Let's Go Cubs! is the ultimate celebration of the talented players who make up the Chicago Cubs' once-in-a-generation roster. Featuring dozens of full-color photographs, this book gives fans a glimpse into the best and brightest Cubs of the present and future — Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell, Javier Baez, Kyle Schwarber and more. It will also feature an in-depth look at the veterans leading this fun-loving bunch, including Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Ben Zobrist, Dexter Fowler and the genius baseball minds behind it all — Joe Maddon and Theo Epstein. Also included are the key moments in building this Cubs team — from the off-season signings of Zobrist and Jason Heyward to the midseason trade for fireballer Aroldis Chapman. Featuring expert analysis from the reporters and columnists at the Daily Herald, this keepsake captures the meteoric rise of baseball's hottest young team.
Chicago in the Roaring Twenties was a city of immigrants, mobsters, and flappers with one shared passion: the Chicago Cubs. It all began when the chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley decided to build the world’s greatest ball club in the nation’s Second City. In this Jazz Age center, the maverick Wrigley exploited the revolutionary technology of broadcasting to attract eager throngs of women to his renovated ballpark. Mr. Wrigley’s Ball Club transports us to this heady era of baseball history and introduces the team at its crazy heart—an amalgam of rakes, pranksters, schemers, and choirboys who take center stage in memorable successes, equally memorable disasters, and shadowy intrigue. Readers take front-row seats to meet Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Joe McCarthy, Lewis “Hack” Wilson, Gabby Hartnett. The cast of characters also includes their colorful if less-extolled teammates and the Cubs’ nemesis, Babe Ruth, who terminates the ambitions of Mr. Wrigley’s ball club with one emphatic swing.
It's not quite like today's spring training: one might find a rookie ballplayer (nicknamed Hack) uprooting trees with his bare hands or a future president of the United States getting into a barroom brawl with some grizzled sportswriters. The team was the Chicago Cubs, and the place was Santa Catalina Island-through the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, and World War II. William Wrigley owned both island and ballclub; from 1921 to 1951, they came together. There were movie stars, like Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. There were grand steamships, big bands, hopes and dreams, and World Series rings. It's Chicago Cubs: Baseball on Catalina Island, and it's a trip like no other.
After his first Cubs game when Rich Cohen was eight, his father asked him to make a promise. "Promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. The Cubs do not win," he explained, "and because of that, a Cubs fan will have a diminished life determined by low expectations. That team will screw up your life." Here he captures the story of the team, its players and crazy days-- not just what happened, but what it felt like and what it meant. He searches for the cause of the famous curse, and came to see the curse as a burden but also as a blessing.
NPR's Scott Simon's personal, heartfelt reflections on his beloved Chicago Cubs, replete with club lore, memorable anecdotes, frenetic fandom and wise and adoring intimacy that have made the world champion Cubbies baseball's most tortured—and now triumphant—franchise. Heartbreak and hope. Charmed and haunted. My Cubs is Scott Simon’s love letter to his Chicago Cubs, World Series winners for the first time in over a century. Replete with personal reflections, club lore, memorable anecdotes, and tales of frenetic fandom, My Cubs recounts the franchise’s pivotal moments with the wise and adoring intimacy of a long-suffering devotee and Chicago native. Simon illustrates how the condition of “Cubness” has defined the life of so many Chicagoans and how the team’s fortunes became intertwined with the aspirations of its faithful. With the curse finally broken on November 2, 2016, My Cubs is the perfect portrayal of paradise lost and found.
From Ryan Theriot's favorite jambalaya or Lou Piniella's chicken salad to Hall of Fame chicken tacos from Ryne Sandberg or ginger pork courtesy of Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome, this one of a kind cookbook offers dozens of tasty recipes from current and former Cubs players, coaches, and broadcasters. In addition, this cookbook also features signature recipes from some of Chicago’s leading restaurants, all lavishly illustrated with specially commissioned photographs of Cubs players. Fans will not only discover some of the players’ favorite dishes but also get a little insight into the Cubs themselves.
The New York Times Bestseller With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions. It took 108 years, but it really happened. The Chicago Cubs are once again World Series champions. How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre, will have full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon, and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. Beginning with Epstein's first year with the team in 2011, Verducci will show how Epstein went beyond "Moneyball" thinking to turn around the franchise. Leading the organization with a manual called "The Cubs Way," he focused on the mental side of the game as much as the physical, emphasizing chemistry as well as statistics. To accomplish his goal, Epstein needed manager Joe Maddon, an eccentric innovator, as his counterweight on the Cubs' bench. A man who encourages themed road trips and late-arrival game days to loosen up his team, Maddon mixed New Age thinking with Old School leadership to help his players find their edge. The Cubs Way takes readers behind the scenes, chronicling how key players like Rizzo, Russell, Lester, and Arrieta were deftly brought into the organization by Epstein and coached by Maddon to outperform expectations. Together, Epstein and Maddon proved that clubhouse culture is as important as on-base-percentage, and that intangible components like personality, vibe, and positive energy are necessary for a team to perform to their fullest potential. Verducci chronicles the playoff run that culminated in an instant classic Game Seven. He takes a broader look at the history of baseball in Chicago and the almost supernatural element to the team's repeated loses that kept fans suffering, but also served to strengthen their loyalty. The Cubs Way is a celebration of an iconic team and its journey to a World Championship that fans and readers will cherish for years to come.
The story of Charlie Root and the 1929 Chicago Cubs -- Root holds the record for the most wins, games, and innings pitched in Cub history. He also happens to be the pitcher that gave up the highly controversial "called shot" to Babe Ruth in the 1932 World Series.
The definitive and revealing biography of Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks, one of America's most iconic, beloved, and misunderstood baseball players, by acclaimed journalist Ron Rapoport. Ernie Banks, the first-ballot Hall of Famer and All-Century Team shortstop, played in fourteen All-Star Games, won two MVPs, and twice led the Major Leagues in home runs and runs batted in. He outslugged Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Mickey Mantle when they were in their prime, but while they made repeated World Series appearances in the 1950s and 60s, Banks spent his entire career with the woebegone Chicago Cubs, who didn't win a pennant in his adult lifetime. Today, Banks is remembered best for his signature phrase, "Let's play two," which has entered the American lexicon and exemplifies the enthusiasm that endeared him to fans everywhere. But Banks's public display of good cheer was a mask that hid a deeply conflicted, melancholy, and often quite lonely man. Despite the poverty and racism he endured as a young man, he was among the star players of baseball's early days of integration who were reluctant to speak out about Civil Rights. Being known as one of the greatest players never to reach the World Series also took its toll. At one point, Banks even saw a psychiatrist to see if that would help. It didn't. Yet Banks smiled through it all, enduring the scorn of Cubs manager Leo Durocher as an aging superstar and never uttering a single complaint. Let's Play Two is based on numerous conversations with Banks and on interviews with more than a hundred of his family members, teammates, friends, and associates as well as oral histories, court records, and thousands of other documents and sources. Together, they explain how Banks was so different from the caricature he created for the public. The book tells of Banks's early life in segregated Dallas, his years in the Negro Leagues, and his difficult life after retirement; and features compelling portraits of Buck O'Neil, Philip K. Wrigley, the Bleacher Bums, the doomed pennant race of 1969, and much more from a long-lost baseball era.
