Wait ‘til Next Year –
a Painful History of a Sport’s Perennial
Losers' Sad Refrain
July, by Grantland Rice
Hope
Springs eternal in the baseball breast
Until July,
When
in six towns, hurled backward from the crest,
Passes by;
And,
stilled at last beyond the pennant gate,
The ringing cheer
Fades
to a curse – and then the cry: “Just wait
Until next year.”
Grantland Rice, from his Bingles and Bungles column, The Washington Times (Washington DC),
June 29, 1914, Home Edition, page 11.
From “da
Bums” (Brooklyn Dodgers) to the “Loveable Losers” (Chicago Cubs), the phrase, “Wait’ll next year” - the hopeful
song of sports’ perennial losers - has long buoyed the spirits of optimistic baseball fans through one hot-stove league after
another.
For many years (from
as early as 1938), “wait until next year” was closely associated with
the Brooklyn Dodgers. A documentary
film, entitled “Wait
‘til Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs,” chronicled the sad history
of the long-suffering Cubbies. In
professional football, a Cleveland Browns’ fan writes a blog under the heading,
Wait ‘til Next Year, Again.
But as Barry Popik pointed out, the “phrase pre-dates the [Dodgers' original] nickname “Trolley
Dodgers” [(1895)] and was not original to Brooklyn.”
The Phillies
In 1916, the year after Philadelphia Phillies won their
first National League pennant, following thirty years of futility, Philly fanatics put their
worries behind them:
“Wait
Until Next Year” is a forgotten slogan
in Philly. Fans will not have to “Pull” the Wait-Until-Next-Year “Stuff” of the
Last Three Decades.
Evening Public Ledger
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), April 1 1916, page 14.
The Washington Senators
In the American League, it was the long-suffering
Washington Senators for whom hope eternally sprung. In 1915, however, things were looking up after they had finished near the top for two consecutive seasons:
It’s
the same old song – “wait
‘till next year”
– but the fans along the Potomac are joining in stronger on the chorus than
they used to.
The Tacoma Times (Washington), March 4, 1915, page 32.
The Senators, a charter member of the American League, which
started play in 1901, had been bottom dwellers for years. In 1909, when firing their old manager was a
distinct possibility, and the search was on for a new one, one writer saw reason for hope:
It
is not within the range of possibility that a Connie Mack or a Hughey Jennings
will be found for the emergency, but there is hope that the “wait until next year” will not again prove so
meaningless and disappointing.
The Washington Herald (DC),
August 3, 1909, page 8.
But, sadly, 1909 was not the first year they had had problems:
Far
be it from a writer in these columns to ask long-suffering fandom to wait until next year. This hoary saying, repeated, reiterated, and
re-echoed, carries with it little consolation to those who have watched and
waited in vain for the opportunity to cheer a winning team. They have been reassured in the past only to
be disappointed.
The Washington Times
(DC), August 15, 1909, page 10.
The Senators’ problems were even older than the team. In 1894, an earlier incarnation of the Senators,
playing in the National League, addressed a familiar problem; they were looking
for another new manager after another disastrous season; – but at least the
outgoing manager deserved praise (however faint) for lifting them out of the
cellar and into eleventh place:
After
the Senators have gotten through their present series in Louisville they go to
Cleveland, from there to Chicago, and wind up the season at St. Louis. They are assured of eleventh place, not so
much through any particularly brilliant playing of their own, but chiefly owing
to Louisville’s disorganized team and its consequent poor work. As usual whenever the local aggregation fails
to win games with startling frequency rumors are set afloat that a change in
managers will take place. One close
follower of the fortunes of the Washington Club is confident Manager Schmelz
will not succeed himself. While the
genial Gus has not always come up to expectations he has been fortunate in
getting the team out of last place and for this, if for nothing else, he is deserving
of praise. But there will be no grand
outpouring of enthusiastic citizens to welcome the team back to this city, as
will be the case forty miles from here, and the chances are the Senators will
disband in the West. ”Wait until next year,” will soon be heard emanating
from the Wagnerian stronghold.
The Washington Times (DC),
September 17, 1894, Page 4.
Other Uses
The use of the phrase, “wait ‘til next year,” has not always
been confined to Major League baseball. The
earliest example in baseball that I found is from minor league, intra-state trash-talking
in Nebraska; Lincoln lorded it over Omaha, because they had a baseball team and
Omaha had none:
Lincoln,
Neb., July 11. – To the Sporting Editor of The Bee: How is this? We are
creditably informed that Omaha is no longer in it. Poor old Omaha. I believe you told me early in the season
that Lincoln would not be in it long.
Poor old Omaha. I’m sorry for you
folks. Population 154,563 and no ball
team. Lincoln’s population 54,000 and
great ball team. Yours, R. S. McI.
Well,
Mac, as Jack Morrison says, it is a Mexican stand off. But just you wait
until next year.
– Sport Ed.
Omaha Daily Bee,
July 19, 1891, part 2, page 12.
The earliest sporting use of the
phrase I ran across is from 1884. Sixteen-year-old, live-pigeon
shooting “Boy Wonder,” H. B. Whitney, promised, “[j]ust wait until next year,
and I’ll show ‘em.!” Curiously, though, he said it after winning the “Pierce
diamond badge, worth $850,” at the New York State pigeon shoot at Buffalo.[i] He won the badge, after shooting fifteen-of-fifteen live pigeons at a distance of twenty-one yards, and then five-of-five
in a three-way tie-breaker at a distance of twenty-four yards, and five-of-five
at a distance of thirty-one yards. Perhaps
he was predicting an even more dominant live-pigeon-shooting season the
following year. That's right, he shot twenty-five live pigeons by himself in one match - of hundreds of matches - held during the event. One event of many during a long season. It was a different time.
The phrase also popped up, on occasion, in other sports;
such as, cycling,[ii] rowing
(Penn hoped for a better result against Cornell in 1903),[iii]
golf (consoling the women who missed the cut for the 1902 National
Championship), and football (the Utah State Aggies hoped for a better result in
1905, after losing to the University of
Utah in 1904).[iv]
Final Post of the Year
This is my final
post for the year, 2014 . . .
. . . just wait’ll next
year.
--------------------
Grantland Rice also helped popularize the expression, "it's not whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game."
[i] The New York Times, September 6, 1884.
[ii] The Greenville Times (Greenville,
Mississippi), October 6, 1897, page 4 (Wisconsin cyclists must still pay for
their wheels on railroad journeys. They
are saying: “Wait until next year!”)
[iii] The St. Louis Republic, June 29, 1902,
Part III, page 5.
[iv] The Salt Lake Herald, November 21, 1904,
last edition, page 7.
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