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8 CHI-TOWN FANDEMONIUM
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8. Chi-town Fandemonium Ba seba l l ma de Ch ic a g oa ns ma d in 1906. That year the city’s two professional baseball teams qualified for the World Series, making Chicago the first city to accomplish this feat. As baseball journalist Hugh S. Fullerton explained at the time, “Chicago is the baseball center of the earth.”1 Indicating the heady times, when it became clear that both squads had locked up their respective pennants, Chicagoans could be seen cheering on street corners and standing in jubilation in “elevated trains.”2 The first article here, from the Chicago Tribune, captured the “mad” thrill for baseball that permeated the city as its two professional teams closed in on their pennants. Seeing these two teams pitted against each other was novel enough in 1906— the annual “City Series” between the two, which took place after the regular season, had only been occurring since 1903—but seeing them matched up for Major League Baseball’s outright championship was truly unique. Indeed, the 1906 World Series remains a fixture in both Cubbie and White Sox lore. Street ticket-prices to the games reached $20 ($456 in today’s dollars), and the controversial Alderman, “Bathhouse” John Coughlin, even shut down City Hall to enable his cityworker cronies to attend.3 The series didn’t just generate cash on the street. New owner Charles “Webb” Murphy had bought a controlling interest in the Cubs in 1905from the retiring James Hart (a baseball innovator credited with changing the shape of home plate, among other things) for $105,000, one-hundred-thousand of which came from a loan that Murphy was given by his friend Charles P. Taft—half-brother of and advisor to future president William Howard Taft. Thanks to the amazing 1906 season—some say Murphy cleared $165,000 in year one—Murphy was able to pay Taft back in full immediately. Now, you might think the only owner in Cubs history to have won a World Series—actually two of them—would’ve been a beloved figure in Chicago. But Murphy, who owned the team from 1905 to 1913 , wasn’t. Some say Murphy, a former writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, got a bad rap because he didn’t cow-tow to his former brethren in the newspaper business, or to the whims of baseball stars, or to the rich. That’s what Murphy thought. Explaining his lack of popularity by the end of his reign as Cubs owner he wrote, “It is some task to run a championship ball club and cater to 25‘prima donna’ ball players. When night comes you are all in and don’t care for wine parties or bacchanalian revels—at least I did not.”4 Others say Murphy was cantankerous and that he alienated fans by alienating beloved Cubbies like Frank Chance, whom he fired as manager in 1912, and Johnny Evers, whom he fired in 1914. Plus, Murphy did things like choosing not to build a visitor’s clubhouse at the West Side Park, though the league expected him to, and making journalists at the 1908 World Series sit in the back row of the grandstand, which didn’t help on the public relations front.5 “Best Part of the Cubs’ Eastern Invasion Is Still to Come.” Editorial cartoon detailing the Cubs’ fast start to the 1907 season. Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1907. 82 f r om t h e c ol t s t o t h e dy na st y [174.129.190.10] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:58 GMT) After the 1913 season, having fired Chance the year before and facing financial pressure from the up-start Federal League as well as peer-pressure from National League president John Tener and fellow owners, many of whom wanted him out of baseball, Murphy sold his interest in the Cubs to his original financier, Taft, for half-a-million dollars. Later in life, when asked if he’d been pushed out of the game, Murphy said, “I sold out to Mr. Charles P. Taft and without force, but for what every other thing of value is obtained—a price. Imagine a man being forced to take $500,000 for a baseball franchise, with a war on and money being sunk by everybody concerned in large gobs.” Murphy took a good chunk of that half a million to build the larger-than-life Murphy Theater in Wilmington, Ohio. To...