Chicago Cubs, 1908 World Series Champions
#1
10-01-2012, 03:23 PM
Chicago Cubs, 1908 World Series Champions
The 2012 Major League Baseball regular season is nearly complete, and has been clear for quite some time, once again the Chicago Cubs will not be winning the World Series. I am merely a casual baseball fan at best, but for some reason I am drawn to early baseball history, in particular that of the Chicago Cubs (as my default team). And any discussion of the Cubs invariably leads to their epic 104-year championship drought. I thought I might use the occasion of today's 143rd anniversary of the Chicago Cubs' founding to take a look back at their early history, and ponder that huge length of time since that last World Series win.
Yes, I said 143rd anniversary. It's a common misconception that the Cubs were founded in 1876 -- you can buy T-shirts at Wrigley Field to that effect -- but in fact the team that is today's Chicago Cubs was founded on October 1, 1869. The confusion arises from the fact that the already existent team was a charter member of the newly created National League in 1876, which is considered the beginning of Major League Baseball as we know it today. But make no mistake, this is a team that is so old it even predates dedicated professional baseball leagues.
The team that would become today's Chicago Cubs was created as the Chicago White Stockings specifically to displace the vaunted Cincinnati Red Stockings. The Red Stockings were the first fully professional team in the previously all-amateur National Association of Base Ball Players, and won the league title in 1869 with a perfect 65-0 record. Looking for a bit of that glory, Chicago recruited many of the game's best players, to build their first all professional team. Mission accomplished; The White Stockings were declared Champions of the NABBP in 1870, in only their first season of play.
The next season the NABBP became the world's first fully professional baseball league. Late in the year the White Stockings were neck and neck with Boston for first place when they encountered the minor issue of the Great Chicago Fire, which fully consumed their stadium and clubhouse. They still managed to finish the season only two wins out of first, in third place, playing all of their remaining games on the road. The White Stockings subsequently found it necessary to also take the next two seasons off, to literally rebuild their facilities. This is the reason the Atlanta Braves (previously that same Boston team, by way of Milwaukee) can claim to be the longest continually operating franchise in American professional sports, having begun play in 1871. While the Braves will forever have played one more season than the Cubs due to that unfortunate incident, the Chicago Cubs are in fact older, and by far the longest tenured American professional sports team in one city.
The team returned in 1875 and then helped form the National League in 1876, winning the title that year. In the ten years that followed the team was a virtual juggernaut, winning five more National League titles (including three in a row from 1880-1882). The team would also go through several nickname changes before finally settling on "Cubs" in the early 1900's. They earned a berth in three out of the first five of the modern World Series, losing in 1906 to the Chicago team from the upstart American League (who had appropriated the Cubs' vacated original nickname, in my opinion a brilliant marketing move), before winning in 1907, and again in 1908.
After the glory of 1908 the Cubs would qualify for an seven additional World Series, losing them all, most recently in 1945 to the Detroit Tigers. Since then they have not even managed to win the National League title. Most seasons they don't even come close. For 104 years the Cubs have ended without claiming Major League Baseball's top prize. How could this happen? How could a team which won ten championships in their first 38 years of existence have fallen so far off the map, for so long? Despite all the changes in players, changes in managers, changes in ownership, even changes in the way the game is played (shoot, until 1884 pitchers threw underhand), the Cubs still cannot find the answer to the riddle of how to win a championship title.
Despite all the hoopla around the Cubs' current general manager (a man who is partly credited for ending Boston's own lengthy championship drought, and who was virtually greeted as the Messiah by the Cubs faithful upon his hire), the team appears no closer to winning a title in the short term. And their chances might not be getting any easier. At the time of their last World Series win there were only 16 teams in all of what today constitutes Major League Baseball. Winning a title meant only having to be better than 15 teams, only better than seven just to get to the Series. Today there are 30 Major League teams. By simple numbers, a team today only has a 1/30 chance of winning the title, assuming every team has an equal chance.
Again, I admit I am not a great student of the game, but it has been said that given the way the MLB is structured today, every team most definitely does not have an equal chance. The deck is stacked against the small market teams with less money to spend on the premier talent. The big market teams with huge fan bases and big media deals simply have more money to spend. And yet the Cubs do play in a large market, the third largest in the U.S. They have nationwide popularity with most of their games broadcast on cable. Their nearly 100-year-old park is literally a landmark, a virtual mecca for baseball fans. And while smaller than average, it is filled to capacity more often than most. This even despite the continued losses.
I realize of course that it's nearly impossible to equate the game as it was over a hundred years ago to today, but by sheer ODDS it would seem the team would HAVE to win it all at some point. Couldn't they just "buy" a championship? At the time of the Cubs' greatest success, the formula was simply to load up on the best talent. That's probably grossly oversimplified, and I guess there's more to winning in baseball than sheer talent. But really, one hundred years? It almost makes you wonder...
