<P> After the 1900 season, the American Base - Ball League formed as a rival professional league, and incidentally the club's old White Stockings nickname (eventually shortened to White Sox) would be adopted by a new American League neighbor to the south . </P> <P> In 1902, Spalding, who by this time had revamped the roster to boast what would soon be one of the best teams of the early century, sold the club to Jim Hart . The franchise was nicknamed the Cubs by the Chicago Daily News in 1902, although not officially becoming the Chicago Cubs until the 1907 season . During this period, which has become known as baseball's dead - ball era, Cub infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance were made famous as a double - play combination by Franklin P. Adams' poem Baseball's Sad Lexicon . The poem first appeared in the July 18, 1910 edition of the New York Evening Mail . Mordecai "Three - Finger" Brown, Jack Taylor, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester, and Orval Overall were several key pitchers for the Cubs during this time period . With Chance acting as player - manager from 1905 to 1912, the Cubs won four pennants and two World Series titles over a five - year span . Although they fell to the "Hitless Wonders" White Sox in the 1906 World Series, the Cubs recorded a record 116 victories and the best winning percentage (. 763) in Major League history . With mostly the same roster, Chicago won back - to - back World Series championships in 1907 and 1908, becoming the first Major League club to play three times in the Fall Classic and the first to win it twice . However, the Cubs would not win another World Series until 2016; this remains the longest championship drought in North American professional sports . </P> <P> The next season, veteran catcher Johnny Kling left the team to become a professional pocket billiards player . Some historians think Kling's absence was significant enough to prevent the Cubs from also winning a third straight title in 1909, as they finished 6 games out of first place . When Kling returned the next year, the Cubs won the pennant again, but lost to the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1910 World Series . </P> <P> In 1914, advertising executive Albert Lasker obtained a large block of the club's shares and before the 1916 season assumed majority ownership of the franchise . Lasker brought in a wealthy partner, Charles Weeghman, the proprietor of a popular chain of lunch counters who had previously owned the Chicago Whales of the short - lived Federal League . As principal owners, the pair moved the club from the West Side Grounds to the much newer Weeghman Park, which had been constructed for the Whales only two years earlier, where they remain to this day . The Cubs responded by winning a pennant in the war - shortened season of 1918, where they played a part in another team's curse: the Boston Red Sox defeated Grover Cleveland Alexander's Cubs four games to two in the 1918 World Series, Boston's last Series championship until 2004 . </P>

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