On Thanksgiving Day in 1887, as the story goes, some 20 members of Chicago’s Farragut Boat Club gathered to celebrate the holiday when a group of them began tossing a boxing glove around the hall. Eventually one of them struck the glove with a broom handle, sending the glove flying into the lap of one […]
Author: Mary Craig
How Not To Boycott A Commissioner: Kenesaw Landis and the 1922 Labor Movement
Following the revitalization of its economy from increased manufacturing due to World War I, America entered an era defined by labor crises. Big business sought to push back on the labor unions that had grown in strength in the 1910s, prompting a nationwide labor strike of over four million workers in 1919. Unfortunately, the magnitude […]
Ronald Reagan’s Losing Role in “The Winning Team”
Ronald Reagan’s career in entertainment began, in part, due to his love of baseball. In the 1930s, he worked for WHO Des Moines, “re-creating” Chicago Cubs games: a wire operator sent him code from Wrigley which he then narrated to his audience, often filling in fictional details when the code was sparse. In the spring […]
An Arrest, a Court Case, and a Push to Legalize Sunday Baseball
On June 23rd, 1895, in the third inning of the Colts’ game in Chicago against the Cleveland Spiders, a group of policemen entered the Colts’ clubhouse and arrested the entire Chicago starting nine. Each player was served an arrest warrant and made to sign a $100 bond officially for disturbance of the peace, but in […]
Maud Nelson and the Chicago Stars
The $10,000 custom Pullman coach parked outside a makeshift canvas grandstand was one of the most exciting sights in small-town America in the summers of 1902 and 1903. For inside the canvas walls was a spectacle irresistible even to the most proper of gentlemen: the Chicago Stars, and in particular, Maud Nelson. The Chicago Stars […]
Chicago’s Poor and Baseball at the Turn of the Century
The Chicago of the mid-1800s that prided itself on its cleanliness and relatively high standard of living for its poor had disappeared by the turn of the century. Connecting the East, South, and West, Chicago rapidly bloomed due to the expansion of the railroad, its population growing from 360,000 in the 1880s to 1.7 million […]
The Best Championship Game You’ve Never Heard Of
Though the 1870 championship game involved a team called the Mutuals, the conclusion was anything but. In many ways, the game was about as improbable as one could be. The reigning champions entered the season expecting to easily trounce their way to another championship, while the newly formed Chicago White Stockings should have been happy […]
Game 42 Recap: Reds 5, Cubs 4
The first game of a doubleheader going to extras after your starter lasting only five innings is, uh, generally Not Great, and it certainly led to a frustrating loss this afternoon. What You Need To Know: Much of the game was a back-and-forth affair with the Reds taking the lead in the first and fourth […]
A Game With The 1890s Cubs
On January 31st, 1898, writing about Cap Anson’s retirement from baseball, the Chicago Tribune declared, “an epoc of baseball is finished,” and, like the great prophets, Anson was “left without honor in his own land.” Though the decade obviously continued for another two years, the 1890s Chicago baseball team was, in the eyes of the […]
Crafting a Mystery: The 1940 Cubs
More than conveyors of facts, baseball writers act as storytellers, uncovering fantastic tales where they exist and inventing them where they do not. But as anyone who has created a story knows, sometimes the characters don’t cooperate, instead wandering along paths no longer suited to the narrative and hiding away where the writer cannot reach […]