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The title of this book is misleading.

"The Original Curse", written by Sporting News writer (and Chicago-area resident) Sean Deveney, isn't really about curses or anything of the sort. The huge letters spelling out the title on the cover -- who knows? Maybe selected by a marketing director to increase sales.

The sub-head: "Did the Cubs throw the 1918 World Series to Babe Ruth's Red Sox and incite the Black Sox scandal?" is a bit misleading, too. If you've read baseball history from that era, you know that gambling by players on ballgames they were involved in was rampant in the late 1910's. The Black Sox scandal was simply the event that finally blew the whole thing up in the faces of baseball moguls and made them realize that they had better do something to clean up the sport or it might cease to exist. (Or become like professional wrestling is today, a staged event where the result was preordained.) Seen in that light, the thought that the 1918 Cubs threw the World Series to the Red Sox and thus gave players a year later the idea that "hey, we could do this, too", is a real stretch.

Further, the author, in my opinion, doesn't really prove his thesis, which came about because the Chicago History Museum recently received a large archive of previously unknown papers regarding the Black Sox scandal. He goes through, in detail, all six games of the 1918 World Series and picks out various incidents that he says might have "proven" that the Series was thrown. But as in 1919, there were players who performed well and who were still in on the fix. In that case, who knows? As I was reading it, I thought, "If the players really wanted to make more money, why didn't they try to make sure there was a seventh game, for more gate receipts?"

We do know that players in that era were (at least in their own minds) underpaid, and the author does present evidence that the Cubs and Red Sox players were likely going to wind up with less money for the 1918 World Series than they had been promised -- but this wasn't due to any scurrilous owners' plot, it was because the attendance at the six games, due to factors you'll read about in the book, was far lower than projected (the Chicago games in the series were moved to Comiskey Park, which had a capacity of almost 30,000 at the time; the Cubs' Weeghman Park, which had no upper deck in 1918, could seat only about 19,000).

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Charlie Root is the Cubs' all-time leader in wins (201), games pitched (605) and innings pitched (3137.1), nearly 70 years after he threw his last pitch for the ballclub.

This new biography, cleverly titled with a play on words "Root For The Cubs", brings this nearly-forgotten figure back to the forefront. And rather than focus on the one event that made Root famous -- an event he despised and in his later years as a pitching coach, would throw at any one of his players who would mention it -- this book is mostly about the 1929 Cub pennant-winning season, which was Root's second-best as a Cub (second only to his breakout year, 1927, when he was 28 years old and won 26 games, which is the most wins for a Cubs pitcher since 1912), when he helped lead the team to their first pennant since 1918. (The Ruth "called shot" is discussed in detail in the book's epilogue.)

The book's charm comes mainly from its primary source, Root's 90-year-old daughter, Della Root Arnold, still living in California (where a family car bears the license plate "BABEWHO"), who sat down for long interviews with the book's author, Roger Snell. She gave Snell many clear recollections of events eight decades past, and apparently kept a journal through many years of her father's career. There's quite a bit of detail about Cubs spring training on California's Catalina Island, where the team trained from 1921-51 (with interruptions during World War II). They trained there primarily because the team's owner, William Wrigley Jr., had bought the island for a song not long before. The book also goes into quite a bit of detail on how Wrigley wrested full control of the team from "Lucky" Charlie Weeghman. The parallels to today's situation aren't exact, but like Tom Ricketts, Wrigley was a huge baseball and Cubs fan, spent many days at the ballpark and was always looking for ways to improve his team both on and off the field; he was one of the first owners to realize the promotional potential of radio broadcasts. Of baseball, Wrigley said:

No man is qualified to make a genuine success of owning a big league ball team who isn't in it because of his love for the game. He's sure to weaken in his support at some critical point of its development if his heart isn't in the sport. On the other hand, it is no undertaking for a man who hasn't practically unlimited financial resources at his command, regardless of how much he loves the game. If he regards it merely as a means of making money, he'd much better invest his time and capital in an enterprise strictly commercial in character.