Are the Cubs losing on purpose? My father, who in my opinion is not dumb but perhaps just a little bit of the good kind of crazy, has a conspiracy theory that the Cubs' not winning it all is deliberate. The more I reflect on it, the more sense it starts to make. As his thinking goes, winning raises the expectations of the fan base, which leads to attendance based on performance. For example, any time the Yankees do not make the playoffs, New Yorkers are demanding changes. In many cities when the team is bad, attendance falters. Yet here in Chicago, when the Cubs put up another 100-loss season it's just another day at the office. People still come to that magical park, to sit in the sun and drink beer and have a good time. Whether the Cubs win, in some aspect is secondary. They are always bad. The Cubs as The Lovable Losers and their 104 year losing streak has become part of the teams identity. People follow the Cubs because they want to share in the unending wonder of maybe this year. If the Cubs were to win it all, how much of that appeal would they lose?
People say the current ownership is different, but if the park is full, does it matter to management whether they win? Do they need to? Would you risk losing the Cubs' odd mystique? Again, it's just a crazy theory. Maybe.
In any case, the Cubs' futility is a singular achievement in American professional sports (and for all I know, perhaps the world -- I would ask our overseas members for clarification on this), never to be duplicated. Or will it? I have maintained for some time there are plenty of teams who probably have the dearth of on-field and management talent to duplicate their record championship drought. It's just that the Cubs have been around so much longer than anyone else that their (lack of) accomplishment stands alone. If somehow the Cubs won it all in 2013, the Cleveland Indians would only have to go 40 more championship-less seasons to overtake the Cubs' record streak. They just might have it in them, having never been crowned champions in their entire history.
But which is more dubious: having never won, or having been champions so many times over, only to inexplicably come up empty for the next century, plus a few?
One hundred and four years. None of us have any frame of reference to such a length of time. So in closing, I'll leave you a short list of things to help try to put it in perspective.
The last time the Cubs won the World Series, way back in 1908:
-- There were only 46 states in the Union.
-- Chevrolet was not yet in business, Enzo Ferrari was a boy of ten years, and the Ford Motor Company had only just introduced the revolutionary Model T. Mass production of that model would not take place for another two years.
-- Construction on the Titanic had not yet begun.
-- Steamships were of course needed for intercontinental travel because powered, heavier-than-air flight was still very much a novelty. The Wright brothers had completed merely a few dozen flights of their various Flyer models.
-- If you wanted to follow the Cubs in their World Series play, you had to either attend the games, or read about it in the papers. Broadcast radio, for all intents and purposes, did not yet exist.
-- The NFL would not exist for another twelve years, Lord Stanley's Cup had only been around for sixteen years, and the entire sport of basketball had only been conceived one year prior to that.
-- Cross-country travel was done primarily by train. It would be another four years before the first transcontinental road (the Lincoln Highway) would even be proposed.
-- The land on which the Indianapolis Motor Speedway sits had not yet been purchased by its builders.
-- Man had not yet reached either the North or South Poles.
-- Ireland was still part of the U.K., Finland was still part of the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire was in the last stages of being dissolution.
Go Cubs Go! Just wait until next year!
Yes, I said 143rd anniversary. It's a common misconception that the Cubs were founded in 1876 -- you can buy T-shirts at Wrigley Field to that effect -- but in fact the team that is today's Chicago Cubs was founded on October 1, 1869. The confusion arises from the fact that the already existent team was a charter member of the newly created National League in 1876, which is considered the beginning of Major League Baseball as we know it today. But make no mistake, this is a team that is so old it even predates dedicated professional baseball leagues.
The team that would become today's Chicago Cubs was created as the Chicago White Stockings specifically to displace the vaunted Cincinnati Red Stockings. The Red Stockings were the first fully professional team in the previously all-amateur National Association of Base Ball Players, and won the league title in 1869 with a perfect 65-0 record. Looking for a bit of that glory, Chicago recruited many of the game's best players, to build their first all professional team. Mission accomplished; The White Stockings were declared Champions of the NABBP in 1870, in only their first season of play.
The next season the NABBP became the world's first fully professional baseball league. Late in the year the White Stockings were neck and neck with Boston for first place when they encountered the minor issue of the Great Chicago Fire, which fully consumed their stadium and clubhouse. They still managed to finish the season only two wins out of first, in third place, playing all of their remaining games on the road. The White Stockings subsequently found it necessary to also take the next two seasons off, to literally rebuild their facilities. This is the reason the Atlanta Braves (previously that same Boston team, by way of Milwaukee) can claim to be the longest continually operating franchise in American professional sports, having begun play in 1871. While the Braves will forever have played one more season than the Cubs due to that unfortunate incident, the Chicago Cubs are in fact older, and by far the longest tenured American professional sports team in one city.
The team returned in 1875 and then helped form the National League in 1876, winning the title that year. In the ten years that followed the team was a virtual juggernaut, winning five more National League titles (including three in a row from 1880-1882). The team would also go through several nickname changes before finally settling on "Cubs" in the early 1900's. They earned a berth in three out of the first five of the modern World Series, losing in 1906 to the Chicago team from the upstart American League (who had appropriated the Cubs' vacated original nickname, in my opinion a brilliant marketing move), before winning in 1907, and again in 1908.
