What if it didnt rain?

Editor’s note: We are going to explore seven “What If” scenarios this week in Cleveland and Columbus. First up, is the 2016 World Series. We will publish one each day, including on Michael Jordan, if he missed The Shot; a reverse of Red Right 88; and what would have happened with no Tattoogate in Columbus.

Rajai Davis’ home run ball disappeared into a sea of fans on the home run porch. Mike Clevinger busted out of the bullpen bathroom, where he had been sequestered in the late innings in a desperate plea for good fortune. Lonnie Chisenhall’s legs morphed into unstable jelly. Dan Otero leaped onto the bullpen fence “like a spider monkey.” Mike Chernoff nearly fell out of the front office suite. Danny Salazar blacked out.

In improbable fashion, with Davis’ hands choked up as far as his lumber would allow and Aroldis Chapman pumping 100-mph fastball after 100-mph fastball in his direction, the Indians had tied the Cubs in the eighth inning of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.

They had trailed all night, a short-handed roster sputtering to the finish line in the battle between the two franchises saddled with the league’s longest championship droughts. But once Davis’ home run cleared the 19-foot-high wall in left field, the Indians had life.

And then the skies opened. And the Cubs united on a soggy infield to celebrate their first title in 108 years.

There are plenty of What-Ifs to ponder involving Cleveland sports teams, and the infamous, 17-minute delay serves as the basis for today’s debate.

What if it never rained?

Jason: I have no scientific proof of this, of course, but I absolutely believe the Indians win the World Series if it doesn’t rain. The Cubs were stunned. This was a haunted franchise. The Billy Goat, the black cat, Bartman. And now the Rajai.

Davis’ home run was so unexpected, so unlikely. It was a thunderbolt in the sky. It shook Progressive Field. It shook the Cubs. Remember when the Indians were three outs from a World Series championship in 1997? Where was the rain then? Not in Miami. The Indians didn’t get a moment to compose themselves. The Cubs did. We know how both series ended.

Without the rain delay, Jason Heyward can’t gather his Cubs teammates in the weight room behind the visitor’s dugout. Without the rain delay, there is no speech to settle nerves and calm fears of another historic Cubs collapse.

Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo called it the best rain delay of all time. Heyward sensed the defeat setting into his teammates and called the players-only meeting.

“We’re the best team in baseball, and we’re the best team in baseball for a reason,” Heyward said, according to Tom Verducci’s book “The Cubs Way.” “Now we’re going to show it. We play like the score is nothing-nothing. We’ve got to stay positive and fight for your brothers. Stick together and we’re going to win this game.”’

Soon, other players began speaking up. Confidence had been restored, nerves had been settled. And then it stopped raining.

Zack: Meanwhile, the Indians gleefully galloped back to their clubhouse… only to see a room filled with World Series champions decals and plastic sheets intended to prevent champagne from soaking the contents of each locker.

The Cubs’ clubhouse had been prepped much earlier in the evening, since they held the lead until Davis’ dramatics. But once the Indians climbed back into the game, the league had to plan ahead for a potential walk-off win. So when the Indians retreated to their clubhouse to wait out Mother Nature, the gravity of the moment sunk in.

But to designate the rain delay as the primary culprit for the Indians’ shortcoming is to ignore Bryan Shaw’s pitching or Ben Zobrist’s hitting or Michael Martinez’s presence at the plate with the game hanging in the balance. Any analytics buff would remind you that both teams entered extra innings with a 50 percent win expectancy.

After all, Terry Francona said he didn’t think the delay “was as meaningful as everybody else did” and added that Shaw was “the one we worry about the least, because he stays loose really well and things don’t affect him.” Shaw said he stayed loose, used a heat pack and said “I don’t think it really affected me very much.”

Jason: Francona is old school. He’s never going to use the weather as an excuse for his guys, and that’s commendable. And while I understand with the stakes, the umpires wanted to make the game as fair as possible for both sides, but the timing of the delay was … curious. It wasn’t really raining that hard when the game was delayed. Could they have squeezed in another half-inning before the heavier rain arrived? Does Kyle Schwarber lead off with a double if he doesn’t have 17 minutes to compose himself?

