Excerpted from LIFE’s Chicago Cubs: Champions At Last, a 96-page, fully illustrated commemorative. Available at retailers and at Amazon by clicking here.
The Chicago Cubs were once synonymous with winning. Since the 1940s, the custom has been to #FlyTheW on the North Side—only the hashtag is new. The Cubs appeared in the World Series four times in the five years between 1906 and 1910—they were the first team to play in three consecutive Fall Classics—and won back-to-back championships in 1907 and '08. In the second half of that first decade of the 20th century, the Cubs’ double-play combination alone—shortstop Joe Tinker to second baseman Johnny Evers to first baseman Frank Chance—became shorthand for a kind of ruthless efficiency.