The chubby little youngster that Cub fans saw sitting on the bench the last month of the season is Paul Dominick, 14-year-old Chicago schoolboy. Paul was not the mascot of the club, as the Cubs couldn't find room in the locker room for another mascot, especially a ponderous child of Paul's proportions. He was merely the club's good-luck charm and he "sat" them into a pennant.
Paul was very much worried when school re-opened during the middle of September. Paul was afraid the team would blow up in the midst of a winning streak, if he was not around to support it by his presence. If the truth must be known, there was actual worry among the more superstitious members of the team.
Bertha Jackson, Paul's school teacher, came to the rescue. The moment school closed each day, 3:30 P. M., teacher and pupil took off in teacher's car and usually made the ball park by the fourth inning. And on days when the Cubs failed to score early in the game and came through with late rallies, they became more and more convinced of the mystic power of the young 150-pounder.
The players would lose their tenseness when they spotted their young pachyderm beaming and smiling from the bench after his midgame arrival from school. When questioned on the Cubs' twenty-one game streak, Paul replied: "I gotta be here. I was here when the fellas started knockin' 'em off, and if I wasn't here now, they'd go stale. They'd lose if I wasn't here."
The youthful bundle of beef does nothing but talk about Herman, Jurges and Cavaretta. He never saw Tinker, Evers and Chance, but can't believe they were any better than the 1935 Cubs infield.
The Cubs have had many symbols but never anything like Paul who, it is claimed, started them on the winning streak that brought them from third position to the No. 1 spot and the pennant during the last month of the season.
Paul has hopes of being a big league catcher within the next few years. It is true that he is a ponderous child, but he replies to questions about his weight with the answer that Shanty Hogan was quite a boy when he came up to the big time.