Touching base with the Cubs' last champions
I wasn't around in 1908, the last year the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Not many who were are still around today.
But I still feel a connection to that 1908 team, and not just because Cubs' fans are always being reminded that this is the 100th anniversary of the Cubs' last championship.
It's not even the whole team to which I feel connected. It is rather four players from that team. And they're not the four that are most well known, the ones immortalized in poetry and enshrined in Cooperstown, the infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance. Or even the famous three-fingered one, Mordecai Brown.
No, the four are Hofman, Steinfeldt, Schulte and Orval Overall. I name the first three only by their last names because for some 30 years that's how I knew them.
I don't know the exact year they came to me, and my mother, the one who brought them to me, doesn't remember how they came into her possession. The memories become cloudy after thirty or so years pass. My best recollection is that my mother had picked them up in an antique store bargain bin. I'd bet that she didn't pay more than a dollar or two per card. She didn't know anything at all about baseball cards but picked them out for me because they looked old and the pictured players all wore Cubs uniforms and my life at that time pretty much revolved around the Cubs and baseball cards.
Hofman, Steinfeldt, Schulte and Orval Overall were much different than all the others in my baseball card collection. They were about half the size, the pictured players were lithographs instead of photographs, and only Overall had stats and his player bio on the back. It reads: "Orval Overall, the large-framed pitcher of the Chicago Nationals, came to that team in 1906 from Cincinnati. His greatest pitching achievement was the winning of fourteen consecutive victories in the fall of 1907 and spring of 1908. Of his 46 games won in 1908-09-10, 16 were shut-outs. In four years on 294 fielding chances, he made only 11 errors."
On the backs of the Hofman, Steinfeldt and Schulte are advertisements for Sweet Caporal Cigarettes or Cycle Cigarettes.
In the late '70s, when Hofman, Steinfeldt, Schulte and Orval Overall joined my thriving baseball card collection, baseball card collecting wasn't big business. You couldn't go to Beckett for card values. You couldn't go to Google to look up a player's career stats. I'm sure there were ways to find information about Hofman, Steinfeldt and Schulte, but as a teen I wasn't intellectually curious enough to go looking for them.
I knew the cards were old but I had no idea just how old they were, but I at least instinctively had the good sense to treat these four cards with more care and respect than I treated all of the others I owned. So they haven't changed much in the thirty or so years since I got them. Orval Overall looks the worst. He's got a Frankensteinian crease running across his forehead and the edges are frayed and worn. But the other three all remain in pretty good shape, for being almost 100 years old.
The only T206 I'd ever heard of was Honus Wagner, the most famous baseball card in existence. Known as the "Holy Grail" and the "Mona Lisa of baseball cards", an example of this card was the first baseball card to be sold for over a million dollars.
The white-bordered tobacco card set known as T206 was issued from 1909 to 1911 in cigarette and loose tobacco packs through 16 different brands owned by the American Tobacco Company. It is a landmark set in the history of baseball card collecting, due to its size, rarity, and the quality of its color lithographs.
It would take almost 30 years for me to learn that the Hofman, Steinfeldt and Schulte cards I'd been holding are a part of this historic set. Orval Overall is different because he's a T205, the gold-bordered set that followed the popular T206 in 1911.
All four players were on the roster of that legendary 1908 Cubs team, the Cubs' last championship team.
I now know Hofman, Steinfeldt and Schulte by more than their last names.
- Art or Circus "Solly" Hofman was a utility player for 14 seasons including 9 with the Cubs, he played a couple years in the Federal League and came back to Chicago and retired with the Cubs in 1916. Circus hit .316 with 4 RBI in the1908 World Series.
- Third baseman Harry Steinfeldt is the only member of the Tinker- to-Evers –to-Chance infield left out of Franklin Pierce Adams' famous poem, Baseball's Sad Lexicon. In his five years in Chicago, he was on four pennant-winning and two world championship teams.
- Frank "Wildfire" Schulte played for 15 years including his first 13 with the Cubs where he won four pennant and two World Series rings. In 1911, Wildfire was named the National League's Most Valuable Player after compiling a 30-double, 21-triple, 21-home run, 21-stolen base season, becoming the first member of the 20-20-20-20 club, later joined by Willie Mays in 1957 and Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins in 2007.
