1908

That's a long time ago! Wikipedia has a list of 41 people who are 110 years old or older. The oldest was just shy of 6 years old when the Cubs last won a Series. (My dad was just short of age 3.)

The World Series continues with game 3 tonight with the Series tied at 1 win apiece. It will be the first game in Chicago in 71 years. That means that after tonight we can stop all this craziness of first times until one of them wins. Which will happen.

The 1908 Cubs had four future Hall of Famers:

• Mordecai Brown, Pitcher
• Frank Chance, 1B and manager
• Johnny Evers, 2B
• Joe Tinker, SS

The last three in reverse order are the most famous double play combination in history. They were immortalized in a poem in 1910, by writer Franklin Pierce Adams, known as Baseball's Sad Lexicon. He was bemoaning the skill of these three infielders against his New York Giants.

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double-
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

The trio played together at Chicago from 1902, including four National League pennants from 1906 to 1910. Some credit the poem for their election to the Hall of Fame.

1908 was the year of the infamous "Merkle's Boner" play that allowed the Chicago Cubs to reach the World Series after beating the New York Giants... in a one-game "playoff", actually the makeup game for the tie that the Merkle play had caused. -Wikipedia

Merkle's Boner refers to the notorious base running mistake committed by rookie Fred Merkle of the New York Giants in a game against the Chicago Cubs in 1908. Merkle's failure to advance to second base on what should have been a game-winning hit led instead to a forceout at second and a tied game. The Cubs later won the makeup game, which proved decisive as they beat the Giants by one game to win the National League pennant in 1908. It has been described as "the most controversial game in baseball history." -Wikipedia

Some credit that for the curse that would keep the Cubs winless in the World Series for at least the next 107 years. After all, the Cubs would appear in seven more World Series- 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938, and 1945, but, as we know, lost them all.

This was the least attended World Series in history as the Cubs beat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers in five games.