Chicago Cubs

Chicago Cubs

National League

AAA

Iowa Cubs

AA

West Tenn Diamond Jaxx

A

Daytona Cubs
Peoria Chiefs
Boise Hawks

R

Mesa Cubs

The Chicago Cubs are a Major League Baseball team based in Chicago. They are in the Central Division of the National League.

Founded: 1870, as an independent professional club. Joined the National Association in 1871. Became a charter National League member in 1876.

Formerly known as: White Stockings, in the 1870s. Colts, in the late 1890s. Orphans, 1898, after the firing of longtime manager Cap Anson. Remnants, in 1901, after a number of players deserted the team for the American League. The nickname Cubs was coined in 1902 when manager Frank Selee arrived and rebuilt the club with young, inexperienced players. The Chicago Tribune tried to call the team the Spuds around this time, but that name didn't stick.

Home ballpark: Wrigley Field, 1060 W. Addison Street, Chicago, IL 60613-4397.

Uniform colors: Blue and red

Logo design: A red "C" circumscribed by a blue circle. Sometimes a smaller "ubs" will follow the large "C", or the team will make use of a cartoon bear cub.

Wild Card titles won (1): 1998

Division titles won (3): 1984, 1989, 2003

League pennants won (16): 1876, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885, 1886, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938, 1945

World Series championships won (2): 1907, 1908

Current Manager: Dusty Baker

Franchise history

White Stockings

The success and fame of the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869, baseball's first openly professional team, led to a minor explosion of openly professional teams in 1870, each with the singular goal of defeating the Red Stockings. A number of them adopted variants on the name and colors, and it happens that the Chicagos adopted white as their primary color. After a summer of individually arranged contests among the various teams, the time was right for the organization of the first professional league, the National Association, in 1871.

The Chicago White Stockings were close contenders all summer, but disaster struck on October 8 when a fire began in Mrs. O'Leary's barn on DeKoven Street on the near south side of the city. The Great Chicago Fire destroyed the club's ballpark, uniforms and other possessions. The club completed its schedule with borrowed uniforms, finishing second in the N.A. just 2 games behind, but was compelled to drop out of the league during the city's recovery period, finally being revived in 1874.

After the 1875 season, Chicago acquired several key players, including pitcher Al Spalding of the Boston Red Stockings, and first baseman Cap Anson of the Philadelphia Athletics. While this was going on, behind the scenes the club President, William Hulbert, was leading the formation of a new and stronger organization, the National League.

With a beefed-up squad, the White Stockings cruised through the N.L.'s inaugural season of 1876. The Chicagoans went on to have some great seasons in the 1880s, starting with 1880 when they won 67 and lost 17, for an all-time record .798 winning percentage. Extrapolating an 84-game season onto a 162-game season is a dubious proposition, but it does provide some perspective to note that a similar winning percentage nowadays would yield 129 wins.

By then, Spalding had retired to start his sporting goods company. The length of the season was such that a team could get by with two main starters, and the Cubs had a couple of powerhouse pitchers in Larry Corcoran and Fred Goldsmith. Those two were fading by mid-decade, and were replaced by other strong pitchers, notably John Clarkson. Much has been written about Old Hoss Radbourn's 60 victories for the Providence Grays of 1884, but Clarkson also had a fair year in 1885, winning 53 games as the Chicagos won the pennant.

A second major league called the American Association came along in 1882, and the Chicagos met the AA's champions three times in that era's version of the World Series. Twice they faced the St. Louis Browns in lively and controversial Series action. That St. Louis franchise, which went on to join the National League in 1892 after the A.A. folded, continues to be a perennial rival of the Cubs.

Throughout all of this, and for the better part of twenty seasons, the team was captained and managed by first baseman Adrian Anson. Cap Anson was one of the most famous and arguably the best player in baseball in his day. He was the first ballplayer to reach 3,000 hits. However, the Hall of Famer is chiefly remembered today for his extreme racist views (which he stated in print, in his autobiography, lest there be any doubt) and thus his prominent role in establishing baseball's color line, rather than for his great playing and managing skills.

After the Chicagoans' great run during the 1880s, the on-field fortunes of Anson's Colts dwindled during the 1890s, awaiting revival under new leadership.

