Baseball and Family Ties

The Chicago Cubs just won their first World Series since 1908 and as a lifelong baseball fan, I am so happy for their fans who have waited so long. I grew up a fan of the San Francisco Giants who saw their own World Series drought of 56 years (52 of them in San Francisco) end in 2010 and was ecstatic that the team I'd been cheering for my entire life had finally won it all. The joy was somewhat tempered with a little bit of sadness though as the first person who I thought about when the last out was made was my grandfather Donald Dwyer, a life long baseball fan, and a die-hard Giants fan once the team moved to San Francisco from New York. Grandpa died in 2000 and never got a chance to see the Giants win a World Series in San Francisco (he did, however, see two World Series losses.) After I attended the victory parade in 2010, I stopped by my parents' house and visited with my mom who said she was thinking of buying some kind of memento and bringing it up to Holy Cross to leave at my grandparents' grave. I told her I was thinking of the same thing, and I'm sure several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were thinking it also. I don't know that anyone ever did though.* I'm quite sure there are many Cubs fans feeling the same way today, though with an even deeper connection as their drought was nearly twice as long.

*I didn't leave a memento at Grandpa's grave. I did buy a commemorative brick
that is in Seals Plaza at AT&T Park as part of the "Champions Walk."

I also feel empathy for the Cleveland Indians fans who have now taken over the mantle of longest drought between World Series wins from the Cubs -- it's now at 68 years. They watched their team fall from a 3-1 series lead, and I know the disappointment weighs heavily. Even after my Giants have won 3 World Series, I still remember the awful feeling after they lost in 2002 and while the bitterness has faded there is still a pang of "what if" that lingers. (The "what if" for 1989 and the Earthquake Series isn't quite as strong as I suspect the Oakland Athletics would have won without the interruption as they were the better team, though I never would have admitted it then.)

Between connecting with how the fans of both teams are feeling now, I've also been thinking about how amazing it is that the sport of baseball can connect generations for so long. Much of the news coverage of the 2016 World Series was focused on three dates, 1948, 1945, and 1908. 1948 was the last year the Cleveland Indians won the World Series, 1945 was the last year the Chicago Cubs had appeared in the World Series, and 1908 was the last year the Cubs won the whole thing. Those Cubs dates are particularly mind-boggling to me. As a result, there were lots of stories about what life was like in those years, who was president, what famous people were alive, and so on and so forth. Thinking about things in history books wasn't what made me connect with how long it really had been. It wasn't until I started thinking about my own family history that the sense of time truly hit. Working backwards in time, these are the things that really hit me.
The Cleveland Indians last won the World Series on October 11, 1948. This was a full nine days before my aunt Diane Murray Earnshaw was born. Diane died in 2005 at a too young 57, yet the Indians did not win a World Series in that time. My mother's youngest sister would be born two months after the end of the 1948 World Series; my father's youngest sister wouldn't be born for another four and a half years. My great-grandfather Marshall Edward Murray passed away in May 1948, but I still had three living great-grandparents when the World Series ended, including my great-grandmother Maggie Muckle Kenny who would live 19 more years.

The Chicago Cubs lost the 1945 World Series which ended on October 10, 1945. My father would have just started kindergarten and my mother was a little over a month shy of three years old. The older of my mother's two younger sisters is only three months old, her younger brother hasn't been born yet. My father's younger brother Jackie was still living, his next youngest brother had yet to be born. That so many people I've known my entire life had yet to be born in 1945 and 1948 is amazing.

The date that gets me the most though is October 14, 1908 -- the date of the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. I look back at that date and know that none of my grandparents have been born -- it would be a good 18 months until Grandpa would be born. He lived for 90 years and not once in his long life did the Cubs win the World Series. In 1908, my great-grandmother Mary Mullane is still married to her first husband, Edward Hayes. My Coleman great-grandparents have only been married for 4 years (equaling how long Lizzie has been in the United States); my Dwyer great-grandparents have been married just 3 years. The fact that boggles my mind the most though is that at least 6 of my 16 great-great-grandparents are still living, and possibly 9 of 16 (still figuring out the Coleman/O'Leary side on those.) My great-great-grandmother Elizabeth McDevitt Kenny died a few weeks after the end of the World Series, and my great-great-grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray had been dead less than a year.  My great-great-grandparents were all born between about 1823 and 1855, before the U.S. Civil War, yet six of them were still alive in 1908!

Those are just some of the things that happened in my family during those years, and those kinds of occurrences happened in the families who grew up in and around Chicago and Cleveland. I know how much I thought about Grandpa after the Giants won in 2010 (and again in 2012 and 2014.) I am certain Cubs fans are thinking similar thoughts and looking back at all the people in their family who waited for this moment but never got a chance to see it. I am also certain Indians fans are doing the same thing and wondering when it will be their turn to celebrate.

Baseball has an amazing place in American history. With the founding of the National League in 1876, we have 140 years of people following teams from their cities in what has now become Major League baseball. And while some teams have come, gone, and/or changed cities and names, others have been added so that there are now 30 teams across the country for fans to support and hand down their love for sport from generation to generation. It is sharing family traditions, like cheering for a particular sports team, that strengthens and enriches family ties. Even if a person never met any of her great-great grandparents, she can know there are stories of when that ancestor was going to the baseball stadium to cheer on the same team years before. (And heck, if that person is a fan of the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox, they've even gone to the same stadium!)
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One last thought -- it's a story I always include when I talk about Grandpa and his love of baseball. When he was growing up in San Francisco, Major League Baseball had yet to come west of the Mississippi, so he was a die hard San Francisco Seals fan. One of the highlights in the history of the Seals was a young player from the heavily Italian North Beach section of town, a fellow named Joe DiMaggio who in 1933 had 61-game hitting streak. Occurring during the Great Depression, Grandpa got to witness a lot of that history. (I also include the story my uncle tells in that linked blog post as I was there when it happened, though not quite in the way described.) Wonder what ever happened to that DiMaggio fellow.