‘Parks and Rec’ Predicted 2016 Cubs World Series Win in 2015

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In 2015, during the final season of Parks and Recreation, the showrunners of the beloved NBC sitcom made a bold creative choice, when they decided to set it all the way in… 2017. They made several small predictions about the future, one of which has now come to pass. As Andy (Chris Pratt), Tom (Aziz Ansari), and Lucy (Natalie Morales) stroll through Chicago, they have this conversation:

Lucy: Yeah, I think you’re really going to like it here. And obviously everyone’s in a really great mood now, because of the Cubs winning the World Series.

Andy: Yeah, it seems really nice.

You could be forgiven for thinking at the time that it was just a joke. When the episode aired in January 2015, the Chicago Cubs had just completed their 100th season at Wrigley Field with a pitiful 73-89 record, good enough for last in the National League’s Central Division. However, it was no joke: It was a real prediction from Parks and Rec showrunner and baseball fanatic Mike Schur. And, as we all know, the Chicago Cubs made good on it, with an exhilarating win over the Cleveland Indians.

In a phone interview with the Washington Post, Schur said, “As soon as we decided to throw the last season of Parks and Rec into the future, into 2017, we sort of started calculating what the world might be like. … I was the only person on the staff who cared about baseball enough to track the Cubs’ minor league system.”

Mike Schur
Mike Schur called the Cubs win in a 2015 Parks and Rec episode. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

You should be hesitant to anoint Schur as a modern-day prophet, though. The powerful comedy producer and writer, who unfortunately roots for the Boston Red Sox, said that he was one of several baseball fans who saw the Cubs’ rise coming. “Every baseball writer in America knew the Cubs were going to be good,” he told the Post. “I can’t emphasize enough how little credit I feel like I should take for that prediction. It’s a little like if we had predicted [in the show] that Hillary Clinton was the president in 2017.”

Parks and Rec isn’t the only place where a Cubs win was predicted. A couple are even more insane. Michael Lee’s 1993 senior quote and yearbook photo for Mission Viejo High School in California was “Chicago Cubs. 2016 World Series Champions. You heard it here first.”

Joining that crazily accurate prediction was Twitter user @RaysFanGio. Upon learning that Joe Maddon had been hired as Cubs manager in 2014, he tweeted:

As we know, those two teams did go to extra innings in the seventh game. And these days sure feel like the apocalypse! Haha, kidding?

Stephen Colbert Becomes Wrigley Field Hot-Dog Vendor:

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