"Tinker to Evers to Chance"

Joe Tinker (SS), Johnny Evers (2B) and Frank Chance (1B) were three legendary Cubs infielders, who played together from 1903-1910, and sporadically over the following two years. They, along with third baseman Harry Steinfeldt, formed the nucleus of one of the most dominant baseball teams of all time. After Chance took over as manager for the ailing Frank Selee in 1905, the Cubs won four pennants and two World Series titles over a five-year span. Their record of 116 victories in 1906 (in a 154-game season) has not been broken, though it was tied by the Seattle Mariners in 2001, in a 162-game season. As with 1880, extrapolating is statistically questionable, but the Cubs' 116-36 season of 1906 projects to 123 wins in a full 162-game season. Curiously, both of those teams were so far in front that they seemingly lost their edge, and fell in the post-season.

The Cubs again relied on dominant pitching during this period, featuring hurlers such as Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, Jack Taylor, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester and Orval Overall, who posted a record for lowest staff earned run average that still stands today. Reulbach threw a one-hitter in the 1906 World Series, one of a small handful of twirlers to pitch low-hit games in the post-season (another was Claude Passeau of the Cubs' 1945 squad). Brown acquired his unique and indelicate nickname from having lost most of his index finger in farm machinery when he was a youngster. This gave him the ability to put a natural extra spin on his pitches, which often frustrated opposing batters.

However, the infield also attained fame, after turning a critical double play against the New York Giants in a July 1910 game. The trio was immortalized in Franklin P. Adams' poem Baseball's Sad Lexicon, which first appeared in the July 18, 1910 edition of the New York Evening Mail:

These are the saddest of possible words:

"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double--

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

The fourth line is sometimes misquoted as also reading "Tinker to Evers to Chance". Also, in the still-in-modern-usage expression "Tinker to Evers to Chance", meaning a well-oiled routine or a "sure thing", people tend to pronounce it "EH-verz", when the proper pronounciation was "EE-verz".

Tinker and Evers reportedly could not stand each other, and rarely spoke off the field. Evers, a high-strung, argumentative man, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1911 and rarely played that year. Chance suffered a near-fatal beaning the same year. The trio played together little after that. In 1913, Chance went to manage the New York Yankees and Tinker went to Cincinnati to manage the Reds, and that was the end of one of the most notable infields in baseball. They were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame together in 1946. Tinker and Evers reportedly became amicable in their old age, with the baseball wars far behind them.

Every Three Years

The Cubs fell into a lengthy doldrum after their early 1900s Glory Years, broken only by their pennant in the war-shortened season of 1918. Around that time, chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley obtained majority ownership of the Cubs, and things started to turn around, especially after they acquired the services of astute baseball man William Veeck, Sr.

With Wrigley's money and Veeck's savvy, the Cubs were soon back in business in the National League, the front office having built a team that would be strong contenders for the next decade. During that stretch, they achieved the unusual accomplishment of winning a pennant every three years - 1929, 1932, 1935 and 1938 - sometimes in thrilling fashion, such as 1935 when they won a record 21 games in a row in September, and 1938 when they won a crucial late-season game with a walk-off "home run in the gloamin'" by Gabby Hartnett.

Unfortunately, their success did not extend to the post-season, as they fell to their American League rivals each time, often in humilating fashion. By the late 1930s, the double-Bills (Wrigley and Veeck), had been in Baseball Heaven for several years. As the decade wound down, the front office under P.K. Wrigley was unable to rekindle the kind of success that P.K.'s father had created, and the Cubs slipped into mediocrity. They enjoyed one more pennant, at the close of another wartime year, 1945, lost the World Series, and have not been back since then, at least through the 2004 season.

Day Games at Wrigley

The Cubs' home ballpark, Wrigley Field, played host to only day games until 1988 because the stadium owner donated the lights to the war effort in the 1940s, and it then became tradition. The first night game was scheduled to be played August 8, 1988, versus Philadelphia, but it was rained out after 3 1/2 innings. The high point of that contest, beyond the cry of "Let there be lights", was when famous top-heavy entertainer Morganna Roberts, "The Kissing Bandit", ran onto the field and attempted to plant one on Ryne Sandberg. She was thwarted by Chicago's Finest, but Ryno hit the next pitch out of the park to thunderous approval. Unfortunately, the rainout nullified his home run. The first official night game thus occurred the following evening, August 9, 1988; the Cubs defeated the New York Mets, 6-4. While night games are now possible at Wrigley, the Cubs still play more day games at home than any other Major League team.

"Lovable losers"

It can't go without mention that the Cubs have the longest dry spell between championships in all of professional sports, having failed to win a World Series since 1908. To make matters worse, the Cubs haven't even been in a World Series since 1945, and finished in the second division, or bottom half, of the National League for 20 consecutive years beginning in 1947. They didn't win any playoff series between 1908 and 2003, when they beat the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS.

