The arc of sports history is so long that if ridden a sufficient distance it will wind back toward something more satisfying than justice – the struggle itself.

The Chicago Cubs are close to ending theirs. They're one game from a World Series in which they would face the Cleveland Indians – which on paper is a little like George Foreman With Rolls of Quarters Taped Into His Fists vs. Don Rickles Wearing a Blindfold. The Cubs aren't just good. They're good with eight syllables.

If they can't win it this time, well, you know they'll win it next time. They're that good.

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I hope it doesn't happen. Nothing against the Cubs. There is no more enjoyable team to watch in baseball and they deserve it. But, more than ever, what the world needs is an exemplary loser. No one's ever done it better than the Cubs and, once they've moved on, I fear no one will ever do it right again.

If it's not happening in your hometown, winners have become boring. They're everywhere. Sports writ large has become a relentless Entertainment Slapping Machine and the generalist fan is starting to lose teeth. The parade of "must watch" games never stops.

The NFL is currently undergoing a viewership crisis. Numbers are down across the board. Everyone's trying to figure out what happened – Anthem protests? Concussion concerns? Competitive imbalance?

How about the fact that there's just too much goddamn football and people have actual lives to lead? What used to be a Sunday thing has morphed into a dawn-to-dusk Thursday-to-Monday thing, leaving the average NFL fan only two days a week in which to sleep, earn a living and squeeze in 30 hours watching people scream at each other about next weekend's games on ESPN.

By the time you get to the championship, everyone's exhausted. Titles have become increasingly meaningless as sports annexes every part of what little remains of terrestrial television. You can't dip in and out. Unless you've switched over to CB radio as an evening's relaxing media option, you're being hit with sports relentlessly. Every game is "The Big Game." Who's going to win the weekend? Or Thursday? Or the time slot? Week after week, sport after sport, it's nothing but titles of lesser and lesser value.

Try this out – Who won Super Bowl XLVII? Who won the Stanley Cup four years ago? Name the past three Wimbledon champions? You don't remember and you shouldn't care.

But while that endless procession of names rolls obscurely across the crowded sports ticker of your life, you remember the Cubs.

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When was the last time the Cincinnati Reds won? No idea. The Cubs? 1908. Everybody knows that. Between Confederation and the end of the Second World War, it's the last historic date you didn't forget as soon as you graduated from grade school.

Over that century, the Cubs exemplified the nobility of hopelessness. They weren't prey to the boom-bust cycle of most franchises – loved when they were good, tolerated when they weren't. It was just endless bust. Every year, their fans came back for more in the full expectation they would be disappointed. It was an ongoing monument to the soothing comforts of pessimism. The Cubs are the sort of team George Bernard Shaw would have admired.

The nuance of baseball allowed this competitive quirk to thrive. It's the sport that spends an enormous amount of energy reminding you that today's game – the one in April or July – doesn't matter.

If you ask a manager after a 14-inning loss in June if this one hurt, he will give you a withering "Who let Stupid in?" look before answering. Because it didn't matter. It was just one of 162. Never too high, never too low – the motto of hang gliders and baseball players.

When the Patriots lose two in a row, it's a disaster. When the Cubs lose four, well, so what? Did you get to watch one at Wrigley? Was the sun shining? Was the beer cold? Then let's call those four losses a personal win.

Baseball's thin margin of success, so-called, also helped. Until 1969, the postseason consisted of a single round played by two teams. For the next 25 years, four teams played beyond the last day of the regular season.

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When just about everyone else is "losing" too, losing doesn't seem so bad.

In the NFL or NHL or NBA, losing feels terrible. Half the league makes the playoffs. You're not just falling under the standard. You're the kid getting picked last at recess.

This is the difference between learning how to lose (life's most valuable skill, since we deploy it so frequently) and becoming a loser (an unshakable and malign condition that rots the soul).

The Cubs were always the former because they did it with weary panache. They continued to produce great players and occasional good teams. They were loved regardless. Their frustration was palpable, but it never turned in on itself. Because people kept coming back.

In the interim, their crosstown rivals the White Sox won titles (all two of them), but stood for nothing. Would you trade a couple of championships no one remembers for a hundred years of binding futility? I'm sure some would, but I would not.

Winning the 2016 World Series will not redeem the Cubs' 108-year streak. Instead, it will end an era.

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After that, they're just another ball club rolling into spring training spouting all the usual gibberish about feeling good and hoping things come together this season. They will have lost the thing that made them special.

Obviously, winning is the goal in professional sports. But it was nice to be reassured that it is not the point everywhere else – in the end, we all lose the big fight.

The Cubs remind you that that might be just as worthwhile. The staying on your feet. The trudging forward, year after year. Enjoying the ride rather than the destination.

In that sense, the Cubs have been the team that seemed most like real life. Once they've joined the indistinguishable mass of winners, there is no one fit to replace them in what might be the most tragic and, therefore, most romantic role in all of sports.