Cleveland Indians. No championships since 1948.

Chicago Cubs. No championships since 1908.

That makes for a long (and very, very long) history of failure for these ballclubs.

But they are playing each other in the current World Series, and somebody has to win.

Even if the DNA of both clubs suggests ways to lose it will be sampled by both teams.

So, who wins a battle of (such a harsh word) chokers?

A case can be made that it is the Indians who have had the best chances to end their World Series drought, suggesting they have been doing more choking than the Cubs — who are in the first World Series since 1945.

Since then, the Indians played in three World Series, prior to this one.

–In 1954, they rolled to a 111-43 record, best in American League history by winning percentage (.721), and finished eight games ahead of the New York Yankees — who won the AL every other year from 1949 through 1958.

They would have taken Game 1 from the New York Giants, at the Polo Grounds, but Vic Wertz’s huge shot toward the impossibly deep (480 feet) center field fence in the eighth inning — with two runners on — was famously run down by Willie Mays, who made a sensational running, over-the-shoulder catch. If anyone but Mays is playing in center, it’s a two-run double and Indians ace Bob Lemon takes a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth. As it was, the Giants won in 10 on a three-run, pinch home run by Dusty Rhodes in the bottom of the 10th.

In Game 2, Cleveland’s other 23-game winner, Early Wynn, held a 1-0 lead into the fifth before That Man Mays walked and came around to score on a hit by That Man Rhodes, and the Giants got one more in that inning and won 3-1.

A case can be made that the Indians were broken by those two games in New York. They fell behind 6-0 and lost 6-2 before 71,555 home fans in Game 3, and fell behind 7-0 before losing 7-4 in Game 4, to be swept.

–In 1995, the Indians of Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome went 100-44 in a strike-shortened season and returned to the World Series after 21 years.  and were ushered out in six games by the Atlanta Braves. The Indians lost a pair of one-run games in Atlanta, won Game 3 in 11 innings in Cleveland, lost Game 4 5-2, staves off elimination in Game 5 with a 5-4 win, then were held to one hit by Tom Glavine and Mark Wohlers in a 1-0 Game 6.

–In 1997, despite putting up their least impressive won-lost record (86-75) over an eight-year span of competence, the Indians battled to the World Series by winning the final two games of the division series over the defending champion Yankees and ousting Baltimore in six games. Against the Florida Marlins in the World Series, they lost Games 1, 3 and 5 but came back three times in winning Games 2, 4 and 6. In Game 7, closer Jose Mesa came on in the ninth with a 2-1 lead, and at the moment the Indians looked pretty clutch. Then came an infamous blown save by Mesa in which he was not exactly rocked. Line single, strikeout, soft single to right, sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell, ground ball — end of inning. The Indians lost it in the 11th in part because of an error by second baseman Tony Fernandez (not clutch), which led to a bases-loaded, two-outs situation, and Edgar Renteria rolled a single up the middle.

So, three World Series since 1948. In the first, were broken down by Willie Mays and the Giants; in the second Atlanta pitching was too much for a fine hitting team; in the third, they couldn’t get a save in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 and lost in 11 on an unearned run.

So, chokers? Not really.

Now, for the Cubs.

Since they won the 1908 World Series (one we all have fond memories of), they lost the 1910 World Series 4-1 to the Philadelphia Athletics; lost the 1918 Series to Babe Ruth (Boston edition), in six games; lost the 1929 Series to Lefty Grove’s Athletics in five games; lost the 1932 World Series to the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees; lost 4-2 to the Detroit Tigers in 1935, a year in which they had the best record and ball and perhaps should have won it all; lost 4-0 to Joe DiMaggio’s Yankees, which tended to happen at that point in history; lost to the Tigers in seven games in 1945, the year of the Billy Goat curse, a Series the Cubs certainly could have won and probably should have.

So, Cubs have a greater history of not succeeding in the World Series when they could have … but none of it is more recent than 1945.

The Indians have that Game 7, 1997 blown save that most fans are old enough to remember, but they are 2-3 in World Series all-time (the Cubs are 2-8) and they played fairly well in their two 1990s appearances.

In a broader context, the Cubs come from a city with some record of sports success. The Chicago Bulls won six NBA titles in the 1990s. The Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX in 1986; the Chicago White Sox won the 2005 World Series.

Cleveland, meanwhile, went 52 years between major sports championships, from the 1964 football Browns to the 2016 basketball Cavaliers.

Arguably, Cleveland were more traumatized by decades of failure than were Cubs fans who were likely to find pleasure in the Bulls and maybe even the White Sox, not to mention the hockey Blackhawks, who won championships in 2010, 2013 and 2015.

The Indians lead the current World Series 3-2 after losing by that score in Game 5. The series returns in Cleveland, and I believe we must at least consider the potential for nervous Cleveland fans infecting their baseball team … while the Cubs do not have to listen to their fans going quiet as things turn bad.

The Cubs are the better team, if we include the regular season, and it would be no surprise if they won Tuesday night and Wednesday night.

As for choking, then, this could be more about fans than players, who become the victims of mass panic in the stands.

If Indians fans can stay calm — and who could blame them if they did not — they would be less likely to freak out their overachieving (so far) team.

I would like to see them win, for semi-odd reasons outlined here. But this could go either way — it might come down to how many nervous Cubs fans get tickets into the stadium in Cleveland, the next day or two.