The Cubs' 2003 playoff run ended in an emotional game 7 of the NLCS against the Florida Marlins. While at one point ahead in the 7-game series 3 games to 1, the Marlins came back to win the final three games. Marlins pitcher Josh Beckett shut out the Cubs in game 5. An implosion of the Cubs defense late in game 6, following the now-infamous incident in which a fan touched a ball in foul territory, allowed the Marlins to score 8 runs in the eighth inning (see The Inning) and tie the series. The Cubs were unable to win the final game at home, and were without a pennant again.

To historians of the game, this incident echoed another Cubs disaster, Game 4 of the 1929 World Series, in which the Cubs yielded 10 runs to the Philadelphia Athletics in the seventh inning. A key play in that inning was centerfielder Hack Wilson losing a fly ball in the sun, resulting in a 3-run inside-the-park home run.

The long history of the Cubs is a dichotomy. For their first 80 years, prior to and including 1945, more often than not the Cubs were generally assumed to be contenders, playing well and winning the occasional pennant. For much of the 60 year span since then, it was as if the baseball gods had pretty much slammed the door on them, granting them just an occasional glimpse through the keyhole. It did not take astute observers long to realize that something bad had happened to this once-proud franchise...

In his 1950 book The World Series and Highlights of Baseball, LaMont Buchanan wrote the following prose next to photos of Wrigley during the 1945 World Series and of their newly-hired manager: "From the sublime to last place! Wrigley Field, the ivy of its walls still whispering of past greatness, watches its Cubs grow less ferocious in '47, '48, '49. New doctor of the cure is smiling Frank Frisch, veteran of previous baseball transfusions who thinks, 'It's nice to have the fans with you.' Chicago has a great baseball tradition. The fans remember glorious yesterdays as they wait for brighter tomorrows. And eventually their Cubs will bite again." Little did anyone realize how long "eventually" might turn out to be.

What may be the least known and cried over, but possibly the most telling, statistic of futility for the Cubs, though, is that their first back-to-back winning seasons since 1973 came in 2003 and 2004. Not division titles, not playoff appearances, just winning seasons. Nonetheless, they remain one of the best-loved and best-attended teams in the league, with attendance figures consistently in the top 10, despite a smaller stadium than many other teams. Wrigley Field consistently sells out during the season.

As with the Boston Red Sox (prior to their astonishing 2004 post-season triumph), the Cubs of recent generations have seemed to be a team that "bad things happen to". Although there is a tendency to compare the Cubs and the Red Sox, there is a stark difference. Since World War II, the Red Sox have been frequent contenders and frequent visitors to the post-season, including five trips to the World Series. They have had more of a reputation as "chokers" than as "losers", the tag that the Cubs bear.

The Cubs have shown they can win, or at least contend, when their pitching is superior. Outstanding pitching has been a major difference in every one of their winning seasons since World War II. But although there is no substitute for front-office savvy and on-the-field excellence, the venerable ballpark itself has to be considered a factor in the teams' failures to go farther than they have. When the bleachers were extended into left field in 1937, it shortened the true power alley from a posted distance of 372 feet to about 350 feet, which is too short for major league standards, especially for a left field. Most batters are right-handed, so their natural power alley is left-center. Thus most asymmetric ballparks have their short field in right. Not so with Wrigley. This allows more left-center field home runs than the average ballpark would. Ferguson Jenkins, upon being traded to the Texas Rangers after a successful though home-run prone career with the Cubs, bitterly complained that "Wrigley Field is a bad ballpark!"

See also: Curse of the billy goat, Steve Bartman, Major League Baseball franchise post-season droughts, Sox Cubs Rivalry, Lee Elia tirade

Players of note

Baseball Hall of Famers

Current 25-man roster (updated on June 15, 2005)

• Manager
  • 12 Dusty Baker

• Coaches
  • 59 Juan López (bullpen)
  • 39 Dick Pole (bench)
  • 36 Gary Matthews (first base)
  • 41 Larry Rothschild (pitching)
  •   2 Gene Clines (hitting)
  • 35 Chris Speier (third base)
  • 15 Sonny Jackson (special assistant)

Not to be forgotten

* Manager

Awards

Most Valuable Player

• 1911 - Wildfire Schulte
• 1929 - Rogers Hornsby
• 1935 - Gabby Hartnett
• 1945 - Phil Cavarretta
• 1952 - Hank Sauer
• 1958 - Ernie Banks
• 1959 - Ernie Banks [2]
• 1984 - Ryne Sandberg
• 1987 - Andre Dawson
• 1998 - Sammy Sosa

