Chicago’s Forgotten Names | Cubs & Sox Origins

From the White Stockings to Colts to Orphans, this episode explores the Cubs' forgotten origin stories and when the White Sox entered the chat. A casual trivia question leads us to Chicago’s earliest baseball beef, including silly names, public insults and a rivalry that defines the city. This lore is worth learning regardless of how well-versed you are in sports. 

Contact: hellomangomoe@gmail.com 

Intro/outro music credit:   

• Title: "feeling happy today [upbeat happy beat]
• Artist: snoozy beats
• Source: Free Music Archive 
• License type: CC BY

Transcript

Speaker 0:02

Hello, everyone! Welcome to The Gossip Practice, a thoughtful take on talks as a tool for reading between life's lines. I'm your host, Moe. Every episode is another interesting story I've come across. Here, we merge a sort of amateur investigative journalism with fun thoughts and opinions. It's gossip as a lens for how we relate. Thanks in advance for listening. Today, we get into the Chicago Cubs baseball team's lore. I'm not talking stats or actual sports. You can get into other media not hosted by me for that information. I'm taking us way back. Back before their stints with live baby cubs on the literal field. I know, right? And back before their "lovable losers" nickname, when they were even called insults like the Orphans, Remnants, and Microbes. Microbes! And all in a ballpark six and a half miles away from its current home of Wrigley Field. Our story starts in 1870. Chicago had their first National League Ball Club who was actually really good, like quickly record setting good. Of course, 1871 halted anything fun or extracurricular with the Great Chicago Fire. Everyone was eager to have a little fun again, so five years after then, the ball club bounced back. They were legit and within the National League, like I mentioned. The reason any of this comes up is because this past April, I fell down this rabbit hole recently when my partner and I were returning from a road trip. He quizzed me on city trivia when this question came up. What was the Chicago Cubs' original name? A. little baby cubs? B. White stockings? C. Orphans? or D. Remnants? I thought half of these objectively suck. And one of them is obviously too close to the White Sox. But Little Baby Cubs is also kind of silly. Still, is it A? The answer was B. White Stockings. Not to be confused as the White Sox's origin story. No no no. We will put a pin in White Sox roots for now, but that's right, our Northside team wore them first, and so the crowd spoke. At this time, sports lovers, or at least baseball watchers, were the ones who gave teams names and meanings. Ball clubs simply played for the love of the game, not for the brand or notoriety, and it was merely their uniform at the time that prompted fans and journalists to endearingly refer to this Chicago club as the White Stockings. The White Stockings was based out of West Side Grounds, also known as West Side Park, which was way later repurposed into UIC's current medical campus. If you're curious, you can go down to that area of Wolcott, Polk, Taylor and Wood Streets near the UIC Neuropsychiatric Institute to see a historical marker and plaque that deepens what I've shared with you just now. But back to the story. This White Stockings team had a strong winning streak. They gained popularity and therefore resources to gain a new leadership team, who renamed the group to the Colts, C-O-L-T-S. I guess it was more official that way. Whatever. The public quickly adopted the new name in daily conversation, too. The Colts included this one man, Adrian Anson, aka Cap as in captain, and aka Pop. Anson was the MLB team's first baseman and manager. Talk about stacking importance onto one person. Most everyone did trust their leading captain, though. They were happy he had the authorities he had because he was among the first of baseball superstars with insane hitting stats and innovative managing of the team roster. Anson had a 20-something year chokehold on the Chicago Colts. I'm talking 27 consecutive seasons as an active player. Can you imagine playing competitive baseball for that long? I'm only 25 and my hips pop multiple times a day. Whatever. That chokehold did more harm than good, in my opinion, though. Anson, as was most every white American, was racist. Racist. He straight up refused to take the field when the opposing team had Black players on the roster. Like, okay. His popularity allowed him to uphold segregation in professional baseball through the late 40s. Again, our humble ball club was established in 1870. I don't quite know when Anson started playing with this club, but to ban baseball contracts with Black players through at least the 1940s is terrible work. Barring Black players resulted in people leaving the Chicago Colts actually, which was so obviously handled by him to be nicknamed "Cap's Colts." We have to remember that Anson was only a player manager. He had minor ownership later in life, but for all this time, the team was owned by a board of other people. One of the executives was seeing a streak of leaving members and losing games to the point when the team and him basically forced retirement upon Anson because they didn't want to re-sign him as the tides were turning. Again, as more players wanted to include black members and as more games were being lost, as it were, with this older man on the professional team. Sure, Anson was unhappy, but you know who was happier? The executive I mentioned. He saw this as an opportunity to turn leadership over and be rid of the losing streak to pursue his