The indomitable Cubs of baseball's early yearsAll Cub fans know from heartbreak and curse-toting goats. Fewer know that, prior to moving to the north side in 1916, the team fielded powerhouse nines that regularly claimed the pennant. Before the Ivy offers a grandstand seat to a golden age:
BEHOLD the 1871 team as it plays for the title in nine different borrowed uniforms after losing everything in the Great Chicago Fire
ATTEND West Side Grounds at Polk and Wolcott with its barbershop quartet
MARVEL as superstar Cap Anson hits .399, makes extra cash running a ballpark ice rink, and strikes out as an elected official
WONDER at experiments with square bats and corked balls, the scandal of Sunday games and pre-game booze-ups, the brazen spitters and park dimensions changed to foil Ty Cobb
RAZZ Charles Comiskey as he adopts a Cubs hand-me-down moniker for his team's name
THRILL to the poetic double-play combo of Tinker, Evers, and Chance even as they throw tantrums at umpires and punches at each other
CHEER as Merkle's Boner and the Cubs' ensuing theatrics send the team to the 1908 World SeriesRich with Hall of Fame personalities and oddball stories, Before the Ivy opens a door to Chicago's own field of dreams and serves as every Cub fan's guide to a time when thoughts of ""next year"" filled rival teams with dread.
""If you like the Chicago Cubs and thoroughly researched and well-written books, then you're going to dig Before the Ivy. Pernot weaves all kinds of information and insight into this lively early history of this once-great and championship-riddled organization, the now World Series-deficient Chicago Cubs.""--Carson Cunningham, co-editor of Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs' Glory Years, 1870-1945 ""Long-suffering Cubs fans will take great pleasure from this delicious account of the late 19th and early 20th century Chicago National Leaguers before Wrigley Field, when the Cubs were perennial contenders, and mounted some of the most powerful teams in all of baseball history. Laurent Pernot gives us thoughtful portraits of baseball greats Al Spalding, Mike ""King"" Kelly, Adrian ""Cap"" Anson--and takes us deep inside the careers and rivalries of the famous combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. This book will warm the hearts of Cub fans in the long winter of their losing near-century at beautiful, unlucky Wrigley Field.""--Warren Goldstein, author of Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball and (with Elliott Gorn) A Brief History of American Sports ""Nicely written and quite lively. A good, engaging narrative, with some fine storytelling about a subject that many are passionate about.""--Elliott Gorn, author of The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prizefighting in America
