http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/sports/baseball/chicago-cubs-win-division-1908.html 2016-09-16 14:09:37 Cubs Win the Division, With 1908 Still Casting a Cloud The Cubs are poised to have the best record in baseball. But. === The first team is officially in the Major League Baseball playoffs, and lo and behold it is the historically jinxed At 93-53, the Cubs are poised to have the best record in baseball, and their Jon Lester (17-4, 2.40 ERA), Kyle Hendricks (15-7, 2.02) and Jake Arrieta (17-6, 2.91), the defending Cy Young winner, are a potent trio of aces. In his second full season, Kris Bryant is one of the best hitters in baseball and Anthony Rizzo is not far behind. The 22-year-old shortstop Addison Russell is one of the game’s best glovemen. The Cubs’ success comes even as their big off-season signing, outfielder Jason Heyward, is not playing that well, hitting .226. Chicago was highly touted coming into the season: 14 of 31 experts The Cubs have “ It was another sports age. Other stories in the one-page Times sports “section” included a report of a horse owned by Lillie Langtry winning in England and multiple dispatches from midweek Ivy League football practices. (There were also ads for the Pierce Arrow car, frock coats (“not only for high-flyers”) and $15 suits.) A lot that happened in 1908 in sports is very unlikely to ever happen again. Penn was the national college football champion. The Stanley Cup winners, the Montreal Wanderers, and the German soccer champions, Viktoria Berlin, no longer exist. At the Olympics in London, events like polo, tug o’war and motorboating were contested, and Bohemia won two medals. But if you’re looking for omens, consider another drought. The winner of the 1908 Olympic men’s 1,500 meters, the “metric mile,” was Mel Sheppard, an American. For 108 years, no other American could match that feat, not Glenn Cunningham, not Jim Ryun, not Steve Scott. An American had not been in the top eight in the race since 1992 or won a medal since 1968. But when Matt Centrowitz of Maryland unexpectedly