The Cubs finished 1981 with a 38-65 record, a .369 winning percentage that would have translated to a 60-102 record if not for the players’ strike that year. (And the way the team was playing before the strike, that 162-game record probably would have been worse.) They’d lost 98 games the year before, hadn’t made the postseason since the 1945 NL pennant and in the 36 seasons since then, had posted a winning record just seven times.
It’s one of the worst stretches for any MLB franchise at any time and so when the team was sold to Tribune Company in late 1981, fans began to be cautiously optimistic that things would change under new ownership.