Not In 100 Years

The top three reasons why the Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908.

The championship drought on the North Side of Chicago has absolutely, positively nothing to do with black cats, curses, goats, or Steve Bartman. Those are all piss-poor excuses and it drives me nuts when I hear them offered up as legitimate reasons as to why the Cubs haven’t won. It is all a bunch of folk lore and quite frankly, I’m sick of it all being used as reasons why they haven’t won a World Series in 100 years.

I’ve talked with a number of Cubs fans and people associated with the team and have come to the conclusion that there are three reasons why they haven’t won since 1908: it all boils down to bad management, lack of modern equipment, and the Chicago media.

The Cubs’ owner during their last visit to the World Series was P.K. Wrigley. While Wrigley, God rest his soul, was a hell of a businessman, he lacked baseball knowledge. Wrigley instituted the unsuccessful “college of coaches” during his time as owner. It was an absolute failure from the get-go.

The results of this system led to a lack of direction for the players and the results were heavily scrutinized by the media. The Cubs never improved their win-loss ratio under the system. While the Cubs struggled mightily to win, the Wrigley Gum Company flourished. The college of coaches ended as a joke and Wrigley would bring in Leo Durocher as the sole manager of the Cubs in 1966.

Despite Wrigley’s best efforts, the Cubs would never see another World Series with him as owner. Like I said, Wrigley’s problem was that he was a businessman and was concerned with profits while winning came in at a close second. The Cubs would fair no better after the Wrigley family sold them to the Chicago Tribune in 1981.

The Cubs are a victim yet again of profits over winning. The Tribune, in the 28 years that they have owned the Cubs, have also failed to produce a championship. Many fans have often pointed to the idea of profits before winning. The Cubs have reached the post-season six times with the Trib company at the helm, and most importantly still have a big fat zero in the World Series column.

They have claimed that winning is in their best interest, which would make sense because Cubs + World Series Championship = money. For the life of me, it doesn’t make sense. If money is what they care about, then why in the world didn’t they give the Cubs GM’s over the years carte blanche? 

Dallas Green had the right idea, as he was the first GM to get the Cubs back to the post-season since 1945. However, in the long run Green failed to get the Cubs to the World Series, as did his predecessors Jim Frey, Larry Himes, Ed Lynch, and Andy MacPhail, all of whom failed in their quests to obtain world championships.

To Jim Hendry’s credit, he has done the best out of all of them, with three playoff appearances since taking over the job in July 2002. Hendry has spent quite freely in the past few years, with the hopes that his big spending will put the Cubs where they need to be, but he still has nothing to show for it.

Don’t fret Cubs fans, better days are ahead. As we speak, the Cubs are being sold by the Tribune to none other then Cubs fan Tom Ricketts. Even though Ricketts’ father founded T.D. Ameritrade, it is safe to say that the Ricketts family, who are Cubs fans, have the best interest of the Cubs’ at heart. Tom lived above a bar in Wrigleyville and even met his wife in the bleachers at Wrigley. Sounds like a match made in heaven.

Aside from poor management over the years, the Cubs have also fallen victim to a lack of modern-day facilities and equipment, as well as a heavy game day schedule pre-1988. Now I’m not advocating getting rid of Wrigley Field, just for the simple fact that if the Red Sox organization can maintain Fenway [which is older than Wrigley], then the Cubs can keep Wrigley around just by making the necessary repairs and upgrades.

The Cubs were the victims of patriotism during WWII, as Wrigley donated the lighting system to the war effort. This would’ve made them the first team in the big leagues to have lights instead of the last. Fans are quick to point out that a lack of night games vs. day games has hurt the Cubs. This is strike one.

Players and fans believe that the heavy game day schedule is to blame for the Cubs' undoing. George Castle, author of Entangled in Ivy and Sweet Lou and the Cubs, said, “Players working 9 to 5 at home, mostly 4 to midnight on the road, get worn down from the constant body-clock shifting over the long season.”

The Cubs have been granted permission to play more night games since the inception of lights in ’88, but they still play the fewest out of any team in the majors.

“Worse yet, the Cubs were barred from playing Friday nights at home to protect the local clubs. If the Cubs played a night game on the road Thursday, they'd have to zip back home, sleep five hours and be at the ballpark the next morning,” said Castle. Strike two.

The Cubs also lack batting cages beneath the dugouts. Most modern parks are built with batting cages just beneath the dugouts before the clubhouses. The best the Cubs are offered is a net that is lowered from the ceiling in the clubhouse during games. This makes it harder for pinch hitters to stay loose. Strike three.

The only other batting cage is beneath the right field bleachers and is not accessible during games. Perhaps this is something the Ricketts family will look into changing once they become the new owners. 

The biggest reason I believe the Cubs haven’t won a championship in over a century is because of the media. That’s right, the media. They’re the ones peddling this garbage about the Cubs being cursed.

Now, players say they don’t read what’s in the paper and I’ll buy that to a certain degree, but you can’t tell me that being reminded about the fact they haven’t won in so long doesn’t mess with their psyche’s just a bit; and over time they actually start buying into the absurd notion that there is a curse.

As soon as a miscue or something bizarre happens, the conversation turns into talk about a man and his damn goat. It is just beyond me how much the media continues to fuel this notion. While we’re on the subject of "curses," lets talk about The Red Sox for a moment. There was hardly a word ever spoken a curse until Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy wrote a book about it in the ‘90s.

The same can be said for the “Curse of the Billy Goat.” Daily News writer Mike Royko brought up the notion as a joke to explain the failures of the Cubs, along with Dave Condon of the Tribune, who wrote humorous pieces about the "curse." The idea of a curse was viewed as a joke, but it has since grown some legs and taken on a life of its own.

To make matters worse, if the Cubs are lucky enough to reach the playoffs, not only do they have deal with the Chicago media, but they now have to field the same type of questions from the national media. The sooner they can tune out media’s negativity, the sooner they can win a championship. It is all a mental thing, if you ask me. If they just go out there and play baseball and forget about the silliness and hoopla, they should be in good shape.

Winning championships has more to do with good fundamental play than it does with goats or silly superstitions. People can believe what they want when it comes to why the Cubs seem to fold at the most inopportune times, but I’m placing my beliefs in something that makes sense to me. It’s all about timely hitting, good pitching and solid defense; and when you get all that, you’ll get a World Series title.