100 Years and Counting … (the poll)
TOWER GROVE — Around about the time the Los Angeles Dodgers took a lead Saturday night at Chavez Ravine, I received an email from the director of the Cubs documentary, “We Believe”. He wrote, in short, that his “Hollywood Happy Ending is in jeopardy!”
Well, at least the “happy” part was.
The Cubs trudged out to Tinseltown to complete their sudden collapse, and for a second consecutive October they’ve been swept out the postseason. Alfonso Soriano is 3-for-28 in those past six playoff games. The Cubs’ would-be MV3 — Soriano, Derrek Lee, and Aramis Ramirez — have not produced one RBI combined in the last two Cub Octobers. (Bernie Miklasz gave an excellent early morning rundown of the ineptitude over the weekend — Breakfast at Bernie’s.) The Cubs got their Hollywood Ending, alright.
Their season ended in Hollywood.
So, it’s at least 101 years since the Cubs won a World Series, which if you buy into the Goat, the Black Cat, the Holy Water and all of that, is also the summer the Cubs ventured to Big Inning, Iowa, and played a 2,614-inning game against All-Stars from The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. (One of the great books.) They must still be recovering.
But there are other 100th anniversaries afoot this season. Plenty to celebrate, even for Cubs fans.
A British web site offers a handy guide for how to celebrate milestone anniversaries. Tenth is aluminum and tin. The 25th is silver. The 60th or 75th is diamond. The web site offers little guidance when it comes a 100th anniversary, for obvious reasons, save to suggest a “10-karat diamond.” Don’t really have one of those laying around, but our blogs here at the P-D do have 10-karat new technology: A poll.
So, that will have to do.
Back in 1908, to celebrate the New Year a ball dropped in Time’s Square for the first time. Mother’s Day was observed for the first time. The Internazionale Football Club is founded in Italy, American Temperance University closes, and cartoonist Tex Avery and famous baseball writer Red Barber were born. The Army Reserve celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The FBI was founded. The first Boy Scout Handbook is published, launching a movement that would reach the United States in 1910, make neckerchiefs a fashion statement and give us Philmont. The Olympics arrived in London. (So, maybe 2012 is the Cubs’ year …)
Hundredth anniversaries abound.
Many in baseball and many locally.
Here’s where the new tech comes in. Below (fingers crossed) is a poll of some things — locally, baseball-wise, etc. — that are celebrating their 100th anniversaries this year.
Which did you celebrate the most (select, at most, two)?
Loading …Earlier in the season Major League Baseball ran a contest to commemorate the 100th anniversary of “Take Me Out to the Baseball Game” (either version, Katie Casey or Nelly Kelly), and there were celebrations around baseball this season. … A few weeks ago at Mizzou, the Mafia descended on campus to mark the 100th anniversary of the J-School. … Eureka High has a couple videos up on YouTube to celebrate its 100th anniversary. … You know the Cubs. … And, at Homecoming this soccer season, Saint Louis University honored their unique mascot, the Billiken, on its 100th birthday.
Of course, there are probably others I missed. Log them below.
This was mainly just a quick, goofy, frivolous entry to test-drive the new technology of inserting a poll. (Would have made those Decision 2008 entries much more user-friendly, eh?) But, also a history lesson of sorts. Back to baseball Tuesday.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Eureka! It works. OK. Bird Land is Poll-enabled. Watch out, Gallup.
I wouldn’t call what I do for the Cubs “celebrating their 100 years”, more of rubbing it in their face.
One hundred votes … and counting. Excellent. I may go poll crazy.
Converse gym shoes is celebrating 100 years in business.
The Ford Model T first rolled off the assembly line in Detroit 100 years ago.
And General Motors is also celebrating 100 years in business.
Even the Nazarene Church has been around as long as the Cubs have been losers.
The real surprise is this country is celebrating a century of municipal water chloronization. That’s right! Our cities have been giving us clean water as long as the Cubs have been poisoning their fans baseball dreams.
Happy Anniversary Little Baby Loser Bears!!!
I’d like to change my vote to “clean water”. Big fan.
DG’s poll…yeah, thats a good thing…way to go DG…BIRD LAND’s nest has just been wired. Looking forward to some interesting stuff to poll concerning those RED BIRDS!!
Nice to see Bird Land poll-enabled…
So much fun to watch the Cubs go down at the hands of Dodgers. Just bad baseball by the Cubs. They didn’t advance runners, they lost their cool, and played awful defense.
The 1908 season was not a pretty one, however, for the St.Louis Cardinals, who were in their 17th season in the National League, the Redbirds scored only 371 runs. That still stands as the major league record for least runs scored in a season. They, as you might expect, finished dead last in the NL…Great stuff, DG…and Go Cards!
Very neat, Derrick! I voted number 101. Was just going to make a comment that the bars needed to have some color and Bingo! they turned blue. Enjoyed your comments tremendously. Keep up your very good work!
May 14: 1st passenger flight in an airplane (bags cost extra)
August 14: race riot in springfield Illinois
Sept 16: General motors incorporated
Nov 10: first Gideon Bible put in a hotel room
–And just for some perspective, it’s been 2000 years since the 2nd Temple was demolished by the Romans. Not that anyone’s counting or anything.
So, in 100 years not much has changed: We still pay to put our bags on the plane, and there are still Gideon Bible’s in the hotel rooms.
There is something fitting about the Gideon anniversary.
dg
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I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. Watching Wainright strike out the last hitter of ‘06 was incredible. Jack Clark’s and Ozzie Smith’s home runs were great in ‘85. Watching the Cubs implosion ranks right up there.
Sorry to double post, but I found a few baseball related things that took place in 1908:
-Billy Werber was born, he is considered the oldest major league player alive.
- Ty Cobb led AL in BA, and Honus Wagner led the NL in BA.
-The AL leader in HR’s Sam Crawford led the league with 7 homeruns, Tim Jordan led the NL with 12
-Christy Matthewson led the NL with a 1.43 ERA and 37 wins
- Cy Young threw his third and final no hitter against the New York Highlanders
Again, sorry to double post, but this was some fun stuff to look at …
I, for one, was very sorry to see the Cubs blow it in three games. I had really hoped they might win the first two games, which would make it all the more crushing to lose the last three games. But I can’t complain.
Fuhrig,
Your scenario would’ve been fun to watch. But, I think that I’m really liking this losing skid they’re putting together. Impressive.
I hear that the Cubs are moving to the Philippines, and are going to be renamed the Manila Folders. All right, it’s an old one, but it’s still a classic. If you have been reading the comments on the Chicago newspaper web sites, you’ll see that they want to get rid of the core of their team, and Piniella. What idiots! Best record in the NL, and they’re talking like that. Thank god my ancestors immigrated to STL and not CHI.
In 1908, Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the remarkable discovery that radioactive elements disintegrate into other elements. Oh, how far we’ve come! Who knows? By the time the Cubbies win the World Series, they’ll be able to travel back in time and talk to the 1908 Cubs about what a wild ride the last 250 years were.
Who needs a winning team when you’ve got Wrigley Field (opened for Major League baseball in 1914; National League moved in in 1916)? After all, is the baseball business about winning or selling tickets?