Books: "Chicago Cubs Firsts" By Al Yellon

 

Chicago Cubs Firsts: The Players, Moments, and Records That Were First in Team History

By Al Yellon; foreword by Pat Hughes

Globe Pequot/Lyons Press; 226 pages; paperback, $22.95; eBook, $21.50

With the Yankees taking on the Chicago Cubs this weekend, it is a perfect opportunity to take a look at some of the illustrious history of the team that calls Wrigley Field home.

Al Yellon, a lifelong Cubs fan, is the author of A Season for the Ages, a chronicle of the 2016 Cubs' World Series run, and a co-author of Cubs By The Numbers, a lighthearted look at Cubs history via uniform numbers. He is the managing editor of Bleed Cubbie Blue, part of the SB Nation network, and he is the former television director of Chicago's ABC-7.

In the inquisitive and enlightening new book, Chicago Cubs Firsts: The Players, Moments, and Records That Were First in Team History, Yellon presents the stories behind the many firsts in Chicago Cubs history, some obvious, some that will surprise you. 

This is more than a mere trivia book, as his collection includes substantive answers to the questions of "Who (or when) was the first...?" on many topics. As Yellon puts it, he will "look at various events, people, and places in Cubs history that were the first to occur in relation to a specific question about Cubs history."

Some of the most known Firsts are who the first Cubs pitcher to win a Cy Young was (Ferguson Jenkins), their first Black player (Ernie Banks), the first night game in Wrigley Field history (August 9, 1988 vs. the Mets), the first Rookie of the Year in Cubs history (Billy Williams), and the first Cubs pitcher to win a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger in the same season (Ryne Sandberg).

Other interesting facts, which are a window into history as much as highlighting who did them. One of those is how Joe Tinker was the first Cub to hit a home run in a World Series game, in Game 2 of the 1908 World Series at their home, the West Side Grounds. Tinker was part of the famous Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double-play combination, and it's notable he homered in a game that was part of the Deadball Era when runs were at a premium.

Ian Happ was the first Cub to hit a home run on the very first pitch of a Major League Baseabll season, which he did in Miami against the Marlins on March 29, 2018 - the earliest Opening Day in Major League history.

The first Cub to hit a home run outside of North America came in a game familiar to New York baseball fans, when the Cubs played the Mets in Japan on March 29, 2000. Shane Andrews hit a home run in the seventh inning off Mets reliever Dennis Cook to put Chicago ahead 4-1 on their way to a 5-3 win. To complete the picture for Mets fans, they won the next day on a Benny Agbayani grand slam in the 11th inning.

In this excerpt, Yellon writes of how Cubs history is largely a history of the game of baseball itself: "The Chicago Cubs are literally the very first franchise of what we now know as 'Major League Baseball,' so there's the first 'first' we'll cover in these pages.

Now that statement comes with a few caveats. The Cubs as we know them today began in 1876 (and were commonly referred to with the name 'White Stockings') upon the creation of the National League, although the franchise's history technically goes back to the predecessor National Association's creation in 1871. With the Great Chicago Fire happening later that year, that franchise went on hiatus for a while, and professional baseball's organization and schedule was rather chaotic until the NL's formation five years later.

The Cubs are the only Major League Baseball team that has existed from 1876 to 2024 in its current city, though with a few name changes along the line (and you'll find out more about that later!). Thus, if I were to present a book of 'firsts' for what was long known to WGN-TV viewers as 'The Chicago National League Ball Club,' they would almost all be from before 1900.

So I'm not going to do Cubs 'firsts' exclusively that way in these pages, although we will ride the baseball time machine into the 19th-century version of the sport from time to time. Back then, baseball was a game that would be mostly recognizable to you as a modern fan. But the game also had some significant differences from what we know in the 21st century, and we'll examine some of those as we go along. I'll also cover players from across the grand sweep of Cubs history over nearly the past 150 years because those men from decades and even over a century ago represented the same franchise you root for today, and they should not be forgotten."