own dream of supplying sporting equipment. His name? Albert Spalding. Does that sound familiar? Have you ever picked up a basketball with the name Spalding on it? Yeah. That's a wild origin story. Like, I literally almost stopped the car passing through Milwaukee to my partner, like, what? Who? What are you dictating to me? The team was basically in shambles after Cap and Spaulding were out. The City of Chicago started calling the team the Orphans since Pop left or the Remnants of what used to be. You're welcome for the plus one point on your next general trivia night. Orphans and Remnants are already such demotivating names, but I also found St. Louis had beef, beef, hating on the Chicago River at the time and its disgusting bacteria flow. So the baseball team was also insulted as the Microbes. Like, imagine trying to take someone nice [out] on a date and saying, you're part of the Chicago Colts, and they come back saying, Oh, I heard about the microbes. Is that you? Like, what a joke. How do you even come back from that? The hint is, you don't. Or I guess you come back from it in time. The Chicago Colts obviously then lost their city identity for some time, especially while they had younger and younger players on the roster. These players were referred to as "cubs" because of their younger tenure than other players or even lovers of the sport. Whe ther it was a misprint or intentional journalistic choice, the local papers reported the happenings of this team and printed a capital C Cubs, even though they were specifically talking about the young players. So it kind of just stuck as a team name. Cute. I'm like shrugging in the background here. Lucky for them, they were starting to win again, which made it an easier transition for the city to call them a proper name again. Into the recesses of our memories went the names of Colts, Orphans, Remnants and Microbes. So there you go. That's how we got to the Chicago Cubs as a name. It's unfortunate to learn its rather racist and prejudicial roots, but let's be honest, racism does still run rampantly throughout the MLB and sports as a whole today. I know I already don't watch sports, but it would be a little true if I were to say that's why I don't watch sports. Duh. But Moe, you might ask, if the Cubs were the White Stockings, how the hell did the White Sox come to be? Great question. That fun fact might have felt like it came out of left field, didn't it? Sidebar, " way out in left field" is a phrase also speculated to relate to the Cubs, or more specifically its original field of West Side Grounds. Sure, this phrase, meaning to be strange or wholly unexpected, could have originated from various places and times. But this rumor is fun and I'm running with it. West Side Grounds' location included the left field fence lining up with or being adjacent to the Illinois Psychiatric Hospital, and it's from there that fans and players would often claim they heard odd noises from its patients during game days. It's fun to question why we say the things we do. Sometimes, it leads us right into our own backyards. Anyway, once the city moved away from calling the Northside Ball Club White Stockings, because the Colts and other names took off more widely, Charles Comiskey, the owner of the Southside Ball Club, seized the moment and earmarked the White Stockings tag for his own team. This helped with early brand recognition since the name was well known to long-standing baseball fans. The opportunist in him was right to do so. It was shortened to the White Sox S-O-X over time, since newspaper editors wanted to make it easier to be read in hit headlines. Everyone was trying to get at being in the top fold of the paper, even if it meant cutting corners or even being lazy, I suppose. Anyway, one could even say the stealing of the original moniker was the first of many eclipsing of the Cubs by the Sox throughout the years. The Sox played for the first time in 1900 and won against the Cubs in their first major championship of the 1906 World Series. The intra-city rivalry was thus birthed. I have a Sox fan friend who listened to this entire story as I pitched it to her and said the Cubs' name origins are reminiscent of when the Republicans used to be the Democrats back in history. But, you know, name swip swap later. It's funny because she's right, and the Cubs' colors are literally red, white, blue. Much like nationalist pride. Hmm. Saying all that to say, even sports less people like me have a little stake in the game of local teams histories. Baseball is so outside my scope of knowledge that I reached out to people I don't typically interact with for this sudden interest. I know I have one additional talking point with a colleague across my office floor who I didn't already share many things in common with now. I am also now in an active text thread with an older neighbor who moved away from my building two years ago because I remembered he loves the Cubs and all things sports marketing. Said ex-neighbor also made it known to me that 2026 is the Cubs' 150th anniversary. So yay for being relevant. Comment or email me your thoughts at hellomangomoe@gmail.com. Are you a Cubs or Socks fan? What's your favorite insulting nickname against the Cubs? Does this entice you to learn about a subject completely unknown to you this week? I know I'm better for it, me. I can't wait to get my hot dogs in the stands this summer with this newfound knowledge. It's like, I'm now, in a way, better than everyone around me for knowing this city lore, even if my neighbors are actually well -read about modern baseball stats. Until next time, XO Moe!