Chicago Cubs

When pigs fly. When cows jump over the moon. When the Cubbies win the World Series again. Now, for the chances of a team finding victory again to be lumped in with the impossible might seem harsh, but we are not talking about just any team here. We’re talking about the Chicago Cubs. This is a team that has been around long enough, and failed for long enough, that they ended up entering the lexicon of the English language as a byword for futility. The Cubs’ origins go way back into the mistiest beginnings of baseball itself, when they helped found the National League in 1876. The team was founded as the Chicago White Stockings* (somewhat confusingly, as their South Side city rivals are now the Chicago White Sox), then became the Chicago Colts, then (most bizarrely, and depressingly) the Chicago Orphans, before settling on Chicago Cubs for the opening season of the modern World Series in 1903 that saw the American League and National League square off for the very first time. It did not take long for the Cubs to make their mark. The team recorded a dominant 116-36 record in the 1906 season (at the time, the best record in baseball history) and headed into the World Series against none other but those South Side Chicago upstarts, the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox, who were known as the “Hitless Wonders” were considered huge underdogs and were given little to no chance of winning, but win they did, sealing the deal in Game Six to set up the Crosstown Rivalry, a bit of a slow burn that would smolder for the better part of ninety years, as the teams did not play each other in official league games again until the start of interleague matchups in 1997. The Cubs came back stronger in 1907 and 1908, beating the Detroit Tigers on both occasions to become the first-ever MLB team to win back-to-back World Series. How sunny the future must have seemed to Cubs fans as they celebrated in the autumn of 1908. The team made another World Series in 1910, which they lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, but remained a strong contender when in 1916 they moved into their brand spanking new stadium, Wrigley Field now one of the oldest active stadiums in professional baseball (and North American pro sports), second only to Fenway Park. The proud owners of six-year-old Fenway Park, the Boston Red Sox, stopped by Wrigley for a World Series in 1918, led by a young pitcher, who could swing a bat pretty well too, named Babe Ruth. The Sultan of Swat sent the Cubs packing that year and would do so again in 1932 for the New York Yankees in his last-ever World Series, the one when the big Bambino pointed to the fences (allegedly) before slamming one out of the park. The Cubs also lost the World Series in 1929 (to the Athletics), 1935 (to the Tigers), 1938 (to the Yankees again), and 1945 (to the Tigers again). Even the most optimistic or nostalgic Cubs supporters in 1946 must have been heading into the season feeling that this was starting to become something of a worrying pattern. But they need not have worried. The Cubs would not lose another World Series. Unfortunately, for a long time, this was because they didn’t get anywhere near one. Superstitious fans attributed this to a curse supposedly uttered by a man who brought his pet goat to Game Four of the Series in 1945 and was asked to leave. And the Curse of the Billy Goat indeed proved to be as strong and durable as its namesake’s teeth. As the millennium dawned, the closest the Cubs had been to another World Series appearance were a pair of NLCS defeats in 1984 and 1989. Long buried hopes were dusted off slightly in 2015 when the Cubs pushed through from a Wild Card spot to the NLCS, but they were comprehensively annihilated by the New York Mets in a four game sweep. And so, in the following year, with their World Series drought standing at a mummified 108 years, when the Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants to reach the NLCS, no one in Chicago really thought they would beat the Los Angeles Dodgers (and the wrath of the long-dead goat). They did, however, claiming their first pennant since 1945 and setting up a World Series against the Cleveland Indians (now Cleveland Guardians), another team with championship photographs that are only in black and white. When the Cubs went down three games to one, the writing looked like it was on the wall, but the pure angst at Wrigley Field helped the team hold on for a 3-2 win in Game Five. A big win in Game Six set up the tensest of all Game Sevens. Would the 107 year thread of fate at last be cut? After Cleveland rallied late from 6-3 down to send the game to extra innings, the Cubs scored two in the top of the 10th, but the Indians scored one in the bottom of the inning and looked poised for more. Somehow, the gods (or goats) of baseball took mercy on the Cubs, and a short grounder was caught, thrown to first, and the wait of all waits was over at last. Incredibly, one Cubs fan who had been born before their previous World Series win in 1908, was still alive to see them win in 2016, 108-year-old Vivian Baron. It almost felt like a loss, oddly, for some fans, so used to the moniker of “Lovable Losers” they had been, but after the party to end all parties in Chicago, the team got down to trying to make sure that the next World Series win won’t be more than a century away. 

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Chicago Cubs Rivalries

The Chicago Cubs have possibly the longest, and strangest, rivalry in baseball with their fellow Windy City tenants, the Chicago White Sox. After the Sox dealt the Cubs their first (of many) World Series defeats in 1906, the two teams did not play another competitive game until interleague play started up in 1997. The fact that they had the two longest-ever World Series droughts (88 and 107 years) in baseball also made their rivalry the subject of quite easy mockery. The rivalry heated up considerably in 2006, the year after the White Sox had finally won a World Series, and a massive collision at the plate ignited a bench-clearing brawl. Meetings in the Crosstown Rivalry ever since have been spicy to say the least. The Cubs also have healthy rivalries with the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers. Getting tickets to such popular games (especially Sox-Cubs) is never easy, so use TicketX to find the most affordable tickets to all the best Chicago Cubs games.

*The White Stockings reached two World Series in the pre-merger era, both against the St. Louis Browns. They lost the series in 1886 and, er, tied the series in 1885.