What students today know about the 1908 Cubs

Mikey Wolverton and his classmates are sure, absolutely sure, that this is the year the Cubs will win the World Series. They haven't been alive long enough to know the pessimistic refrain that has kept Cubs fans going for the past 108 years, “There's always next year.”

“This is it. They are the best,” said Wolverton, 11. “(Anthony) Rizzo is awesome.”

Although Wolverton and his fourth and fifth grade classmates at Ivy Hill Elementary School in Arlington Heights had a lot to say about the Cubs chances this season, they may need a bit of a refresher about what life, and baseball, was like in 1908 — the last time the Cubs won it all.

Back then there were only 16 teams in the major league and the highest paid player made $8,500 for the year. Today, the Cubs' Jon Lester makes $20 million, and he isn't even the highest paid player in the league.

The Cubs still played at West Side Park and wouldn't move into historic Wrigley Field until 1914. A regular ticket might run you 25 cents, a World Series ticket maybe $1. Tickets to the 2016 World Series are already reselling for thousands of dollars online and the Cubs haven't made it there yet.

With Model-T cars just starting to roll off the assembly line and street cars not coming to the city for a few more years, it would have been difficult for Arlington Heights students to get to a game.

“I guess we'd have to walk there, or take a horse and carriage,” said Maddie Paytuvi, 9.

And if they made it to the game, they wouldn't find familiar snacks such as deep dish pizza, which didn't come to Chicago until the 1940s. Although peanuts and crackerjack were probably plentiful, given that the song “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” was written in 1908.

TVs were far in the future and the first radio broadcast of a baseball game didn't happen until 1921, so the students would have to pick up the evening edition of the newspaper to find out who won. “And there was no Jumbotron,” said Grace Vates, 10. And no live-tweeting either.

While a lot has changed from 1908 to 2016, the hope of a young Cubs fan stays the same. “We're gonna win it all,” promised Devyn Samaniego, 10.