The Cubs: A Review Essay

George Castle. The Million-to-One Team: Why the Chicago Cubs Haven't Won a Pennant Since 1945. South Bend in: Diamond Communications, 2000. 337pp. Cloth, $29.95.

David Claerbaut. Durocher's Cubs: The Greatest Team That Didn't Win. Dallas: Taylor Publishing, 2000. 226pp. Cloth, $22.95.

Carrie Muskat. Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Chicago Cubs. Lincolnwood il: Compiled by Contemporary Books, 2001. 292pp. Cloth, $21.95.

John C. Skipper. Take Me Out to the Cubs Game: 35 Former Ballplayers Speak of Losing at Wrigley. Jefferson nc: McFarland & Company, 2000. 248pp. Paper, $29.95.

Warren Brown. The Chicago Cubs. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001. 256pp. Paper, $15.95.

Bill Hageman. Baseball Between the Wars: A Pictorial Tribute to the Men Who Made the Game in Chicago from 1909 to 1947. Lincolnwood il: Contemporary Books, 2001. 292pp. Cloth, $29.95.

One of the democratic qualities of baseball is that every team starts out even at spring training. The winter is thawing, and fans all over the world look forward to a season full of possibilities. Everyone has a chance, at least theoretically, to win the pennant. Everyone, it seems, but the Chicago Cubs. At least for the past fifty or so years.

Perhaps it's that name, which denotes cute and cuddly. Compare this to the Windy City's football team, the Bears, Monsters of the Midway. Which sounds more intimidating?

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Cubs could be expected to win the pennant on a fairly regular basis. The 1906 team, featuring such stalwarts as Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, Frank Chance, Harry Steinfeldt, and Johnny Kling as well as topnotch pitching from Three Finger Brown, Jack Fiester, and Ed Reulbach, compiled a 116-36 record, which is still the standard of excellence nearly 100 years later. They did lose the World Series that year, but they won back-to-back Fall Classics the following two years. They also won in 1910 and 1918 and then every third year from 1929 to1938.

That was then...

This is now: when it comes to "championship futility," the two teams we read about most are the Boston Red Sox and the Cubs. As well known as the "Curse of the Bambino" is, it's nothing compared to the inability of the Cubbies to keep playing into October, let alone win the whole shooting match. The BoSox, at least, have made it to the Series as recently as 1986. The last Cubs appearance? Back in 1945. And even that one, according to George Castle, author of The Million-to-One Team, was almost a default, due in large part to the wartime absence of Stan Musial and some of his Cardinal teammates.

To put it in some perspective, the Cubs have not won the World Series since Ford invented the ModelT.

Maybe it's all for the best. In "The Last Pennant Before Armageddon," W.P. Kinsella postulates how the end of the world will come when the Cubs next play in the World Series. In fact, they are lauded in fiction as the poster team for dreams unfulfilled.

One area in which the Cubs are among the league leaders is the amount of bookshelf space devoted to the team. Within the past two years, a seemingly disproportionate number of titles on the team from the Northside of the Windy City have appeared, several of which are included here.

The Million-to-One Team is the most analytic in its criticism of the foibles, almost all of which Castle blames on the Cubs ownership. Phil Wrigley was the antithesis of the crosstown White Sox owner Bill Veeck. "P.W." played everything close to the vest, not wanting to take too many chances, fiscally conservative to the point of penuriousness, racially conservative to the point of passing on black players who could have improved theteam.

One...