Cubs in the Postseason

After their back-to-back world championships in 1907 and 1908, the Cubs did not win another postseason series of any kind until 2003, and, of course, they didn't win the World Series again until 2016. 

     The Cubs won seven more pennants in the first half of the 20th century (and narrowly missed several more), but never captured the ultimate prize. They came closest in 1945, when they lost a seven-game Series to the Detroit Tigers and then disappeared from all postseason play for 39 years and from the Fall Classic for 71 years.

     Lou Piniella's 2007 and 2008 teams were the first Cubs to make back-to-back postseason appearances since Frank Chance's legendary teams exactly a century earlier. Alas, Piniella's Cubs failed to win a single playoff game.   

     Below is the complete list of Cubs teams in the postseason.

    

JOE MADDON

 

1885

W. 87    L. 25    .777    

Manager: Cap Anson

Best Player: John Clarkson

Finished first in National League

Tied St. Louis Browns 3 games to 3 in World Series

 

1886

W. 90    L. 34    .726

Manager: Cap Anson

Best Player: King Kelly

Finished first in National League

Lost to St. Louis Browns 4 games to 2 in World Series

 

1906

W. 116    L. 36    .763

Manager: Frank Chance

Best Player: Mordecai Brown

Finished first in National League

Lost to White Sox 4 games to 2 in World Series

 

1907

W. 107    L. 45    .704

Manager: Frank Chance

Best Player: Orval Overall

Finished first in National League

Defeated Detroit Tigers 4 games to 0 in World Series

1908

W. 99    L. 55    .643

Manager: Frank Chance

Best Player: Mordecai Brown

Finished first in National League

Defeated Detroit Tigers 4 games to 2 in World Series

 

1910

W. 104    L. 50    .675

Manager: Frank Chance

Best Player: Solly Hofman

Finished first in National League

Lost to Philadelphia Athletics 4 games to 1 in World Series

 

1918

W. 84    L. 45    .651

Manager: Fred Mitchell

Best Player: Hippo Vaughn

Finished first in National League

Lost to Boston Red Sox 4 games to 2 in World Series

 

1929

W. 98    L. 54    .645

Manager: Joe McCarthy

Best Player: Rogers Hornsby

Finished first in National League

Lost to Philadelphia Athletics 4 games to 1 in World Series

 

1932

W. 90    L. 64    .584

Managers: Rogers Hornsby, Charlie Grimm

Best Player: Lon Warneke

Finished first in National League

Lost to New York Yankees 4 games to 0 in World Series 

 

1935

W. 100    L. 54    .649

Manager: Charlie Grimm

Best Player: Billy Herman

Finished first in National League

Lost to Detroit Tigers 4 games to 2 in World Series

 

1938

W. 89    L. 63    .581

Managers: Charlie Grimm, Gabby Hartnett

Best Player: Bill Lee

Finished first in National League

Lost to New York Yankees 4 games to 0 in World Series    

 

1945

W. 98    L. 56    .636

Manager: Charlie Grimm

Best Player: Stan Hack

Finished first in National League

Lost to Detroit Tigers 4 games to 3 in World Series

 

1984

W. 96    L. 65    .596

Manager: Jim Frey

Best Player: Ryne Sandberg

Finished first in National League East

Lost to San Diego Padres 3 games to 2 in N.L. Championship Series  

 

1989

W. 93    L. 69    .574

Manager: Don Zimmer

Best Player: Ryne Sandberg

Finished first in National League East

Lost to San Francisco Giants 4 games to 1 in N.L. Championship Series

 

1998

W. 90    L. 73    .552

Manager: Jim Riggleman

Best Player: Sammy Sosa

Finished second in National League Central

Lost to Atlanta Braves 3 games to 0 in N.L. Division Series 

 

2003

W. 88    L. 74    .543

Manager: Dusty Baker

Best Player: Mark Prior

Finished first in National League Central

Defeated Atlanta Braves 3 games to 2 in N.L. Division Series

Lost to Florida Marlins 4 games to 3 in N.L. Championship Series

 

2007

W. 88    L. 74    .543

Manager: Lou Piniella

Best Player: Mark Prior

Finished first in National League Central

Lost to Arizona Diamondbacks 3 games to 0 in N.L. Division Series

 

