For the fourth installment of our Illinois 250 series, we look at teams and people in sports that have achieved greatness — or infamy.
Our list goes beyond Michael Jordan, Walter Payton, Ernie Banks and Red Grange — legends we’ll give their due later in the series.
The state’s sports history runs deep, which means this list can’t cover every accomplishment. But below, we highlight achievements that have left an imprint on the world:
- Illinois 250: Celebrating the state’s fabulous firsts
- Illinois 250: Art, culture, food and music made here — and then shared with the world
- Illinois 250: The political land of Lincoln, but also Addams, Daley, Washington, Jackson, Obama and more
Inaugural National League pennant (1876)
The Chicago White Stockings (later known as the Cubs) clinched the league title with a 7-6 win against Hartford.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Cubs anniversaries to celebrate during the 2026 season
The team ended its first season with a 52-14 record. The Cubs and Braves (then known as the Boston Red Stockings) are the oldest rivalry in professional baseball.
Softball (1887)
The game was originally called a variety of names — indoor baseball, mush ball, playground, “softbund ball,” kitten ball — but it was first played here on Nov. 24, 1887, at Farragut Boat Club. Its inventors were bored Ivy Leaguers who played it while waiting for the results of the annual Harvard-Yale football game.
The size of the ball changed often until the 20th century. Much of the world adopted the 12-inch game, which requires gloves and a field. Chicago, not done innovating, stayed with a 16-inch ball so you could play without gloves and on smaller fields or inside during abysmal weather.
Big Ten founded (1896)
The Big Ten Conference was organized on Feb. 8, 1896, at the Palmer House in Chicago. One faculty member from each of seven schools — Purdue University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University and University of Wisconsin — established the fundamentals of the conference, which was officially incorporated as the Intercollegiate Conference Athletic Association in 1905.
First modern college basketball game (1896)
The first game of five-on-five college basketball was played on Jan. 18, 1896, between the University of Iowa and University of Chicago at the Iowa City Armory in Iowa City, Iowa.
The U. of C. won 15-12.
Sporting goods manufacturing hub
Spalding and Schwinn were founded in Chicago. Removable cleats were developed by Evanston Township High School athletic director John Tate Riddell. Brunswick opened an office here in 1848, and Wilson was founded in 1914.
Most no-hitters in the American League
White Sox pitchers have thrown 20 no-hitters — including three perfect games — according to Major League Baseball. Factoring in the National League, only the Los Angeles Dodgers (25) have thrown more.
Chicago White Sox pitchers have thrown 20 no-hitters since 1902 — including 3 perfect games
Carlos Rodón threw the 20th no-hitter in White Sox history in 2021, striking out seven in an 8-0 victory over Cleveland in front of 7,148 fans at Guaranteed Rate Field.
First Black heavyweight champion (1908)
Jack Johnson — who lived in Chicago and owned a short-lived cafe in the Bronzeville neighborhood — defeated Tommy Burns in the 14th round by decision during a bout in Sydney, Australia, “when the police took a hand in the affair and stopped the uneven battle,” the Tribune reported.
‘Flea flicker’ (1910)
Innovative football coach Robert Zuppke used the trick play — in which the quarterback hands the ball off, catches a pass behind the line of scrimmage and then throws it — at Oak Park High School before he was hired by the University of Illinois. The German immigrant, who is also credited with popularizing the huddle, led Illinois to four national titles and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951.
Birth of the NFL (1920)
The meeting took place out of state, but Chicago had a seat — reportedly on the running board of an automobile — at the creation of what became the National Football League.
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George Halas of the Decatur Staleys (the precursor to the Chicago Bears) and representatives from nine other teams met on Sept. 17, 1920, inside the showroom of Hay’s Hupmobile Agency in Canton, Ohio. The American Professional Football Association was born during that two-hour discussion. The Arizona (formerly Chicago) Cardinals and the Bears are the only remaining franchises from the meeting and the oldest continuously operated teams in the NFL.
The Staleys proclaimed themselves the new league’s champions after a 0-0 tie against Akron on Dec. 12, 1920, at Wrigley Field.
NFL’s oldest rivalry begins (1920)
The oldest rivalry in the NFL doesn’t include a team from Green Bay. This matchup began in 1920 when two professional football teams called Illinois home.
