The Cubs Won't Win the 2015 World Series, and It's Mean to Pretend They Will

Let's get this out of the way up front: as a born-and-raised Chicagoan, I want the Cubs to win the World Series every year. No February goes by without me staring at their MLB.com depth chart and saying, "you know, if X, Y and Z break right, this team might have a chance."

That's why it hurts me so much to say it won't happen this year, and why it hurts when you say it will.

Unlike a lot of winters, this year a lot of folks are saying that. The Sporting News picked the Cubs to win the 2015 World Series. Sportsbook.ag lists the Northsiders behind only serious contenders - among them the favored Dodgers, powerhouse Nationals and rival Cardinals - in World Series odds at +1500. Pop-culture enthusiasts won't stop beating us over the head with Back to the Future II demands it.¹

(Heads up, genius: Back to the Future II also demands Miami move to the American League so the Cubs can meet them in the Fall Classic. We get it. Decades-old predictions are funny. Shut up.)

In more-analytical corners, however, folks are speaking the truth. Fangraphs projects the Cubs will finish in the middle of the pack at 83-79. Buster Olney of ESPN omitted the boys in blue from his offseason top 10 starting rotations and top 10 batting lineups. Members of the team aren't talking about the World Series; they want to win the NL Central, itself an ambitious goal for a 73-89 team that, even after a strong offseason, still lacks rotation depth and established hitting.

I know what you'll say: Be flattered. Enjoy the attention. It's all in good fun.

It's really not, though. For fans like me, who know that 2015 is going to be a .500 season or close to it, hearing so much talk about the Cubs bathing in champagne this fall isn't fun. It's depressing. It's patronizing. It's bitchy.

It says "the Cubs are so enduringly terrible I can't think of anything more implausible than them ever doing well." It shouts "I can get a bunch of traffic by catering to these sad sacks!" It ignores the forward-thinking approach this fanbase has clung to through the longest Cubs playoff drought since the late 1980s - six years and counting - in favor of the "next-year-is-here" idiocy that got us here.

So, please, as a long-suffering Cubs fan, I beg you: Have some class. Give some compassion. Show a little basic human decency and leave us alone.

We know this team hasn't won a World Series in 106 years; we know it's getting better; and, rest assured, we'll be the first to know when a championship is coming.

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1 No, I'm not linking to any of these hacks.