Which baseball team waited longest between World Series titles: the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox or the Boston Red Sox?
The Cubs, at 108 years (1908 to 2016). The White Sox waited 88 years (1917 to 2005) and the Red Sox 86 (1918 to 2004), per Baseball-Reference’s list of every modern World Series.
Basis for every number below: Baseball-Reference’s modern World Series winners list (AL vs NL, 1903 to 2025; Negro Leagues and pre-1903 series are not counted) and its Active Franchises table. Drought lengths are title year minus title year (our arithmetic). Franchise lineage follows Baseball-Reference’s “Also played as” lines, so the 1903 Boston Americans count as the Red Sox. Curse stories come from BR Bullpen wiki pages and are reported only as legends. Fan shares come from two separate polls, the Associated Press poll conducted by Ipsos (October 16 to 18, 2007) and PRRI (published January 16, 2014), which ask different questions and are never combined. The 1 in 30 figure is an even-share baseline, not a forecast. Lines that the 2026 World Series can change are worded “through the 2025 World Series”.
A lucky jersey on one couch cushion
Picture a fan in a team jersey, planted on the same couch cushion for all nine innings, refusing to stand until the last out. The scoreboard keeps its own counsel. For the length of a drought, you need a list of title years, not a seat.
How we counted the waits
We used Baseball-Reference’s modern World Series winners list, 121 Series from 1903 through the 2025 World Series, with none held in 1904 or 1994. A drought here is the calendar years from one title season to the next. Recounted from that list, the Cubs, White Sox and Red Sox gaps are the three longest between consecutive titles of any franchise. Through the 2025 World Series, the next longest is the Twins lineage, which won in 1924 as Washington and next in 1987 as Minnesota: 63 years.
A drought is a count of seasons. It is not evidence that anything, cursed or otherwise, caused it.
The legends arrived after the droughts
The Cubs’ best-known curse story is the Billy Goat. BR Bullpen calls it a long-standing “explanation” in quotation marks and says that “supposedly” tavern owner Bill Sianis and his goat were kicked out of Game 4 of the 1945 World Series after other spectators complained about the goat’s odor. Detroit won that Series 4 games to 3. By then the Cubs had already gone 37 years without a title (1945 minus 1908). The drought came first. The goat came later.
The Red Sox story is the Curse of the Bambino, which BR Bullpen describes as “supposedly a bad omen” placed on the team after it sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. The Red Sox had last won in 1918. Again, the wait came first.
This page reports how those legends are told, not whether they did anything. The droughts ended the ordinary way: the teams won the World Series.
What fans say about curses and rituals
In a PRRI poll published in January 2014, 25% of Americans who are fans of a particular team said they believe their team has been cursed at some point, about 1 in 4. In the same 2014 PRRI poll, 21% of sports fans said they perform a ritual before or while watching their team, and 66% of those rituals involve wearing team jerseys or team colors. PRRI’s page does not print a sample size, field dates or margin of error.
Seven years earlier, in an Associated Press poll conducted by Ipsos from October 16 to 18, 2007 (1,013 adults, margin of error 3.1 points), 13% of U.S. adults said they ever try to behave in a way that brings good luck to, or avoids jinxing, a sports team they support. The other 87% said no.
Two polls, seven years apart, with different questions and different people: they sit side by side here and are not added together.
The 1 in 30 baseline, through the 2025 World Series
Major League Baseball has 30 active franchises, so an even share would be 1 in 30, about 3.3%, for any one franchise in a season. It is a naive baseline, not a forecast or a betting line; real chances are not equal across teams.
Through the 2025 World Series, the New York Yankees had won 27 of the 121 Series, about 22.3%. Five franchises had never won a World Series through the 2025 World Series: the Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners and Tampa Bay Rays. Cleveland last won in 1948, a gap of 77 years through the 2025 World Series and the longest open gap among the 25 franchises that had won at least once by then. From 1998, the first season with all 30 current franchises, through the 2025 World Series, 16 different franchises won the 28 Series.
For scale, a baby born in 1908 would have turned 108 in 2016.
What we cannot say
No source we opened tests whether a curse, ritual, charm or prayer changes a game result. So this page describes beliefs and habits, and does not say they help or hurt. We also found no survey of how many MLB players are superstitious, so that share stays out.
The short version
Of the Cubs, White Sox and Red Sox, the Cubs waited longest between World Series titles: 108 years, 1908 to 2016. The White Sox waited 88 and the Red Sox 86, and those are the three longest gaps between titles for any franchise. The Billy Goat story is set in 1945, 37 years into a drought already under way. About 1 in 4 team fans told PRRI in 2014 that their team had been cursed. The record book counts the waits. It does not say a goat, a ritual or a lucky jersey decided them.
Last checked: 2026-10-19. This article was machine-checked against the sources below and has not been expert-reviewed. Spotted an error or a newer public figure? Please tell us on our contact page with the article link and we will review it.
Sources
- Baseball-Reference, “World Series Winners,” https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/world-series.shtml (accessed Oct 19, 2026).
- Baseball-Reference, “List of all the Major League Baseball Teams,” Active Franchises table, https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/ (accessed Oct 19, 2026).
- BR Bullpen (Baseball-Reference wiki), “Curse of the Billy Goat,” https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Curse_of_the_Billy_Goat (accessed Oct 19, 2026).
- BR Bullpen (Baseball-Reference wiki), “Curse of the Bambino,” https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Curse_of_the_Bambino (accessed Oct 19, 2026).
- The Associated Press poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, “Superstition Study” topline, interviews October 16 to 18, 2007, http://surveys.associatedpress.com/data/Ipsos/national/2007-10-19%20AP%20Sports%20Superstition%20Study%20topline.pdf (accessed Oct 19, 2026).
- PRRI, Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox and Juhem Navarro-Rivera, “Half of American Fans See Supernatural Forces at Play in Sports,” January 16, 2014, https://prri.org/research/jan-2014-sports-poll/ (accessed Oct 19, 2026).