This weekend, the Chicago Cubs will try to do something they have never done in the history of the franchise: win a game at a place called Yankee Stadium.
The Chicago Cubs are scheduled for three games Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Bronx. It’s a place where they have never won. Never … as in not once.
Obviously the National League Cubs haven’t played a lot of games at Yankee Stadium in their nearly 150-year history. Still, there have been those two Cubs versus Yankee World Series at the old Yankee Stadium, plus periodic trips to the Bronx to both the former and present Yankee Stadium since the start of interleague play in the late 1990s.
A crazy statistic between the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium
Yet if the Cubs manage to steal a game or two this weekend, it will actually mark a first. Since the two teams first met in the 1932 World Series, the Cubs have played a dozen regular season and World Series games in the Bronx, and they are 0-12.
Not only to the Bombers regularly beat up on the visiting Cubs, they usually slaughter them. Only one of those dozen meetings was a one-run game, and in only one other was the margin two runs. Throughout all of baseball history, the average score of a Cubs-Yankee game at Yankee Stadium is a decisive 7-2.
This statistic, lifted from real life, should put the level of futility the Cubs will be trying to end this weekend in perspective. Since the two teams first met in the 1932 World Series, the Cubs and Yankees have played 112 innings of serious baseball in the Bronx. The Cubs have held a lead at the end of five of those 112 innings, never after the sixth inning.
Here’s a chronological table of the Yankees’ home domination of the Cubs across baseball history. The table shows the date, final score, plus the winning and losing pitchers.
- Sept. 28, 1932. (Game 1, World Series) Yankees 12, Cubs 6. Red Ruffing, Guy Bush
- Sept. 29, 1932. (Game 2, World Series) Yankees 5, Cubs 2. Lefty Gomez, Lon Warneke
- Oct. 8, 1938. (Game 3, World Series) Yankees 5, Cubs 2. Monte Pearson, Clay Bryant
- Oct. 9, 1938. (Game 4, World Series) Yankees 8, Cubs 3. Red Ruffing, Bill Lee.
- June 18, 2005. Yankees 8, Cubs 1. Chien Ming Wang, Glendon Rusch.
- June 19, 2005. Yankees 6, Cubs 3. Mike Mussina, Sergio Mitre.
- April 16, 2014. (Game 1). Yankees 3, Cubs 0. Masahiro Tanaka, Jason Hammel.
- April 16, 2014. (Game 2). Yankees 2, Cubs 0. Michael Pineda, Travis Wood.
- June 10, 2022. Yankees 2, Cubs 1 (13 innings). Ron Marinaccio, Alec Mills.
- June 11, 2022, Yankees 8, Cubs 0. Jordan Montgomery, Matt Swarmer
- June 12, 2022. Yankees 18, Cubs 4. Jameson Taillon, Keegan Thompson.
The closest the Cubs have ever come to walking off the Yankee Stadium turf with a victory was a year ago last June in the opener of their three-game series. Jason Heyward’s fifth-inning home run tied the game 1-1, and a succession of nine Cub and seven Yankee pitchers took it from there to the 13th inning before Jose Trevino’s base hit drove in Joey Gallo, who had started the inning at second base under the extra inning rule.
The only other time the Cubs even came within two runs of the Yanks in New York was in the second game of a 2014 double-header. In that game, Travis Wood gave up runs in the fourth and fifth innings, both on RBI singles, and four Yankee pitchers held the Cubs to just six hits.
At least the Cubs won’t have to worry about Hall of Famer Red Ruffing, a Yankee pitcher who has beaten them twice in New York. In Game 1 of the 1932 World Series, Ruffing coasted to a 12-6 victory, striking out 10 in the process. The key hit was Lou Gehrig’s third-inning home run with Babe Ruth on base, erasing a 2-1 Cubs lead.
Six years later, Ruffing concluded New York’s four game sweep of the Cubs with an 8-3 rout, and this time the big blow was Ruffing’s own third-inning RBI single. Moments later, Frank Crosetti tripled home Joe Gordon and Ruffing.
The Cubs will enter New York in 2023 with a lot already going against them. They entered Wednesday’s action with a 39-45 record and having lost seven of their last nine games.
And as if that isn’t bad enough, they be staring 90 years worth of negative history in the face.