Baseball’s Best Runners-Up: 1909 Cubs

If Chicago Cubs fans have not yet tired of hearing about their ignominious centennial, there is no doubt that they soon will. Though it may be little consolation, it is worth bearing in mind how close the 1909 Cubs came to giving this year’s Cubs another season’s reprieve.

The 1908 Cubs emerged from a famously close pennant race with a 99-56 record and the National League title. They topped Pittsburgh and New York by a single game apiece, with New York’s decisive victory coming in the playoff game necessitated by Merkle’s Boner. Chicago was led by the famous infield trio of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and playing manager Frank Chance, with Mordecai Brown heading the pitching staff. Evers led the club with a 144 OPS+ and 83 runs scored, while Brown compiled a 29-9 record with a 1.42 ERA, and 160 ERA+—good for three second place finishes behind NL Triple Crown winner Christy Mathewson. That season, in fact, the Cubs were actually topped by the Giants (and in some cases the Pirates) in most major offensive and defensive categories. New York also outperformed them by four games in their pythagorean winning percentage. Nonetheless, it was Chicago which emerged victorious at the end, and the North Siders wasted little time in dispatching American League champion Detroit, taking the series in five games.

The 1909 Cubs brought back the better part of the team to defend their second consecutive World Series title. One significant loss was veteran catcher Johnny Kling. From 1906-08, when the Cubs won three straight pennants, Kling had hit .291/.338/.396, establishing himself as one of the finest hitting backstops in the game. Unfortunately for his baseball employers, Kling had also made a reputation for himself as a professional billiards player. In the months following the 1908 World Series, Kling had been crowned the world pocket billiards champion. He requested and obtained a leave of absence for the following season in order to open a pool hall in Kansas City and to defend his title. In the latter, he was not successful. Back in Chicago, Jimmy Archer was acquired from the Tigers to fill his shoes. Archer would go on to be a stalwart for the Cubs, but at this point, he had recorded just 62 big-league at-bats in Pittsburgh and Detroit, with 8 singles to show for them. The only other substantial change for the club was the replacement of light-hitting outfielder Jimmy Slagle, who retired in the off-season, with the younger Solly Hofman.

On the whole, the Cubs had an ideal mixture of youth and experience. None of their regular players were over 32 years old. This included manager-first baseman Frank Chance, who at the age of 31 was already in his fifth season as a manager. Perhaps more importantly, nearly all of the players, including all the regulars, had already played in three World Series, beginning with their legendary 116-win season of 1906.

Looking out into the National League, the Cubs were again challenged most heartily by the Pirates and Giants. New York had Mathewson back and still in his prime, along with the reliable Hooks Wiltse and Bugs Raymond. The offense, well-balanced and potent, featured Larry Doyle and Red Murray in starring roles. In 1909, McGraw’s Giants would have a fine season, but started slowly and never worked their way into pennant contention. Despite out-playing their pythagorean winning percentage by six games, they finished in a distant third place with 92 wins. This put them 18.5 games out of first place, but also 15 games ahead of fourth-place Cincinnati­­­­—a stark sign of that season’s competitive imbalance. In fact, in 1909, Pittsburgh, Chicago and New York would go a combined 240-86 against the other five teams in the NL, a .694 winning percentage; Pittsburgh and Chicago alone were 170-47 (.783).

With New York quickly fading from the picture, 1909 became a two horse race between Pittsburgh and Chicago. Pittsburgh was a veteran squad, led by Honus Wagner and player-manager Fred Clarke. Outside of the 35-year-old Wagner, the Pirates had revamped their infield over the off-season by bringing in Bill Abstein, Dots Miller and Jap Barbeau. This pushed Tommy Leach into the outfield with Clarke and Chief Wilson. Vic Willis, Howie Camnitz and Lefty Leifield comprised a solid pitching staff with plenty of experience.

