The baseball season ended Wednesday night when the Chicago Cubs topped the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. As such, now it's time to talk about everyone's favorite subject -- not roster-building fantasies or the forthcoming Hall of Fame voting cycle, but, rather, ratings.

Predictably -- given the in-built drama from a Game 7, the potential for a 3-1 series collapse and both teams' respective championship droughts -- the viewer metrics were good. Very good, even. Here's some insight, via the Hollywood Reporter:

This makes it the most-watched baseball game in 25 years, blowing past the handful of turn-of-the-century games that hit 39 million. The last baseball game to top the 40-million mark was in 1991. Game 6 of that World Series earned 40.8 million viewers.

Perhaps the best way to get a feel for these kinds of things is to compare them to other sporting events. Like, say, Game 7 of the 2014 World Series:

Or Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, in which a different team blew a 3-1 lead:

In addition, Game 7 was the most-watched program outside of the presidential debates since the Super Bowl, according to a USA Today report -- and the same report noted that more than 70 percent of the televisions in use in Chicago were tuned to the game (compared to 49 percent in Cleveland).

This World Series was also reportedly the most-watched since the 2004 Series, which, wouldn't you know it, featured the Boston Red Sox trying to end their own championship drought.

So, what are the takeaways here? A lot of people tuned in to Game 7 and this World Series in general. Oh, and one more thing -- the key to getting people to watch a program seems to be invoking curses. Everyone should keep that in mind come next October.