How Long It's Been: The Chicago Cubs Won a World Series

It has happened: The Chicago Cubs have won a World Series. Tonight, in a Game 7 that went back and forth, with heroes and goats, comebacks and chokes, and even a rain delay as they tried to go to extra innings, the Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 8-7, getting the last out as the winning run was at the plate.

The Curse of the Billy Goat? The Curse of Fred Merkle? If either ever existed, they are now gone.

True, the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005, only 11 years ago. But until then, the City of Chicago had no World Series wins since the Sox did it in 1917.

The Cubs? Before tonight, the last time they won a World Series was on October 14, 1908, beating the Detroit Tigers 2-0, in Game 5 at Bennett Park in Detroit.

That's 108 years and 19 days. How long has that been?

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Admittedly, the double-play combination of shortstop Joe Tinker, 2nd baseman Johnny Evers and 1st baseman Frank Chance should not have gone into the Hall of Fame together. They were all good players, but none was a clear choice to go in as a player. Chance was a player-manager, and was definitely worthy of the Hall as a manager.

However, all 3, plus Hall of Fame pitcher Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, pitchers Jack Pfeister and Ed Reulbach, and catcher Johnny "Noisy" Kling would have been easy choices for the NL All-Star Team, had there been an All-Star Game back then.

The World Series had only been played 5 times. The Cubs had won in 1907 and 1908. The Boston Americans, by 1907 the Red Sox, won in 1903. The Giants won in 1905. And the Cubs had lost to the crosstown Chicago White Sox in 1906.

World Series won since 1908: Yankees 27 (including 1932 and 1938 against the Cubs), Cardinals 11, Athletics 9 (5 in Philadelphia, including 1910 and 1929 against the Cubs, 4 in Oakland), Red Sox 7 (including 1918 against the Cubs), Giants 7 (4 in New York, 3 in San Francisco), Dodgers 6 (1 in Brooklyn, 5 in Los Angeles), Cincinnati Reds 5, Pittsburgh Pirates 5, Tigers 4 (including 1935 and 1945 against the Cubs), Baltimore Orioles 3, Minnesota Twins 3 (1 as the Washington Senators), Braves 3 (1 each in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta), White Sox 2, Cleveland Indians 2, Toronto Blue Jays 2, New York Mets 2, Phillies 2, Miami Marlins 2, Kansas City Royals 2, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 1, Arizona Diamondbacks 1... Cubs 1.

It makes it worse when you realize that the Angels, Mets, Royals, Blue Jays, Marlins and Diamondbacks didn't exist in 1908. Hell, even as late as 1960, none of them existed. The Blue Jays, Marlins and Diamondbacks didn't exist in 1976. The Marlins and Diamondbacks didn't exist in 1992. The Diamondbacks didn't exist in 1997!

The Cubs then played their games at West Side Park. The Red Sox at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. There are no major league ballparks in use now that were in use then. By 1938, when the Phillies moved out of Baker Bowl to groundshare with the A's at Shibe Park, none of the MLB stadiums of 1908 would still be in use. Indeed, in just 7 short years, by 1915, only the Phillies and the Cardinals would still be using the same stadium they were using in 1908.

There was football, basketball and hockey, but very little of any of them that was professional. There was no NFL, no NBA, no NHL. There was a Stanley Cup, and it had been awarded to the Montreal Wanderers. Aside from the 16 MLB teams from 1908 that are still around today, no major league team in place today was in place then. The Montreal Canadiens were a year away from their foundation. The Heavyweight Champion of the World was Tommy Burns, 2 months away from being dethroned by Jack Johnson, who thus became the 1st black Heavyweight Champ.

The 16 teams were confined to 10 cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis. There were no teams south of Washington, Cincinnati and St. Louis. There were no teams more than 2 miles west of the Mississippi River.

There were no concrete and steel stadiums: Shibe Park in Philadelphia and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh would open the next year. There were no lighted stadiums, no artificial fields, no domes (retractable or otherwise), and no nonwhite players.

Half the 10 members of the 1st openly professional baseball team, the 1869-70 Cincinnati Red Stockings, were still alive: Catcher Doug Allison, 1st baseman Charlie Gould, shortstop George Wright, right fielder Cal McVey and utility man Dick Hurley.

Honus Wagner, Napoleon Lajoie, Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb, as well as Tinker, Evers, Chance and Brown, were the biggest stars in baseball. Babe Ruth was 13 years old, Lou Gehrig was 5, and Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Hank Greenberg, Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller weren't born yet.

