Brother Lundgren Helps Lead Chicago Cubs During Golden Era

It has been 71 years since the Chicago Cubs last appeared in the World Series. The year was 1945, and the Cubs would fall 4-3 to long time foe, the Detroit Tigers. In fact, the last time the Cubs won the World Series was in 1907 and 1908 when they won back-to-back World Series championships against the Tigers becoming the first Major League team to play in three consecutive World Series (they lost the World Series to the Chicago White Sox in 1906), and the first to win it twice. During that World Series span, one of the pitchers for the Cubs was Brother Carl L. Lundgren (Alpha-Gamma, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1899)!
Brother Lundgren played both football and baseball for the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. He played at the halfback and fullback positions for the Illini football team and pitched for the baseball team from 1899-1902. After playing in an exhibition game between the Cubs and his Illini team, the Cubs gave him a tryout and he began playing for the team shortly after he graduated in June of 1902. Brother Lundgren would go on to play for the Cubs from 1902 to 1909 and compile a 91–55 (.623) record and career earned run average of 2.42. His best year was their first championship year – 1907. In 1907 Lundgren pitched 207 innings without allowing a single home run, and accumulated seven shutouts while only giving up 27 earned runs in 28 games.
After retiring in 1909, Brother Lundgren would go on to have a long a illustrious career as a college coach. He got his start as an assistant pitching coach at Princeton University in 1912, but by 1913 he had become the head baseball coach at the University of Michigan. He held that position until 1920, compiling a record of 93–43–6 and developing several Major League players. He was also an assistant coach on the Wolverine football team under legendary coach, Fielding H. Yost. In June of 1920, he left the University of Michigan to become the head baseball coach and assistant athletic director at his alma mater, the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, where he would remain until his death in 1934. Over the course of his coaching career, Brother Lundgren won eight Big Ten Conference baseball championships – a feat that only three other coaches have surpassed.