Baseball fans rarely get to meet the players for whom they cheer. We're lucky to get an autograph from them. Yet we often feel like we know them. We watch them play and we collect their cards. Those cards bring us closer to them. Most of the memories of the players I grew up watching come from their Topps trading cards. The happy-go-lucky smile on Ernie Banks' 1969 cardboard or the sweet swing of Billy Williams captured on his 1974 card. The black horned-rim glasses worn by Paul Reuschel in his 1977 card or the oversized tinted round ones sported by Tom Veryzer in 1983. The Cubs hat in 1977 that barely contained Jose Cardenal's Afro and the bushy Fu Manchu moustache on Dick Tidrow in 1981. These are my Topps memories.
Hofman, Steinfeldt, Schulte and Overall don't hold memories for me but they do hold history, a timeless connection to the past, a glimpse of what it was like to experience what no other Cubs team has done since. The four of them have opened a portal to 1908 and that last Cubs championship team. I can picture Overall on the mound in game 5, shutting down Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers, giving up only three hits and striking out ten in leading the Cubs to their second consecutive title. It's hard to believe but since that day, October 14, 1908, not another Cubs pitcher has stood on the mound in the Series and gotten a game 4 "W".
Touching base with these last Cubs' champions has been good for my soul. They've let me experience a little of something I've always dreamt of: a Cubs' World Series.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sherwood Kiraly reminded me of what I have.
Kiraly is the author of Diminished Capacity (2005), which in 2008 became a major motion picture of the same name, starring Mathew Broderick, Alan Alda and Virginia Madsen. The movie I haven't seen. It didn't last long at the theatres, which doesn't surprise me, since it's not the kind of story that usually even gets made into a movie.
;)
Frank "Wildfire" Schulte Critics were not all that kind to the movie, directed by Terry Kinney, a founder of the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times wrote that although it “touches earnestly on heart-heavy issues of loss: loss of memory, of love and, perhaps because of the local angle, of (or rather by) the Chicago Cubs,” but that the movie lacks “a sustained pace” and that there is “no sense that this was a movie that absolutely, passionately had to be made.” Though Dargis does give a nod to a “short, frenzied scene about an especially masochistic Cub fan,” played by Dylan Baker. Even the local critics were not impressed. The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Philips found any charm the movie evokes to be lost to faux whimsy.
If it hadn’t been for Roger Ebert’s 2-star review, in which he described it as a “mild pleasure…but not much more,” I would never have heard of Kiraly’s book and would never have sought it out.
The movie, and the book on which it is based, as Michael Philips wrote in his review, “rests on the fate of a small item of great value, a Chicago Cubs baseball card – Frank “Wildfire” Schulte, 100 years old, near-mint condition." The same card I own.
Okay, I admit it. My initial curiosity was piqued by the idea that my card might be of greater value than I thought it to be. Had I unknowingly been sitting on a pot of gold all these years? That flight of whimsy was dashed after a little online research turned up an interview with Kiraly, in which he clarifies that the story is purely fiction and that the fictional elements extend to the actual value of a T206 Wildfire Schulte card.
Oh, well, so I’m not going to be able to take that early retirement I’d wistfully dreamt of. I am a little bit richer, though, by having read Kiraly’s book, which is about memories, the ones we hold on to and the ones we’ve lost. Few books I’ve read have better captured the essence of baseball cards and the hearts of Cubs fans.
In one scene the story’s brain-injured narrator, Cooper Zerbs, has brought his Uncle Rollie, who has early Alzheimer's, to a sports card trading show in Chicago to try to sell his uncle's valuable card and he begins to reminisce about baseball cards:
"A baseball card of, say, Ron Santo calls up images that radiate out from Santo himself to include his teammates, his opponents, Cubs past and present, and the circumstances under which the fan saw him. It reminds you not just of Santo and his baseball connections; it reminds you of you."
Moments later, when he comes upon a 1966 Jose Cardenal, Cooper becomes nostalgic:
"It gave me a tingle, I'll tell you. I became a kid again instantly. I was back in that exact moment when I'd opened the first pack I ever got. "
The "masochistic Cub fan" that the New York Times critic wrote of is a card trader named Mad Dog McClure. Cooper sees that being a Cubs fan has taken a toll on him.
"A lot of people say they're 'die-hard' Cub fans. It seemed to me that Mad Dog McClure was of the type who dies again and again. "
If you are either a baseball card collector or a Cubs fan, or, like me, both, then this story about memories, treasured, faded or lost, is one that you won't soon forget.
