The 29 most hopeless fan bases in professional sports

CLEVELAND, OH - DECEMBER 13, 2015: Cleveland Browns fans hold up signs reading 'HELP' during a game against the San Francisco 49ers on December 13, 2015 at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland won 24-10. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images) /

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CLEVELAND, OH – MAY 18: Albert Belle of the Cleveland Indians bats against the Texas Rangers at Progressive Field on May 18, 1996 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Sporting News via Getty Images) /

3. Cleveland Indians

Last championship: 1948

Last winning season: 2015

Pushed along by the inspired play of their 31-year-old All-Star shortstop/manager, Lou Boudreau, the Indians won 97 games and then took four from the Milwaukee Braves (yes, Milwaukee) to win the 1948 World Series. Now 68 years later, that World Series pennant still flies as the most recent to be won by the Tribe.

The Indians have reached the promised land of October baseball on occasion since then, in 1954 and then more recently in 1995 and ’97, but more often than not they’ve been onlookers from quite a distance once October rolls around.

Until returning to the postseason in ’95, it hadn’t been since the loss in ’54 that the Indians reached the playoffs. Instead, the team spent the better part of 40 years in the cellars of the American League. They were the second worst team of the 1980s, tallying a .455 winning percentage; this after pulling off a similar feat (.459) in the 1970s — a long ways removed from the greatness of Boudreau’s team and Bob Feller and Nap Lajoie’s lineages before that.

The Indians have been major contributor to Cleveland’s long sports nightmare. One that LeBron James (famously, already) returned to help thaw and today’s Indians are threatening to exorcise forever. Still, the past has affirmed the Indians as harbingers of doom and gloom on a near-unparalleled level.

Next: 2. Chicago Cubs