Wrigley Field

Wrigley Field carried a 71-year curse after tavern owner Billy Goat Sianis and his pet goat Murphy were ejected from Game 4 of the 1945 World Series for smelling bad, triggering a drought reinforced by a mysterious black cat in 1969 and the Steve Bartman incident in 2003 before finally ending with the Cubs' 2016 championship.

"Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." William "Billy Goat" Sianis said it in 1945. It took 71 years for him to be wrong.

Sianis was a Greek immigrant who would later move his Billy Goat Tavern to its famous Michigan Avenue location. On October 6, 1945, he showed up to Game 4 of the World Series at Wrigley Field with two tickets: one for himself, one for his pet billy goat, Murphy. The goat had its own seat. When ushers ejected them because Murphy smelled terrible, Sianis cursed the franchise on his way out the door. The Cubs lost the series to the Detroit Tigers in seven games.

What followed was the longest championship drought in professional sports. The Cubs didn't just lose. They lost in ways that felt designed by a screenwriter with a vendetta.

September 9, 1969, at Shea Stadium: a stray black cat materialized from nowhere, walked directly between on-deck hitter Ron Santo and the Cubs dugout, stared at the players, and disappeared into the crowd. The Cubs held first place at the time. They collapsed, and the Mets went on to win the World Series. Nobody could explain where the cat came from or where it went.

October 14, 2003, Game 6 of the NLCS: the Cubs led the Marlins 3 to 0, held a three-games-to-two series lead, and were five outs from the World Series. A foul ball drifted toward the seats. Left fielder Moises Alou reached for it. Fan Steve Bartman deflected it. The Marlins scored eight runs in the inning. Chicago lost the game and the series. Bartman needed a police escort out of the stadium.

The curse attempts got creative. In 2008, a Greek Orthodox priest sprinkled holy water on the Cubs dugout. When Pope John Paul II visited Chicago, fans offered him a lifetime supply of ballpark franks and season tickets if he'd lift the curse. On April 10, 2013, someone delivered a severed goat's head to Wrigley Field in a package. None of it worked.

Wrigley Field has its own layer of strangeness beyond the curse. The construction of Weeghman Park (the original name, built in 1914 for the Chicago Whales of the Federal League) is rumored to have disturbed a burial site. The stadium sits in the path of the Haidan Totem Pole, a replica brought to Chicago whose faces were said to change positions. The totem was believed to contain power that predated the park by centuries.

Fans and park workers have described something else, too. A presence in the upper decks that doesn't belong to any living person. Some think it's Harry Caray, the legendary announcer who spent 16 seasons calling Cubs games and died in 1998. Others suggest songwriter Steve Goodman, a lifelong Cubs fan who wrote "Go Cubs Go" and died of leukemia in 1984, four days before the Cubs clinched the NL East. Charlie Grimm, Cubs player and manager from the 1920s through the 1960s, had his ashes scattered at Wrigley after he died in 1983.

The curse ended on November 2, 2016, when the Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 in extra innings to win their first World Series in 108 years. The city of Chicago threw a parade attended by an estimated five million people, the seventh-largest gathering in human history.

Billy Goat Sianis died in 1970. His nephew Sam inherited the tavern and spent decades milking the curse for publicity. The goat Murphy is long gone. But the ballpark at 1060 West Addison Street is still standing, still full, and now permanently associated with a 71-year hex placed by a man whose goat smelled bad.