World Series 2016: On brink of losing to Cleveland, Cubs may be facing existential crisis

Jesse Spector

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World Series 2016: On brink of losing to Cleveland, Cubs may be facing existential crisis image

CHICAGO — The situation is, quite obviously, desperate for the Cubs. After Saturday night’s 7-2 loss in Game 4 of the World Series, Chicago is one loss away from its dream season of 103 wins and a first National League pennant since 1945 ending in disappointment.

What might not be so obvious is that the Cubs may well be in a fight for their very existence. In the history of American sports, losing a championship at the hands of a Cleveland team has had a deleterious effect on the defeated.

Go back to 1920, when Cleveland first won the World Series, knocking off the Brooklyn Robins in seven games in what was then a best-of-nine series. Twelve years later, the Robins became the Dodgers. After the 1957 season, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.

By that point, Cleveland had won another World Series — its last, until maybe this year. The loser in 1948? Boston, which five years later lost its National League team to Milwaukee, before it eventually wound up in Atlanta.

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As Cleveland then embarked on its long World Series drought, football rose to prominence in the Forest City, with the Browns joining the NFL in 1950 and winning the league title in their first year after being absorbed from the defunct All-American Football Conference. In the NFL championship game, the Browns beat Cleveland’s former NFL team, the Rams, who would go on to move to St. Louis in 1995, spending 21 years in exile from California.

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The Browns won the NFL title again in 1954, beating the Lions, who have not left Detroit, but have become the Detroit Lions, a fate you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. In 1955, Cleveland beat the Rams again, and then in 1964, the Browns won their last championship, beating the Baltimore Colts, a team that 20 years later moved to Indianapolis.

After 1964, Cleveland had to wait until this year for another major sports championship, getting it when the Cavaliers beat Golden State. While the Warriors have not left the Bay Area, nor do they have any plans to do so, and in fact signed Kevin Durant in the offseason, their loss in June turned a 73-win team, the greatest in the history of the league, into a running joke. Not a day has gone by since June without a reminder on Twitter that the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals. When there are enough characters, that reminder also includes the fact that they had the unanimous MVP. It’s become the text version of Crying Jordan.

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Saturday night, Cleveland took a 3-1 lead of its own, so…

Jesse Spector