By Shaun Delaney
roslyn@antonmediagroup.com
Break up the Cubs? As outlandish as this might sound to modern ears, it was likely a common cry of baseball fans during the first half of the 20th century, when the Chicago team steamrolled their opponents in a sustained display of excellence unrivaled by even the most powerful Yankee dynasties. These were your great-great-great grandfather’s Cubs.
Hal Bock, an East Williston resident and a distinguished baseball historian and writer, details these Cubs teams in his new book entitled The Last Chicago Cubs Dynasty.
Bock’s love of baseball started early in his childhood when his father took the eight-year-old boy to the old Polo Grounds in Northern Manhattan to see their favorite team, the New York Giants. Bock’s eyes gravitated towards a place where he would become well-acquainted.
“I’m looking around, trying to take this all in, and my eye catches this structure that’s hanging off the second deck, and I asked my father ‘What is that?”’ and he said “That’s the press box,’” Bock recalled.
Bock became hooked and soon realized that he had found his calling.
“It beats heavy lifting,” he joked. “What’s a better job than writing about baseball? That’s what I always wanted to do.”
Bock became particularly interested in the Dead Ball Era, a rough and tumble era of hard drinking, fistfights and colorful personalities. Home runs were scarce and performance-enhancing drugs were nonexistent. Speed and strategy were the hallmarks of a winning team.
“I’ve been fascinated with that period of baseball history. To me, the game that was played in that era was a purer game,” said Bock. “Plus the fact that the poor Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908, when Theodore Roosevelt was president. They haven’t been in a World Series since 1945. That’s a long time and yet there was a time when this was the best team in baseball.”
The 1906-10 Chicago Cubs were an overwhelming force in the National League. In 1906 they won an astounding 116 games; all the more remarkable considering they only played in 152 games, 10 fewer than today’s clubs. In 1907 they won 107 games, and over a five-year period they won four pennants, two World Series (1907,1908) and had the greatest winning percentage of any team in baseball history.
Another aspect that drew Bock to this team were the players. For all of their on-field chemistry and talent, their relationship off the field was anything but friendly.
“And that’s part of the charm of that team. They were all a bunch of jerks,” said Bock. “They hated each other. Well, not all of them, but some of them.”
A case in point is the legendary infield of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Joe Chance, also known as “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon.” Tinker and Evers weren’t even on speaking terms for six years due to an incident where Tinker broke Evers’ finger with an intentionally faster than normal throw from shortstop to second base. This was precipitated by an incident where the contentious Evers grabbed a cab to the ballpark for himself, leaving his teammates in the dust and drawing the ire of Tinker.
Anecdotes like these are plentiful in Bock’s book, something that he feels is regrettably absent from today’s game.
“Stuff like that, you don’t have that today. Today it’s button-down baseball,” he said.
Bock talked about the famed pitcher “Three Finger” Mordecai Brown, another stalwart of those vaunted Cubs teams, who turned his physical abnormality into a lethal occupational weapon, making the ball spin in hitherto unforeseen directions and winning 239 games in the process.
The Cubs lofty position as one of the preeminent teams in baseball may have continued if not for the incident that came to be known as the “Curse of the Billy Goat.” Bock writes about that fateful day that many believe forever doomed the North Siders. A local tavern owner supposedly got thrown out of Game 4 of the 1945 World Series after someone complained about his malodorous pet goat. The vexed man then wrote a letter to the Cub’s owner after the team’s 1945 World Series loss, saying ‘Now who stinks?’” He continued to say that because of the poor treatment suffered by him and his goat, the Cubs would never win another World Series.
“They tried like hell to have the curse removed,” said Bock. “The great Ernie Banks took a goat and walked around the field on Opening Day one year.”
Bock conducted long hours of research for his new book, including reading baseball history books and old newspapers. He credits his mentors for much of the knowledge he gleaned from them over the years.
“Once I became a professional, I always hung out with writers,” said Bock. “I was fascinated by the Chicago writers who were a very important group within my industry—John Carmichael, Bill Gleason, Jerome Holtzman—who covered these teams. So I would sit and listen to their stories, and a lot of what they told me, I had in my head.”
The Last Chicago Cubs Dynasty by Hal Bock, is published by Rowman & Littlefield and will be in stores on April 16. It is available now for purchase on Amazon.