After the glory of 1908 the Cubs would qualify for an seven additional World Series, losing them all, most recently in 1945 to the Detroit Tigers. Since then they have not even managed to win the National League title. Most seasons they don't even come close. For 104 years the Cubs have ended without claiming Major League Baseball's top prize. How could this happen? How could a team which won ten championships in their first 38 years of existence have fallen so far off the map, for so long? Despite all the changes in players, changes in managers, changes in ownership, even changes in the way the game is played (shoot, until 1884 pitchers threw underhand), the Cubs still cannot find the answer to the riddle of how to win a championship title.
Despite all the hoopla around the Cubs' current general manager (a man who is partly credited for ending Boston's own lengthy championship drought, and who was virtually greeted as the Messiah by the Cubs faithful upon his hire), the team appears no closer to winning a title in the short term. And their chances might not be getting any easier. At the time of their last World Series win there were only 16 teams in all of what today constitutes Major League Baseball. Winning a title meant only having to be better than 15 teams, only better than seven just to get to the Series. Today there are 30 Major League teams. By simple numbers, a team today only has a 1/30 chance of winning the title, assuming every team has an equal chance.
Again, I admit I am not a great student of the game, but it has been said that given the way the MLB is structured today, every team most definitely does not have an equal chance. The deck is stacked against the small market teams with less money to spend on the premier talent. The big market teams with huge fan bases and big media deals simply have more money to spend. And yet the Cubs do play in a large market, the third largest in the U.S. They have nationwide popularity with most of their games broadcast on cable. Their nearly 100-year-old park is literally a landmark, a virtual mecca for baseball fans. And while smaller than average, it is filled to capacity more often than most. This even despite the continued losses.
I realize of course that it's nearly impossible to equate the game as it was over a hundred years ago to today, but by sheer ODDS it would seem the team would HAVE to win it all at some point. Couldn't they just "buy" a championship? At the time of the Cubs' greatest success, the formula was simply to load up on the best talent. That's probably grossly oversimplified, and I guess there's more to winning in baseball than sheer talent. But really, one hundred years? It almost makes you wonder...
Are the Cubs losing on purpose? My father, who in my opinion is not dumb but perhaps just a little bit of the good kind of crazy, has a conspiracy theory that the Cubs' not winning it all is deliberate. The more I reflect on it, the more sense it starts to make. As his thinking goes, winning raises the expectations of the fan base, which leads to attendance based on performance. For example, any time the Yankees do not make the playoffs, New Yorkers are demanding changes. In many cities when the team is bad, attendance falters. Yet here in Chicago, when the Cubs put up another 100-loss season it's just another day at the office. People still come to that magical park, to sit in the sun and drink beer and have a good time. Whether the Cubs win, in some aspect is secondary. They are always bad. The Cubs as The Lovable Losers and their 104 year losing streak has become part of the teams identity. People follow the Cubs because they want to share in the unending wonder of maybe this year. If the Cubs were to win it all, how much of that appeal would they lose?
People say the current ownership is different, but if the park is full, does it matter to management whether they win? Do they need to? Would you risk losing the Cubs' odd mystique? Again, it's just a crazy theory. Maybe.
In any case, the Cubs' futility is a singular achievement in American professional sports (and for all I know, perhaps the world -- I would ask our overseas members for clarification on this), never to be duplicated. Or will it? I have maintained for some time there are plenty of teams who probably have the dearth of on-field and management talent to duplicate their record championship drought. It's just that the Cubs have been around so much longer than anyone else that their (lack of) accomplishment stands alone. If somehow the Cubs won it all in 2013, the Cleveland Indians would only have to go 40 more championship-less seasons to overtake the Cubs' record streak. They just might have it in them, having never been crowned champions in their entire history.
But which is more dubious: having never won, or having been champions so many times over, only to inexplicably come up empty for the next century, plus a few?
One hundred and four years. None of us have any frame of reference to such a length of time. So in closing, I'll leave you a short list of things to help try to put it in perspective.
The last time the Cubs won the World Series, way back in 1908:
-- There were only 46 states in the Union.
-- Chevrolet was not yet in business, Enzo Ferrari was a boy of ten years, and the Ford Motor Company had only just introduced the revolutionary Model T. Mass production of that model would not take place for another two years.
-- Construction on the Titanic had not yet begun.
-- Steamships were of course needed for intercontinental travel because powered, heavier-than-air flight was still very much a novelty. The Wright brothers had completed merely a few dozen flights of their various Flyer models.
-- If you wanted to follow the Cubs in their World Series play, you had to either attend the games, or read about it in the papers. Broadcast radio, for all intents and purposes, did not yet exist.
-- The NFL would not exist for another twelve years, Lord Stanley's Cup had only been around for sixteen years, and the entire sport of basketball had only been conceived one year prior to that.
-- Cross-country travel was done primarily by train. It would be another four years before the first transcontinental road (the Lincoln Highway) would even be proposed.
-- The land on which the Indianapolis Motor Speedway sits had not yet been purchased by its builders.
-- Man had not yet reached either the North or South Poles.
-- Ireland was still part of the U.K., Finland was still part of the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire was in the last stages of being dissolution.
Go Cubs Go! Just wait until next year!
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