(Did you know that the Chicago Cubs were a powerhouse in two earlier decades? Have you been to the Billy Goat Tavern? On your next trip to the Windy City, check out its location on a dark street below the Miracle Mile. Have a cheeseburger with fries. Wait! No fries, cheeps, aka chips. Was the film and book The Natural based on the shootings of two Cubs' ballplayers? Read on.)
When they won four pennants
and two World Series between 1906 and 1910 the Chicago Cubs, famed for the
double-play flair of Tinker to Evers to Chance, were a perennial National
League powerhouse. When the Cubs beat Detroit in 1908, it was their second
straight World Series victory over the Tigers (and they have waited 107 years
for another). The early 20th-Century successes are more notable given that the participants in
the most famous double play combination in baseball history didn’t get along
and barely spoke to each other. And Frank Chance was also the manager, not
much hand holding back then.
Bonehead Play. Due to an outlandish adventure, a late September game
with the New York Giants was called due to darkness and ended in a tie. Except
for a “bonehead” play by utility man Fred Merkle the Giants would have won.
With a runner on third and Merkle on first with two outs in the bottom of the 9th
inning, the batter singled in the winning run, but Merkle forgot to tag
second base. Frank Chance stood on second and hollered for the ball. A Giants’
player saw what was happening and threw the ball into the stands. The Cubs
retrieved the ball (or got another one), and the umpire called the force-out
nullifying the run.
With destiny taking completely over, the Cubs and Giants
finished the season a few weeks later tied for the National League lead. The
Cubs won the replayed game 4-2 at the Polo Grounds and got into the 1908 World
Series. Fred Merkle never got over his blunder, and it haunted him the rest of
his life.
Orval Overall and Three-Finger
Brown, two memorable names out of baseball’s distant past, won two games each
in the 1908 World Series. Mordecai Brown lost part of his right index finger
and injured other fingers in childhood accidents, and the result was a grip
that gave his sinker a late dip that elevated him to a Hall-of-Fame career.
AFTER A LONG DROUGHT the Cubs
began a resurgence in 1929 and were contenders for the next 10 years. They won
the National League pennant at precisely spaced, three-year intervals: 1929,
1932, 1935, and 1938. And were runner-ups to the Yankees for the best record in
the big leagues during the 1930’s. Despite these successes, the Cubs were a four-time World Series
also-ran.
The
Cubs lost the World Series again in 1945 to the Detroit Tigers and haven’t
gotten into one since. Prospects were bright in 1969, 1984, 1989, 1998, and
2003, but the Cubs came up short in all these chances for the big prize. Like the stock market, the Cubs climb a wall of worry; but
unlike many long-term investors the club hasn’t gotten a big payoff in 100
years.
Billy Goat Curse.The Cubbies’ faithful grapple
for a clue to this seemingly endless injustice; Chicago lore suggests that the
Cubs labor under a curse brought on by a Greek tavern owner. Legend has it that
William “Billy Goat” Sianis tried to get his goat into Wrigley Field for the
1945 Series and was refused. He laid down a curse on the Cubs by saying that
they would never get into a World Series again. Later, in a futile effort to
break the curse, a goat was brought into Wrigley Field, but all that got was a
few laughs.
The Friendly Confines. Wrigley Field, one of two
ballpark stops on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line, sure doesn’t look
cursed. Like Boston’s Fenway Park, it’s a little green jewel. A place to dream
about, bounded on all sides by streets with mini-grandstands on top of neighborhood houses.
The
aptly nicknamed Friendly Confines just smiles at you, and the people are
Midwestern congenial (see an exception in a later story). Many fans wear Cubs’
caps, so the grandstand and bleachers are patched with blue among a sea of
green. The fans sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning
stretch, throw opposing hitters’ home run balls back into the field of play,
and sing “Go, Cubs, Go” after a Cubs’ victory.
The buoyant ”Go, Cubs, Go” was
written by Chicago folksinger Steve Goodman who died tragically young from
leukemia in 1984 at age 36, just a few days before the Cubs got into their
first postseason series in 39 years.
