Back to the Future baseball prediction remains on track

The world of Back to the Future 2 could be closer than you think. Photo / Universal

Great Scott! Is Back to the Future 2 set to predict the 2015 World Series champion?

The Chicago Cubs went one step closer to making it happen after beating division rivals the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0 in a the National League wild-card game yesterday.

Chicago now face fellow NL Central side the St Louis Cardinals in an NL Division Series, the winner going through to the NL Championship Series which is one series away from the World Series.

The Chicago Cubs celebrate beating the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Cubs last won a World Series in 1908 and haven't been in the World Series since 1945.

The sequel to Back to the Future, released in 1989, features a scene where Michael J. Fox's character Marty McFly travels from 1985 to 2015. The 2015 in the film is not exactly what we know today, flying cars still seem some way off, but it includes a scene where the Cubs are celebrated as World Series winners.

At the time when screenwriter Bob Gale, who is a Cardinals fan, penned Back to the Future 2 in 1989, he thought it would be a good joke to poke-fun at the Cubs' long title drought. A drought that 26 years later is still going.

"Whether the Cubs make it or the Cubs don't make it, the joke will still be funny," Gale recently told dailyherald.com.

"And if the Cubs do make it, then I'm a visionary."

The Cubs' World Series drought is the longest in American sports, standing at 107 years. The Boston Red Sox ended a 92-year drought in 2004, winning their first title since 1912.

"Being a baseball fan, I thought, 'OK, let's come up with one of the most unlikely scenarios we can think of,'" said Gale, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Chicagoan Robert Zemeckis.

"Back in the day, seeing the movie with an audience, that always got a laugh," Gale recalled.

In the scene, a newsflash hologram report says that the Cubs have beaten Miami in the World Series.

"100-1 shot, who would have thought?" a character says to McFly.

The Cubs were actually paying around 16-1 before this season and surged into the playoffs with strong performances on the mound by 22-game winner Jake Arrieta and veteran Jon Lester, while Anthony Rizzo (31 home runs, 101 RBIs) and Kris Bryant (26 home runs, 99 RBIs) led the way with the bat.

In 1989 Miami didn't have a baseball team, another solid prediction by Gale, but the Florida Marlins were established four years after the release of the movie and the franchise changed to the Miami Marlins in 2011.

However the Marlins are in the National League, as are the Cubs so the sides couldn't have met in the 2015 World Series which is played between the National League and American League champions.