2008

W. 97    L. 64    .602

Manager: Lou Piniella

Best Player: Ryan Dempster

Finished first in National League Central

Lost to Los Angeles Dodgers 3 games to 0 in N.L. Division Series

 

2015

W. 97    L. 65    .599

Manager: Joe Maddon

Best Player: Jake Arrieta

Finished third in National League Central

Defeated Pittsburgh Pirates in N.L. Wild Card Game

Defeated St. Louis Cardinals 3 games to 1 in N.L. Division Series

Lost to New York Mets 4 games to 0 in N.L. Championship Series

 

2016

W. 103    L. 58    .640

Manager: Joe Maddon

Best Player: Kris Bryant

Finished first in National League Central

Defeated San Francisco Giants 3 games to 1 in N.L. Division Series

Defeated Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 2 in N.L. Championship Series

Defeated Cleveland Indians 4 games to 3 in World Series  

 

2017

W. 92    L. 70    .568

Manager: Joe Maddon

Best Player: Kris Bryant

Finished first in National League Central

Defeated Washington Nationals 3 games to 2 in N.L. Division Series

Lost to Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 1 in N.L. Championship Series

 

2018

W. 95    L. 68    .583

Manager: Joe Maddon

Best Player: Javier Baez

Finished second in National League Central

Lost to Colorado Rockies in N.L. Wild Card Game

 

2020

W. 34    L. 26    .567

Manager: David Ross

Best Player: Yu Darvish

Finished first in National League Central

Lost to Miami Marlins 2 games to 0 in N.L. Wild Card Series

 

("Best Player" based on Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement.)

 

 

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White Sox in the Postseason

No manager ever led a White Sox team into the postseason more than once until Ozzie Guillen did so more than a century into the franchise's history. No manager has ever led the White Sox into the postseason in consecutive years--although Gene Lamont deserves an asterisk for that one. His Sox team won the American League Central in 1993 and was in position to repeat when a labor dispute ended the 1994 season on August 12.

     Interestingly, no White Sox team ever qualified for postseason play without finishing in first place until this year. Wild-card playoff berths have been available since 1995, but this year is the first time the Sox have claimed one.

     Below is the complete list of White Sox teams in the postseason.  

 

OZZIE GUILLEN

1901

W. 83    L. 53    .610     

Manager: Clark Griffith

Best Player: Clark Griffith

Finished first in American League

(No postseason)

 

1906

W. 93    L. 58    .616     

Manager: Fielder Jones 

Best Player: George Davis

Finished first in American League

Defeated Cubs 4 games to 2 in World Series

 

1917

W. 100    L. 54    .649

Manager: Pants Rowland      

Best Player: Eddie Cicotte

Finished first in American League

Defeated New York Giants 4 games to 2 in World Series

1919

W. 88    L. 52    .629     

Manager: Kid Gleason

Best Player: Eddie Cicotte

Finished first in American League

Lost to Cincinnati Reds 5 games to 3 in World Series

1959

W. 94    L. 60    .610     

Manager: Al Lopez

Best Player: Nellie Fox

Finished first in American League

Lost to Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 2 in World Series

1983

W. 99    L. 63    .611     

Manager: Tony LaRussa

Best Player: Richard Dotson

Finished first in American League West

Lost to Baltimore Orioles 3 games to 1 in A.L. Championship Series

 

1993

W. 94    L. 68    .580     

Manager: Gene Lamont

Best Player: Frank Thomas

Finished first in American League West

Lost to Toronto Blue Jays 4 games to 2 in A.L. Championship Series

 

1994

W. 67    L. 46    .593 

Manager: Gene Lamont      

Best Player: Frank Thomas

Finished first in American League Central

(No postseason due to dispute between owners and players)

 

2000

W. 95    L. 67    .586 

Manager: Jerry Manuel     

Best Player: Frank Thomas

Finished first in American League Central

Lost to Seattle Mariners 3 games to 0 in A.L. Division Series

 

2005

W. 99    L. 63    .611  

Manager: Ozzie Guillen

Best Player: Mark Buehrle

Finished first in American League Central

Defeated Boston Red Sox 3 games to 0 in A.L. Division Series

Defeated Los Angeles Angels 4 games to 1 in A.L. Championship Series

Defeated Houston Astros 4 games to 0 in World Series

 

2008

W. 89    L. 74    . 546

Manager: Ozzie Guillen

Best Player: John Danks

Finished first in American League Central

Lost to Tampa Bay Rays 3 games to 1 in A.L. Division Series

2020

W. 35    L. 25    .583

Manager: Rick Renteria

Best Player: Jose Abreu

Tied for second in American League Central 

Lost to Oakland Athletics 2 games to 1 in A.L. Wild Card Series

 

("Best Player" based on Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement.)

