When Chicago Ruled Baseball: The Cubs-White Sox World Series of 1906 (review)

The 1906 World Series featured the Chicago Cubs, 116–36 in the regular season, and the Chicago White Sox, 93–58 in the regular season. The Cubs finished twenty games ahead of the second-place New York Giants, while the White Sox finished three games ahead of the second-place New York Highlanders. The Cubs starting lineup featured names familiar to baseball fans even one hundred years later: Steinfeldt, Tinker, Evers, and Chance in the infield; Schulte, Hofman, and Sheckard in the outfield; and Kling behind the plate. Starting pitchers were Mordecai Brown, Jack Pfiester, Ed Reulbach, and Orval Overall. The Cubs had the highest team batting average in the National League (.262) and scored eighty more runs than the next highest team total. The Cubs’ 283 stolen bases were second only to New York’s 288. They had the fewest errors in the league, and their 1.75 team ERA bested the next lowest, 2.21 by Pittsburgh. It appeared to some fans of the day that the Cubs would run away with the Series.

The White Sox struggled to play .500 baseball in the first half of the season but caught fire in August, winning nineteen games in a row. They started September in first place, but injuries caused them drop out of first late in September. They came back to clinch the league title on October 3. With a team batting average of .230, lowest in the American League, the White Sox were the only team in either league to have fewer than ten home runs for the season. The White Sox had strong pitching with a league-best thirty-two shutouts and the league’s second-best ERA at 2.13. Their starting pitching rotation featured Doc White, Nick Altrock, Ed Walsh, and Frank Owen.

The Series that year was a best-of-seven contest. The first two games were played in very cold weather, with the White Sox taking the first 2–1 and the Cubs winning the second 7–1. For the third game, the temperature warmed to forty-eight degrees, and the White Sox won 3–0. The Cubs won game four 1–0 in one hour and thirty-five minutes. With the temperature climbing to seventy-four degrees for Game 5, the White Sox won 8–6. The White Sox scored eight runs on fourteen hits in the sixth game to the Cubs’ three runs on seven hits to wrap up the Series victory. The White Sox outpitched the Cubs in the Series, 1.50 ERA to 3.40 ERA, and White Sox batters rapped out twenty-six hits in the last two games to the Cubs’ thirteen.

The author provides entertaining details of the teams and the six Series games, while he presents some context of the baseball history of that era. The historical background he touches upon includes the excitement surrounding the crosstown series, some of the industrial and cultural history of Chicago, aspects of the nature of baseball fandom at the time, the history of the Chicago National League team from the playing days of Albert Spalding through how the team of 1906 was built, newspaper stories at the time of the Series, information about the sportswriters covering the Series, biographical information on Charles Comiskey, the business of baseball at the time, the formation of the American League, and the pennant races that year. He uses a discussion of the upbringing and education of some of the ballplayers in the Series to dispel myths of the time about ballplayers, like claims that “they were all bums unable or unwilling to earn an honest living” or “that they all began as unlettered bumpkins” (45).

The last chapter discusses the lives of some of the players in the 1906 Series. The text closes with an afterward on the White Sox’s World Series victory in 2005. The book is recommended to readers interested in baseball in...