The Chicago Cubs are a baseball team based in Chicago, Illinois. The Cubs belong to the Central Division of Major League Baseball’s National League. The club has played its home games at Wrigley Field since 1916. The Cubs are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago, the other being the Chicago White Sox. They are also one of the only two remaining charter members left in the NL, the other being the Atlanta Braves. The Cubs have a strong, ongoing rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals. The franchise, counting from its National League inaugural season in 1876, won its 10,000th game on April 23, 2008, an MLB record for a team in a single city. The Cubs also hold MLB's longest World Series championship drought, which currently stands at 99 years.
The Cubs are often referred to by fans and media as The North Siders, since Wrigley Field is in Chicago's north side Lakeview community. They are also referred to as The Loveable Losers, referencing their significant fan following despite their championship futility. They are also simply known as The Cubbies. The Cubs are currently managed by Lou Piniella, and their general manager is Jim Hendry. In December 2007, Sam Zell completed his purchase of the club's parent company, Tribune Company, and announced his intention to sell the team. Zell holds a minority ownership stake in the Chicago White Sox, and following Major League Baseball rules cannot own parts of two different major league teams.
Joe Tinker (shortstop), Johnny Evers (second baseman), and Frank Chance (first baseman) were three Cubs infielders who played together at Chicago's West Side Park from 1903 to 1912. They were made famous as a double-play combination by Franklin P. Adams' poem Baseball's Sad Lexicon, which first appeared in the July 18, 1910, edition of the New York Evening Mail. Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, Jack Taylor, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester and Orval Overall were several key pitchers for the Cubs during this time period. With Chance as player-manager, the Cubs won four pennants and two World Series titles over a five-year span. Although they fell to the White Sox in the 1906 World Series, The Cubs recorded a record 116 victories and the best winning percentage (.763) of the modern era. With this roster, Chicago won back to back World Series championships in 1907 and 1908. Veteran catcher Johnny Kling sat out the 1909 season to become a pocket billiards player. He was replaced by Jimmy Archer. Some historians think Kling's absence was significant enough to prevent the Cubs from also winning the pennant in 1909. They finished 6 games out of first place. When Kling returned the next year, the Cubs won the pennant again, but lost to the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1910 World Series.
With owner William Wrigley's money and William Veeck's front-office savvy, the Cubs were soon back in business in the National League, having built a team that would be strong contenders for the next decade. Hack Wilson, Gabby Hartnett, Rogers Hornsby, and many other stars donned Cub uniforms during this period, and they achieved the unusual accomplishment of winning a pennant every three years - 1929, 1932, 1935 and 1938. Unfortunately, their success did not extend to the post-season, as they fell to their AL rivals each time. The '32 series featured Babe Ruth's "called shot." There were some historic moments for the Cubs as well - they won the '35 pennant in thrilling fashion, winning a record 21 games in a row in September. The '38 club saw Dizzy Dean lead the team's pitching staff and provided a historic moment when they won a late-season game with a "walk-off" homer by Gabby Hartnett, which became known in baseball lore as "The Homer in the Gloamin'". By 1939, the "double-Bills" (Wrigley and Veeck) had both died, and the front office, now under P.K. Wrigley, found itself unable to rekindle the kind of success that P.K.'s father had created, and so the team slipped into a few years of mediocrity.
The Cubs enjoyed one more pennant at the close of World War II. Due to the wartime travel restrictions, the first three games were played in Detroit, where the Cubs won two games, including a one-hitter by Claude Passeau, and the final four were played at Wrigley. In game 4 of the 1945 World Series, the Curse of the Billy Goat was allegedly laid upon the Cubs when P.K. Wrigley ejected Billy Sianis, who had come to game 4 with two box seat tickets, one for him and one for his goat. They paraded around for a few innings, but Wrigley demanded the goat leave the park due to its unpleasant odor. Upon his ejection, Mr. Sianis uttered, "the Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." The Cubs lost game 4, lost the 1945 World Series, and have not been back since. It has also been said by many that Sianis put a "curse" on the Cubs, apparently preventing the team from making it back to (but not actually winning) the World Series. After losing the 1945 World Series, the Cubs finished with winning seasons the next two years, but those teams did not enter post-season play.
After more than a dozen more subpar seasons, the 1984 Cubs made a midseason deal to acquire ace pitcher Rick Sutcliffe from Cleveland, who joined Scott Sanderson, Dennis Eckersley, Ron Cey and NL MVP Ryne Sandberg on a squad that ultimately tallied an NL best 96 victories, winning the NL East. In the NLCS the Cubbies won the first two games at Wrigley Field against the San Diego Padres. The Cubs needed to win only one game of the next three in San Diego to make it back to the World Series. After being beaten in game 3, the Cubs lost when dependable closer Lee Smith allowed a game-winning home run to Steve Garvey in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 4. In Game 5 the Cubs took a 3-0 lead to the 6th inning, and a 3-2 lead into the 7th with Sutcliffe (who won the Cy Young Award that year) still on the mound, but he tired, and a critical error by Leon Durham, who watched a routine grounder go through his legs helped the San Diego Padres win the game and kept Chicago out of the 1984 World Series.
