To many people residing in the city of Chicago, today is the best day of their lives. That is because their historically “cursed” baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, won the World Series last night against the Cleveland Indians.
That Game 7 featuring between the Cubs and Indians was truly one of the most dramatic and legendary baseball games ever played. That the Chicago Cubs roared back from a 3-1 deficit, against a team whose hometown basketball team achieved a similar feat against Golden State, but still almost lost, was absolute bonkers. And that’s not even mentioning Bill Murray was there.
However, in the minds of one television program, this outcome was pre-destined. While Parks & Rec has been off the air since 2015, it’s still delivering gems to viewers years later. The show’s final season was set in 2017, and one scene features Tom and Andy visiting Lucy in Chicago. She casually mentions that “everyone’s in a really great mood now because of the Chicago Cubs winning the Series.”
Two years ago, in a season that took place in the summer of 2017: pic.twitter.com/p8jaYZNwcT
— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) November 3, 2016
Now Parks & Rec showrunner Mike Schur is a man who knows his baseball. He used to write the cult-favorite baseball blog Fire Joe Morgan, along with fellow TV writers Alan Yang and Dave King. And as Schur explained to the Washington Post, the Cubs winning wasn’t a throwaway line, but rather, an honest prediction.
“As soon as we decided to throw the last season of ‘Parks and Rec’ into the future, into 2017, we sort of started calculating what the world might be like […]I was the only person on the staff who cared about baseball enough to track the Cubs’ minor league system,” Schur said.
While it’s still rather remarkable that Schur had the gusto to add such a prediction for a team with a 108-year curse, he’s not eager to take any credit for it.
“It’s not like I was only person who thought the Cubs were going to be good,” he said. “Every baseball writer in America knew the Cubs were going to be good. I can’t emphasize enough how little credit I feel like I should take for that prediction.”
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