The Olympics had just been held in London. There were no Winter Olympics yet. Nor was there a World Cup -- indeed, in most countries, soccer was still in its infancy. Manchester United had won the English Football League for the 1st time, and Wolverhampton Wanderers had won the FA Cup. Since those London Games, the Olympics have been held in America 7 times, France 4 times; 3 each in Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada; twice each in Britain, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Australia, and Russia; and once each in Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Mexico, Bosnia, Korea, Spain, China and Brazil.

There were 46 States in the Union: Oklahoma had been admitted in 1907, New Mexico and Arizona would have to wait until 1912, and Alaska and Hawaii until 1959. The President of the United States at the time the Chicago Cubs last won the World Series was Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt. Between the death of Grover Cleveland on June 24, 1908 and his succession by William Howard Taft on March 4, 1909, TR was the only living President.

Taft was then Secretary of War, the position now known as Secretary of Defense. Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton University, Warren Harding was running a newspaper, Calvin Coolidge was in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Herbert Hoover was an independent mining consultant, Franklin Roosevelt was practicing corporate law (making his eventual New Deal stance impossible to imagine at the time), Harry Truman was farming, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was in high school.

Lyndon Johnson was 46 days old. John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump weren't born yet.

The Governor of Illinois was Charles S. Deneen, of New York Charles Evans Hughes, and of New Jersey John Franklin Fort. The Mayor of Chicago was Fred A. Busse, and of New York George B. McClellan Jr., son of the infamous Civil War General. Chicago has since had 14 Mayors -- which becomes more stunning when you realize that Richard J. and Richard M. Daley, father and son, were Mayor for 43 of those years. Illinois has had 20 Governors.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a pair of Scandinavians: Klas Pontus Arnoldson of Sweden and the Swedish Peace and Arbitration League; and Fredrik Bajer of Denmark, of the International Peace Bureau.

The Pope was Pius X. The Prime Minister of Canada was Wilfrid Laurier, and of Britain Herbert H. Asquith. The monarch of Britain was King Edward VII -- as long as his great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne, that was 4 monarchs ago. Germany was ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Russia by Czar Nicholas II. (Both "Kaiser" and "Czar" mean "Emperor," and both derive from the Latin name "Caesar.") Both the Kaiser and the Czar were 1st cousins of King Edward's son, the Prince of Wales, who would succeed him in 2 years as King George V. Just 4 years after that, they'd be at war. There have since been 19 Presidents (and nearly a 20th), 5 British monarchs, and 10 Popes.

Indeed, aside from Switzerland, every country in Europe -- including some then dominated by Russia, such as Poland and Finland, and some by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as the 2 nations that would later make up Czechoslovakia and the 7 that would later make up Yugoslavia -- was ruled by a monarch, some of them with more limited powers than others. Just a little over 10 years later, the only European monarchies left would be Britain, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Romania -- all heavily limited. No "Off with his head!" decrees from a King or Queen were binding in any of those.

Major novels of 1908 included A Room With a View by E.M. Forster, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr., The Wind In the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and The Blue Lagoon by H. De Vere Stacpoole.

Each of these books would eventually be made into at least one major motion picture, but, at this point, there wasn't really a "film industry" like we understand that term today. And the films that were released were silent, black & white, and tended to be short. But the year did see the production of film versions of William Shakespeare's plays Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, and of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Raymond Chandler was an unpublished reporter in London. J.R.R. Tolkien was 16 years old. C.S. Lewis was about to turn 10. Vladimir Nabokov was 9. Margaret Mitchell was about to turn 8. John Steinbeck was 6. Ian Fleming was 4 months old. Gene Roddenberry wasn't born yet.

No one had yet heard of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Boston Blackie, Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple, the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, Ellery Queen, Simon Templar, Dick Tracy, Doc Savage or Nero Wolfe.

Although the character of the Scarlet Pimpernel -- a progenitor of such men masquerading as both foppish aristocrats and fighters for justice as Zorro and Batman -- had premiered in 1905, the idea of the "superhero" was far off. Friedrich Nietzsche had written of the Übermensch (Overman) in 1883, but George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play Man and Superman had little to do with such ideas. And Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster wouldn't be born until 1914.

There wasn't yet music charts to determine the most popular song of a week or a year. Popular songs of 1908 included "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?" (Irish songs were big then), "When Highland Mary Danced the Highland Fling" (Scottish songs were also big then), and "I'm a Yiddish Cowboy" (written not by anyone Jewish, but with words by Edgar Leslie and music by Al Piantadosi and Halsey K. Mohr).