In 1989, the first full season with night baseball at Wrigley Field, the Cubs were led by a core group of veterans in Sandberg, Sutcliffe and Andre Dawson, who were boosted by a crop of youngsters such as Mark Grace, Shawon Dunston, Greg Maddux and Rookie of the Year Jerome Walton. The Cubbies won the NL East once again that season winning 93 games. This time the Northsiders met the San Francisco Giants in the NLCS. After splitting the first two games at home, the Cubs headed to the Bay Area, where despite holding a lead at some point in each of the next three games, bullpen meltdowns and managerial blunders ultimately led to three straight losses. The Giants lost to "The Bash Brothers" and the Oakland A's in the famous "Earthquake Series".
After the retirement of Sandberg and the trading of Dunston, the team needed to look elsewhere for help. In 1998 the Cubs signed outfielder Henry Rodriguez while Sammy Sosa responded with a 66 home run season. This effort, coupled with a Rookie of the Year season by Kerry Wood, won a down-to-the-wire Wild Card chase over San Francisco, culminating with the Cubs beating the Giants in a one game playoff at Wrigley in which Gary Gaetti hit a game winning homer and propelled the Cubs into the postseason once again. They scored only four runs en route to being swept by Atlanta. The home run chase between Sosa and Mark McGwire generated a great deal of media coverage, and helped to bring in a new crop of fans as well as bringing back some fans who had been disillusioned by the 1994 strike.
During the 2001 playoff push Sosa had 64 homers and Jon Lieber won twenty games, while the club made a midseason deal for Fred McGriff, which was drawn out for nearly a month as McGriff debated waiving his no-trade clause, as the Northsiders led the wild card race by 2.5 games in early September, but the run died when Preston Wilson hit a three run walk off homer off of closer Tom "Flash" Gordon, which halted the team's momentum. The team was unable to make another serious charge, and finished five games behind both Houston and St. Louis.
The Cubs had high expectations in 2002, but the squad played poorly, and the club responded by hiring Dusty Baker and by making some major moves in '03. Most notably, they traded with the Pittsburgh Pirates for Aramis Ramirez, finally filling a gaping hole at third base, and rode dominant pitching as the Northsiders won their first division title in 14 years, and their NLDS victory over the Atlanta Braves was the team's first postseason series win since 1908. The Cubs then took a 3 games to 1 lead over the Florida Marlins in the NLCS. After dropping Game 5, Mark Prior and the Cubs took a 3-0 lead to the 8th inning of Game 6, when a now-infamous incident took place. A fan, Steve Bartman, attempted to catch a foul ball off the bat of Luis Castillo, disrupting a potential catch for the second out by Moisés Alou. Interference was not called on the play, as the ball was on the spectator side of the wall. Alou was unable to make the catch. Two batters later, Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez misplayed a potential inning ending double play, loading the bases and leading to eight Florida runs and a Marlin victory. Despite sending Kerry Wood to the mound and holding a lead twice, the Cubs also dropped Game 7, and failed to reach the World Series.
In 2004, despite the return of Greg Maddux and a midseason deal for Nomar Garciaparra, misfortune struck the Cubs again. They led the Wild Card by 1.5 games on September 25, but LaTroy Hawkins blew a save to the Mets, and the Cubs proceeded to drop 7 of their last 9 games and relinquished their lead to the Astros. Despite winning 89 games, this fallout was decidedly unlovable, as the Cubs traded superstar Sammy Sosa after he had left the season's final game early and then lied about it publicly. Sosa, already a controversial figure in the clubhouse after his corked-bat incident,alienated much of his fan base, the few teammates still on good terms with him, and possibly tarnished his place in Cubs' lore for years to come. The disappointing season also saw fans become frustrated with the constant injuries to ace pitchers Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, and finally led to the departure of popular commentator Steve Stone, who had become increasingly critical of management and was verbally attacked by reliever Kent Mercker.
After finishing with only 66 wins and 17.5 games out of first in 2006, the Northsiders re-tooled for 2007, signing Alfonso Soriano to the richest contract in Cub history, and replacing manager Dusty Baker with Lou Piniella. After a rough start, which included a brawl between Michael Barrett and Carlos Zambrano, the Cubs overcame the Milwaukee Brewers, who had led the division for most of the season, with winning streaks in June and July, ultimately clinching the NL Central with 85 victories. They met Arizona in the NLDS, but controversy followed as Piniella, in a move that has since come under scrutiny, pulled Carlos Zambrano after the sixth inning of a pitchers duel with D-Backs ace Brandon Webb, to "Save Zambrano for (a potential) Game 4." The Cubs, however, were unable to come through, losing the first game and eventually stranding over thirty baserunners in a three game Arizona sweep.
