Early Franchise History
Although 1876 is generally recognized as the birth-year of the Cubs franchise, the Chicago club was initially founded in 1870 as the Chicago White Stockings and played a single season in a pro-am league called the National Association of Base Ball Players. The White Stockings won that league's championship and followed that effort playing the next five seasons (with the exception of 1872 and 1873, when the club temporarily ceased operations following the Great Chicago Fire) in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players along with the Boston Red Stockings (now the Atlanta Braves). Both of these early leagues were hampered by a variety of ethical issues, such as the "throwing" of games and the league's inability (or unwillingness) to enforce rules and player contracts. Because of these challenges, William Hulbert, the president of the Chicago club, spearheaded the development of the National League, whose inaugural season was 1876.
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Famous quotes containing the words early, franchise and/or history:
“the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise ...”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)