How did the Cubs' curse end? With the greatest game ever

— -- CLEVELAND -- At least it didn't take anything special to wipe out the longest title drought in the history of professional sports. Only the greatest World Series Game 7 ever played. That's all.

Move over, Jack Morris and Luis Gonzalez. Tell Ralph Terry and Madison Bumgarner they had a great run. And you, Bill Mazeroski fans, submit your case via your favorite form of social media.

But we would argue that none of those games can top the passion, the drama and the history of Game 7 in Cleveland, on a balmy Wednesday night turned stormy Thursday morning. It took 10 exhausting innings and 4 hours and 45 exhilarating minutes. But when it finally ended, at 12:47 a.m., on Nov. 3, 2016, the giant left-field scoreboard read: Cubs 8, Indians 7. And it was suddenly possible to type a sentence that no living human has ever typed:

The Chicago Cubs?are the champions of baseball.

But to scale that mountain they'd been climbing for 108 years, the Cubs found themselves trying to survive a game we'll be dissecting for about a century.

It was just the fifth extra-inning, winner-take-all World Series game ever played.

It was the first of those games, from all accounts, to feature an actual rain delay in extra innings -- a rain delay that may have saved the Cubs' season, by the way.