# Last Time The Cubs Won the World Series Before November 2nd, 2016, the Chicago Cubs had gone 108 years without a World Series title, the longest championship drought in baseball history. During Game 7 that night, Neil deGrasse Tyson began tweeting historical facts about 1908, sparking a viral Twitter joke format where users mocked his pedantry with absurd fake 'facts' about the last time the Cubs won. ## Origin The Chicago Cubs' championship drought was the longest in Major League Baseball history, stretching from 1908 to 2016, and had inspired self-deprecating jokes from fans for decades. Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse, who called games on WGN-TV from 1948 to 1981, famously shrugged off the losing with the line 'Anyone can have a bad century' in 1977[1]. The modern Twitter meme crystallized on November 2nd, 2016, during Game 7 of the World Series between the Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. As the Cubs jumped to an early lead, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson started posting a run of tweets from @neiltyson noting what had and hadn't yet happened in 1908, the last year Chicago had won[3]. Twitter users, led by accounts like @pourmecoffee, treated the tweets as a pedantic buzzkill and started replying with their own deliberately absurd 1908 'facts' as parody[1]. - **Platform:** Twitter - **Creator:** Unknown (Twitter users reacting to @neiltyson) - **Date:** 2016 ## Overview The joke format takes the shape of a fake historical fact prefaced by some version of 'The last time the Cubs won the World Series...' followed by something absurd, anachronistic, or laughably trivial about 1908[1]. It parodies the earnest listicles and TV graphics that news outlets and Fox Sports Network rolled out to contextualize the Cubs' 108-year drought[2]. The format works because the setup writes itself. 1908 was so long ago that almost any modern reference point produces a joke, so tweeters piled on with absurd fake trivia and pointedly irrelevant historical asides[3]. The tone is dry mock-pedantry, aimed less at the Cubs themselves than at pundits like Neil deGrasse Tyson who filled Game 7 with actually-1908-was-the-year-that tweets[1]. ## How It Spread Interest in the drought had spiked before 2016. Fans revisited the topic in 2008 for the 100-year anniversary of the 1908 title, and again in 2015 when the Cubs lost the National League Championship Series to the New York Mets[2]. Pix11 covered fans mocking the century-long drought with memes during that 2015 run[4]. With the Cubs favored to win it all in 2016, publishers leaned hard into the format weeks before Game 7. Heavy.com ran a piece on things that didn't exist the last time the Cubs went to the World Series[5], and Business Insider published its own 'the world has changed a lot' rundown[6]. Those listicles primed the joke, so when Tyson's tweets arrived mid-game, the parody format was already loaded and fired within minutes[3]. After the Cubs beat Cleveland in extra innings to end the drought, the joke kept a long tail as a nostalgic reference point about the pre-2016 team. It still shows up whenever a long championship drought ends in another sport, or when a pundit gets too earnest about historical context[1]. ## How to Use The typical setup is 'The last time the Cubs won the World Series...' followed by a made-up or intentionally trivial 1908 fact, the more banal the better. A common convention is to mimic the cadence of Tyson's original tweets or a Fox Sports graphic, then undercut it with something absurd, oddly specific, or utterly pointless[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Last Time The Cubs Won the World Series? A Twitter joke format from Game 7 of the 2016 World Series where users mocked pedantic historical context tweets about 1908 with absurd fake 'facts'[1]. ### Where did Last Time The Cubs Won the World Series come from? It took off on Twitter on November 2nd, 2016, in response to @neiltyson tweeting real 1908 facts during Game 7 between the Cubs and Cleveland Indians[3]. ### What does Last Time The Cubs Won the World Series mean? The phrase pokes fun at the Cubs' 108-year championship drought and the earnest, pedantic way commentators kept reminding viewers just how long ago 1908 was[2]. ### How do you use Last Time The Cubs Won the World Series? Open with 'The last time the Cubs won the World Series...' and follow it with an absurd, trivial, or anachronistic 1908 'fact' in mock-pedantic voice[1]. ### Is Last Time The Cubs Won the World Series still popular? It is a classic sports Twitter reference from the 2016 World Series and still resurfaces when other long championship droughts end or when pundits over-explain historical context[1]. ## References 1. [https://twitter.com/neiltyson]() 2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/last-time-the-cubs-won-the-world-series]() 3. [https://twitter.com/pourmecoffee]() 4. [http://pix11.com/2015/10/16/fans-mock-chicago-cubs-century-long-world-series-drought-in-hilarious-memes/]() 5. [https://heavy.com/sports/2016/10/things-that-didnt-exist-last-time-chicago-cubs-world-series-1945-history/]() 6. [https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-world-has-changed-since-the-cubs-last-won-the-world-series-2016-10]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/last-time-the-cubs-won-the-world-series Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library