In "Back to the Future 2," Marty McFly travels into the future and finds a world changed. One of the most audacious wrinkles: McFly looks at a hologram and sees that the Chicago Cubs won the 2015 World Series.
It's a big moment for McFly, and a fun little joke for baseball fans, who know the Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908. And, as it turns out, the Cubs' championship was written into the script by a Cardinals fan.
But according to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bob Gale wasn't trying to be kind to his team's division rivals. He saw the humor in such a scenario. For the joke to land, the World Series winner couldn't be an established winner like the Yankees or Cardinals.
Gale had already invented a Miami baseball team, which hadn't been established through expansion at that time, and turned them into the A.L. champions defeated by Chicago in the World Series. Having the winner be the Cubs was perfect: They were consummate losers, famous for their championship drought.
"It's just more ridiculous that it's the Cubs," Gale told the Post-Dispatch.
Even in the movie, Chicago is described as a "100 to 1 shot." Those odds almost seem gracious now, given that the drought has lasted nearly 107 years.
But as the playoff picture takes shape in Major League Baseball, the movie is coming closer to nailing an incredible prediction. Chicago looks likely to claim one of the National League wild-card spots, putting them in the playoffs with a shot at the championship.
As a Cards fan, Gale isn't necessarily rooting for the Cubs to win. In his mind, the victory is that this conversation is occurring in the first place.
"It's the dream of every filmmaker to make something everybody sees, everybody loves," Gale said. "There is all this buzz about the Academy Awards. The real award is if your movie lasts."
