Cubs Win the 1908 World Series and Chicago Celebrates. Downtown Looking North on State Street at Madison Street.

Dr. Neil Gale identifies the correct subject and date of this photograph that is over 110 years old. The subject was unknown and thus, mislabeled on the Internet. This is one of a handful of historical photos that I corrected or identified the subject matter on.

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This photo was taken on Wednesday, October 14, 1908, at 1:05 pm (per the Marshall Field clock) as Chicago Cubs fans flock to the streets to celebrate the Cubs winning the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. Game 5 had a 10 o'clock start time. The average time of a 9-inning MLB game is 3 hours. The game was played at Bennett Park in Detroit, Michigan. The image was most likely captured from the photographer standing on the roof of a streetcar.

I contacted Major League Baseball (mlb.com), then sent my research and photo. They used the photo in an article.

RESEARCH

The handwritten date on the face of the photograph, which was misread as 1909, is actually 1908. I inverted the photograph in Photoshop and used other filters to further deduce the last digit was actually the number 8, not the number 9.

Moreover, at that time in Chicago's history, nothing else would bring such a crowd (today, called a flash mob) out in the streets of downtown Chicago, resulting in bringing traffic to a standstill. News traveled at lightning-fast speed via telegraph, telephone (by 1905, the total telephones in Chicago proper had increased to 100,000), and by word of mouth.

Copyright © 2016 Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.