Perhaps it was revenge for "Dorando"? The song was by a young Jewish songwriter named Irving Berlin, mocking Dorando Pietri, the Italian runner who collapsed near the end of the Olympic marathon, and was illegally helped to his feet and the Gold Medal by officials (including Sherlock Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), before being disqualified and having the Gold go instead the runner-up, American Johnny Hayes. In that time when even Irving Berlin could be less than enlightened, he sang, "Dorando, he's-a good-a for not."

Oh, yes, it was also a good year for songwriter Jack Norworth. With his then-wife, Nora Bayes (who would later sing the hit version of George M. Cohan's World War I song "Over There"), he wrote "Shine On Harvest Moon." And with Albert Von Tilzer, he wrote "Good Evening, Caroline," "I'm Glad I'm Married," "Smarty," and "You Will Have to Sing an Irish Song." Aside from "Shine On Harvest Moon," None of those songs is well-remembered today.

But, in 1908, Norworth and Von Tilzer also wrote another song that would become baseball's anthem: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Despite having been inspired to write it by seeing a sign on the new (opened in 1904, and a ride cost a nickel) New York Subway saying, "BASE BALL TO-DAY POLO GROUNDS," Norworth never attended a Major League Baseball game until 1940. 

Any one of those songs could have been played on a phonograph, or "Gramophone," as it tended to get nicknamed, for the leading brand of manufacture at the time, a la "Kleenex" and "Frigidaire." Hence, the trophy for music awards would, in 1958, become a gold-plated gramophone, or a "Grammy."

But, in 1908, they wouldn't have been played on the radio. Radio broadcasting wouldn't be possible for another few years. Television? No way. The telephone was still considered a luxury: Only 8 percent of U.S. homes had it. Only 14 percent had a bathtub. Air conditioning was in its infancy, and very few buildings had it. Computers? Forget it, unless you want to count adding machines and early cash registers.

The automobile was also a luxury, with only 8,000 in existence. This would be the year in which Henry Ford introduced the Model T, though not yet the assembly-line production that would make it quick to build and thus easier to sell. It cost $825 -- about $20,000 in today's money. The average house cost about $2,500 -- around $61,000. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, introduced only 11 years earlier, was 86.

The Wright Brothers, shortly before the Cubs' victory, had made 2 dramatic demonstrations of their current Wright Flyer, at Le Mans, France, thus earning European recognition as the first true pilots and aircraft builders; and at Fort Myer outside Washington. But in the Fort Myer demonstration, Orville Wright piloted with a 26-year-old Army Lieutenant, Thomas Selfridge, and crashed. Orville barely survived. Selfridge didn't, becoming the 1st person to die in a plane crash. So heavier-than-air flight was still in the experimental stage. Space travel? In spite of the fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, no one had yet launched a rocket toward space.

Marijuana, cocaine, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at drugstores. There were no photocopiers, credit cards or automatic teller machines. Artificial organs were not yet possible. Transplantation of organs was not possible. The distribution of antibiotics was not possible: If you got any kind of infection, you could easily die. There was no polio vaccine. Insulin was not yet used to treat diabetes. There was no birth control pill, but there was no Viagra, either.

In the Autumn of 1908, the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Ottoman Empire, the 1st domino to fall in what became The Great War (known today as World War I) in 6 years. Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottomans, declaring Ferdinand I as their Tsar (that's how they spelled "Tsar"). Puyi ascended the throne of China at age 2, and turned out to be that nation's last Emperor. The Christian Science Monitor was first published. And Wild West outlaws Robert Parker and Harry Lonagabuagh, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, were reported killed by the Bolivian Army, although this is disputed.

Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Wyatt Earp, Geronimo, William James, William S. Gilbert (though not Arthur Sullivan), Carrie Nation, Joseph Pulitzer, Joseph Lister, Clara Barton, Bram Stoker, Salvation Army founder William Booth, and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" composer Julia Ward Howe were still alive.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Henri Becquerel, and early American theater impresario Tony Pastor, and Dickey Pearce, one of the 1st professional baseball players in the 1860s, apparent inventor of the bunt and perhaps the 1st great shortstop, died. Novelist Richard Wright, and actress Carole Lombard, and All-Star Yankee 3rd baseman Red Rolfe were born.

October 14, 1908: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series. They had 107 chances to win another. (Well, 106: There was no World Series in 1994.) They finally got it on their 108th.

People told me that the Cubs are set up very well, with both a strong current team and a deep farm system, and that they'll be contenders for years, and will win a Pennant for sure in that time.

Yeah, that's what we were told in 1969, and 1984, and 2003. It didn't happen then. Men have grown old and died waiting for it to happen.

Now, it has. Enjoy it. Just don't make asses of yourselves, the way Boston Red Sox fans did after 2004, and New York Rangers fans did after 1994.