Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 6

Brown's greatness is locked in numbers and later newspaper prose, not in replayable mythology. That alone knocks him out of the casual fan's consciousness.

This is kind of unusual, but for many, his Cubs dynasty is overshadowed by the "curse" era. The early 1900s Cubs were a juggernaut; arguably the best sustained team in baseball history. But modern fans don't associate the Cubs with dominance; they associate them with goats, curses, heartbreak, and the 108 year drought, the latter a reference to the lack of a world series victory from 1908-2016.

The franchise's mythology is built on losing, coming close at times, but not winning. That means the stars of the winning era; Brown, Tinker, Evers, Chance, get eclipsed by the tragic comedy of the later decades.

His rivalry with Christy Mathewson became a one sided legend. Brown actually outpitched Mathewson head to head; 13-11, with a microscopic ERA. But Mathewson became the gentleman hero, the college educated icon, the face of early baseball, one of the first five inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame when it was first established in 1936, the subject of books, speeches, and mythmaking.