 

 

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The Black Sox Scandal

“The [Cincinnati] Reds beat the greatest ball team that ever went into a World’s Series,” said White Sox manager Kid Gleason after the final game of the series in 1919. “But it wasn’t the real White Sox. They played baseball for me only a couple or three of the eight days.”

One hundred years ago tomorrow, on September 28, 1920, the Sox trailed the first-place Cleveland Indians by only one game with three left to play when seven players, including some genuine stars, were suspended amid allegations that they had conspired with gamblers to fix the 1919 Series in favor of the Reds. The seven were starting pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, left fielder Joe Jackson, center fielder Happy Felsch, third baseman Buck Weaver, shortstop Swede Risberg, and backup infielder Fred McMullin (an eighth suspect, first baseman Chick Gandil, had retired after the 1919 Series).

SHOELESS JOE JACKSON

In the weeks following the Series, allegations of a fix had became widespread. This was not the first whiff of a gambling scandal affecting the national pastime. Far from it. In those days, betting on major-league games was roughly as popular as betting on NFL games became decades later. There was a lot of money involved, which inevitably led to the corruption of certain players. But previous episodes had been on a much smaller scale and were brushed under the rug rather easily.   

For a time, sportswriter Hugh Fullerton’s articles detailing his concerns about the Series were dismissed as mere sensationalism. “These yarns are manufactured out of whole cloth,” Sox owner Charles Comiskey said.   

Despite his public pronouncements, however, Comiskey had actually been suspicious from the beginning. He had even delayed sending out the players’ World Series checks until the initial controversy died down somewhat. From then on, he kept his fingers crossed. “I believe my boys fought the battles of the recent World’s Series on the level,” he said. “And I would be the first to want information to the contrary.”

Comiskey grandly announced that he would pay $10,000 to anyone who produced proof of a fix. When a number of people came forward to take him up on it, though, he rejected all the information offered as “hearsay.”

But the matter ultimately couldn’t be wished away. By late summer of 1920, separate investigations had been launched by American League president Ban Johnson and, more ominously, a Cook County grand jury. Although the grand jury’s inquiry was into the influence of gamblers and gambling throughout baseball, it eventually focused on the White Sox players and their role in the events of 1919.

In the grand jury room, the players told their tale. It began in a New York hotel during the waning days of the 1919 regular season, where Gandil announced to several teammates that they could collect $20,000 for each losing game in the impending World Series, for a total of $100,000 (the Series was best-of-nine games at the time). It was a tempting offer—for although they were the best team in baseball, the Sox were among the lowest paid. Their nickname, “Black Sox,” was later used to refer to the scandal, but it actually originated in 1918 to describe the filthy uniforms the players wore to protest Comiskey’s refusal to pay for laundering.        

Cicotte had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games in 1919—but after he won his 29th, Comiskey ordered him benched for the remainder of the regular season. Before the grand jury, Cicotte confessed that he had taken part in the fix for $10,000 in cash, which he’d found under his pillow the night before Game 1. The next afternoon, he’d signaled to the other conspirators that the fix was on by hitting Cincinnati’s Morrie Rath with his second pitch in the first inning.

“It is hard to tell when a game is on the square and when it is not,” Cicotte advised the grand jury. “A player can make a crooked error that will look on the square as easy as he can make a square one.” As for his own pitching in the two games he had lost, Cicotte said, “You could have read the trademark on [the ball], the way I lobbed it over the plate. Why, a baby could have hit ’em. [Catcher] Ray Schalk was wise the moment I started pitching.”

Lefty Williams claimed that he had gone along only because of threats on his life. After Game 5, by which time it was apparent that not all of the agreed-upon payments were being delivered, the players had decided to double cross the gamblers and play Games 6 and 7 to win. They did win both games, and Williams testified that a stranger had visited him the night before Game 8 to tell him that he would be killed if the Sox won again. The next day, Lefty had failed to make it through the first inning, becoming the first pitcher to lose three games in a single World Series (this record went unequaled for 62 years). 

