The Evolution of Nicknames for the North Siders

This article appears in SABR’s “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.

First, they were the “Chicago Base Ball Club.”1 They would not be the Cubs until much later. Some sportswriters and baseball fans – at various times and for different reasons – also knew Chicago’s National League team as the Orphans, Colts, Panamas, Remnants, and by many other aliases. Yes, they were even the Microbes for a while.

Local businessmen founded the franchise on October 1, 1869, as a member of the National Association of Base Ball Players. The new squad won its first game, 7-1, on April 29, 1870, against the St. Louis Unions. Team uniforms featured white hose, white flannel caps, and white shirts with blue trousers. Not surprisingly, many fans began calling their base ball club the “White Stockings.”2 Some preferred “the Chicagos” or the Chicago Nine. In 1876, Chicago joined the fledgling National League.

William Hulbert, a longtime Chicago resident and grocery-store owner, invested in the White Stockings. He quickly became one of the team officers and, later, its president. Hulbert disapproved of gambling, drinking, and most other vices. So did Albert Goodwill Spalding, an Illinois native and one of baseball’s top pitchers. Hulbert lured Spalding away from the Boston Red Stockings (the forerunner of the Boston Braves). Spalding, a right-handed thrower and future sporting-goods mogul, won 47 games in 1876. Infielder Ross Barnes hit .429, and catcher James “Deacon” White led the league with 60 RBIs.

Hulbert also had purchased Adrian “Cap” Anson’s contract from the Philadelphia A’s before the 1876 campaign. The hard-hitting first basemanbatted .356 in his debut season as a White Stocking. A player-manager with Philadelphia in 1875, Anson eventually took over those twin duties in Chicago. The White Stockings roster boasted several talented young players in addition to Barnes and White They included infielder Tom Burns and outfielders George Gore and Abner Dalrymple.. Many sportswriters began calling the team “Anson’s Colts,”3 or, simply, “the Colts,” who won their first pennant in 1876. (Spalding retired as a pitcher after his first season with Chicago. He played one year in the infield and joined the team’s front office. Hard-throwing Larry Corcoran and curveball artist Fred Goldsmith took over as the team’s main pitchers a few years later.)

The White Stockings signed Mike “King” Kelly in 1880. Just 22 years old, the Troy, New York, native already had gained a reputation as one of the game’s smartest and best players. Yes, he drank. He also sprayed line drives around the field. Supposedly, he invented the hook slide. Every spring, he swore to give up his carousing.

The Colts won more pennants, in 1880-82 and 1885-86. However, Anson and Spalding (promoted to White Stockings president after Hulbert died in 1882) grew tired of babysitting whiskey-soaked ballplayers. They shipped Kelly to the Boston Beaneaters after the 1886 campaign. The team’s slide soon began. Anson’s later clubs struggled to reach .500 even as the player-manager kept hitting and driving in runs. Following a disappointing 59-73 season in 1897, Anson was let go by Chicago after spending 27 seasons in the big leagues. The players had lost their leader, their “Pop.” They were now, and hit above .300 almost every season. Baseball writers voted him into the Hall of Fame in 1939, 17 years after his death at the age of 69. His legacy as a baseball player is tainted by his racial insensitivity. Anson refused to play games with African-American ballplayers.)

The upstart American League began play in 1901. Eight teams were formed, the same number as in the National League. The Chicago club opted to be the White Sox, not a far stretch from the old White Stockings. Several American League teams raided National League squads. The Orphans were no exception. The 1901 squad finished a woeful 53-86 and in sixth place. Club officials began a large-scale rebuilding project. This time, many newspapers decided that the team should be known as

the Remnants.

The Cubs nickname appeared in print for the first time on March 27, 1902, in the Chicago Daily News. Chicago had hired Frank Selee, a quiet New Englander, to run the club, which was once again made up of young, enthusiastic ballplayers. The headline, written when every team is filled with optimism, read “Selee Places His Men.”4 Below that, the subhead read “Manager of the Cubs Is in Doubt Only on Top Positions.” It was as simple as that.

No byline accompanied the article, which was not unusual in that era. Charles Sensabaugh may have written the headline, though. He was the Chicago Daily News sports editor at the time. But why did he pick “Cubs”? Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson reported in their 2007 book The Cubs: A Complete History: “The term ‘cub’ was common slang for a young ballplayer.”5 The writers also give some credit to an unknown typesetter. “Had the word not appeared with the capitalized ‘C,’ it might not have stood out,” Stout and Johnson wrote.6

Baseball historian John Snyder wrote: “The (Cubs) name caught the imagination of the public and began to be used in everyday speech until it became part of the team’s identity.”7 Even so, some sportswriters still preferred the Colts moniker. (Writers and fans quickly retired the Orphans.)

