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Cubs-Cardinals Rivalry

With the start of the NBA playoffs, do you feel the excitement in the air? Me neither. The greatest rivalry in sports is on the baseball diamond. No, it's not the Yanks and the Sox or even the Giants and Dodgers. It is the St. Louis Cardinals and the lovable losers from the south side of Chicago. Unlike Red Sox and Yankees fans, Cardinals and Cubs patrons let their teams decide the outcome and take care of most of the trash talking on the field. In the Northeast, you're not considered a diehard fan unless you some how get involved in the game by either challenging a player to a shoving match, or bombarding him with obscenity laced tirades in front of children.

Losing's a lot harder than it looks... just ask the Chicago Cubs! It mostly got overlooked that the Chicago Cubs quietly moved one step closer to a remarkable plateau. No team in North American professional sports has ever waited longer to win a championship. No small feat, this streak bears watching when Chicago can establish a complete century of futility since last winning in 1908.

The Cubs' 99-year run of baseball ineptitude is so staggering that it actually makes winning a championship look easier. Take the Florida Marlins. They've won two and they've only been in existence since 1993! The ridiculous Arizona Diamondbacks won a World Series in merely their fourth season as an organization in 2001.

No American League franchise waited as long as the crosstown rival White Sox in 2005 when they won a World Series, but that snapped only an 88-year wait. That Red Sox silliness in 2004 ended a mere 86-year drought and, of course, they've subsequently added another championship.

There was no National Football League or National Hockey League the last time the Cubs won a championship in 1908. There was no National Basketball Association in 1945 when they were even in a World Series, but why limit this quest to mere sports here.

To get a real handle, consider that the current wait for Cubs followers is one that started with Teddy Roosevelt in the White House and has lasted through 17 different US presidents, including a current chief executive who actually ran a baseball team. There were only 46 states at the time.

The last championship predates Federal income taxes, women's suffrage, US highways, TV and radio, 13 US Constitutional amendments, including the repeal and reinstatement of booze, and Wrigley Field itself. Henry Ford's first Model T rolled off the assembly line only a month earlier in 1908, when the Cubs beat the Detroit Tigers four games to one to claim their last Series.

If you think this defies logic, Edward Packel, a Lake Forest College mathematics professor in suburban Chicago, can prove you are 100 percent correct. Using "binomial coefficients" in his formula, he says the probability of the Cubs capturing a World Series has increased in recent years precisely because they haven't done it — something that has to be little comfort for the club's long-suffering fans. "It is correct to suggest," the professor concludes, "that under all my assumptions, it would be more difficult to go 100 seasons without winning than it was to win in any given year. It is less than half as likely" Packel has a doctorate in math from M.I.T. and authored a book on sports' probability, The Mathematics of Games and Gambling.

The prospect of a 100-year World Series drought is a marketing challenge for the Cubs, who've proven to be masters at filling their ballpark no matter what the record. But if they can manage just one more season without winning one, they can become the first sports team in history to legitimately say: Wait 'til next century!

Nobody who has ever been involved in the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry — as a player, manager, front-office executive, broadcaster or fan — is neutral about it. The games each team has played against each other have left a lasting impact on both participants and witnesses. Even latecomers to the Chicago-St. Louis games get quickly caught up in the emotion and fun of one of sports' top geographic rivalries. It's a Cubs-Cardinals game, and it's the biggest thing in the Midwest.

The Cubs and Cardinals are much more alike than not. The two teams had corporate ownership that was first- class and respected, Anheuser Busch for St. Louis and the Tribune Co. for Chicago. Each parent company had brilliant people in high management positions, and both companies had developed strong, distinctive identities away from baseball ownership. That helps with perception. You'll have the advertising with Budweiser, the Clydesdales, WGN.

There's also great similarity in the fan bases of both teams. Both are extremely loyal. Some of that comes from the fact Chicago and St. Louis used to be the furthest west of all the major league teams. The loyalties used to be passed from generation to generation. If you were in Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee—all through that area—you were a Cardinals fan. Further north, you were a Cubs fan. Those regional loyalties stayed firm even as more teams were added to the majors. Cubs and Cardinals fans were like the Hatfields and the McCoys for decades on end.

