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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ex-Cubs Factor | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:59:30.051451+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Ex-Cub Factor is a seemingly spurious correlation that was seen as essentially a corollary to the Curse of the Billy Goat. Widely published in the 1990s, the hypothesis asserted that since the appearance by the Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series, any baseball team headed into the World Series with three or more former Cubs on its roster has "a critical mass of Cubness" and a strong likelihood of failure.
== Ex-Cubs Factor hypothesis ==
The theory was developed in October 15, 1981 by Ron Berler, a freelance journalist and Cubs fan. Berler posited in an article that "it is utterly impossible for a team with three or more ex-Cubs to win the series." Berler based this on a pattern that he observed in the post-1945 era; 1945 being the last time the Chicago Cubs made it to a World Series until 2016. Berler cited many examples of teams with three or more ex-Cubs on their teams that reached the World Series and lost: including the 1958 Milwaukee Braves, the 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers, and the 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers. The 1978 Dodgers, according to Berler, had lost the 1977 World Series with three ex-Cubs on their roster and seemed to be doing well the next season when they traded away one of those ex-Cubs, Mike Garman, and began playing excellently. However, four weeks later, the Dodgers traded for ex-Cub Bill North and, in the words of Berler, the "team suffered an immediate tailspin and barely beat Cincinnati to the pennant" (North was actually traded to the Dodgers first on May 17, and Garman was traded away three days later). The 1978 Dodgers lost the World Series to the Yankees, leading to Berler's hypothesis of three ex-Cubs making it impossible to win a championship. In addition, the 1980 Kansas City Royals lost the World Series with three former Cubs. In the original article, Berler predicted that based on this pattern the 1981 New York Yankees would not win the World Series because they had five ex-Cubs on their roster: Oscar Gamble, Bobby Murcer, Dave LaRoche, Rick Reuschel, and Barry Foote. This prediction went against the odds which heavily favored the Yankees at the time. His prediction about the 1981 World Series based on this hypothesis was proved correct with the Yankees losing to the Dodgers, four games to two.
=== Explanation of the relationship === Berler relates the relationship to the inherent "cubness" that ex-Cubs take to their future teams. In the original article, he wrote that "the ballclub possesses eerie, bewitching powers over its players" and that "'Cubness'...is synonymous with the rankest sort of abject failure, and is a condition chronic among all Cubs, past and present." Mike Royko, who popularized the term in his columns in Chicago, wrote that Cubness was a "virus" where "Three or more ex-Cubs could infect an entire team with the will to lose, no matter how skillful that team might appear." Berler adopted a similar explanation in later articulations, writing that the virus "attacks all who've played for the Cubs, even if only for a single day. There is no inoculation, no cure. When traded to another team, ex-Cubs become carriers of this debilitating disease—the ticks of baseball. Any World Series team infested with three or more of them turns addled and confused, losing all ability to win."
=== Modified Ex-Cub Factor ===
Mike Royko developed an additional hypothesis contending that "A team with no ex-Cubs probably has the edge on a team that has even one." The key evidence provided for this was the 1986 World Series which had the New York Mets, with no ex-Cubs, defeat the Boston Red Sox, who had ex-Cub Bill Buckner who made a dramatic error. This hypothesis was largely discredited in the 2003 World Series when the Florida Marlins, who had ex-Cub Lenny Harris, defeated the New York Yankees, who had no ex-Cubs. However, Harris did not play in the World Series.
== Cases for the Ex-Cubs Factor hypothesis ==