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It has been a long time. Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chancethat trio of bear cubs immortalized in poem and enshrined as a unit in Cooperstownformed the core of a ball club that brought Chicago baseball fans backtoback World Series championships 100 years ago. And fans are still waiting for victory number three. Chicago Cubs: Tinker to Evers to Chance brings the reader back to the notsohalcyon days of spitball pitchers, insidethepark home runs, and an era when raucous fans lined the foul lines, often a little too close for comfort for the visiting ballplayers. Beginning in 1898 with the acquisition of a green Frank Chance and following the teams exploits through the 1916 season, the last for Joe Tinker in a Cubs uniform, this is the story of Wrigleyvilles favorite tenants, before there was a Wrigleyville.
About the author
Art Ahrens mixes baseball myth with history as admirably as he did in his first book with Arcadia Publishing, Chicago Cubs: 1926-1940. Ahrens, recently featured in HBO's Wait 'til Next Year, knows the meaning of that phrase as well as any Cubs fan. With the astute eye of a historian, however, he laments Frank Chance's decision not to pitch Carl Lundgren against the upstart White Sox in the 1906 World Series as passionately as the many more recent blunders of the many lessmemorable Cubs managers from the current era.
