Chicago's Baseball Blood Feud

The 1906 World Champion White Sox, famously known as the Hitless Wonders. Source: Wikimedia Commons - Wikimedia.org

It was supposed to be a coronation. The 1906 Chicago Cubs had gone 116-36 — the best winning percentage in modern Major League Baseball history, a record that still stands today. Their rotation ERA was 1.76. They had Frank Chance at first, Joe Tinker at short, Johnny Evers at second. The most famous double-play combination in baseball. They were, by every measurable standard, the greatest team ever assembled.

The White Sox, by contrast, hit .230 as a team — the worst batting average in the American League. Sportswriter Charles Dryden had already dubbed them the “Hitless Wonders.” They won 93 games on the strength of their pitching and not much else. They were heavy underdogs. Nobody gave them a chance.

Nobody except Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Tribune, who predicted a White Sox victory before the Series began. His editor initially refused to print the prediction. Fullerton had to beg to get it in the paper. He was right.

Games 1 through 4 were a pitching showcase unlike anything the World Series had seen. Game 1 at West Side Grounds (the Cubs’ home at what is now the University of Illinois Hospital footprint on the UIC campus) was played in snow flurries. Nick Altrock and Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown both pitched brilliantly — the Sox won 2-1 on an unearned run when catcher Johnny Kling dropped a throw at the plate.

Game 2 was all Cubs — Ed Reulbach one-hit the Sox for 7 innings in a 7-1 rout. Then Game 3: Big Ed Walsh was untouchable. Twelve strikeouts, two hits allowed, a 3-0 shutout. At the time, a World Series record for strikeouts. Journeyman George Rohe — filling in at third for the injured George Davis — hit a bases-loaded triple in the 6th for all the runs needed.

Game 4, Mordecai Brown answered: he carried a no-hitter into the 6th inning before giving up a hit, finished with a 2-hitter, and the Cubs won 1-0 on a Johnny Evers single in the 7th. Through four games the Sox were hitting .097. Eleven hits total. Still tied 2-2.

Then something happened. The Hitless Wonders started hitting.

Game 5, the Sox erupted for 12 hits and 8 runs. Frank Isbell set a World Series record with four doubles in a single game. Walsh pitched but gave up 6, aided by 6 Sox errors — still got the win. Cubs used three pitchers. Final: Sox 8, Cubs 6. Sox led the Series 3-2.

Game 6, Brown started on one day’s rest — a desperation move by manager Frank Chance. The Sox knocked him out in the second inning. Doc White pitched a complete game for Chicago. Sox win 8-3. White Sox are World Champions.

The final numbers tell the full absurdity of what happened: the Sox hit .198 for the Series. The Cubs hit .196. The greatest team in baseball history was out-hit — barely — by the team with the worst batting average in the league. The White Sox committed 16 errors, resulting in 10 unearned runs. And they still won.

Charles Comiskey, the Sox owner, was so overcome that he gave the players a $15,000 bonus to split among the team. He later recovered his composure and informed the players that the bonus was actually an advance on their 1907 salaries. That’s very on-brand for Comiskey. The players were less amused.

It was the first World Series ever played entirely within one city. The 1906 World Series was the first major professional sports championship ever won by a Chicago-based team. The city went sideways. The Cubs would win the World Series two years later in 1908 — and then wait 108 years for the next one. The Sox waited until 2005. But in October 1906, the South Side had it first.