The Future Really is...Now?

Just a reminder that back in March, I wrote a posting here about a bit of whimsy that was making the rounds in Chicago with the baseball season about to start.  It was about how the 1989 movie Back to the Future II takes place in 1985 and then jumps forward far into the future and makes a bunch of wildly outlandish "predictions".  And one of those is that the Chicago Cubs win the World Series -- something that not only seemed ludicrous at the time, but even as recently as last year, when the team lost 84 games and finished the season without a World Series title for the 106th straight year.  

Well, that 1985 movie-jump far into the future was 30 years, which in the story made it 2015.  This year.  And the Chicago Cubs are not only actually in the post-season, but won the Wild Card game to advance to the National League Division Series, which they also just won, and are now about to play in the NL Championship Series.  And if they win that...they are in the World Series.  The National League Championship Series starts tomorrow.

Obviously, there's no guarantee of any of that happening, as Cubs fans well-know, but just that they're actually this close is too bizarre to ponder.

Co-screenwriter Bob Gale was asked about all this on the Major League Baseball website --

"Part One takes place in October 1985, so we're going to jump ahead to 2015, and there's no bigger sports event in October than the World Series, and there was no more insane, outrageous, unbelievable thing to have happen than to have the Cubs win it," Gale says with a laugh. "Now, of course we had them beating Miami, and we got the team name and league wrong there, but this is 25 years ago. There wasn't even a Miami franchise! We've got to get some credit for that, too.

"But for us, there was no doubt that it had to be the Cubs. I mean, what could be more insane than that?"

Here's the scene --