The Bears, then known as the Decatur Staleys, faced the Racine Cardinals — named after Racine Avenue, where their home venue was Normal Park, not for the city in Wisconsin — for the first time. Paddy Driscoll kicked the deciding extra point in the Cardinals’ 7-6 win and kept the Bears in poor field position all afternoon with his precision punts.
First MLB commissioner (1920)
Chicago-based federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis accepted the chairmanship of professional baseball on Nov. 12, 1920. His second job: keep crooks out of the game. The Tribune called Landis “a one-man court of last resort in all matters of administration which may arise between the leagues.” Landis served as commissioner until his death in late 1944.
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America voted in 2020 to remove Landis’ name from the American and National League MVP awards. “This past summer, two Most Valuable Player award winners, Barry Larkin and Terry Pendleton, spoke of their discomfort with the name of Kenesaw Mountain Landis attached to their awards,” BBWAA president and Tribune columnist Paul Sullivan said in a statement. “Landis, baseball’s first commissioner, served from 1920-44 and notably failed to integrate the game during his tenure.”
‘Black Sox’ banned from baseball (1921)
The 1919 White Sox — considered by some baseball historians as one of the greatest teams ever to take the field — were heavy favorites to beat the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. But the Reds dominated the best-of-nine series. (Major League Baseball expanded the best-of-seven format due to postwar demand..
Eight White Sox players were charged with throwing the World Series. Despite earning the “Black Sox” nickname, the men were acquitted in August 1921 by a jury that deliberated just 2 hours and 47 minutes.
A day after their acquittal, however, Landis ruled that the players allegedly involved — “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Oscar Emil “Happy” Felsch, Chick Gandil, Frederick William McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams — were banned for life from organized baseball.
1919 Black Sox: What to know about the World Series scandal, ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson and more
In 2025, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred removed the men’s names from the permanently ineligible list.
Golden Gloves founded (1923)
The Tribune organized an amateur boxing tournament that would be the foundation of the Golden Gloves. The Tribune called the event “a great boxing carnival … the greatest amateur boxing tournament ever held in Chicago,” featuring some 424 young men fighting over three March days at the Ashland Boulevard auditorium. It was the brainchild of the newspaper’s sports editor Arch Ward.
Seventeen-year-old Cassius Clay (five years before he changed his name to Muhammad Ali) shocked Australian champion boxer Anthony Madigan in three rounds on March 25, 1959, for the 175-pound title as part of the Golden Gloves tournament at Chicago Stadium.
The tournament — which draws fighters from 30 national outposts — is the longest-running and largest non-national amateur boxing event in America.
Harlem Globetrotters (1926)
Abe Saperstein founded the entertaining basketball team that was originally formed with five players from Wendell Phillips High School. Since then, the barnstormers have traveled to 123 countries.
The team played its first road game on Jan. 7, 1927, in Hinckley, Illinois.
First NFL playoff game (1932)
NFL champions since the league was established in 1920 were based on their standings at the end of the regular season. In 1932, however, there was a tie. For the first time, a one-game playoff was needed between the Bears and Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans.
The Bears moved the title game to Chicago Stadium because of zero-degree weather and 5 inches of ice at Wrigley Field.
The Bears beat the Spartans before 11,000 fans on a field reduced to 80 yards in length and 145 feet in width. They scored the game’s only touchdown on a fourth-down play-action 2-yard pass from Bronko Nagurski to Red Grange.
MLB’s All-Star Game (1933)
Edward Kelly, Chicago’s newly installed mayor, was worried. The city committed in 1933 to hosting a World’s Fair — the Century of Progress International Exposition. But with millions of Americans out of work due to the Great Depression, how could Chicago attract enough visitors to ensure the fair’s success?
Ward, the Tribune’s sports editor, had an idea.
“This is an announcement of the greatest baseball game ever scheduled,” Ward wrote in the May 19, 1933, edition of the Tribune. “Never has the maximum strength of one major league been pitted against the maximum strength of the other.”
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Ward decided fans should select the starting nines on the 18-player teams, with the managers picking the rest. The Tribune and 55 other newspapers around the country distributed ballots to millions of readers. About 500,000 votes were cast and the lineups were announced on June 25, 1933, in the Tribune.
