The Chicago Tribune Book of the Chicago Cubs is a decade-by-decade look at one of baseball’s most beloved if hard-luck teams, starting with the franchise’s beginnings in 1876 as the Chicago White Stockings and ending with the triumphant 2016 World Series championship.
For more than a century, the Chicago Tribune has documented every Cubs season through original reporting, photography, and box scores. For the first time, this mountain of Cubs history has been mined and curated by the paper’s sports department into a single one-of-a-kind volume. Each era in Cubs history includes its own timeline, profiles of key players and coaches, and feature stories that highlight it all, from the heavy hitters to the no-hitters to the one-hit wonders.
And of course, you can’t talk about the Cubs without talking about Wrigley Field. In this book, readers will find a complete history of that most sacred of American stadiums, where Hack Wilson batted in 191 runs—still the major-league record—in 1930, where Sammy Sosa earned the moniker “Slammin’ Sammy,” and where fans congregated, even when the team was on the road, throughout its scintillating championship run.
The award-winning journalists, photographers, and editors of the Chicago Tribune have produced a comprehensive collector’s item that every Cubs fan will love.
The Chicago Tribune is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (the slogan from which its integrated WGN radio and television received their call letters), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. In 2022, it had the seventh-highest circulation of any newspaper in the United States. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the Chicago Tribune became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century, under Medill's grandson Robert R. McCormick, its reputation was that of a crusading newspaper with an outlook that promoted American conservatism and opposed the New Deal. Its reporting and commentary reached markets outside Chicago through family and corporate relationships at the New York Daily News and the Washington Times-Herald. In the 1960s, its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, sought to expand its market. In 2008, for the first time in its over-a-century-and-a-half history, its editorial page endorsed a Democrat, Barack Obama, a U.S. Senator from Illinois, for U.S. president. Originally published solely as a broadsheet, the Tribune announced on January 13, 2009, that it would continue publishing as a broadsheet for home delivery, but would publish in tabloid format for newsstand, news box, and commuter station sales. The change, however, proved unpopular with readers; in August 2011, the Tribune discontinued the tabloid edition, returning to its established broadsheet format through all distribution channels. The Tribune was owned by parent company Tribune Publishing. In May 2021, Tribune Publishing was acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media.
I own the hardback edition of this book and Anthony Rizzo is on the cover, not Jake Arietta.
I loved the pictures, interviews and details of the book. I deducted a star because I disagreed with some of the editors selections for the all-decade teams in each section.
While reading The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse, wanted to read more baseball books. Found this listed in an article on bleedcubbieblue.com, "Choice Reads for Cubs Fans This Offseason," November 2018.