The Chicago Cubs, one of the most successful baseball teams of the first decade of the twentieth century, won their first World Series in 1907--and their last in 1908.
The Chicago Cubs, a charter member and first pennant winner of the National League in 1876, seemed to thrive in the new 20th century's arrangement of two major leagues. With a still-standing record of 116 victories and winning percentage of .736 in 1906, the Cubs began a run of three consecutive league titles with World Series wins in 1907 and 1908 over the junior American League champions. Ironically, while the Cubs went on to an overall total of 16 pennants by 1945, they have gone almost a century without another world title.
A baseball-minded New York poet of the first decade of the 1900's immortalized three-quarters of the Chicago infield for frustrating too many Giants' rallies with double plays. As a result, shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman-manager Frank Chance are probably the only names that can be recalled by baseball fans from that distinguished team. But the 1907 roster also included Johnny Kling, considered one of the best catchers of his time, an outstanding outfielder in Frank Schulte, and two twenty-game winning pitchers, Orval Overall and Mordecai (Three Fingers) Brown. In fact, that pitching staff had three pitchers who threw 20 or more complete games each.
The Cubs receded only slightly from their record 1906 win total with 107 in 1907, winning the NL pennant by 17 games over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Eager to avenge their World Series loss to the crosstown rival White Sox, the Cubs found themselves facing instead the Detroit Tigers. The new AL champions were led by future charter Hall of Famer Ty Cobb, winner that year of the first of his 12 batting titles.
The Series opened with a 12-inning 3-3 tie, called because of darkness in that daylight game era. Limiting the Tigers to one run in each of the next three games, the Cubs took an overwhelming lead, and capped it with a 2-0 shutout by Brown in the finale. Their "forgotten" infielder, third baseman Harry Steinfeldt, led their offense with a .471 average and the team stole 18 bases. The young Cobb, who would compile a still-unequalled .367 average over 24 regular seasons, was held to .200 in this series.
The same teams squared off in the 1908 Series, with Chicago repeating by a 4-1 count. The Cubs would win their share of NL pennants in the next four decades with stars like Hack Wilson, Gabby Hartnett, Claude Passeau, and Phil Cavarretta, but they would not win another World Series in the 20th century.