As of 2007, the Cubs' flagship radio station was WGN-AM, 720 AM. With the recent end of the Pittsburgh Pirates' run on KDKA, this may now be the longest team-to-station relationship in MLB. Pat Hughes is the play-by-play announcer, along with color commentator Ron Santo and pre- and post-game host Cory Provus. Santo, a former Cubs star and a fan of the team, and who is introduced as "Cub legend" on a daily basis by Pat Hughes, is known for his emotional highs and lows during games. One example of a "low" was his "Nooo! Nooo!" when Brant Brown dropped a fly ball in a key game in 1998. A "high" for Santo was upon the retirement of his number on the last day of the 2003 season, in which he declared his #10 flag to be "my Hall of Fame".
The Chicago Cubs Radio Network consists of 45 stations in eleven states. Cubs telecasts are split three ways: WGN (both the local station and the superstation), WCIU (a local independent station), and CSN Chicago (with some games, often Wednesday night contests, aired on the supplemental channel CSN+). Len Kasper is the play-by-play announcer, and Bob Brenly, a former major league catcher and Arizona Diamondbacks manager, is the color commentator for the games. WGN also produces the games shown on WCIU; for those games, the score bug changes the "WGN" logo to "CubsNet." WGN and CSN Chicago generally show an even number of Cubs games, while WCIU averages about 8 games per season. In addition, the club also produces its own print media; the Cubs' official magazine Vineline, which has eight annual issues, is in its third decade.
Two broadcasters have made their mark on the team. Jack Brickhouse manned the Cubs radio and especially the TV booth for parts of five decades, covering the games with a level of enthusiasm that often seemed unjustified by the team's poor performance on the field for many of those years. His trademark call "Hey Hey!" usually followed a home run or other spectacular play. That expression is spelled out in large letters vertically on both foul pole screens at Wrigley Field. "Whoo-boy!" and "Wheeee!" and "Oh, brother!" were among his other pet expressions. When he approached retirement age, he personally recommended his successor.
Harry Caray's stamp on the team is perhaps even deeper than that of Brickhouse, though his tenure was half as long. First, Caray had already become a well-known Chicago figure by broadcasting White Sox games for a decade, after having been a Cardinals icon for 25 years. Caray also had the benefit of being in the booth during the NL East title run in 1984, which was widely seen due to WGN's status as a cable-TV superstation. His trademark call of "Holy Cow!" and his enthusiastic singing of "Take me out to the ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch (as he had done with the White Sox) made Caray a fan favorite both locally and nationally. Harry occasionally had problems pronouncing names, to comic effect, such as his attempt at saying "Hector Villanueva" which was captured on WGN's memorial CD to Harry. He also continued his long-standing bit (dating back to the Cardinals years) of pronouncing names backwards. Caray had lively discussions with commentator Steve Stone, who was hand-picked by Harry himself, and producer Arne Harris. Caray often playfully quarreled with Stone over Stone's cigar and why Stone was single, while Stone would counter with poking fun at Harry being "under the influence." Stone disclosed in his book "Where's Harry" that most of this "arguing" was staged, and usually a ploy developed by Harry himself to add flavor to the broadcast. Additionally, Harry once did a commercial for Budweiser, dressed as a "Blues Brother" and parodying "Soul Man", singing "I'm a Cub fan, I'm a Bud man," while dancing with models dressed as ballgirls.
The Cubs still have a live singer, usually a celebrity, during the 7th inning stretch to honor Caray's memory. The quality of their renditions varies widely. Chicago icons often return annually, such as former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, who tends to sing the song very fast and possibly on key. Caray is also honored with a statue located at the corner of Sheffield and Addison streets, and during the 1998 season, a patch with Caray's caricature and Brickhouse's trademark "Hey Hey" were worn on the players sleeves to honor the passing of both commentators within a span of a few months. Harry's popularity also led to his grandson Chip Caray joining the broadcast team in winter of 1997, shortly before Harry's death. Chip Caray worked the Cubs games alongside Stone until events that unfolded in 2004, when Stone became increasingly critical of management and players toward season's end. At one point, reliever Kent Mercker phoned the booth during a game and told Stone to "keep out of team business." Stone left the team, taking a position with Chicago-based WSCR. Chip Caray also left, joining his father Skip Caray on TBS, providing play-by-play for the Atlanta Braves.