Operating a successful big-league ball team is radically different from running any commmercial or industrial business, because you are dealing, 100 percent, in and with human nature -- and that's always a variable quantity.

There's a catch in this business at every turn, because you're playing with tricky, variable human nature, not inert physical commodities and mechanical methods.

Words, I think, for Tom Ricketts to live by as he takes over the team sometime later this year.

Wrigley also hired Joe McCarthy as manager and, like Lou Piniella today, McCarthy managed to change the team's culture. But Wrigley also fired McCarthy after blaming him (wrongly, I think) for the team's loss in the '29 World Series, where they executed what is still the biggest blown lead in a World Series game, an 8-0 seventh-inning lead in Game Four, when they could have tied the series (a game in which Root had pitched brilliantly up to that time), and a one-out, nobody-on, 2-0 lead in the ninth inning of Game Five. The Cubs had been favored to win despite the Athletics' better regular-season record. McCarthy, who never played in the majors, went on to win seven World Series with the Yankees, and although the Cubs and Root would be in three more Fall Classics... well, you know the end of that story.

This book tells about a part of Cubs history that is largely forgotten today. With only the possible exception of Mordecai Brown, Charlie Root is the greatest pitcher in the history of the Cubs. Read this biography and you'll know him better, and you'll also know more about the 1929 Cubs, one of the franchise's greatest teams.

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How, exactly, are you supposed to review a book in which you play a fairly significant role?

That's not intended to be boastful, but if you pick up a copy of Jim McArdle's "Living The Dream", you will learn more about me than I have ever revealed on this website.

Why is that? Because Jim quit his job as editor of Vine Line to "live the dream", that is, to experience the 2008 Cub season from both the inside -- he was credentialed and so did many interviews with Cubs players, coaches and Lou Piniella -- and the outside, sharing it with fans in the bleachers and elsewhere. I had known Jim for a couple of years, having written some articles for him at Vine Line, and so he wound up hanging out in the bleachers with our group on many days, and in addition, with other people in the bleachers who are also my friends. In that sense, it's a chronicle of our time in the bleachers, how we watch each game, win or lose, how we pass the time when things get dull or slow, how we exult in the victories and commiserate together in the defeats. I've mentioned the names of many people you'll see in the book here at BCB, and you will also meet some others I haven't -- all of them have interesting stories of how they came to be bleacherites, and how we view ourselves as family out there, especially those of us whose families outside of the ballpark aren't that large.

But it's more than that -- Jim spent time on rooftops, in the box seats with season-ticket holders of 45 years' time, and in the upper deck and other sections of the park with many other longtime fans. You may recognize some of those names, too, but even if you don't, they are representative of all of us. If it's not you, it's someone just like you, with all your hopes and dreams of however many years you have been a Cubs fan.

Jim also writes some history of Wrigleyville -- where he's lived for many years, including last year in the dark-brown building just across Waveland from my seat in the LF corner (the last building with no rooftop club; "Landlady Lara", who inherited the building from her folks, wants to keep it that way); we used to wave at him as he was writing on his sun porch and there's a funny story about pizza and that building that I'll make you wait to read the book to find out about.

And, it's a chronicle of the 2008 season, its joys and failures, told from the perspective both of the players and of the fans whose hopes were raised to heights not seen for perhaps seven decades, only to see them crushed in cruel fashion in three October days. Jim hoped to live the victorious dream and write about it -- and, unfortunately, neither that nor some other "endings" in the book are happy ones. Nevertheless, the tone is still upbeat, even as it ends with sadness.

Incidentally, though the cover photo (shown) looks like a Photoshop creation, it's not; on a beautiful September day while the Cubs were out of town, Jim and a couple of his buddies actually dragged his desk onto the field so they could take the picture.

