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If you’ve browsed the internet, turned on a TV, or been to the Chicago area recently, you may have heard the news: The Cubs finally broke their 108-year-old curse with a nail-biting World Series win against the Cleveland Indians last night.
The championship marked the first time the team had made it to the World Series since 1945, and their first victory since 1908 (to put that in context, Thomas Edison, Franz Ferdinand, and Al Capone were all around for that W). To commemorate the historic triumph, The Chicago Tribune dug through their archives to republish their front page story from October 15, 1908.
#1908 Chicago Tribune cover when #Cubbies won their last World Series:) @johncusack pic.twitter.com/YtJ9CklfYd
— Becca Renee (@Becca42983) November 2, 2016
The cover, which reads “Cubs supreme in baseball world,” is reminiscent of a time when life was good for Chicago sports fans. From 1906 to 1908, the Cubs appeared in three consecutive World Series, becoming the first major league team to do so. The article reporting their 1908 win reads:
“Not in the memory of this generation of fans has any team ever won its honors with greater credit than that which belongs to Frank Chance’s warriors. Not in a thousand years has a team been compelled to fight as hard for its titles as the Chicago team, which won the National league pennant twice inside of five days under the most trying circumstances.”
Any Cubs fans can tell you that it hasn’t exactly been smooth travels for the team since. A number of supposed curses, including one connected to a famous, smelly goat, have been blamed for the Cubs’ decades-long bad luck streak. But after more than a century of heartbreak, the loyalty of their fans has finally paid off. In 1908, the Tribune wrote, “What those gray clad modest young warriors have accomplished will be remembered longer than any of them lives,” a statement that rings just as true today.
[h/t The Chicago Tribune]
November 3, 2016 – 11:45am