Right in the midst of a divisive and bitter election cycle, there was, apparently, some kind of newsworthy baseball game on Wednesday.

Suddenly, everyone in America was a fan of the Chicago Cubs, whose seventh-game, 10^th-inning win over the Cleveland Indians broke a 108-year dry spell for the team, a period prolonged enough that all manner of superstitions had sprung up to explain why the Cubs kept failing to take home the championship trophy.

There’s something in the American spirit that makes us all fans of the underdog. The Rocky Balboa films of the ‘70s and ’80s, the “Miracle on Ice” U.S. Olympic hockey team’s win over Russia in 1980, an entire genre of teen “literature” — they all attest to and confirm our penchant for watching unbeatable odds give way to unrelenting tenacity.

And 108 years is pretty unrelenting.

So, whether you are a fan of baseball or not, there was something special about this Cubs win. Something historic. Something like a breath of fresh air temporarily sweeping away the foul stench that has polluted the airwaves for so much of 2016.

History may remember this year as the year that the other party won the White House, but there’s a fair bet that many across the country will recall it as the year that the Cubbies finally broke the curse.

For that, we should all be thankful.