The Last Chicago Cubs Dynasty by Bock Hal;

Author:Bock, Hal;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

2. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, 194.

3. “Gabby Hartnett,” Wikipedia, last updated September 18, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

4. Astor, Baseball Hall of Fame, 169.

5. David Fulk and Dan Riley, eds., The Cubs Reader (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 34.

Chapter 8

Curses, Cats, and Other Calamities

There are times when followers of the Chicago Cubs—fans, players, and executives—will swear this team needs an exorcism, a complete cleansing of the soul from the curses and other unfortunate conditions that have dogged this franchise over the years.

If it wasn’t Babe Ruth calling his shot against them, it was a billy goat barred from entry at Wrigley Field and its owner cursing the team in perpetuity. If it wasn’t a committee of coaches appointed to run the team in a sort of managerial merry-go-round, it was a poor innocent fan, reaching out of the stands for a foul ball and touching off another tragedy in 2003. The Cubs scored 22 runs against Philadelphia on May 17, 1979, ordinarily more than enough to secure a win or maybe two or three. The problem was that day the Phillies scored 23.

Black cats dashing in front of the dugout. Unfortunate trades. It’s always something. When they installed lights at Wrigley in 1988 so that they could add night games to a previously all-day schedule, the first game was rained out. Some thought it was a message from God not to disturb the last outpost for day baseball.

There is good reason that the Cubs fan club was named the Emil Verban Society, honoring the memory of an otherwise forgettable infielder whose mediocre play sort of epitomizes the history of the franchise. The membership list of over 700 included some high-profile folks like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Murray, and Bryant Gumbel. Even Barack Obama, an ardent White Sox fan, was added as a sort of prank by the Verban Society membership. They are all accustomed to the frustration of the Cubs.

It is a fact that since the blessed season of 1945—Chicago’s last National League championship year—31 different Major League franchises have been to the World Series, none of them named the Cubs. And it seems as if everyone, even the much-pitied Boston Red Sox, has won the World Series—three, in fact, for the Red Sox—since the last time the Cubs managed that trick during the Roosevelt administration—Theodore, not Franklin.

The hard times are well past a hundred years now. The Cubs last ruled baseball in 1908, a time when horseless carriages and handlebar mustaches dotted the American landscape. They invented radio after that. Television, too. Harry Caray, Cubs broadcaster of blessed memory, was born after that year. And died, too.

Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii were added to the union. Prohibition came and went. Twelve amendments were added to the Constitution, and America elected 18 presidents, some of them more than once, all after that.

The NBA, NHL, and NFL were all formed, and Chicago teams won championships in each of those leagues. None of the success rubbed off on the Cubs though.

Hall of Famer Ernie Banks labored through 19 champion-less seasons with the Cubs but maintained his optimism.

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