One hundred and eight years.

1908 was the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, winning back-to-back championships. The Cubs would then stand as a joke for over a century, making seven unsuccessful appearances in the World Series, the most recent in 1945. After 1945, Chicago would make five appearances in the post-season, but never made it back to the big show.

But that all changes in the 2016 season.

Cubs manager Joe Maddon takes the Cubs through the post-season, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-2 in a best of seven game series. The Cleveland Indians will host Chicago for Game 1 in another best of seven series.

The series is set at 1-1, the previous two games played in Cleveland. Then the Indians take a 3-1 lead after Game 4, with the two Indian wins being in Chicago. It seems that Chicago will tack on at least one more year to their losing streak, and the Indians will end their 68-year drought. A fourth win will bring another championship to Cleveland, months after LeBron James and the Cavaliers made history with an NBA Championship.

But Chicago refuses to go down without a fight. Cubs win Game 5 with a 2-3 score, the last game played in Chicago; they will play the remaining two games in Cleveland. Already down 3-2 in the Series, the Cubs snag a 9-3 victory in Game 6 in Cleveland, and the Series is tied 3-3. Game 7 is forced, and history is up for grabs.

The stage is set, and the winner will conclude a long championship drought. Chicago has played hard, coming back from a 3-1 deficit, the second hardest series record to come back from since the Boston Red Sox defeated the Yankees when down 0-3 in the American League Championship Series in 2004. (Jokes circulate that if Cleveland loses, the irony would be that the Cavaliers won their NBA Championship after coming back from a 3-1 series deficit against the highly favored Golden State Warriors.)

Celebrities pitch in to the excitement — Charlie Sheen teases with his character Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, a Cleveland pitcher in the movie Major League. Bill Murray travels from Chicago to keep cheering on his Cubbies after being such a positive influence for the home crowd at Wrigley Field, leading the crowd to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” The Cavaliers All-Star Forward LeBron James also makes an appearance.

Game 7 starts, and Chicago strikes early with a solo home run in the first inning. At the end of the seventh inning, the score is 6-3 Chicago, and they only have to last two more innings. In the bottom of the eighth inning, at a 6-4 score with a man on second base, Rajai Davis hits a home run for Cleveland and ties the game. A nerve-racking ninth inning goes scoreless for both sides, forcing the game into extra innings.

A game that must go into extra innings, with high-profile celebrities pumping up the crowd, is a dream come true for either team. The MLB couldn’t have asked for any better World Series.

The game goes into rain delay right before the start of the 10^th for 17 long minutes. The pressure just increases from the prolonged tie game. What could be going on in the heads of the players in their dugouts?

The umpires resume the game and the top of the tenth begins, Chicago at bat. Chicago scores twice, making it an 8-6 score before the Indians end their successful inning.

Cleveland is now on deck. Davis gets another run to make it a one-score game. Martinez is now at bat, and Montgomery on the pitching mound. With only one strike, Martinez hits it low and to the left, where the third-baseman launches it to Rizzo on first base, and the third out is called.

The Cubs win. The Chicago dugout storms the mound, jumping and cheering. For an away game, Chicago gets just as many cheers from the stands as a home game.

Why was this game so big? I contemplated the question in my living room, watching a livestream of masses outside of Wrigley Field erupting into cheer. Forty million people watched the same game, the largest audience for a Game Seven since 1991. The Cubs have needed this win for a very long time, and this is becoming one of the most remembered World Series ever. Some people have waited their entire lives for this.

Over the next few days, social media exploded with headlines talking about the Cubs’ historic comeback, their historic win — and their historic fans. Videos showed elders jumping and cheering like they were 19 years old, and even an emotional man sitting at a gravestone, listening to the championship game with his long-dead dad. Over 5 million people showed up to the victory parade in Chicago to gaze at the trophy the city hadn’t held in over a century.

It hit me that this game was much bigger than I knew. While some fans just shout, “Go Team!” others devote a lot of their life and time to their teams. Fans born after 1908 may have been rooting for the Cubs their entire lives, with no real results. To some people, never seeing their team win, after pouring in years of emotion and faith, is heartbreaking.

This game matters so much because some Cubs fans have literally waited their entire lives to see it. Their team finally delivered.