My mother is pulling for the Cubs to win the World Series. Nothing new. She pulled for the Cubs in 1945, too.
“That was a good year, 1945,” my mother said.
World War II ended that September, a month before the Cubs and Tigers met in the World Series. Ann Byrne was 19, a student at Mundelein College, now part of Loyola University, and worked her way through school as a bookkeeper for the Chicago Tribune.
The Cubs had lost six World Series in a row (1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938) entering the ’45 Series, so the North Side of Chicago knew all about title-less baseball long before the drought surpassed the century mark.