

There are two existing teams that have never made a World Series: the Seattle Mariners (est. 1977) and Washington Nationals (est. 1969). The Houston Astros, San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, Texas Rangers, Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers have all made World Series before but never won them. Not one of those teams predates 1961. That’s 43 years that the Cubs had on them to begin with. It took 85 years for the Boston Red Sox to end the drought that began when they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees but they did so in 2004. The Chicago White Sox went 87 years between titles but that ended in 2005. The Phillies took 77 years between their entering the league and winning a ‘ship in 1980.

The next longest active drought is the Cleveland Indians who are at 67 years and counting (they won their division in 2016 and are playing the Red Sox in the ALDS – the Nationals and Rangers are also in the playoffs). Again, the Chicago Cubs’ streak sits at 107 seasons. There’s no need to even compare it to any NFL, NHL or NBA teams because those leagues didn’t even exist when the Cubs last won the MLB.

The year when it first became a thing was 1945. Back in the World Series for the first time since 1908, the Cubs played the Detroit Tigers. It was not a classic series. Held during wartime, albeit as World War II was winding down, many of the two teams’ best players were still involved in active military service – although not Hank Greenberg of the Tigers, who was discharged early and would score seven runs with seven RBI in the series. Sportswriter Warren Brown joked, when asked who’d win, that: “I don't think either one of them can win it”.

But of course the Tigers won it. This was the seventh appearance on the grand stage for the Cubs since that 1908 victory and they’d lost every one of them. They took two out of three in Detroit to take a 2-1 lead ahead of four games at the home confines of Wrigley Field. And it was in that fourth game when things got a little supernatural.

Bill Sianis was the guy’s name. He owned a tavern around the corner from the stadium called the Billy Goat Tavern – still in use today – and that tavern had a pet goat as a mascot. They called it Murphy. Mr Sianis took Murphy to watch the game at Wrigley but the goat had such a stench that it was upsetting the surrounding fans. Some people even say that Cubs’ owner Philip K. Wrigley ejected Sianis and the goat himself, while a contemporaneous report in the Chicago Sun suggested that the goat was never allowed through the gates in the first place, instead left tied to a pole outside while Sianis went in alone.

Whatever it was, Sianis wasn’t happy about the discrimination against Murphy and he declared for all to hear: “Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more!” And they didn’t. They lost game four and they lost the series in seven. They haven’t been back since and thus the Curse of the Billy Goat began.

By the way, that 2015 Championship Series? With a spot in the World Series on the line in the Chinese calendar’s Year of the Goat, it was Mets’ first baseman Daniel Murphy who was named series MVP. Yup, Murphy. Just like the goat.

In between long spells of irrelevance, there have been a few shining runs that ultimately only brought about more pain. They were leading the division in 1969 when, in a September clash against the NY Mets, a black cat ran across Wrigley Field and from that moment they tumbled back to second and missed the playoffs.

In 1984 the Cubs won their first pennant since 1945, going 96-65 in the regular season. They had MVP Ryne Sandberg, Cy Young winner Rick Sutcliffe and Manager of the Year Jim Frey. Up against the Padres in the NLCS, having taken a 2-0 lead in the series at home, they then went to San Diego and lost three straight games to tumble out. Three straight potential clinchers lost and they held leads going into the fifth innings of every one of them.

They won their next division pennant in 1989 but the San Francisco Giants comfortably beat them 4-1 in the first round. Just as happened in 1998 when they next made the postseason, going down 3-0 to the Braves. In fact because of the old format of playoffs (where there were only two divisions and thus only one playoff series) they wouldn’t even win a playoff series after 1908 until the new millennium… when maybe the most famous Cubs moment ever occurred.

2003 was the year. A game five win over the Braves in the NLCS had given Cubs fans an enormous sense of triumph – the team had risen to the occasion and delivered an impressive victory. A few people even proposed that the curse had been lifted... ah but not so quickly.

The Florida Marlins beat the Cubs in the eleventh innings of game one of the 2003 NLDS thanks to a solo pinch hit home run from Mike Lowell. In game two Mark Prior pitched a beauty for the Cubs to level things. Then in the third matchup, they were back to extras again. In a back and forth kinda game, a Doug Glanville three-bagger drove in what proved to be the winning run and Mike Remlinger earned the save. It was a devastating loss for the Marlins, who had twice left the bases loaded to end an innings in that one. Aramis Ramirez hit a first innings grand slam in game four and the Cubs sailed to a 3-1 lead and a victory away from advancing.

Florida got a gem from Josh Beckett in the fifth game to send things back to Chicago but the Cubs were still confident. They had their two aces ready to go and their home fans to do it for. In game six they led 3-0 going into the eighth innings. Mark Prior had given up only three hits. Mark Mordecai popped up for one out.

Then Juan Pierre doubled. Luis Castillo was up next and he lifted one high towards left field. It was clearly a foul ball but Moises Alou thought he could make the play. He ran towards the crowd and reached over for what would have been the second out only for a man in the crowd, sitting there decked in a dark sweatshirt above a green turtleneck, with a Cubs hat and headphones on, to reach out and try catch it himself. The ball hit his hands and bounced away, denying Alou the chance at the catch. No call of fan interference, Castillo was walked with a wild one the very next pitch. The Marlins would score eight runs in that frame and win to force a game seven.

Forget that there was still another out to get in the innings. Forget that Alou might not have made the catch at all (he’s had conflicting statements on that issue before). Forget the error at short that allowed Miguel Cabrera (then a rookie) to reach base when it should really have been a double play ball. Forget the crumbling that followed the scores being tied. Forget that the Cubs still had a game seven to play at home and that they were 5-3 up at one stage in that one. Steve Bartman was the fan’s name and he became the most hated man in Chicago.

A century of frustration was unleashed on one unlucky fan who himself happened to be a die-hard Cubs fan. Death threats and insults. Watch the 30 for 30 doco ‘Catching Hell’ to see an absolutely brilliant account of the incident, reflecting the best and worse of sports fandom all together. Other than an initial apologetic statement, Steve Bartman has never spoken publically about any of it. He has never appeared in public and the only images of him known to the wider community are those from the gamecast. He turned down a six-figure sum to appear in a Super Bowl commercial a few years ago.

But could 2016 be the year? Beginning with three straight wins and starting 8-1 marked their best start since 1969 – the year of the black cat. They beat the Reds 16-0 in a game in April, Jake Arrieta throwing a no-hitter and Kris Bryant knocking in six scorers. By mid-May they were 24-6 for their best start since 1907 and the first team in 32 years to win 24 of their first 30 games. Arrieta wins Pitcher of the Month for April and Jon Lester wins it for June and September. Bryant, Rizo, Russell and Ben Zobrist are all named as All Star starters. Dexter Fowler is also named, though injured, and Arrieta and Lester join them on the pitching side of things.

There’s a dry spell in late-June/early-July where they lose 15 of 21 games yet they still hold a large lead over the Cardinals in the division. They go 22-6 in August. In the final game of the season, the Cubs beat the Reds 7-4 for their 103rd win of the season – the franchise’s most since 1910. Kyle Hendricks pitched that one and he ended the campaign with a 2.13 ERA for the lowest in the majors. Three Cy Young candidates, a near sure-fire MVP in Bryant (.292 AVE, .554 SLG, 121 R, 103 RBI, 39 HR).

They meet the San Francisco Giants in the National League Division Series and may never have had a better opportunity to break the curse. The weight of history, though, is a heavy thing. Futility becomes a habit and an excuse and nobody knows that better than the poor old Chicago Cubs, for whom next year is every year and this year is just a pipe-dream.