By Dave Studeman

I’ve never been one to put much stock in the Billy Goat Curse of the Chicago Cubs. I’ve lived in Chicago over twenty years, and I never heard of it until the Cubs made the playoffs in 2003. It was just an odd, historical footnote to the Cubs’ past. I personally think the story was pounced on by the media, as a way to compare and contrast the Cubs with the Red Sox, but it has never really held much currency for true Cubs’ fans. It’s not truly primal in nature. It doesn’t cause a shudder, nor speak to our dark nature. It’s a second-rate curse.

Print by W.O. Mull, ca. 1872 I have a better curse in mind—one that the media totally missed. The Curse of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

The National Association of Base Ball Players was the very first professional baseball league, formed after the Cincinnati Red Stockings made it clear that professional baseball would be a big hit with the fans. The first ten teams were the Philadelphia Athletics, the Washington Olympics, the Washington Nationals (TWO teams in DC!), the New York Mutuals, the Cleveland Forest Citys (an odd oxymoron), the Fort Wayne Kekiongas (no clue), the Troy Haymakers, the Rockford Forest Citys (two teams with the same nickname? And what did it mean?), the Boston Red Stockings and the Chicago White Stockings.

Suffice to say that the Chicago team, called the White Stockings, was actually the original manifestation of today’s Cubs. The granddaddy of our lovable, Sosa-less losers. They would later be known as the Colts and the Orphans (after Cap Anson was fired)—the name Cubs would not be given to them until 1902. But the curse that would cause so much future rue was inflicted that very first year.

The NA teams played many other teams, not just those in the NA, but it was only the NA games that counted in the standings. The goal was for each team to play every other team in the league five times, but that didn’t work out. Still, they played the season as much as possible, and each team was supposed to finish its schedule by November 1st (remember that the next time you think the current postseason goes on for too long), at which time the first professional league baseball champion would be crowned.

A close race developed between Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. In fact, the Chicago team was in the lead on October 17, 1871, the day the city caught fire. I won’t go into all the details of the Chicago fire, but it almost literally wiped the city out. The fire spread so fast that people couldn’t outrun it. Some intrepid folks jumped into open graves in Lincoln Park in order to let the fire pass over them. And the White Stockings’ ballpark, uniforms and equipment did not survive. They may have been buried with the other ashes that formed the landfill now known as Streeterville, by the Magnificent Mile.

The team had to play their final games on the road. Without a home, certainly demoralized by the devastation at home, they lost every game and the pennant to the Athletics.

It was two years before the White Stockings were able to play in the National Association again. Their final years in the NA were lackluster, though they did go on to be perhaps the key founding club of the National League in 1876, and they had some great teams over the next two or three decades.

But the die was cast. The scourge had been revealed. Temporary successes couldn’t suppress the formidable power of the Chicago Fire. It’s time to acknowledge the origin of the Cubs’ true curse.

Dave Studeman and Pete Simpson are the creators of the Baseball Graphs website, which features historic and historical baseball graphs and Win Shares research. Dave is also a regular contributor to Heater, a PDF fantasy magazine for the digital age. Dave lives in the greater Chicagoland area.

On Sunday, May 18, 1947, Jackie Robinson played his first game at Wrigley Field. Mike Royko and Bud Selig both attended the game. Here’s the entry from Royko’s diary that day, as I imagine it.

By Jonathan Eig

I went to the Cubs game today with Slats Grobnik and nearly got into a fight. I know what you’re gonna say: So what else is new? But this time was different.

I started to think about the game even before I left the neighborhood.

Way Things Were by Will Byington“Slats,” I said, “Do you think they’re going to let the colored guy play?”

“You mean Jackie Robinson?” Slats asked.

“No, I mean Buckwheat. Of course I mean Jackie Robinson.”

“Lookit,” said Slats, “The way I figure they gotta let him play or else a whole lot of his people coming up from the South Side to see him are gonna make a riot. They ain’t payin’ to see Dixie Walker.”

