--- title: Chicago Cubs History: Photos of Early Days at Wrigley Field description: It was 100 years ago that the Chicago Cubs played their first game at the park that would become Wrigley Field canonical: https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-20T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:53.271Z article:section: History og:title: Chicago Cubs History: Photos of Early Days at Wrigley Field og:description: 100 years ago the Cubs played their first game at what was then called Weeghman Park og:url: https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5d75e1e572fbc6c2/69888e925f570fd3d0b2068e/160411-weeghman-park-08.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Wrigley Field 1918 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Chicago Cubs History: Photos of Early Days at Wrigley Field twitter:description: 100 years ago the Cubs played their first game at what was then called Weeghman Park twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5d75e1e572fbc6c2/69888e925f570fd3d0b2068e/160411-weeghman-park-08.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # See Early Photos of Wrigley Field Before it Was Wrigley Field > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Despite Precautions, Baseball Hasn't Made Stands Entirely Safe [Watch (HLS stream): Despite Precautions, Baseball Hasn't Made Stands Entirely Safe](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/y3PxN6xQ.m3u8) (1:33)  _Published 2015-06-06. Even with nets in place, wayward balls and, to a lesser extent, shattered bats can make foul territory a dangerous place._  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 20, 2016 12:00 PM UTC  Chicago Cubs baseball players Merkle, Zeider, Charles Hollocher, and Deal standing in front of a dugout at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1918. Chicago Cubs baseball players Merkle, Zeider, Charles Hollocher, and Deal standing in front of a dugout at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1918. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 20, 2016 12:00 PM UTC Few sports teams are as closely associated with their home as the Chicago Cubs are with Wrigley Field, which means Wednesday is a big day for fans: it was precisely 100 years ago—on April 20, 1916—that the Cubs played their first game at Weeghman Park, which later acquired the name it bears today. Both the park and the team are older than 100, however. The Cubs can trace their lineage all the way back to the earliest days of professional baseball, and have gone by their current moniker since 1907\. The ballpark, meanwhile, opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park, home of the Chicago Federals. These photos trace Weeghman Park’s evolution into the famous Wrigley Field, from construction to the arrival of the Cubs to the team’s purchase by William Wrigley Jr. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) As explained by Les Krantz’s [_Wrigley Field: The Centennial_](https://books.google.com/books?id=vcjyAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=chicago+cubs+1916+weeghman&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyvKX3tInMAhWIPD4KHRfnDqkQ6AEITDAI#v=onepage&q=chicago%20cubs%201916%20weeghman&f=false)_,_ the Federals played in the fledgling Federal League, a competitor of the established National League, and were owned by businessman and restaurateur Charles Weeghman. After only two years, however, the Federal League fell apart, leaving Weeghman with an empty park (on which he’d spent [a quarter of a million dollars](https://books.google.com/books?id=KGyzXHbcLksC&pg=PA167&dq=chicago+cubs+1916+weeghman&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyvKX3tInMAhWIPD4KHRfnDqkQ6AEINDAE#v=onepage&q=chicago%20cubs%201916%20weeghman&f=false)) and a successful neighboring National League team that belonged to absentee owners who were willing to sell. Weeghman bought the Cubs franchise and moved them to his own park. In 1918, he sold the team to William Wrigley Jr., who named the park after himself in 1926. **_Read a 1929 cover story about the Chicago Cubs and William Wrigley Jr., here in the TIME Vault:_** [World Series](http://time.com/vault/issue/1929-10-14/page/24/)  Construction taking place at Federal League ballpark Weeghman Park in Chicago, 1914\. From the Chicago Daily News collection. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  Members of the Federal League's Chicago Whales baseball team sitting and standing in front of grandstands at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1914\. Weeghman Park was renamed Wrigley Field in 1926. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  View of crowds standing on the field and in bleachers during a flag-raising ceremony at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1914. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson throwing first pitch at a Chicago Whales baseball game at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1915. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  National League's Chicago Cubs baseball game spectators standing in the grandstands on opening day at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1916. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  National League's Chicago Cubs baseball player Heinie Zimmerman standing in front of a floral arch at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1916. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  National League's Chicago Cubs baseball player Bill Wortman and an unidentified teammate standing outside the dugout on the field at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1916. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  Chicago Cubs baseball players Merkle, Zeider, Charles Hollocher, and Deal standing in front of a dugout at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1918. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  Chicago Cubs baseball player Newkirk winding up to throw a baseball at Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1920. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  Left to right: Chicago Cubs baseball player Alexander, co-owner William Wrigley Jr, and manager Bill Killefer standing behind a batting practice backstop on the field at Weeghman Park, located at 1060 West Addison Street, Chicago, 1922. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images  Crowds waiting in lines outside Weeghman Park, Chicago, 1923\. From the Chicago Daily News collection. Chicago History Museum—Getty Images ## Transcript A woman struck by a shattered bat at Friday night's Red Sox athletic's game remains in the hospital with life threatening injuries. The fragment hit the woman in the head during the second inning. The ball went fair, but part of the bat broke off and entered the stands. She was rushed off the field on a stretcher. Oakland third baseman Brett Lawrie, whose bat shattered, told the Boston Globe he was keeping the woman in his thoughts. He also lamented that much of the onus is on spectators to stay alert. You've got limited netting here in Boston. You've really got to be heads- up for foul balls, anything coming into the stands, because it's so close there's really no time to react. An average MLB batter can swing about two pounds of solid ash, birch, or maple bat between 80 and 90 miles per hour. Anything coming off the bat, be it the baseball or fragments of a shattered bat itself can move at speeds in excess of 110 miles per hour. MLB changed its regulations in 2009 to cut down on catastrophic bat failure, and says since then broken bats are 50 % less common. But of course it still happens, and recent Bloomberg investigation found there are some 1, 750 injuries a season at Major League games as a result of bat Batted balls entering the stands. Bats flying into the crowd is much rarer. Calls for extended protective netting go back years. In 2012, MLB instituted a new rule requiring extra netting during batting practice before games, but the League told Bloomberg last year it would lead the decision to expand or not expand extra netting during game time to individual teams. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/"},"headline":"See Early Photos of Wrigley Field Before it Was Wrigley Field","datePublished":"2016-04-20T12:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:43:53.271Z","description":"One hundred years ago the Cubs played their first game at what was then known as Weeghman Park","url":"https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Sports topic","photography"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5d75e1e572fbc6c2/69888e925f570fd3d0b2068e/160411-weeghman-park-08.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5d75e1e572fbc6c2/69888e925f570fd3d0b2068e/160411-weeghman-park-08.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Wrigley Field 1918","caption":"Chicago Cubs baseball players Merkle, Zeider, Charles Hollocher, and Deal standing in front of a dugout at Weeghman Park, Chicago, Illinois, 1918.","creditText":"Chicago History Museum—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/","name":"See Early Photos of Wrigley Field Before it Was Wrigley Field"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Despite Precautions, Baseball Hasn't Made Stands Entirely Safe","description":"Even with nets in place, wayward balls and, to a lesser extent, shattered bats can make foul territory a dangerous place.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/y3PxN6xQ/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-06-06T18:02:50.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/y3PxN6xQ.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/","duration":"PT1M33S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4288701/wrigley-weeghman-cubs-1916/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```