Cubs Win World Series Championship 2016

  Congratulations to the Chicago Cubs on their first World Series Championship in 108 years. The history behind the Cubs long drought has been one of the most superstitious, frustrating, and disappointing stretches in all of baseball. However, it has brought them hopeful support from Baseball fans across the country for many decades.

In 1921 William Wrigley Jr. gained a controlling interest in the Cubs and made the decision to have them train on Catalina Island. In doing so, he became the first baseball owner to bring a major league club out West for spring training. He built a facility for the Cubs on Catalina that he humbly called “Wrigley Field.” (Regular-season major league baseball wouldn’t arrive on the West Coast until the Dodgers and the Giants made their moves west in the 1950s.) This Wrigley Field predates the Los Angeles minor league baseball facility of the same name, which didn’t open until 1925. Not only that, but it’s technically the first baseball facility to bear Wrigley’s name. The more famous Chicago ballpark was known first as Weeghman Park, and then as Cubs Park, before being renamed Wrigley Field in 1926.
 
The Cubs trained on Catalina every spring from 1921-1941, and from 1946-51. (The island was controlled by the U.S. military during the war years.) An amazing array of baseball stars spent their springs in the bucolic setting, including Charlie Root, Phil Cavaretta, Charlie Grimm and Hall of Famers Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean, Gabby Hartnett, Joe McCarthy,Grover Cleveland Alexander and Hack Wilson.

 The team would arrive every spring on one of Wrigley’s fleet of ships used for transportation from the mainland. These included the Hermosa, the Cabrillo, the S.S. Avalon, and, beginning in 1924, the S.S. Catalina, “The Great White Steamship.” After disembarking, the team would join the fashionable set and stay at the island’s fanciest hotel, the Hotel St. Catherine on Descanso Bay.

The club would spend most of the spring playing intra-squad games, though occasionally outside teams such as the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels would make the trip over for some games, and the Cubs would make the trip to the mainland right after spring training for exhibition games with West Coast minor league teams. The team’s home games were free, and the stadium was a major tourist attraction on the island during spring training.

The Cubs’ last season on the island was 1951. A spell of bad weather, including a snowstorm, may have played a role in convincing the team to move spring operations to Mesa, Arizona for a few years. According to Daily Breeze files, an announcement was made in May 1965 by then-owner Philip K. Wrigley, William Wrigley Jr.’s son, that the Cubs would return to Catalina temporarily for the 1966 spring training session while other permanent facilities were being finished. Unfortunately, a combination of timing issues and the expense of conducting the camp caused the team to reconsider and cancel its Catalina plans in favor of training at Blair Stadium in Long Beach instead.

After the 1966 session in Long Beach, the club trained in Scottsdale, Ariz., through 1978, before settling permanently again in Mesa in 1979, where their spring training is held to this day. 

Because of this long history Cub fans almost always out number LA Dodger fans when they come to town. The roars by Cub fans during the recent NL Division Championship Series in LA bears witness to the fact that Cub fans are alive and well in Dodger town. Congratulations! Go Cubs and Go Dodgers.