Finally, tonight at Harry Caray's in Wrigleyville (3551 N. Sheffield, Jim is hosting a launch party for the book from 6 to 9 pm. For $30 you can meet Jim, get a signed copy of the book, and have food & drink. Unfortunately, I have to miss this party, as I'll be on a plane landing at O'Hare just about 7 tonight. I know you understand, Jim. It was great sharing the 2008 season with you -- here's to October wins this year, and see you on Monday.

My highest recommendation for "Living The Dream" -- and I'd say that even if I weren't in it.

While we wait for this afternoon's matchup between the Cubs and Indians, here's a book review for those of you who have school-age and younger children. A startup company, Hawk's Nest Publishing, based in Connecticut, is printing a series of these books for young fans of various teams. So far they have books for the Mets, Red Sox, Yankees and Cubs.

In addition to being a coloring book for young kids, there are crossword puzzles, mazes and word games that are suitable for ages 6 to about 12, and even a couple of quizzes (match the Cub to his home country, and fill-in-the-blank for various Cubs' record holders, as well as some questions about the city of Chicago) that might entertain teenagers or adults on a long car trip or plane ride. (I liked the three "You Make The Call" umpiring questions.)

It's got the 2008 roster (says it's updated through "November 1, 2009, which is obviously off by a year), and uses that for another fill-in-the-blank quiz, and of course there are many pages that younger, or even older, kids can color in, both players and things such as the Wrigley Field scoreboard.

At $11.95, it's affordable entertainment and something you could bring to the ballpark. Nicely done and fills a niche for kids that I haven't seen before. For parents of young kids, this is a nice book to introduce them to our favorite team and start 'em out right. You can order one via the web links above.

Later this morning, I'll have the game thread posted for the Cubs/Rockies game at Tucson; in the meantime, check out this interesting new book.

Larry Norris is a Chicago-area man with a vision: he has started a small, niche publishing company called Sporting Chance Press, which is going to publish sports and baseball related books that don't get the chance from the larger publishing houses, for various reasons, and to share sports lessons that can be used elsewhere in our lives.

The company's first effort is by J. D. Thorne, an attorney from Milwaukee who played college baseball at the University of Wisconsin in the 1960's. He first ran across the "commandments", which were put forth by Hall of Fame manager Joe McCarthy in the 1920's, in a restaurant run by former major leaguer Bill Zuber in Homestead, Iowa.

Some of the commandments seem somewhat dated, witness #2: "You will never become a .300 hitter unless you take the bat off your shoulder." -- this sounds like something Dusty Baker might say, right? -- but many of them can help us in life lessons as well, such as #7 ("Always run them out. You never can tell."), #8 ("Never quit.") and #9 ("Do not find too much fault with the umpires. You cannot expect them to be as perfect as you are.").

Thorne deftly weaves in both baseball stories and stories from his own life and the lives of his family in showing how we can apply McCarthy's lessons as we go through living today. Despite some annoying typos (Curt Schilling's name is spelled "Shilling" throughout), I enjoyed this book and Thorne's "positive thinking" message is one that each and every one of us can use, especially in today's trying times.

Before I tell you how you can get this book, a word about Joe McCarthy. McCarthy managed the Cubs from 1926-1930, having five winning seasons and winning the 1929 pennant (and that team may have had the best shot of any post-1908 team of winning the World Series, had they not blown a couple of leads and gotten tricked by Connie Mack when he started 35-year-old Howard Ehmke in game 1, rather than one of his star pitchers, after Ehmke had scouted the Cubs diligently at the end of the season). After a down year in 1930, McCarthy was dismissed. What a mistake -- one of the biggest in the history of the franchise. McCarthy was immediately hired by the Yankees and won eight pennants and seven World Series between 1932 and 1943, and nearly took the Red Sox to the Series in 1948 (they lost the first pennant playoff). If only the Cubs had followed McCarthy's third commandment, "If what you did yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today." -- maybe they'd have kept him and had some of the success the Yankees did (McCarthy's Yankees beat the Cubs in the World Series twice, in 1932 and 1938).

