Excerpts: Chapter 1

To die-hard fans of the Chicago Cubs and to all followers of major league baseball, the word Cubs has become synonymous with failure. The rapid deterioration of the team following their last pennant (in 1945), the futile seasons in the 1950s and early '60s, and their rapid return to mediocrity and worse after the Leo Durocher years in the '70s and early '80s are all responsible for the Cubs' tarnished image. Yet an examination of the Chicago National League franchise in the first five decades of the twentieth century illustrates a stark contrast in the team's fortunes. In the first half of the century, few teams were as good as Chicago; in the second half, few teams were as bad. No other team in the major leagues went from being so dominant to so utterly futile as the Cubs did over the last half century.

Between 1900 and 1945, the Cubs won the National League pennant ten times. The only National League team with more World Series appearances was the New York Giants, with 13. During the first five decades of the twentieth century, the Cubs won at least one pennant every decade, something no other major league team was able to do. Not even the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Athletics, the American League's most frequent champions, could match this feat. The Yankees won their first pennant in 1921, while the Athletics' last league championship occurred in 1931. Chicago also experienced the shortest dry spells between pennant-winning seasons through the World War II era, their longest hiatus lasting only from 1918 until 1929.

Yet in the 45 years following their last pennant, the Cubs finished first in their division only twice, in 1984 and 1989. Curiously, their most celebrated postwar season was 1969, when they finished second in their division. But even if they had been able to stay ahead of the New York Mets in 1969, they still would have had to win a playoff against the Atlanta Braves to capture the National League flag. The Mets did not deny Chicago a chance to win a pennant; they merely prevented them from winning a division. If the National League had not had a two-division format in 1969, the Cubs would have finished third, eight games behind New York and one game behind the 93–69 Atlanta Braves.

Finishing last, the exact opposite of winning the pennant, was what the Cubs accomplished with ease after the postwar era. Between 1946 and 1990, Chicago finished in the National League's basement nine times, with back-to-back last-place finishes in 1948–49 and 1980–81. During the first 45 years of the twentieth century, the team's only last-place finish came in 1925, but they quickly rebounded to go 82–72 the following year, for a 14-game improvement.

Between 1900 and 1945, Chicago, like the Cardinals, finished second six times, but both teams took fewer second-place finishes than the New York Giants, who had 12, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, who tallied 11. Between 1945 and 1969, when the National League divided into two divisions, the Cubs never finished second. Meanwhile, during the Durocher era, they finished second in their division three times: in 1969, 1970, and 1972. During the same period, they finished second to the bottom 11 times. The Cubs' only seventh-place finish through World War II came in 1921.

During the first half of the twentieth century, first-division finishes (ending the season in the top half of the league's final standings) were commonplace for Chicago. Through the World War II years, the Cubs finished in fourth place or better in 32 out of 45 seasons, a feat that in the National League only New York, with 34, and Pittsburgh, with 37, could eclipse. Only one American League team through 1945 could match such success: the New York Yankees, who matched the Cubs at 32. During the postwar years, however, the Cubs managed only three first-division finishes, when they finished third in 1946, 1967, and 1968. In 1969 the value of a first-division finish was greatly diminished when the two major leagues adopted a four-division format.

During the twentieth century's first five decades, Chicago also held the distinction of securing more first-division finishes than any other team in the National League. Between 1926 and 1939, the Cubs strung together 14 straight first-division finishes, with an additional 13 straight between 1903 and 1915. During roughly the same period, from 1901 to 1913, the Pittsburgh Pirates tallied 13 straight first-division finishes, and they garnered another 12 straight between 1918 and 1929. The New York Giants' records in this category were 12 straight (1903–14) and ten straight (1916–25). In the American League, the New York Yankees put together 20 straight first-division seasons from 1926 to 1945, while the Philadelphia Athletics were first-division for nine straight seasons, from 1925 to 1933. After World War II, however, first-division finishes by the Chicago Cubs were rarities.

In the years following 1945, the words Cubs and second division became virtually synonymous. If one waters down the divisional format instituted in 1969 and accepts the notion that a fourth-place finish in a six-team division is the equivalent of a second-division finish under the old format, Chicago finished in the bottom half of the league in 33 of the 45 seasons between World War II and 1990. The team's sorry record includes a stretch of 20 consecutive seasons in the second division, from 1947 through 1966, while the majors were still in a two-league format. The only season during that stretch when the team was not under .500 was 1952, when they finished fifth with a record of 77–77. As a means of comparison, through the end of World War II, Chicago finished in the second division only 13 times, and in seven of those seasons, they finished fifth.

Babyboomers growing up with the Cubs in the 1950s nostalgically recall the "cellar pennant" races that Chicago engaged in with the equally inept Philadelphia Phillies or Pittsburgh Pirates. From 1947 through 1962, last place in the National League was the exclusive domain of the Cubs, the Pirates, or the Phillies. In seven of those seasons, Pittsburgh finished last; Chicago claimed the cellar six times, and Philadelphia, four. In 1962 the newly formed New York Mets moved into the basement and spent the next four seasons there, but after the Mets vacated the premises in 1966, the Cubs moved right back in, shortly after new manager Leo Durocher embarrassed himself by boasting that "the Cubs aren't an eighth place team."

Although the Cubs, the Phillies, the Pirates, and the Mets cohabited in the nether regions of the National League during the first 20 years following World War II, only the Cubs are remembered for futility, because unlike the Cubs, the other three teams balanced their early postwar failures with success as the years progressed. In the years following World War II, the Phillies became a very good, young team and actually won the pennant in 1950. During the latter part of the 1950s, they became weaker, and after the National League expanded in 1962, the Phillies were mired in mediocrity, never good enough to challenge the front-runners but managing to stay out of the cellar. By the mid-1970s, however, Philadelphia was once again a major league power. In 1983 they made it to the World Series, and in 1993 they won it with an entirely different team. Meanwhile, by the late 1950s, the Pirates had shed their futility, and in 1960 they won the World Series. In 1971 they repeated the feat, and they appeared in the play-offs several times thereafter. The Mets' level of incompetence was legendary when they first entered the league under manager Casey Stengel, but they permanently sealed Chicago's fate as an also-ran after 1969 and added some very successful seasons, including a World Series victory in 1986.

Attendance was another area in which the Cubs reigned supreme during the first half of the twentieth century. The Wrigley Field team was the first in the National League to draw more than a million fans, which they accomplished in 1927. Over the next 18 years, they repeated the feat six more times: in 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1938, and 1945. In 1932 and 1938 they fell just short of that total. It would not be until 1941 that another National League team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, would draw a million in attendance. The Dodgers also hit the mark in 1942 and 1945, the same year the New York Giants attracted a million fans for the first time in their history. In the American League, the New York Yankees, after moving into Yankee Stadium, which dwarfed Wrigley Field in capacity, logged nine seasons at the million mark. The only other American League team to accomplish this feat in the first part of the century was the Detroit Tigers.

Any way you look at it, a study of the Chicago Cubs during the twentieth century is a study in contrasts, a history of notable success through World War II followed by a mirror image of unmatched failure in the postwar years. Throughout the twentieth century, no other team would follow ten pennants in a 45-year span with nine last-place finishes in the next 45 years. No other team would enjoy six second-place finishes and 32 years in the first division followed by 12 seasons with second-to-last finishes and 36 seasons in the second division. For the Chicago Cubs, the watershed year was 1945—the last season of their five decades of success, and the beginning of many decades of failure.