The Mets beat the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday in Game 5 of the NLDS, securing a spot in the NLCS against the Chicago Cubs.

That means that one of the Mets — the much maligned, frequently cash-strapped, perennial punchline of an organization that hasn’t won a championship since 1986 — and the Cubs — the Chicago Cubs, of the 107-year drought and the Curse of the Billy Goat and everything else — is going to the World Series.

And, heck, the American League Championship Series teams have not wanted for misery in recent decades.

The Kansas City Royals seem like an established winner at this point, and it’s hard to say their fans have been “long suffering” when their fans enjoyed a World Series just last season. But it was only last year that the Royals ended a 29-year postseason drought, then the longest in baseball. And it’s not like they won the darn thing.

This year, the Toronto Blue Jays ended a 22-year-old postseason drought — also the longest in baseball at the time.

So this year’s League Championship Series consist of: A team that recently ended baseball’s longest postseason drought, a team that even more recently ended baseball’s longest postseason drought, a team that still endures the longest championship drought in major sports history, and a team that is the Mets.

And barring some sort of fireball-from-space scenario, which we can’t quite rule out, one of these teams will definitely win the World Series. Again: In three weeks’ time, we will be saying, “The (Cubs/Mets/Blue Jays/Royals) just won the World Series,” and it’s going to sound pretty wacky.

So that’s pretty sweet. Except for the fans of the three teams that don’t win the World Series, of course. They will drown themselves in what-ifs and coulda-beens, experiencing a brand of torment they never see in years when their clubs can’t get this far. So it goes.