Happy Felsch admitted that he had been paid $5,000. “I could have got just about that much,” he said ruefully, “by being on the level if the Sox had won the Series.” A .275 hitter during the regular season, Felsch had hit .192 in the Series. 

Fred McMullin, a benchwarmer who could not have affected the outcome, had been let in on the plot after overhearing Gandil and Risberg talking about it in the Sox clubhouse. Promised a full share in exchange for keeping quiet, he’d received nothing. 

Buck Weaver also hadn’t gotten a penny, but he admitted that he had attended meetings with the others and had failed to blow the whistle on them. He had played superbly throughout the Series; his 11 hits were second only to Jackson’s 12 among players on both clubs. 

Joe Jackson testified that he’d been promised $20,000 but had collected only $5,000. A virtually illiterate country boy from South Carolina, Jackson was Ty Cobb’s only rival as the finest hitter of the era; his .356 career mark remains the third-highest of all time. He had batted .385 in the Series. “Shoeless Joe” stood at the pinnacle of his career when he and the others were suspended—in 1920, he hit for a .382 average, with 105 runs scored, 12 homers, and 121 RBIs. He was well on his way to the Hall of Fame before the scandal intervened. 

Cicotte, Williams, Felsch, and Jackson all agreed that they had received but a fraction of the money promised them. They believed that the rest had been siphoned off by Gandil and his roommate Risberg. “I told Williams after the first day it was a crooked deal all the way through,” Jackson said. “Gandil was not on the square with us.”

Gandil, whom Cicotte called the “master of ceremonies” for the scheme, denied everything. He had batted .233 in the Series, with most of his hits coming late in games that had already been decided. He had turned down Comiskey’s offer of a contract for 1920 and had retired from baseball—according to Jackson, because he could no longer face the others and because he had plenty to retire on.

Risberg had managed only two hits in the Series for an average of .080, while experiencing a variety of lapses at shortstop.

 

It is difficult to imagine today how traumatic the Black Sox revelations were at the time. Americans still had unqualified faith in their institutions, perhaps the most sacred of which was the national pastime. The nation’s sense of betrayed trust was captured in the single sentence that a young boy is supposed to have uttered to Jackson on the courthouse steps: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” 

A gambler named Arnold Rothstein was supposed to have pulled all the strings. He was said to have made hundreds of thousands betting on the Reds, but he would have made two or three times as much if the fix hadn’t been so blatant as to drive the odds down to even money. Called to testify when the scandal broke, Rothstein came away from his encounter with the grand jury unscathed, and went on to a long career in organized crime in New York before being shot to death in a dispute over a poker game. 

On October 22, 1920, the grand jury returned indictments against the eight players, former featherweight boxing champion Abe Attell (purportedly Rothstein’s liaison to the players), former pitcher Sleepy Bill Burns, and a handful of others. Fixing a baseball game was not illegal in Illinois, so the men were indicted for conspiracy to defraud the public and to do injury to Charles Comiskey’s business.

The trial, which began in June 1921, quickly proved a farce as the grand jury’s records disappeared, witnesses recanted their earlier testimony, and the confessions of Cicotte, Jackson, Williams, and Weaver also turned up missing. Not surprisingly under the circumstances, the defendants were acquitted. When the charges against them were dismissed on August 2, the players were carried off to a nearby restaurant on the shoulders of courtroom spectators and even jurors for a post-trial party.

Though raucous, the celebration was short-lived. The day after the trial concluded, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis declared that the eight Black Sox would be banned from baseball for life. “Regardless of the verdict of juries,” Landis intoned, “no player who throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, no player that sits in conference with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a ballgame are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.” 

Desperate to restore the public’s faith in the integrity of the game and its players, baseball had ordained Landis, a federal judge, as its first commissioner in November 1920. This slightly built, stern-faced fellow with a mane of snow-white hair had been granted absolute authority over all aspects of the national pastime, along with the assurance that his decisions would not be subject to appeal. He retained these powers until his death in 1944.

Landis and his successors saw to it that none of the eight Black Sox ever held a job in organized baseball again. As late as 1953, Buck Weaver was still writing to commissioner Ford Frick, pleading for reinstatement. None of his letters was ever answered.  

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