Before They Were the Cubs

<p> Founded in 1869 the Chicago Cubs are a charter member of the National League and the last remaining of the eight original league clubs still playing in the city in which the franchise started. Drawing on newspaper articles books and archival records the author chronicles the team's early years. He describes the club's planning stages of 1868; covers the decades when the ballplayers were variously called White Stockings Colts and Orphans; and relates how a sportswriter first referred to the young players as Cubs in the March 27 1902 issue of the <I>Chicago Daily News</I>.</p><p> Reprinted selections from firsthand accounts provide a colorful narrative of baseball in 19th-century America as well as a documentary history of the Chicago team and its members before they were the Cubs.</p>