This is how the Chicago Tribune described that first game: "Chicago took the Federal League to its bosom and claimed it as a mother would claim a long lost child. With more more frills and enthusiasm than had prevailed at a baseball opening here Joe Tinker and his Chifeds made their debut before a throng of fans that filled the new north side park to capacity...It may not have been the largest crowd that ever saw an opening game in Chicago, but conservative estimators placed the attendance at about 21,000. The new park is said to have a seating capacity of 18,000...every seat in the place was taken, a great many were standing up in the back of the grandstand, and more than 2,000 were on the field in the circus seats placed there for the occasion."
Weeghman Park didn't have a second deck yet. That wouldn't come for fifteen years. But it did have one feature that is quite common today...
"The windows and roofs of flat buildings across the way from the park were crowded with spectators. The surface and elevated trains leading to the north side were overhanging with people in the early afternoon and three or four separate and distinct automobile parades unloaded several thousand gaily decked rooters at the gates."
And the Federal League Whales even had a number of players with Cub roots, and a few players that would later play for the Cubs.
The starting pitcher was Claude Hendrix. Hendrix would later pitch for the Cubs in the 1918 World Series, and would then be quietly banned from baseball for allegedly betting on a game in the 1920 season. The investigation of that game would unearth the Black Sox scandal.
Rollie Zeider, the ChiFeds third baseman, would later play for the Cubs too. He has the distinction of having played for three different Chicago teams (he also played for the Sox).
Catcher Art Wilson, and outfielders Dutch Zwilling and Max Flack also played for the Cubs in later seasons. In fact, Flack was the goat in the 1918 World Series against the Red Sox when he dropped an easy fly ball in the ninth inning to lose the game and the series.
But maybe the most important person with Cubs connections was Charles G. Williams. He had served more than twenty-five years in the front office of the Cubs. Williams, and owner Weeghman, had a pretty ingenious plan to attract fans. They went after an audience that heretofore hadn't been so openly courted. They went after the ladies.
The Tribune piece even pointed that out...
“The significant part of the affair to the new owners was the large number of women present."
That remained a marketing quest even after Weeghman bought the Cubs, which he did in 1916
