August 22, 1908: Cubs lose a heartbreaker in 15 innings. Also, the Wright Brothers prepare for a hi

The Cubs lost a tough one today, dropping the final game of the Boston series 3-1 in 15 long innings. Also, the Wright Brothers prepare for a historic flight.

Boston Doves rookie Tom Tuckey had the game of his career today. Tuckey signed with the Doves out of the Connecticut Valley semi-pro league just two weeks ago, and today was thrust into a game to pitch against the defending World Champion Chicago Cubs and their ace, Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown.

Young Tom responded by throwing the best game of his career (past, present, or future), which resulted in a 15 inning, complete game 3-1 victory. With a big sweeping curve, Tuckey kept pace with Brown inning after inning (he of course pitched all 15 innings too) until things finally fell apart for the Cubs in the 15th.

And this truly will be the highlight of Tuckey's career. He finished the 1908 season with a 3-3 record, and then proceeds to go 0-9 in 1909 and is out of baseball forever.

Leave me alone, this is my moment!

The biggest story of this game is that Mordecai Brown really has nobody to blame but himself for this loss. With the score still knotted 1-1 in the 14th inning, the Cubs managed to load the bases with one out, meaning any kind of fly ball to the outfield and this game was over. Brown's spot in the order was up, and managed Frank Chance planned to send in pinch hitter Heinie Zimmerman.

Granted it was in limited at bats, but Zimmerman had a .292 average on the season, second only on the team to Johnny Evers' .300. Meanwhile, Brown batted just .207 on the season, which is not too terrible for a pitcher, but still not very good either.

Regardless of this fact, Brownie argued HARD with Chance to let him stay in the game and win the thing himself (I picture Madison Bumgarner doing the same thing in 2016). Chance gave in to his ace, who stepped to the plate and promptly struck out. Solly Hofman then popped out to end the best chance the Cubs had to put a victory in the books.

So yeah ... had Brown kept his mouth shut and let his manager make the right call, things may very well have ended differently in this game. And really, Chance deserves plenty of the blame as well, since he should've just told his pitcher to go screw and made the correct call.

In the top of the 15th, Johnny Bates led off with his fifth hit of the day (he went 5-6), and then Ginger Beaumont followed it up with a single of his own. Now I know Ginger Beaumont was a guy, but I still just picture a rich Southern woman in a giant hat stepping to the plate, shades of someone from Gone With the Wind or Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls.

I do declare!

Claude Ritchey was intentionally walked to load the bases, and then Bad Bill Dahlen stepped to the plate and laced a line drive into left field that scored two Doves. The Cubs couldn't do much in the bottom of the 15th and that's how things ended, the Cubs taking a tough luck 3-1 loss. And as if that wasn't enough, Pittsburgh won today too, so the Cubs dropped back to four and half games out of first.

In other news, the legendary Wright Brothers were preparing for yet another historic flight. Now, the original Wright Brothers flight that you learned about in the third grade already happened a few years ago (1903 to be exact), but none of their test runs in the past five years had even been conducted in front of the public. That all changed in 1908.

The French had been incredibly skeptical of the Wright Brothers' claims, and for years had reported the entire thing as an elaborate set of lies and hoaxes. So naturally, the Wright Brothers set out to stick it to the French and prove them wrong, and on August 8, 1908 did exactly that in front of huge crowd in Paris.

The French media issued a public apology, and the Wright Brothers headed home to the U.S. to prepare for their first public display in this country. The flight will take place on September 3rd in Fort Meyer, Virginia, and here's a shot of the team preparing for that historic flight ...

I'm such a nerd, I love cool old pics like this!

So in summary, the tough loss drops the Cubs to 62-47 on the year and four and a half games out of first place. On the bright side ... Brooklyn comes to town next, and they've been playing terribly, which (spoiler alert) is going to be a great way for the Cubs to rip off their biggest winning streak of the season. Stay tuned!