CHICAGO — Baseball isn’t fair. You know this already: Sometimes frozen ropes find gloves and dribbling grounders find holes. Sometimes perfect pitches get hit; sometimes awful swings connect. Sometimes mediocre teams luck their way into the World Series, and sometimes — most times, even — the best teams go home long before that.

Cubs fans know this best of anyone. No Cubs fan alive in 1908 was old enough to remember it, and most contemporary Cubs fans weren’t around to remember their last World Series appearance in 1945. Lots of baseball teams and fanbases have endured title droughts, and plenty of clubs have never won a championship at all. But the Cubs… well, you know this. No team has ever suffered quite like the Cubs.

Then a crazy thing happened this season: Baseball worked. The Cubs had the best team in the National League, and on Saturday night at Wrigley Field, the Cubs won the National League.

Their handy Game 6 victory showcased the full breadth of the Cubs’ excellence: Great starting pitching, perfect defense, timely hitting, big homers, aggressive baserunning, everything — an easy victory in a ballpark that has known nothing of the sort.

Now the Cubs are going to the World Series. The Chicago Cubs. Those Chicago Cubs, of Bartman and the Billy Goat and more than a century of misery. It’s happening.