You can get this book only at the Sporting Chance Press website, as for now the publisher, based in Crystal Lake, wants to start small. If you happen to be in Cooperstown, the book has also been chosen to be sold at the Hall of Fame Gift Shop (though not in their online store).

It's a nice, fun read and maybe you'll learn something, too.

With today being an off day, at least this early in the morning there's nothing really new to report from spring training. There may be more roster cuts announced soon, but that could happen later in the day or early tomorrow, since the Cubs don't play till tomorrow night vs. the Giants at Scottsdale.

With that, I have a couple of baseball/Cubs books that I've been meaning to review, but haven't had time in the crunch of spring training. Here's the first.

People are running out of book titles -- there are two recent books out with this title (The other one is called "Chicago Cubs Yesterday And Today", the difference being the word "and" instead of the "&" -- the other book is also similar in format and content). The one reviewed here has the cover pictured, with a photograph from the 1940's; it appears to be a black & white photo from the era that was colorized. That's not a knock on the photo, which is attractive, just an (apparent) fact. Saul Wisnia, the author, is a Boston-based writer currently working on a history of the Boston Braves, but he knows his Cubs history, too.

Naturally, I had to figure out when this photo was taken. It didn't take too long to discover that the May 16-17-18 series against the Dodgers took place in 1949. The series followed a 12-game road trip (longer homestands and trips were more common in those days of train travel), so it could have been taken any day before May 16. What we do know from the schedule link above is that the May 16 game must have been rained out -- there's no result for that day -- and the Cubs lost the other two games, 8-5 and 14-5, dropping to last place; the rest of 1949 they never placed higher than seventh.

The beauty of this coffee-table size book is not the nuts-and-bolts history of the team; it's the large and colorful photos, many of which I had never seen before. It details eras in Cubs history and each section has a description of what a day at the ballpark would have been in each era. Photos include a wistful-looking photo of Buck O'Neil, a Cubs coach in the College of Coaches era; to this day it's a sad statement that he never got a chance to be Head Coach, as the others did in the rotation. There's a photo of the phantom 1969 World Series tickets (sigh...) and many others, from players and owners to ballparks.

There will be a new version of this book out sometime this spring which will include pages on the 2007 and 2008 seasons, but I have been informed by the author that it may be in a smaller format and have some content eliminated, so if you want to see the photos in all their glory now, you can order one from this amazon.com link.

There are illustrations of tickets and scorecards and other souvenirs, some that I have never seen anywhere else. So, I highly recommend "Chicago Cubs Yesterday & Today" for the photos and illustrations alone.

Many of you are familiar with Kasey Ignarski's comprehensive webpage that has a list of every Cub to wear a uniform number and what number they wore, since the Cubs first put numbers on their backs in 1932. (It wasn't until that year that all teams finally numbered their players.) Kasey often posts here under the username "kaseyi".

Kasey's been a friend of mine for many years and it was of this list that an idea was born last spring. Last April, I read this review of a new book called "Mets By The Numbers", and, knowing of Kasey's exhaustive research into Cubs uniform numbers, thought, "We could do this for the Cubs!" I contacted Kasey and discovered he knew one of the MBTN authors, and in the matter of a few emails with Matt Silverman, the other MBTN author, we had a contract with Skyhorse Publishing for "Cubs By The Numbers". (Yes, we let a Mets fan write this with us -- after all, he was the point man for getting us the deal. Matt's a good guy and the collaboration couldn't have been smoother.)

Here is Skyhorse's description of what we've written:

What do Dizzy Dean, Catfish Metkovich, John Boccabella, Bill Buckner, Mark Prior, and Kevin Hart all have in common? They all wore number 22 for the Chicago Cubs, even though seven decades have passed between the last time Dizzy Dean buttoned up a Cubs uniform with that number and the first time reliever Kevin Hart performed the same routine.

