Looking back on Cubs' century of futility
100 years have passed since the Cubs last won a World Series, creating the longest sports championship drought in the history of major sports. As they slug their way through the first round of the playoffs, we look back on a century of futility.
1908: Fresh from their second straight World Series championship, the Cubs double-play combination of Tinker, Evers and Chance and star pitcher Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown look forward to the Three-Peat in 1909.
1909: Cubs miss the postseason by 6 games.
1910: Cubs lose the World Series.
1914: Cubs trade Johnny Evers to Boston for second-baseman Bill Sweeney. Sweeney hits .218 for the fourth-place Cubs. Evers wins the Most Valuable Player Award and hits .438 in the World Series to lead the Braves to a championship.
1915: Cubs need their mommies after suffering first losing season since team changed its name from Orphans after 1902 season.
1918: Cubs lose another World Series.
1929: Fans go into Depression after Cubs lose yet another World Series.
1932: Babe Ruth calls his shot and Cubs get swept in the World Series.
1935: Cubs manage to win a couple games, but lose still another World Series.
1938: Repeating now, Yankees sweep Cubs in four World Series games.
1945: While many able-bodied men are off winning World War II, the Cubs win the pennant - and then drop the World Series before lots of fans, but no goat.
1958: Ernie Banks wins MVP, and Mr. Cub's team finishes 20 games out of first.
1959: "Let's Win Two!" as Ernie picks up second MVP, but Cubs pick up 13th straight year without a winning season.
1962: Cubs top the century mark for the first time with 103 losses, finishing a half-season out of first. No single manager to fire as blame is spread around evenly thanks to much-mocked "College of Coaches."
1964: Cubs unload young outfielder Lou Brock by trading him to the rival Cardinals for veteran pitcher Ernie Broglio. Brock leads St. Louis to a World Series championship and goes on to a Hall-of-Fame career. The Cubs finish 17 games back and Broglio goes 4-7 on his way to a 7-19 career as a Cub.
1966: Leo Durocher hired as manager of the eighth-place Cubs and proclaims "this is definitely not an eighth-place ballclub." The Cubs prove him right by finishing 10th.
1969: Most fun summer ever has Ron Santo clicking his heels and the Cubs on the way to the World Series when a black cat crosses Santo's path in the on-deck circle in September in Shea Stadium. The Mets pass the Cubs on the way to a New York championship. Santo discovers his now trademark yowl of anguish.
1972: Cubs record sixth straight winning season, and still fall short of postseason, but Jose Cardenal makes history by missing a game because crickets chirping in his hotel kept him awake all night.
1974: Cubs finish last, and Jose Cardenal asks for a day off after claiming he slept funny on his eyelid and couldn't blink.
1977: First-place Cubs are 25 games above .500 in June. They swoon and finish 81-81 in fourth place and 20 games behind Philadelphia.
1979: Cubs right fielder Larry Biittner attempts a diving catch of a line drive hit by the Mets' Bruce Boisclair. The ball falls from his glove and lands under Biittner's hat. As a run scores and a tentative Boisclair keeps running, a frantic Biittner can't find the ball. With the Bleacher Bums yelling "Hat! Hat! Hat!" Biittner finally locates the ball just in time to gun down Boisclair at third and keep things from getting worse in an 8-3 loss on the way to a fifth-place finish.
1981: Cubs sign White Sox announcer Harry Caray and finish with worst record (and second lowest attendance) in National League. Spelled backward, that's "dab."
1983: Cubs manager Lee Elia sets modern-day record for F-bombs and hyphenated swear words in rant that rips the 15 percent of the world that comes out to Wrigley to boo. Team backs him up by losing 91 games and finishing fifth.
1984: Cubs trade one-time batting champ Bill Buckner to the Boston Red Sox for Dennis Eckersley, so Leon Durham becomes the Cubs first baseman who lets a routine ground ball through his legs to ruin the postseason for Ryne Sandberg, Rick Sutcliffe and the Cubs. Weird, eh?
1988: First Cubs night game. Fourth straight losing season.
1989: Led by Greg Maddux, Andre Dawson, Ryne Sandberg and Mark Grace, Cubs win the division, but continue streak of never winning a postseason game west of Clark Street. Leave fans' broken hearts in San Francisco with three straight playoff losses.
1993: Cubs decide they don't have money to sign 1992 Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Greg Maddux, but promise to resign him after his Hall-of-Fame career with the Atlanta Braves winds up.
1998: Sammy Sosa and his Flintstone vitamins slug the Cubs into the playoffs, where Greg Maddux and his Atlanta Braves beat sore-armed rookie Cubs hurler Kerry Wood to sweep the Cubs from the postseason.
2003: The Fan Who Must Not Be Named rises from the left-field foul line as Cubs drop games 6 and 7 of the National League Championship Series at Wrigley. The upstart Florida Marlins win the World Series.
2007: Cubs win the division, draw 3.2 million fans and hit .194 in the playoffs to lose three straight to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
2008: Cubs win the division. Fans wonder if this, at last, might be Their Year. If not, there's always 2108.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Audio</h2> <ul class="audio"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=23&type=audio&item=21">Lee Elia's 1983 rant </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>