Navigating through Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Zobrist was never going to be easy in the 10th inning, delay or not, but Shaw dodged trouble when he came on in the ninth with a runner at third and one out and got out of the inning without allowing the run to score. After the Indians were set down in order in the bottom of the ninth, crew chief John Hirschbeck called for the tarp.

“We’ve been talking for the last couple innings,” Hirschbeck told our Ken Rosenthal on the television broadcast when the delay began. “… This (storm), we thought it might miss us, but at the last second when the inning was getting ready to start, he said ‘It’s going to hit us.” And in this situation, we don’t want to take any chances. We don’t want to have them play now in the seventh game of the World Series in extra innings, tie score, in conditions that aren’t right. So just to keep the field perfect, we’ll cover it and wait this out.”

When the players were pulled off the field, Shaw lingered near the dugout, throwing into a net to stay loose and looking to the sky, wondering where the rain was. I texted him last week to see if he wanted to talk about that night. He never responded.

Zack: He’s the “Pariah of Cleveland,” remember? I wouldn’t want to re-live that night if I were him.

And, hey, Roberto Pérez agreed with you: “Shaw was sitting there for 20 minutes and he went back out there. I think it took the momentum away.”

But momentum had nothing to do with Albert Almora tagging up on Kris Bryant’s warning-track scare or Zobrist punching Shaw’s cutter past a diving José Ramírez.

The following spring, Shaw told me: “It was a good pitch, down and away. It was off the plate. It wasn’t a strike. It was right where I wanted to throw it. He stuck the bat out and got a little hit down the line. If José’s playing a foot closer to the line, he fields it, steps on third and throws it.”

He’s not wrong. But that isn’t going to remove the pit from Indians fans’ stomachs.

There certainly was a seismic swing of emotion once Zobrist’s hit zipped by Ramírez. There’s no better evidence of it than the sight of Anthony Rizzo, standing on third base with his hands on his helmet, saying, “Oh my God,” as the scoreboard operator placed the go-ahead tally in the Cubs’ run column.

After Zobrist’s double, Shaw intentionally walked Addison Russell. Then, Miguel Montero slapped an RBI single through a gaping hole at shortstop. What if Francisco Lindor hadn’t shifted toward second base? What if Ramírez hadn’t been playing so far from third base?

A Game 7 in November between the franchises with the league’s longest title droughts boiled down to a few inches in extra innings after midnight. Was the rain delay *a* factor? Sure. But the trophy isn’t handed to the team with the most impassioned rallying cry.

What if Shaw only surrendered one of those hits, and Davis’ RBI single in the bottom of the 10th knotted the score at 7-7? What if literally anyone but Martinez (no offense, Michael) would have stepped up to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the 10th?

If altering any of those scenarios, precipitation- or performance-related, Davis might have a statue instead of a footnote.

Jason: Wait a minute, why was Clevinger locked in a bathroom?

Zack: Baseball players aren’t superstitious. They’re extremely stitious.

Throughout Game 7, the Indians’ relievers ordered Clevinger — a rookie at the time — to the bullpen bathroom to try to change the team’s fortunes. When Davis approached the plate in the eighth, Clevinger, unprompted, scurried in there and shut the door. The rule was, he had to remain in the bathroom until the Indians made an out at the plate. But Clevinger heard everyone scream when Davis tied the game, so he raced back to the bullpen bench, where his teammates yelled at him to return to the bathroom.

Jason: Poor fella. And poor Michael Martinez. Tough way to go out.

Look, I’ll never be able to prove the Indians would’ve won. But I know this much: I know the delay helped the Cubs way more than it helped the Indians. So many Cubs folks, from executives like Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein to players like Heyward, Rizzo and David Ross have talked over the years about how the game was moving fast for them at that point. Their heads were down. The stadium was spinning. They needed a 20-second timeout and a good cutman to dress the wounds. They got both at the exact right time.

Does Schwarber single to start the 10th without the delay? We’ll never know. But now I have a new “What if?” Is this Clevinger’s fault for running out after Rajai’s home run?

What if Clevinger never left the bathroom?

(Photo: Nick Cammett / Getty Images)

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What if it didnt rain?