Since the Chicago Cubs first adopted uniform numbers in 1932, the team has handed out only 71 numbers to more than 1,100 players. That’s a lot of overlap. It also makes for a lot of good stories. Cubs by the Numbers tells those stories for every Cub since ’32, from 1930s outfielder Ethan Allen to current ace Carlos Zambrano. This book lists the players alphabetically and by number, but the biographies help trace the history of baseball’s most beloved team in a new way.

For Cubs fans, anyone who ever wore the uniform is like family. Cubs by the Numbers reintroduces readers to some of their long-lost ancestors, even ones they think they already know.

The book is, as the blurb says, really about the stories, more than just lists of numbers. Each chapter in the book lists the Cubs who wore that uniform number, from the #1 worn by the popular Augie Ojeda, to the #99 that the less-than-fan-friendly Todd Hundley wore in 2001. More than just lists of numbers (although you'll never quite look at any Cub wearing #7 in the same way again), the book's full of stories about hundreds of players, from Hall of Famers (you'll find out what number Ryne Sandberg originally asked for before he got #23), to guys you'd perhaps only heard of when I posted their photo here and asked you to "Name that Cub". And, you'll find out the identity of the one obscure Cub whose uniform number we were unable to locate, despite efforts to do so for many years.

We had fun researching and writing this book and I learned a lot about players long forgotten... but now remembered in its pages. And so Kasey, Matt and I think you'll enjoy reading this different take on the history of our favorite team. WGN Radio play-by-play man Pat Hughes graciously wrote the foreword for us.

You can preorder "Cubs By The Numbers" by clicking here. It will ship in early March. Enjoy, and thanks from Kasey, Matt and me.

The grizzled, day-old-bearded face of Lou Piniella glowers at you from the cover of George Castle's new book, "Sweet Lou And The Cubs", so you'd be forgiven if you thought this breezy new trade paperback was about Lou's transformation of the cuddly Cubs into growling baby bears.

While an examination of who Lou was and is, and how he got here, is part of this book, it's really a review of the 2008 season -- I suspect George thought he'd be writing a book about what would be, at last, the Cubs' championship season after ... well, you know.

We don't have to rehash the reasons for the playoff implosion here, though Castle does so in his epilogue. Full disclosure: George asked me, not long after the season ended, for my thoughts on what happened and why. I directed him to this post from last October 10, from which he liberally quoted in the epilogue. I stand by what I said there, and I repeated it yesterday when I saw this FanPost.

And that's one thing that Lou Piniella has tried to do since he came here -- get the focus on winning on the field. We've all heard about the "Cubbie Swagger" that Lou has tried to instill in the players, and Castle deftly shows us how Lou got to this point in his career; there's an excellent summary of Lou's playing and managing career. I had forgotten that Lou actually served about half a year as Yankees general manager under George Steinbrenner (1987-88) before being fired (who wasn't by King George in those days?) and becoming a "consultant", before moving on to the Reds, where he won what is to date his only World Championship as a manager, in his first season there (and you'll also find out why he abruptly left Cincinnati).

Castle also goes into great detail about Piniella's entertaining postgame press conferences. You've heard them, and the malaprops Lou is famous for. But are those really malaprops, or is he being crafty and calculating? Read the book and you'll find out. You'll also find out why the famous Lou cap-throwing tirade on the day after the Zambrano-Barrett brawl will likely be his last such blowup.

But most of all, this is a bittersweet recap of last year, with several chapters devoted to individual players and what makes them tick. I particularly liked the Ryan Dempster chapter -- it really shows how dedicated Dempster has become to his craft, after being viewed as the "clubhouse clown" for some of his career. If the Cubs had won it all, the book would have been a loving celebration from a writer who's been a lifelong fan.

Instead, it serves to remind us how great everything was... until October 1. An entertaining read, well worth your preseason time.