Next year finally came.  The Chicago Cubs won the grueling seventh game of Major League Baseball's 2016 World Series, ending a championship drought that lasted more than a century.

The game itself couldn't have been more of a nail-biter.  At one point, the Cubbies were ahead of the home team Cleveland Indians 5-1, and then 6-3, until Cleveland's formidable pitching and batting tied that score at 6-6 in the eight.  Deadlocked at the bottom of the ninth inning, the game wouldn't go into an extra tie-breaking inning until after a 17-minute rain delay.  Finally in the tenth inning, the Cubs bounced back with run-scoring hits from Miguel Montero and Ben Zobrist, who was named World Series Most Valuable Player (MVP), bringing the score to 8-6.  Both teams exhausted their pitching bullpens.

But it wasn't over.  The Indians scored once more, until the Cubs last pitcher Mike Montgomery entered the diamond to induce the game-ending grounder to third base that became Cleveland's third and final out of the series.  The Cubs rushed the field.  Their diehard celebrity pals - Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Actor John Cusick, and the immortal Bill Murray - crowded in the locker room with the team as the champagne corks popped and sprayed the room.  Back in Chicago, tens of thousands of youthful fans were already milling about the streets of Wrigleyville and exploded in celebration, most of them too young to appreciate the long wait for a World Series triumph.  Cubs fans across the country rejoiced, and they remembered those Dads and Uncles who patiently waited for years and passed away before the big victory finally came.

Even President Barack Obama tweeted his congratulations:  "It happened: win World Series. That's change even this South Sider can believe in. Want to come to the White House before I leave?"

Not for a long time will Chicago Cubs fans have to mutter "wait 'til next year" at the end of dismal season after dismal season.  Decades of patience and smiling while suffering the indignities from pranksters and comedians who said the Cubs did not, could not, and would not win a World Series are over.  Gone are the curse of the Billy Goat, the memory of the 1969 collapse, the near misses of 1984 and 2003.  The Cubs are not the "lovable losers".  No more will a fan be villified for something that was not his fault.  It finally happened.  Next year finally arrived.  Next year is here.