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The Chicago Cubs began playing baseball in 1878. The team has had many highs and many lows in their history. The Cubs were a force to be reckoned with early on, winning 16 pennants before 1946. The team brought home two World Series titles (1908 and 1917). The club had one of the best single seasons in the history of the National League four years after its formation in 1880. The team won .798 percent of its games. That season was only 84 games long, so the team finished with only 67 wins, but would have won 129 games if that had been a modern season.
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About The Chicago Cubs
The Cubs last World Series win was in 1918, but the team threatened several times after. It was not until the 1945 World Series against Detroit that the Cubs officially became cursed. As the story goes, local tavern owner Billy Sianis was kicked out of game four of the series with the Tigers for trying to bring in his pet goat. Sianis, upset, cursed the Cubs.
Since then the Cubs have handed their fans a century of close calls and humiliations. The ’69 Cubs and the talented roster of Ron Santo, Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, and Billy Williams led the National League East deep into the season, but a last-stretch crumble and a surge by the Miracle Mets found the Cubs listening to the playoffs from their radios.
The 1984 squad had a 2-0 lead in the NLCS and a team loaded with NL MVP Ryne Sandberg, Rick Sutcliffe, Scott Sanderson, and Ron Cey. The team could not finish off the San Diego Padres though, and surrendered three games in a row after only needed one more to go the World Series.
The young 1989 Cubs had Sandberg, Sutcliffe, Andre Dawson, Mark Grace, Shawon Dunston, and Greg Maddux. They won the East once again and had a lead in the NLCS again. But, once again the team collapsed with one victory to go to win the series. Three games later the San Francisco Giants were in the World Series.
Sandberg may have retired and Dunston may have been traded, but the Cubs brought in Swinging Sammy Sosa and Henry Rodriguez to replace them in 1998. The club, on the strength of Sosa’s 66 home runs, won the wild card, but was swept by the Braves in the first round.
The Cubs latest collapse was in 2007. Lou Pinniella took over as manager and took the surprising Cubs to the playoffs in a late season surge that caught and passed the Brewers. The team could not carry that spirit very far into the playoffs, losing in the first round to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a series that stranded 30 Cubbies on base.
The curse was supposed to end in 2008. The Cubs team that took the field at Wrigley was perhaps the best balanced team in either league. They had pitching, they had power, they had contact hitters, and they had speed. They also had the best record in the National League, as well as the entire MLB for much of the season. The first round continued to vex the team and the curse they seemed destined to reverse lived on to torment the fans another year.
The club comes into the 2009 season largely intact. Mark DeRosa and Kerry Wood are gone, but most everybody else remains. The team even managed to add Milton Bradley in the midst of an attempt to sell the team. The Chicago Cubs are coming into this season with the fire power and the pitching excellence to dominate once again.
Bradley joins a roster that already has Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Geovany Soto, and Alfonso Soriano. Hitting the ball out of Wrigley was never hard, but this group will make it seem ridiculously easy.
Aaron Miles is a downgrade power wise, but an upgrade in terms of pure contact and defense. The only everyday player who may not hit .300 or hit 25 homeruns is Reed Johnson. Basically, although nobody on the team is going to lead the league in homeruns, the Cubs could very easily score the most runs in the entire MLB.
The starting rotation starts with Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden, both excellent starters; then there is Ryan Dempster, a veteran coming off a career year; Ted Lilly follows as the solid fourth starter; and it looks like Sean Marshall, a converted reliever, end the rotation (though Jeff Samardzija is another possibility).
The bullpen restocked with Kevin Gregg and Luis Vizcaino and it looks like Carlos Marmol and his unfathomable fastball will close the games. Basically, they should go into 2009 with very good odds to win the World Series again.