Cartoonists loved the “Cubs.” In 1906, Chicago’s two ballclubs met in a crosstown World Series. One newspaper printed an editorial cartoon after the Series showing a figure clad only in white stockings, along with a bearskin nailed to the wall and six white socks hanging on a clothesline. The White Sox had won the fall classic in six games.8

By 1907, the team was “universally called the Cubs by all the newspapers. That year, the name ‘Cubs’ first appeared on the club’s scorecards.”9 Credit for that might go to Frank Chance of Tinker to Evers to Chance fame. The first baseman from Salida, California, served as the Chicago player-manager from 1905 to 1912 after breaking in with the team in 1898. Chance “insisted in 1907 that the club be called the ‘Cubs’ exclusively. The Chicago newspapers fell in line. The Cubs nickname was “officially recognized during the 1907 World Series, when new coats were issued to the players sporting a large bear figure on each sleeve.”10

This time, the Cubs swept the Detroit Tigers to earn their first Series title. Harry Steinfeldt hit .471 (8-for-17), Johnny Evers batted.350 (7-for-20), and the Chicago pitching staff posted a combined 0.75 ERA. Every player received a World Series medal. Not surprisingly, the medals bore the mark of a bruin. The Chicago Tribune explained: “Its center represents in rose gold the ‘world,’ on which is mounted in relief the profile of a bear cub holding a large diamond in his teeth, which are to be of aluminum. A ruby represents the cub’s eye. The figures ‘1907’ will be raised slightly. Circling this field is a band of Roman gold bearing the inscription ‘World’s Champions.’”11

Of note, the Cubs’ 1908 uniform “featured an emblem of a rather lackadaisical bear holding a bat.”12 Also in 1908, a teenager wearing a bear suit during a summer heat wave entertained the crowd at Wrigley Field. This early team mascot “had to fan himself by pulling a string that opens and closes a space in front of his mouth.”13 After a big win, the mascot cheered the Cubs. The fans, though, “threw cushions at it.”14

It may seem surprising that the Chicago franchise ever finally settled on a long-lasting nickname. They went through so many short-term ones. Chicago trained one spring in New Mexico. Thus, some writers labeled its players the Desert Rangers. At least one writer noticed that many players were sporting Panama-style hats one year. So … the Panamas.15 Another year, several team members looked a bit short in stature, such as 125-pound Johnny Evers. They would be the Microbes. In fact, the Chicago American edition of September 26, 1903, ran a banner headline across the front page: “Microbes Make Stand for Second Place.”16 Maybe the funniest short-term nickname, though, was the Spuds, a reference to Irish-American Charles Murphy, who owned the Chicago club from 1906 to 1913.17 That one didn’t gain much traction.

The Cubs stood out as one of baseball’s early dynasties in the World Series era. They earned three straight pennants (1906-1908) and back-to-back World Series championships. From 1906 through 1945, the Cubs won 10 National League pennants. Quickly, though, the team’s fortunes changed. Chicago did not finish above .500 throughout the 1950s and did not win a pennant from 1946 through 2015. At long last, in 2016, they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League Championship Series and knocked off the Cleveland Indians in seven games to celebrate a World Series title.

The Cubs remain one of baseball’s most beloved franchises. They are valued at $2.675 billion, according to an estimate in forbes.com, the fourth most valuable team in major-league baseball.18 They certainly have used some colorful names through the years. Some people still call them the Baby Bears, the Cubbies, the North Siders, and, unfortunately, due to that championship drought, the Lovable Losers. More than anything else, though, they are now and probably forever, the Cubs.

Notes

1 Glenn Stout, Glenn and Richard A. Johnson, The Cubs (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin: 2007).

2 “Base Ball, Chicagos vs. Atlantics,” Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1874.

3 “Anson’s Colts Defeated in the Opening Game at the Hub,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1890.

4 “Selee Places His Men,” Chicago Daily News, March 27, 1902.

5 Stout and Johnson, The Cubs.

6 Ibid.

7 John Snyder, Cubs Journal: Year by Year and Day by Day With the Chicago Cubs Since 1876 (Covington, Kentucky: Clerisy, 2005).

8 John Devaney, The World Series: A Complete Pictorial History (Skokie, Illinois: Rand-McNally, 1972).

9 Art Ahrens, Chicago Cubs: Tinker to Evers to Chance (Images of Baseball) (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2007).

10 Snyder, Cubs Journal.

11 “Origin of the Cubs.” Wrigleyivy.com.

12 Cait Murphy, Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 “We solve the mystery of the Cubs’ early name: The Microbes.” Timeout.com

17 “Spud Slump Not Serious,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1906.

18 “The Business of Baseball,” Forbes.com forbes.com/teams/chicago-cubs/.