Are The Chicago Cubs Cursed?
Do the Cubbies Have Their Own Version of the Curse of the Bambino?
Jul 2, 2007
Are the Chicago Cubs cursed? Nobody would have thought so 100 years ago. That's because from 1906 through 1910, the Cubs were the best team in all of baseball. In 1906, they posted the game's best-ever record when they won 116 games and lost only 36. Although they lost the 1906 World Series to their cross-town rival White Sox, the Cubs bounced back and won the Series in both 1907 and 1908, hammering Ty Cobb's Detroit Tigers each time.
Cartainly, these Cubs were not cursed. These were the 'Tinkers to Evers to Chance' teams memorialized by Franklin Pierce Adams in his 1910 poem about the Cubs double play combination. These were the Cubs that won yet another pennant in 1910, and made it to a fourth World Series in five years, something only the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers have since accomplished. Although the Philadelphia Athletics won the Series in five games that year, the Chicago Cubs were still flying high and seemed anything but cursed.
Then everything began to change.
Another Curse of the Babe?
The Cubs went through a brief lull in the mid-teens, but rebounded in 1918 when they made it back to the Fall Classic. This time they were slated to play the Boston Red Sox, who were shooting for their fourth World Series in seven seasons. The starting pitcher for the Red Sox in Game 1 was a 23-year old pudgy lefthander named Babe Ruth. Although he'd won 24 games the year before, his baby-face and youthful exuberance prompted Chicago's hard-nosed veterans to hurl embarassing insults and incendiary epithets at the young Bambino. Ruth ignored their jeers, proving his mettle with a complete game shutout in that first game.
Ruth's peformance set the tone for the Series, as he and the rest of the Red Sox pitching staff held Chicago to just 1.6 runs per game as Boston took the Series 4 games to 2. Ruth himself went 2-0 with a 1.06 ERA in 2 games and 17 innings. As he would prove years later, however, Babe Ruth was not done tormenting the Cubs.
Four More Crushing Defeats
The Cubs reached the World Series every three years from 1929 through 1938, and were beaten soundly each time. In all, Chicago lost 16 out of 19 games. The most interesting anecdote from this time period is an epic tale involving Babe Ruth, a pointed finger, and one very long home run. Here is how it usually goes.
During a Babe Ruth at-bat in Game 3 of the the 1932 Series, the Cubs bench players heckled him mercilessly for the first four pitches in his fifth inning at-bat against pitcher Charlie Root, who worked the slugger into a 2-2 count. What happened next seems to be determined by what the observers and historians chooses to believe.
Some say that Ruth extended his arm and pointed his finger toward the center field wall, thus calling his shot by predicting he would hit a home run to center field on the next pitch. Others say Ruth merely pointed his finger at the Cubs dugout in an act of mock aggression, continuing his jawing with the Chicago bench.
Eyewitnesses seem split down the middle, Yankee fans swear that Ruth called it and Cubs fans scoffing at the notion. A film of the event surfaced in the early 1990s, and Ruth can clearly be seen with him arm outstrecthed, pointing. But because of the angle of the camera, it is impossible to determine the direction in which the Babe was pointing. This, of course, only adds to the argument, and ultimately, to the entire myth.
Regardless of where George Herman Ruth really pointed that day, one thing is certain. On the next pitch, he hit a mammoth 490-foot home run over the center field wall. It was his second dinger of the game. In fact, the Babe dominated the Cubs in the '32 Series, batting .333, hitting 2 home runs, knocking in 6 RBI and scoring 6 runs in the Yankees four game sweep.
After Chicago was swept again in the 1938 Series, the team's fan base became increasingly downhearted. They were beginning to wonder, "Was this team cursed?" After all, despite six trips to the World Series since their 1908 victory, the team had repeatedly come up empty. By the 1940s, fans in Boston were beginning to feel the Red Sox might be jinxed because the team sold Ruth before he truly hit his prime. Hence, "The Curse of the Bambino". Perhaps, the same thing was going on in Chicago. Were the Cubs suffering from a curse of their own? Had somebody put the whammy on the Cubs?
Not yet.
