Was 'Back to the Future II' right about Cubs?

Bill Keveney | USA TODAY

This is starting to make us think hoverboards are closer to reality than we may think.

With the Chicago Cubs' division-series-clinching win Tuesday against their top rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, the lovable losers from Chicago's North Side are one step closer to their first World Series triumph since 1908. More important, at least for film fans not from Chicago, a Cubs World Series championship would make one imagined element of Back to the Future II's 2015 a reality.

In the 1989 film, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels from 1985 to 2015 in Doc Brown's (Christopher Lloyd) flying DeLorean time machine. In the distant future – which is now our present – Marty sees a hologram-like news report announcing a Cubs World Series sweep over Miami. Miami? Miami, which didn't have a major league team in 1985 (and some might question whether it meets that standard now), isn't in the playoffs and the Marlins are in the National League, so they couldn't face the Cubs in the World Series, anyway.

Future II's screenwriter, Bob Gale, recently told Chicago's Daily Herald:

"Being a baseball fan, I thought, 'OK, let's come up with one of the most unlikely scenarios we can think of,' " he told the Daily Herald. "Back in the day, seeing the movie with an audience, that always got a laugh."

The Wrigley Field denizens still have a long way to go before they can turn Future II's fiction into reality. They must win the National League Championship Series before they even get to the World Series.

Still, it's enough to make underdog lovers start practicing their hoverboard moves.