The loyalties were helped by a great tradition of broadcasting with each club. The Cardinals had that huge radio network all over the area with Harry Caray and Jack Buck. The Cubs televised the most games of any team, with Jack Brickhouse, succeeded by Caray, the mainstays at the microphone over a 50-year span. These were all Hall of Fame announcers bringing the news about each team to the listeners and viewers.

Even the uniforms are traditional. The designs of the Cubs' and the Cardinals' uniforms have stayed the same for many decades. St. Louis' bat with the two cardinals perching on each end on the shirt is one of the longest-appearing logos anywhere. The Cubs have had the blue pinstripes with the red Cubs "C" since 1957.

But then there are differences between the two clubs. The Cardinals had a long tradition of player development dating to when Branch Rickey set up the first true farm system in the 1930s. St. Louis almost always has been able to produce many of its players through the decades. The Cubs didn't put as much emphasis in the farm system through much of that same time. However, in recent years, a lot of positive steps have been taken for Chicago to become a more consistently productive player-development operation. In spite of the Cardinals' advantage in developing players, the Cubs haven't done too badly in head-to-head matchups with a 1,003-959 all-time record against St. Louis going into the 1999 season.

The nature of the two teams' ballparks also provides a stark contrast. Different Cubs management regimes over the years may have looked toward the quick fix, importing various power hitters at the expense of developing young players, because of cozy Wrigley Field. The power alley may be labeled "368 feet" in left-center field, but the dimensions are probably shorter. Meanwhile, the Cardinals knew they had to emphasize speed with the spacious dimensions of Busch Stadium power alleys about 20 feet deeper than Wrigley Field—prior to the re-doing of the field and seats in the last few years, making it more conducive to power hitters.

George Will An avid baseball fan, Will is one of the nation's leading political commentators and essayists and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 10 books. His widely acclaimed newspaper column, syndicated by the Washington Post since 1974, now appears twice weekly in nearly 500 newspapers in the United States and Europe. Will is often mentioned as a potential next commissioner of Major League Baseball. His own baseball career began in the sandlots of Champaign and culminated in 1992, with his induction into the Little League Baseball Museum Hall of Excellence. His 1990 book, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, rose to No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list and earned praise as one of the decade's best "nuts and bolts" books on baseball. A collection of his new and previously published writings on baseball was published this month under the title Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other Reflections on Baseball. He credits baseball with shaping many of his core beliefs, including respect for hard work, fair play, and in fact, his unique brand of conservatism.

Loyalties to the two teams divided friends, families, and co-workers, and shaped the locals in various ways, as George Will noted in a commencement address at Washington University in 1997 at St. Louis: I grew up in Champaign, Illinois, midway between Chicago and St. Louis. At an age too tender for life-shaping decisions, I made one. While all my friends were becoming Cardinals fans, I became a Cub fan. My friends, happily rooting for Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst, and other great Redbirds, grew up cheerfully convinced that the world is a benign place, so of course, they became liberals. Rooting for the Cubs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I became gloomy, pessimistic, morose, dyspeptic and conservative. It helped out of course that the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, which is two years before Mark Twain and Tolstoy died. But that means that the Cubs are in the 89th year of their rebuilding effort, and remember, any team can have a bad moment. So, Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Cub fans.

The tradition and drama involving the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry is an even better show in person at either Wrigley Field or Busch Stadium. In St. Louis, despite their dislike for the Cubbies, opposing players often receive an appreciative ovation from Cards fans for a great play in the field or a display of extraordinary effort or hustle. Fans of both teams fill Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium and often sit side-by-side while watching the game without incident. There is no less passion in the Midwest. The rivalry has had its heated moments for sure, but a mutual respect between the teams and their fans has always been a staple of the series.

Players and managers have come and gone. Great broadcasters like Harry Caray and Jack Buck left their mark on generations of fans. Both teams have seen their share of triumphs and failures (some more than others). But, it is the fans that remain the constant theme of this great rivalry. Their passion for the game baseball supersedes everything else.

Mike Conklin. Loveable Losers: The Cubs' 100-Year Itch. . July 2008.

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