"The Cubs"

Each year, lots of teams don't win the World Series. The Cubs have been one of those teams every year since 1908. During the season when the Cubs first began their current streak of not winning the World Series, Ty Cobb hit .377 for the Tigers and Christy Mathewson won twenty five games for the Giants.

But futility isn't the only good reason for a book about the Cubs. Some of the other reasons are Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Ferguson Jenkins. For older fans, there are Phil Cavarretta and Claude Passeau. For younger fans there are Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa. Sort of.

Anyway, The Cubs is a terrific book. Glenn Stout, who warmed up for this one by writing books about the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Dodgers, has, as usual, been ably assisted by Dick Johnson, who assembled the excellent photographs for the volume. Stout has also included fine essays about the Cubs by such worthies as William Nack, Mike Royko, John Schulian, and the aforementioned Richard Johnson. In fact, the only clunker among the essays in The Cubs is the one written by Penny Marshall, whose determination to break the world record for name-dropping is transparent and unbecoming.