Chicago Cubs Team History

The name “Cubs” first appeared in print in 1902 and gained popularity over the next four years, before becoming the sole nickname in 1906.

The 1907 World Series featured the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, with the Cubs winning the Series four games to none (with one tie) for their first championship.

The 1908 World Series matched the defending champion Chicago Cubs against the Detroit Tigers in a rematch of the 1907 Series. In this first-ever rematch of this young event, the Cubs won in five games for their second consecutive title.

P.K. Wrigley died in 1977. The Wrigley family sold the team to the Chicago Tribune in 1981, ending a 65-year family relationship with the Cubs.

The Steve Bartman incident occurred during a Major League Baseball playoff game between the Chicago Cubs and the Florida Marlins on October 14, 2003, at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

In the eighth inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, with Chicago ahead 3–0 and holding a 3 games to 2 lead in the best of 7 series, several spectators attempted to catch a foul ball off the bat of Marlins’ second baseman Luis Castillo. One of the fans, Steve Bartman, reached for the ball, deflecting it and disrupting a potential catch by Cubs outfielder Moisés Alou. If Alou had caught the ball it would have been the second out in the inning, and the Cubs would have been just four outs away from winning their first National League pennant since 1945. Instead, the Cubs ended up surrendering eight runs in the inning and shortly afterward lost the game, 8-3. When they were eliminated in the seventh game the next day, the “Steve Bartman incident” was seen as the “first domino” in the turning point of the series.

The Ricketts family acquired a majority interest in the Cubs in 2009, ending the Tribune years. Apparently handcuffed by the Tribune’s bankruptcy and the sale of the club to the Ricketts family, the Cubs’ quest for a NL Central 3-peat started with notice that there would be less invested into contracts than in previous years.

The 2016 World Series was the 112th edition of Major League Baseball’s championship series, a best-of-seven playoff between the National League (NL) champion Chicago Cubs and the American League (AL) champion Cleveland Indians, the first meeting of those franchises in postseason history. The Indians had home-field advantage because the AL had won the 2016 All-Star Game. The Cubs defeated the Indians in seven games, for their first World Series victory in 108 years. They clinched the Series in Game 7 with an 8–7 win in extra innings, marking the fifth time that a Game 7 had gone past nine innings, the first one to have a rain delay, and that happened just as the tenth inning was about to start. It was only the sixth time in World Series history that a team came back from a deficit of three games to one to win a championship.