Played at Comiskey Park in ideal weather, the game attracted a capacity crowd of 47,595 fans to see Lou Gehrig, Gabby Hartnett, Al Simmons, Jimmy Foxx and more. Babe Ruth — who hit a two-run home run to deep right field in the third inning off National League starter Bill Hallahan of the St. Louis Cardinals — was the star in a 4-2 American League victory.
First Heisman Trophy winner (1935)
University of Chicago’s John Jacob “Jay” Berwanger was named the best college football player on Dec. 10, 1935. He’s officially known as the first Heisman Memorial Trophy recipient, although the honor wasn’t called that until a year later. Berwanger was presented with the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy in New York.
“They treated us royally,” Berwanger said. “It was a very nice lunch, and we saw the Rockettes, Times Square and the Statue of Liberty.”
Berwanger was also named the 1935 recipient of the Tribune’s Silver Football for the best player from the Big Ten Conference. The Tribune hoped the annual award, which preceded the Heisman Trophy by 11 years, would “become a much sought honor surpassing any now possible for these hard-working gridiron heroes whose efforts afford pleasure to so many thousand people.”
Chicago College All-Star Game (1935)
Ward proposed a football game like none previously played: college kids against the Chicago Bears. Just like the MLB All-Star Game, a nationwide poll of newspaper readers determined the collegiate roster. For the Bears, the game was an opportunity to represent the National Football League and appeal to fans of college football, which at the time was more popular and better established. The game also raised money for charity, which would be “divided equally among the United Charities, Catholic Charities and Jewish Charities of Chicago.”
A Soldier Field crowd of 79,432 fans saw the NFL champion Bears and College All-Stars play to a scoreless tie. Chicago Tribune Charities sponsored the game, which continued until 1976.
Birthplace of roller derby (1935)
Promoter Leo Seltzer put together the Transcontinental Roller Derby — advertised as the “most thrilling spectacle in years” — that debuted on Aug. 13, 1935, at the Coliseum in Chicago. An estimated 20,000 people watched, and some ice skated, as 25 co-ed teams raced around the oval. “The girl speed star is expected to skate her number of miles daily just as the man will do,” the Tribune reported.
After decades of waning popularity, the Windy City Rollers revived the sport locally in the early 2000s.
Most lopsided victory in major American professional sports (1940)
The Bears shut out the Washington Redskins 73-0 in the 1940 NFL championship game. It still stands as the biggest blowout in the league’s championship history and helped earn the Bears their “Monsters of the Midway” nickname.
Oldest collegiate wheelchair basketball team (1948)
The University of Illinois adapted athletics program began with a team of injured World War II veterans known as the Gizz Kids at a former Veterans Administration Hospital in Galesburg. Timothy Nugent, the program’s director, created the National Wheelchair Basketball Association in 1949.
First Black pitcher to throw a professional no-hitter (1955)
Sam “Toothpick” Jones, so nicknamed because he chewed on a toothpick as he pitched, beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in a drama-packed ninth inning at Wrigley Field.
Jones, also called “Sad Sam,” walked the first three Pirates he faced in the ninth. Then he struck out the side: Dick Groat, Roberto Clemente and Frank Thomas. Jones received a golden toothpick from TV announcer Harry Creighton.
The save (1959)
Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman, who joined the Tribune in 1981, is credited with inventing the baseball statistic in 1959 that recognizes the work of a relief pitcher who preserves his team’s lead for a win. The save became an official MLB stat in 1969.
‘Exploding’ scoreboard (1960)
The $300,000, 130-foot-wide scoreboard — the first of its kind — was created by the “Barnum of baseball,” White Sox owner Bill Veeck. It featured lights, sirens, a “Soxogram” message board and multicolored pinwheels. The Tribune likened the spectacle to Veeck’s version of Frankenstein’s monster. Holtzman called it a “screeching banshee.”
First NCAA basketball championship with a majority of Black starters (1963)
Loyola won the NCAA championship over Cincinnati, which was seeking an unprecedented third consecutive title in a row. Cincinnati had three Black starters, while Loyola started Vic Rouse, Jerry Harkness, Les Hunter and Ron Miller.
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Loyola rallied from a 15-point deficit for a 60-58 victory in overtime that was decided on Rouse’s last-second put-back of a Hunter miss.
