The Rangers finally won a championship. These teams haven’t.
The Texas Rangers on Wednesday did not end Major League Baseball’s longest World Series drought. That belongs to the Cleveland Guardians, who have not won the World Series since 1948. But the Rangers still ended decades of misery by winning the first World Series title in franchise history, which began in 1961 when the team was born as the second version of the Washington Senators.
This got us to thinking about other sad-sack teams that have been around awhile. Here, then, is the list of franchises that have been around the longest without winning a championship. For our purposes, we’re excluding long-existing teams such as the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals or Detroit Lions, who have never won a Super Bowl but won NFL championships before the Super Bowl was created. Likewise, the Buffalo Bills, Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers and Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers won AFL championships before the AFL-NFL merger. In the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets and Indiana Pacers won ABA titles before joining the NBA.