Despite
the team’s failures, Wrigley is a park of undiminished, and some say
irrational, joy. Friday afternoon games become a day-into-night street party.
Many fans play hooky from work and college and hit the bars along Clark Street and Sheffield Avenue
before and after the games.
The
stands at Wrigley are an intimate 70-80 feet from the infield baselines.
Another pleasing feature is a pretty, redbrick wall enclosing much of the
playing field. The ivy covering the outfield wall is a superb visual treat.
When viewed from the bleachers, the brick wall also provides an unusual and vivid
backdrop for the action between the mound and home plate. One of the last Major
League manual scoreboards sits atop the center field bleachers. And beyond that
is the elevated Red Line, a symbol of the waiting since 1906 for another
Cubs-White Sox, north-side, south-side World Series.
Connie,
Hack, Babe, Mickey, Gabby, and Hank. Connie Mack became manager of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1901. The “Tall Tactician” was a dignified,
scorecard-waving leader in a business suit who won five World Championships and
built two dynasties with four pennants in five years from 1910 to 1914 and
three in a row from 1929 to 1931.
Mack was just beyond the midpoint of his enduring
managerial career when the Athletics met the
pre-curse Cubs in the 1929 World Series. The A’s went up two games to one, but
the Cubs led game four 8-0 and seemed a sure bet to even the Series. In what
became a threadbare Cubs’ script that often borders on farce (the sun got
between two fly balls and Hack Wilson’s glove), the A’s rallied hard, scored 10
runs in the seventh inning and won the game, the fifth game, and the title.
Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics until
his retirement at the age of 88 in 1950. He holds the mark for most wins
(3,776) by a skipper.²
CUBS’
SLUGGER HACK WILSON’S 159 RBI’s contributed mightily to the 1929 National
League championship and presaged what he accomplished the following season.
Wilson was a five-six fireplug with lightning bat speed and a love for the
bottle. It was said he was a “lowball hitter and a highball drinker.” After one
all-nighter, a teammate asked Hack how he could drink so much and still hit.
Wilson said, “When I see three baseballs I swing at the middle one.”
A winner of four home run titles while
with the Cubs, his 1930 season still inspires awe - 191 RBI (the all-time major
league record), 56 home runs (a National League record for 68 years) and a .356
batting average. Alcohol shortened his career and led to his death at age 48.
“For years, it was impossible for me to look at any round
outfielder who could hit a long ball without deciding I had found myself
another Hack Wilson.”³
—Bill Veeck
PACKING HEAT IN THE WINDY
CITY. Midway through the 1932 season shortstop Bill Jurges was shot twice in a
Chicago hotel room by a jilted girlfriend with a bad aim. The wounds were fixed, and Jurges
rejoined the team a few weeks later. The Cubs won the National League pennant,
but the shooting was not a good omen.
In
1949, ex-Cub Eddie Waitkus visited Chicago with his new team, the Philadelphia
Phillies. He was shot and seriously injured in the Edgewater Beach hotel by an
unhinged female stalker who became obsessed with Waitkus during his time with
the Cubs. He survived to play again. It is generally believed that the book and
film The Natural were loosely based on the Jurges and Waitkus shootings.
The Babe at Wrigley. Getting back to 1932, The
New York Yankees swept the Cubs in the World Series (minus Hack Wilson who had
been traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers). Among a barrage of Yankee hits, Babe
Ruth’s “called shot” made the series memorable. In the fifth inning of game
three Ruth pointed to the center-field bleachers. On the next pitch he launched
a mammoth home run in that direction. The Babe was getting a riding from the
Cubs’ bench, and some say he gestured toward the dugout. However, film of the
incident appears to show Ruth pointing toward the outfield. Posterity likes
that version better.
TIGERS’ REVENGE. In 1935,
the Cubs met the Detroit Tigers for the first time since they beat them
consecutively in the World Series of 1907 and 1908. Led by the hitting of Pete
Fox, Charlie Gehringer, and Mickey Cochrane, who singled and scored the winning
run in the ninth inning of game six, the Tigers won the Series four games to
two.