First NBA mascot (1969)
Benjamin T. (Benny) the Bull — named in honor of the team’s publicist Ben Bentley — has been portrayed by seven people (and countless understudies) since the Bulls mascot debuted Oct. 17, 1969.
Only MLB team to ever wear shorts (1976)
The White Sox wore shorts in the first game of a doubleheader against the Kansas City Royals on Aug. 8, 1976, but refused to wear them for the nightcap. The shorts were short-lived. The players wore them in just three games that season, including an Aug. 21-22, 1976, series against the Baltimore Orioles.
“It’s almost inconceivable that men dressed like little boys could give up 16 hits in six innings, trail the Samson-like Baltimore Orioles by six runs, yet still beat them in 12 innings, 11-10,” Tribune baseball writer Richard Dozer wrote.
First Chicago Marathon (1977)
A 25-year-old theology student, Dan Cloeter, from Fort Wayne, Indiana, won the first race — which was then known as the Mayor Daley Marathon — on Sept. 25, 1977, with a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes, 52 seconds.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Chicago Marathon — highs and lows from the race’s 45-year history
The race is one of the world’s eight major marathons.
‘Kiss Him Goodbye’ (1977)
Ever chant “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye” when the opposing baseball team pulls its pitcher? That’s because longtime White Sox organist Nancy Faust played it first. She also picked a special tune for Hall of Famer Dick Allen when he came up to bat: “Jesus Christ Superstar Overture.”
Faust retired in 2010, after 41 seasons and more than 3,000 games. She returned to Rate Field in 2025 for a handful of home games during the team’s 125th season.
Harry Caray takes on the seventh-inning stretch (1977)
North Siders might not recall that broadcaster Harry Caray belonged to the South Side first. Veeck put the broadcaster on the loudspeakers as Faust played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 1977 season.
Caray turned something commonplace at ballparks into a theatrical event, later taking the act with him to the Cubs. The spectacle continues today at Wrigley Field with a rotating cast of celebrities, athletes and Chicago-area favorites taking a turn on the microphone.
Last MLB team to install lights for night games (1988)
Night ball, at long last, reached Wrigley Field on Aug. 9, 1988. After a rainout the previous night, Mike Bielecki fired a called strike to Lenny Dykstra to start the game.
The Cubs hit the New York Mets with four runs in the seventh inning, then held on for a 6-4 victory before 36,399 very noisy people.
Only NBA team to ‘Three-Peat’ twice in the same decade (1990s)
The Bulls won the first NBA championship in the team’s 25-year history on June 12, 1991, with a 108-101 victory in Game 5 of the NBA Finals over the Los Angeles Lakers.
”(The championship) means so much,” MVP Michael Jordan, in tears after the game, said to a national television audience. ”Not just for me but for this team and this city. It was a seven-year struggle. It’s the most proud day I’ve ever had.”
The team repeated in 1992 and 1993, then again in 1996, 1997 and 1998 — its “Last Dance.”
Most strikeouts in a nine-inning MLB game (1998)
On a drizzly day at Wrigley Field, 20-year-old rookie Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood fanned 20 batters. Only three other MLB pitchers have accomplished the feat: Roger Clemens (1986 and 1996), Randy Johnson (2001), and Max Scherzer (2016).
If not for Kevin Orie’s failure to glove a Ricky Gutierrez grounder leading off the third, which was ruled a hit, Wood might have had a no-hitter to boot. In the minds of many observers, it was the single greatest pitching performance in baseball history, and certainly one of the most dominant. The Cubs beat the Houston Astros 2-0.
Modern NHL dynasty (2010-15)
The Blackhawks won three Stanley Cup championships — in 2010, 2013 and 2015 — in six years. On three separate occasions, an estimated 2 million people feted the club with a massive parade and rally, each remembered as one of the best-attended celebrations in city history.
Longest drought in MLB championship history quashed (2016)
After 108 years, the Cubs won the 2016 World Series with a wild 8-7, 10-inning Game 7 victory over Cleveland at Progressive Field. The triumph completed the Cubs’ climb back from a 3-1 series deficit to claim their first championship since 1908.
Most losses in an MLB season (2024)
The White Sox reached the pinnacle of baseball infamy with record-breaking loss No. 121, falling to the Detroit Tigers in front of a sellout crowd of 44,435 at Comerica Park.