So we took three trolleys and a bag full of Mrs. Grobnik’s bologna sandwiches and we got to Wrigley just in time for the first pitch. Slats said he was going to buy a scorecard and I went to find a couple of empty seats. We had standing-room tickets, but why stand when you don’t have to? I found a pair in the upper deck, even with first base. Not bad. I grabbed one seat and put the bologna sandwiches on the other to save it.

After about ten minutes, no sign of Slats, but this nerdy-looking kid in a sweater—I think it’s called a Cardigan—came up next to me. He was pretty big, but skinny. I could’ve knocked him over with a good sneeze.

“I believe your bag is on my seat,” he said.

“I believe you’re an idiot,” I told him.

“Will you please move the bag?” he said.

“I’m saving that seat for Slats Grobnik.”

“Is that your imaginary friend?”

“You’ll find out when he gets here and beats you to a pulp for taking his seat.”

“Please move your bag or I’ll be forced to call an usher,” the kid said.

“Your funeral,” I told him.

Then the kid tried to get friendly.

“My name is Allan,” he said. “My friends call me Bud.”

“Nice to meet you, Allan,” I said, as I unwrapped a sandwich.

“I’m here to see Jackie Robinson,” he said.

“You and everybody else,” I answered.

But I’ve got to admit I was getting excited, too. Robinson on the same field as Hack, Cavarretta, Pafko, Merullo. A black man in the big leagues. Mr. Grobnik said he wasn’t sure the game could handle it. He said baseball as a business might collapse if the races mixed. I was more worried about the future of the game if guys in Cardigans like Allan here started taking all the good seats.

Robinson came to bat in the top of the first and you should have heard the roar. It was low and strong and it kept going, like a locomotive. I think Allan might have been scared because for a minute or two he didn’t even move.

Robinson swung at the first pitch and hit a little pop foul that landed behind the Cubs dugout. The crowd cheered as if he had just hit a homer. I don’t remember a lot of the details of the game, but I remember a few things that happened that afternoon.

Slats didn't come back. It turned out he met a girl who was selling Cracker Jack and took her behind the bleachers. He told me later her name was Jenny and that she let him get to second base.

I also remember that Robinson played first base. Early in the game there was a close play and Lennie Merullo ran hard into the bag and knocked Robinson to the ground. Robinson was twice the size of Merullo. He could have destroyed him. But when he got up and brushed the dirt off his uniform, he didn’t even look at Merullo. He didn’t say a word.

“If I were Robinson, I’da killed him,” I said.

“Jackie has to restrain himself,” Allan said. “He promised Branch Rickey he would turn the other cheek.”

“Screw Branch Rickey,” I said. “Somebody hits you, you hit ‘em back—and harder. That’s just common sense.”

“But Branch Rickey has to think about the business of baseball. He has to think about the franchise. He has to think about revenues and salaries and balancing the interests of players and owners and building a solid base of fans in all the major markets.”

I stared at Allan like he was from another planet but I don’t think he noticed. He had a dreamy look on his face.

Later in the game Robinson came to bat again. This time he looped a foul ball high and hard and right toward us. I gave Allan a quick elbow to the kidney and he doubled over in pain. Somebody in front of me got a hand on the ball first, but it glanced off of him and bounced around in the seats. Suddenly, Allan was back on his feet and it was between me and him. I stuck out a leg and tripped him. Then I grabbed the ball and stuffed it in my pocket.

I thought Allan was gonna take a swing at me after that but he didn't. He took his seat and I took mine.

Just then Slats came back.

“Let’s get outta here,” he said. “There’s a security guard lookin’ for me.”

“We gotta go, Allan,” I said. “Nice talkin’ to you.”

Allan put his arm around my shoulder as he said goodbye, which struck me as pretty queer, but I guess it had been an emotional day for everyone.