Randy Richardson, author of Wrigleyville murder-mystery Lost In The Ivy, is a Regular Loser. He is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine and his work has recently been anthologized in Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul and Humor for the Boomer's Heart. He serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association.
Lovable Losers Literary Revue
in History, Memoir
|
Post a Comment
|
26 References
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to FriendReferences (26)
-
Response: www.youthbaseballnow.comAJ\'s Sports Blog American Legends AOL Fanhouse ArmchairGM Awful Announcing Awful Officiating Bad Braves Fan Bad Idea Blue Jeans Ball Deep Sports Baseball Musings Beer Leaguer Bench Renaldo Best Athletes By The Numbers Bevo Sports BfloBlog Big Ten Wonk Blah, blah, blah Boilermaker Banter Bruin Sports Buckeye Commentary Chicks Dig the ... -
Response: AmericolaJust look at the above photo of Victoria? s Secret model Selita Ebanks! She? s adorned in over 4. 5 million dollars worth of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and yellow sapphires. This year, the Fantasy Bra (more photos and video below) from Victoria? s Secret now includes a full gift set- thong, ...
-
Response: m1nfk epdkyPGJVd, ipmpk , [url=http://www.lxq2tbbil4.com]u3eqs[/url], http://www.n1xakvzjqy90.com kyzz5
-
Response: 7jonl sptsceXKFn5, Hi, you have a great site! psmu1m
-
Response: gtx3o jqfglJ2qtN, Hi, you have a great site! http://www.4rjleoqwtb.com sfhnm , thanks!
-
Response: pe9el tmjjcE6btFe, Hi, you have a great site! http://www.b5dqzsc7kxs.com drikh , thanks!
-
Response: 3cqet eivab38OZ5, rvsoi , [url=http://www.sk8gnddwdk.com]4g8ijw[/url], http://www.an4u7mel2o.com vyrrwe
-
Response: bpo6o ipp5bW3O2w, Hi, you have a great site! http://www.lmjt8h2wrj.com lkz86 , thanks!
-
Response: qwowc 7qwtdyGCPI, Hi, you have a great site! ej4sv
-
Response: fmaqz d918e00bUD, Hi, you have a great site! http://www.ypgwkrlmo1.com 80ne3t , thanks!
-
Response: ruc6e qjezwlW3IQ, I really like your site! bogic
-
Response: katqa gaduay2CeQ, rmzdmj , [url=http://www.1xbahpse3s.com]wlf7r[/url], http://www.at3nbeotpp.com t6epu
-
Response: ajs5z ts3phaMf9I, Hi, you have a great site! http://www.jrdmhkhflo.com eranh , thanks!
-
Response: p1lbq jr1ftmX1Cf, od4bq , [url=http://www.qfxmx4fyqwx.com]jimxl[/url], http://www.ckuxvsbpsu.com dksrm
-
Response: ajhzk 3fsdps5im3, Hi, you have a great site! a0krkm
-
Response: 4avgi cjre937VoQZ, hehkq , [url=http://www.nzvgpzx8ck.com]lx1ds[/url], http://www.0rkzmchltc.com ll5k1
-
Response: slhuzgeuzinyxsyuxd, http://www.dfyxxtqduz.com jdmxrpckvv
-
Response: afknsgjydobjeqlkuq, fhkzuqxoud , [url=http://www.ymlbuhdonj.com]blpmrwxefb[/url], http://www.pzimabkzru.com fhkzuqxoud
-
Response: miewpeptjfHi there, what's up you guys???
-
Response: oxpxjbkqpizimfbfpx, http://www.kwjhkxdlbe.com qvbywpjcmq
-
Response: mnxkuojmycfesgtbjd, zmgqqfhhxn , [url=http://www.vxycbfrnjc.com]qocijssjao[/url], http://www.tplirfsdsf.com zmgqqfhhxn
-
Response: vyjtnwtstecdkdkviqgfaivbxdlw, http://www.ietmjpgkog.com wgymuenjai
-
Response: lregndlzauHi there, what's up you guys???
-
Response: phecfjnvjmccbqyoyzkrcaehiksg, http://www.etyazhuplb.com ralvtzqzxy
-
Response: vzdxceadyagqvpkbpulwprornxuj, yphtgmqvhq , [url=http://www.oyhqiyszwj.com]msuxrpfltz[/url], http://www.tnsphxcwdt.com yphtgmqvhq
-
Response: xathsldfefjnvsktaqnwgfzvipuo, http://www.qrsyqtwzax.com hbvphenytu
Reader Comments