There are many who have waited their entire life for this moment. They are octogenarians and children, grandparents and great-grandparents and teenagers. For more than a century, the Chicago Cubs were the punchline to an eye-roll-inducing joke. They were haunted by the specters of goats and a man in headphones. The Cubs have seen the fall of the Ottoman Empire, two world wars and a cold one, the advent of television, the atomic bomb, the nuclear family, two passes of Halley’s Comet, and the turning of the century. It has been a long time coming for the North Side of Chicago. And now, the moment has arrived.

For the first time in 108 years, the Cubs won the World Series. The longest championship drought in all of sports was emphatically vanquished once and for all. Chicago came back from a 3-1 deficit to win three games in a row and claim the title, pulling one last rabbit out of their hats and stunning the Cleveland Indians in extra innings.

It was a game that was chaotic enough to exorcise any demons. Fifteen runs scored, one of them on just the fourth pitch of the game when Dexter Fowler sent a ball over the center-field wall for a leadoff home run. Another was on a Javier Baez home run that came after he made two critical fielding errors, and another still when David Ross, 39 years young, took Andrew Miller deep. Just the inning before, two Cleveland runs had scored on a wild pitch that bounced hard off his mask. There were 24 hits, four errors, and one brief extra-inning rain delay.

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It was an ugly night for Cleveland for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, they lost Game Six of the World Series. Second, they allowed nine runs. Nine.

Third, Tyler Naquin happened. In a variety of ways. What does that mean, exactly? First, there was this Bull Durham-esque snafu in the first inning.

Kris Bryant had already gone yard with two outs in the first inning. Anthony Rizzo and Ben Zobrist had followed with singles. Addison Russell, as shown above, then poked a very catchable fly ball out to right-center field. We may never know what temporary madness possessed Naquin at this moment. We do know that he didn’t grade out as a very good center fielder this year, nor did possess the most sterling defensive reputation before his ascension to the big leagues.

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Oh, how quickly the tables were turned.

The Cubs, they of the 103 regular-season wins, entered the World Series as the presumptive favorites in the minds of nearly all who chose to be foolish enough to actually forecast the madness that is postseason baseball. The Cubs have the star power and the narrative and the Kris Bryant. That didn’t matter, because the Indians have the pitching. They have Corey Kluber and Andrew Miller, Cody Allen and Bryan Shaw. Chicago now teeters at the precipice of elimination, a hair’s breadth from breaking the hearts of Cubs fans everywhere. Joe Maddon will need to play his hand tonight perfectly, because if they don’t succeed tonight, there will be no Game Seven over which to agonize. He’ll need to save the season, and he’ll need his bullpen to do it.

Given that the Cubs have almost no margin for error at this point, they will need to maximize run prevention above all else. Cleveland will be deploying Josh Tomlin and Kluber in games Six and Seven, respectively, along with a likely heavy dosage of Miller. Runs will be at a premium. Kyle Schwarber will be back in the Chicago lineup, which will help, but there’s only so much he can do when Willson Contreras and Javy Baez are swinging at pitches thrown into the next state and Jason Heyward’s bat is on the side of a milk carton. These games will be about preventing runs, not scoring them.

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