Cy Young

• 1971 - Ferguson Jenkins
• 1979 - Bruce Sutter
• 1984 - Rick Sutcliffe
• 1992 - Greg Maddux

Rookie of the Year

• 1961 - Billy Williams
• 1962 - Ken Hubbs
• 1989 - Jerome Walton
• 1998 - Kerry Wood

Gold Glove Award

• Pitcher
  • Greg Maddux [4] (1990-92, 2004)
  • Bobby Shantz (1964)

• Catcher
  • Jody Davis (1986)
  • Randy Hundley (1967)

• First base
  • Mark Grace [4] (1992-93, 1995-96)

• Second base
  • Ryne Sandberg [9] (1983-91)
  • Glenn Beckert (1968)
  • Ken Hubbs (1962)

• Shortstop
  • Don Kessinger [2] (1969-70)
  • Ernie Banks (1960)

• Third base
  • Ron Santo [5] (1964-68)

• Outfield
  • Andre Dawson [2] (1987-88)
  • Bob Dernier (1984)

Silver Slugger

• Pitcher
  • none
• Catcher
  • none
• First baseman
  • none
• Second baseman
  • Ryne Sandberg [7] (1984-85, 1988-92)
• Shortstop
  • none
• Third baseman
  • none
• Outfielder
  • Sammy Sosa [6] (1995, 1998-2002)
  • Andre Dawson (1987)
  • Leon Durham (1982)

Manager of the Year

• 1984 - Jim Frey
• 1989 - Don Zimmer

Single Season Records

• Batting average: Bill Lange, .389 (1895)
• Home runs: Sammy Sosa, 66 (1998)
• Runs batted in: Hack Wilson, 191 (1930) (MLB record)
• Runs: Rogers Hornsby, 156 (1929)
• Hits: Rogers Hornsby, 229 (1929)
• Singles: Bill Everitt, 169 (1898)
• Doubles: Billy Herman, 57 (1935 & 1936)
• Triples: Vic Saier and Frank Schulte, 21 (1913 & 1911)
• Extra-Base hits: Sammy Sosa, 103 (2001)
• Total bases: Sammy Sosa, 425 (2001)
• Stolen bases: Bill Lange, 84 (1896)
• Hitting streak: Jerome Walton, 30 games (1989)
• Strikeouts: Sammy Sosa, 174 (1997)
• Walks: Jimmy Sheckard, 147 (1911)
• Pitching wins: John Clarkson, 53 (1885)
• Pitching strikeouts: Bill Hutchinson, 314 (1892)
• Pitching ERA: Mordecai Brown, 1.04 (1906)
• Pitching saves: Randy Myers, 53 (1993)

Retired numbers

• 10 Ron Santo
• 14 Ernie Banks
• 23 Ryne Sandberg (will be retired in pregame ceremony August 28, 2005)
• 26 Billy Williams
• 42 Jackie Robinson (retired throughout baseball)

Some notable Broadcasters

• Lou Boudreau (1958-59; 1961-87) "Kiss it goodbye!"
• Bob Brenly (1990-91;2005-present)
• Thom Brennaman (1990-95)
• Jack Brickhouse (1941-45; 1947-81) "Hey-hey!" [*]
• Chip Caray (1998-2004)
• Harry Caray (1982-97) "Holy cow!" "Cubs win!" [*]
• Joe Carter (2001-02)
• Bob Elson (1928-41) [*]
• Pat Flanagan (1929-43)
• Charlie Grimm (1939-42; 1960)
• Milo Hamilton (1955-57; 1981-84) [*]
• Pat Hughes (1996-present) "It's got a chaaaance... GONE!"
• Len Kasper (2005-present) "Way back! It's outta here!"
• Vince Lloyd (1955-86) "Holy mackerel!"
• Lloyd Pettit (1963; 1965-1966; 1969-1970)
• Jack Quinlan (1956-64)
• Ronald Reagan (1933-36)
• Ron Santo (1990-present)
• Steve Stone (1983-2000; 2003-04)
• Hal Totten (1924-44)
• Bert Wilson (1944-55) "I don't care who wins, as long as it's the Cubs!"

[*] Ford C. Frick Award - Resource: MLB [1] (http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/chc/history/broadcasters.jsp) The current cubs games are broadcast on WGN 720.

Other persons of note

• Pat Pieper, stadium announcer from 1916-1974, who used a megaphone until the installation of a public-address system in 1931 [2] (http://www.baseballyarn.com/16.htm).

"Attention! Attention, please! Have your pencil, and scorecard ready, and I'll give you, the correct lineups, for today's ball game. The batt'ries: Jenkins and Hundley..."