We were outside the ballpark when I remembered my foul ball.

“Hey, Slats,” I said. “Lookit!”

But when I reached in my pocket all I found was a wad of bologna sandwich.

Guest Loser Jonathan Eig, a senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal and former executive editor of Chicago magazine, will appear at the next Lovable Losers Literary Revue Wednesday, June 4 at El Jardin. Eig is the author of Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.

By Randy Richardson

Cubs fans of the late fifties and early sixties must have had medicine cabinets crammed with pain relievers and antacids. How else could one stomach a team that habitually lost two out of every three games? This was arguably the century's worst baseball team at its very worst. Even for a team steeped in a tradition of futility, the Baby Boomer era Cubs would had to have severely tested a die-hard's loyalty.

What these Cubs teams lacked in momentum, however, they tried to make up for with Moe-mentum. I've no proof that there was a concerted effort on the part of the Cubs brain-trust (loosely defined) at the time to recruit guys named Moe to play for them, but if they did, they were indisputably successful.

Between 1957 and 1962, the Cubs cornered the market on guys named Moe. Three Moes – Drabowsky, Thacker and Morhardt – wore Cubbie blue at varying times during that stretch of dreadful baseball, turning the North Side into Moe-town.

The first Moe to put on a Cubs uniform was Drawbowsky, whose real name was Myron. He was born in Ozanna, a village in southern Poland and in 1968, in the twilight of his 17-year big league career, Chicago columnist Mike Royko quipped that he “is still considered the best pitcher that Ozanna, Poland, ever produced.”

Drabowsky was also the best ballplayer of the three Moes during this Moe-azoic Era of Cubs baseball. The Polish-American right-handed pitcher was in many ways the 1950s model for the modern hard-luck pitcher Kerry Wood. In his rookie year, 1957, Drabowsky posted a 13-15 record and struck out 170 batters, second in the National League. A sore arm in 1958, however, cost him his fastball and he was never able to recapture that electricity of that rookie year.

Drabowsky was back on the mound for the Cubs in 1959 just in time for the arrival of rookie backstop Moe Thacker (given name: Morris). Yes, it was a battery tandem of Moe and Moe, which undoubtedly served as inspiration for the Andrea True Connection twenty years later when it recorded the disco anthem “More, More, More” but which to the ear sounded like "Moe, Moe, Moe".

The wheels were in Moe-tion to turn around the Cubs, built on a super-charged Moe-tor. You can almost hear the cheers. "Moe! Moe! Moe!"

Unfortunately, Moe turned out to be less. The Cubs gave up on Drabowsky after four years and traded him away. Like Kerry Wood, Drabowsky found new life in the bullpen and even helped the Baltimore Orioles win the World Series in 1970, a pinnacle he never would have attained had he remained with the Cubs. He also developed a reputation as a flake whose practical jokes involved, among other things, being rolled to first base in a wheelchair after being hit by a pitch. In the Jim Bouton book “Ball Four”, one of Drabowsky’s teammates claimed that Drabowsky got sick on a team flight and “puked up a panty girdle.”

The Cubs weren't done living for the Moe-ment just yet. The year after Drabowsky's departure saw the late-season call-up of Moe Morhardt, a left-hand hitting first baseman whose given name was Meredith. Morhardt played well enough in September to earn his way back onto the roster at the start of 1962.

But that would be final year of the Cubs' Moe movement, as the cheers of "Moe" were replaced by moans. The 1962 Cubs finished 59-103, the first 100-loss club in Cubs history.

Morhardt played in only 25 games with the Cubs in '62, batting .205. That would be the end of his Major League career. The Cubs traded Thacker away to the St. Louis Cardinals in a six-player deal at the end of the season. He would play only one more year, ending five years in the big leagues with a career batting average of .177.

Forty-six years have gone by and there's not been another Moe to wear the Cubs uniform. Say it ain't so, Moe.

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.