14 Cubs form chain that spans 145 seasons By JohnW53 on Dec 20, 2020, 7:35am CST 1 Some years ago, an enterprising baseball historian figured out how to make a chain of just 9 players that spanned the history of Major League Baseball. It began with Harry Wright of the 1869 Cincinnati Reds, the first professional team. In his final season, another player was a rookie, and it that player's final season, a third player was a rookie, and so on to the current season. (I hunted for the story online but could not find it.) I wondered how few players it would take to do something similar using only Cubs, and beginning in 1876, the first year of the National League.