Castillo then drew a walk, sparking an eight-run rally against an exhausted Prior and the Cubs’ bullpen as the Marlins won 8-3. But with one out and one on in the eighth inning, a fan named Steve Bartman interfered with a Luis Castillo foul popup in the leftfield stands, preventing Moises Alou from catching it for the second out.

In the NLCS against the Marlins, Chicago won three of the first four games and, after losing Game 5 in Florida, had a 3-0 lead with five outs to go and Prior on the mound in Game 6 at Wrigley Field. The Cubs won 19 of their final 27 games to claim the NL Central by one game, then downed the Braves in the NLDS for their first postseason series win since 1945. Two last-place finishes followed the Cubs’ 1998 season, but by the start of the new millennium, the team looked like a contender once more, thanks in large part to the hardthrowing duo of Wood and 22-year-old Mark Prior. The Mets went on to beat the Atlanta Braves in the first NLCS and then the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series for their first championship. 9, which was part of an eight-game losing streak for Chicago. Prominently figuring in the minds of Cubs fans during that late-summer swoon: a black cat that appeared on the field during a loss to the Mets at Shea Stadium on Sept. 16 but went just 17-26 onward and finished second to the Mets, eight games behind. In the first season of divisional play and led by the trio of third baseman Ron Santo, outfielder Billy Williams and rotation ace Fergie Jenkins, the Cubs raced out to a 36–16 start and an 8 ½-game lead in the NL East. Though neither resulted in an end to the long postseason drought, 1969 looked to be the Cubs’ year. Sianis’s hex would live on as the Curse of the Billy Goat, keeping the Cubs out of the World Series until 2016.Ĭhicago’s long stretch in the NL basement finally came to an end in 1967 and ‘68, when the team put together its first consecutive winning seasons since ‘46 and ‘47. But in the winner-take-all Game 7, the Cubs gave up five runs in the first inning en route to a 9–3 loss. Sianis did depart, but only after angrily pronouncing, “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” Chicago lost Games 4 and 5, then stayed alive with a Game 6 victory. But during Game 4 at Wrigley, Billy Sianis, the owner of the nearby Billy Goat Tavern, was asked to leave the game because the smell of his pet goat, Murphy, was bothering the other fans. Pitted against the Tigers in the World Series, the Cubs won two of the first three games.

Led by league MVP Phil Cavarretta, Chicago featured one of the best offenses in baseball, and the pitching staff’s 2.98 ERA was second best in the league. Billy Goat Curse sends Cubs to a sixth straight World Series lossĪfter several years of sub-.500 mediocrity, the Cubs unexpectedly took the NL pennant in 1945 with a major league-best 98 wins.

Who was in the world series last year