Chicago started their season at home against the Browns, splitting a four game set. They next welcomed the Pirates for a single Sunday contest, with Mordecai Brown facing off against Camnitz. The start was delayed by rain, which persisted throughout the afternoon. Both pitchers were on the top of their games in the early going. In the 4 ^th inning, with a man on first and the scoreboard blank, Pittsburgh’s Abstein sent a shot deep into the left field corner. The runner from first, Ward Miller, scored easily as the ball disappeared beneath temporary bleachers which had been erected on the playing field. Umpire Bill Klem, however, ruled the hit a ground-rule double and ordered Miller back to third. He and Abstein were both ultimately stranded, and the game continued, both pitchers posting strings of zeroes. It was not until the 12 ^th inning, as darkness set in, that the Pirates managed to plate the winning run on an uncharacteristic fielding error by Tinker.

The loss was the Cubs’ third in a row, and was only part of a difficult early season. After a modest winning streak in St. Louis and Cincinnati, they returned home to Chicago and were dropped four more times in a row by the Pirates, knocking them out of first. The Cubs, however, were soon back on the road and back to their winning ways, taking nine of twelve games on a long trip. This left them in a first-place tie on the weekend of May 30-31. In a scheduling quirk, the Pirates and Cubs played in Pittsburgh on Saturday, then headed to Chicago for a Sunday doubleheader. Chicago won the first game, putting them in sole possession of first place for the first time since the early losses to the Pirates. The next day, however, Pittsburgh swept them in the twin-bill. These losses, coupled with a split double-header in Cincinnati the next day, dropped them back into second place with a 2.5 game deficit. This brutal span of five games in three days in three different cities (all, of course, without the luxury of air travel) would prove to be too much to recover from.

In April and May, the Cubs had gone a combined 24-16, posting their two worst monthly winning percentages of the season. Oddly, they were 6-9 at home but 18-7 on the road. Six of those home losses came at the hands of the Pirates, who had gone 25-12 over the same span. Pittsburgh caught fire after beating the Cubs on the last day of May, winning 14 straight to begin June and going 19-3 on the month overall. The two teams clashed yet again at the end of June, with the Cubs taking three games and the Pirates two, yet Pittsburgh emerged from the series with a comfortable seven game cushion.

Chicago’s last push came in August, when they ran off ten straight wins during a lengthy homestand to pull to within 2.5 games. The streak was abruptly ended in the second week of August by the lingering Giants, who took four consecutive games at West Side Park. This was the closest the Cubs came to challenging Pittsburgh again.

Frank Chance’s team finished the 1909 season with a record of 104-49. Only the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers have ever won as many games without also winning the pennant. Those Dodgers finished two games behind the powerhouse St. Louis Cardinals. The 1909 Cubs, on the other hand, finished an astonishing 6.5 games behind the Pirates, whose final record was 110-42. Chicago won 57 games on the road as opposed to 47 at home. Their offense was solid, and they scored the second-most runs in the league, but it had nonetheless dropped off significantly from the years before. Jimmy Archer, replacing Kling behind the plate, hit just .230, and Tinker, Evers and Chance all saw their performance decline from 1908.

The Pirates led the N.L. in runs, hits, doubles, triples, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Honus Wagner contributed with a .909 OPS and 100 RBIs, easily topping the league in each. The pitchers held up their end of the bargain as well, with the second lowest team ERA. In the World Series, they went the full seven games against Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers. In game seven, Pittsburgh’s Babe Adams tossed a shutout while Wagner and Dots Miller knocked in two apiece as the team brought the world title home to the Steel City for the first time. Only five other teams in major league history have managed to attain 110 wins: the 1906 Cubs, 1927 Yankees, 1954 Indians, 1998 Yankees and 2001 Mariners, with the last two coming in 162-game seasons. It was the incredible misfortune of the 1909 Cubs to be overshadowed by one of the greatest teams in the history of the game.

References: www.baseball-reference.com; Gil Bogen & Dave Anderson’s biography of Jimmy Kling at bioproj.sabr.org; Chicago Tribune April 19, 1909.