Title time: Cubs, Indians meet eyeing end to World Series droughts

Cubs. Indians. World Series.

It’s about time.

Time is truly the essence of this fascinating Fall Classic pairing, because, in a Series that gets underway Tuesday 7:30 p.m. ET air time/8 p.m. game time on FOX at Progressive Field, one of the two longest active championship droughts in the game is about to come to its merciful conclusion.

Only adding to the allure, the guys at the helm of these two clubs know a bit about drought destruction. Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein and Indians manager Terry Francona once collaborated on the end of the “Curse of the Bambino” in Boston, so it’s oddly appropriate that they’ll now have their curse-breaking abilities in other markets tested head-to-head.

For the Cubs and their fans, it has been 108 years of unrewarded hope and, for that matter, 71 years of waiting just to even get back to this point of the postseason. And whether you believe that’s attributable to bad luck, bad management or a bitter billy goat owner, the bottom line is that this current concoction of the Cubs constructed by Epstein and Co. was built to be a juggernaut. And the 103-win regular season only amped-up the expectations.

For the Indians and their fans, it has been a 68-year wait for a title, prolonged by the heartbreak of watching two of the greatest regular-season winning percentages in history snuffed out on the Series stage in 1954 and 1995, and the utter agony of losing a Game 7 lead with two outs in the ninth in ’97. The Indians weren’t nearly as widely acclaimed as World Series contenders, especially when they lost prominent players like Michael Brantley, Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar to injury, but Francona has again proven himself as a skipper capable of exceeding the sum of his …

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