In “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request,” famed Chicago Cubs fan and songwriter Steve Goodman sang that the Cubs’ decades of misery led him to discover “alcohol, gambling, dope … What do you expect when you raise up a young boy’s hopes and then just crush ’em like so many paper beer cups year after year after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year?”

Goodman has long since passed from leukemia, so he’s not around to talk about how much the Cubs’ 2016 World Series championship means to him. When Cubs fans say this victory “means the world to them,” as a friend told me in the wee hours of Thursday morning, they’re not exaggerating.