“Schoolboy”
Rowe was one of the Tigers’ pitchers and a very good one. In late 1934, during
a radio interview on a national broadcast, Rowe, a guileless southern lad,
asked his wife over the air, "How’m I doing, Edna?” You can imagine the riding
Rowe took from opposing benches, especially from the mouthy St. Louis
Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang bench jockeys during the Tigers’ loss in the 1934
World Series. And you can bet the Cubs didn’t let him forget it during his two
losses to them in the 1935 World Series.
Ducky. In
the 1934 World Series, the hard-nosed Gashouse Gang was led by the Dean
bothers, Dizzy and Paul (or as Dizzy called them Me ‘n’ Paul), who won two
games each. The Cardinals also had scrappy position players like Leo Durocher,
Pepper Martin, player-manager Frankie Frisch, and the ill-tempered (he even beat
up his own teammates), muscular slugger Joe “Ducky” Medwick. In the sixth
inning of the seventh game, Medwick slid high and hard into the Tigers’ third
baseman while finishing a triple. A ruckus ensued, and when he went to his
outfield position in the bottom of the inning, the Detroit fans showered him
with whatever they could grab. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis restored
order by pulling Medwick from the game. But the Cardinals, behind Dizzy Dean,
won the game 11-0 and the 1934 World Series.
“I'd rather pitch to any other hitter in the league. He's bad news
all the time. No game is ever won against the Cardinals until Medwick is out in
the ninth.” ⁴
—Van Lingle Mungo (Ironic given that Medwick was out of
the seventh game in the ninth after being removed by the commissioner.)
CREPUSCULAR CLOUT. The highlight of the 1935 Cubs’ season was
future Hall-of-Fame catcher Gabby Hartnett’s “Homer in the Gloamin’.” The Cubs
and Pittsburgh Pirates battled for the pennant in the final days of the season
when player/manager Hartnett beat the Pirates with a two-out, 0-2 count home
run in the gathering Wrigley Field darkness as the game was about to be called.
The Cubs went on to win the pennant on the most famous home run in their
history. But they lost the World Series in six games to the Tigers.
“Gabby was the greatest
throwing catcher that ever gunned a ball to second base. He threw a ball that
had the speed of lightning, but was as light as a feather.” ⁶ -Joe McCarthy
DIZZY DEAN (late of the Cardinals,and now a sore-armed
Cub) pitched bravely without his fastball in game two of the 1938 World Series.
He held the Yankees, featuring sluggers Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig, to five
hits in seven innings.
Back in his fireballing days (Diz was 30-7 in 1934, the last National League
pitcher to record 30 wins), he and his brother Paul “Daffy” Dean led the St.
Louis Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang to the World Championship. A broken toe suffered
in the 1937 All-Star Game (from a line drive off the bat of Earl Averill)
forced Dizzy to adjust his delivery. This led to arm problems that shortened
his playing days. He later embarked on a successful broadcasting career.⁷ (English teachers
criticized Dizzy for colorful on-air constructions like “Zarilla slud into
third.”)
“As
a ballplayer, Dizzy Dean was a natural phenomenon, like the Grand Canyon or the
Great Barrier Reef. Nobody ever taught him baseball and he never had to learn.
He was just doing what came naturally when a scout named Don Curtis discovered
him on a Texas sandlot and gave him his first contract.” ⁸ —Red Smith
“There’s nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a
vein.” -Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Red Smith
CLAWED AGAIN. The 1945 World
Series began less than two months after the end of World War Two. Organized
baseball’s ability to survive had become increasingly precarious through each
succeeding year of the war as the pool of able-bodied players steadily
depleted. Since the Cubs and Tigers had the deepest pools, it was no surprise
that both teams led their leagues.
The
sizzling hitting of perennial all-star third baseman “Smiling Stan” Hack (he
was also the Cubs’ hitting star of the 1938 World Series) and the pitching of
Hank Borowy (who was acquired in mid-season from the Yankees) propelled the Cubs into game seven.
Then, in a losing wager, they pitched Borowy on one day’s rest; he was chased,
and the Cubs lost another World Series. Their search for the big prize will be
107 years old in 2015. (Has any other team, in any sport, gone 107 years
without winning a title?)
Detroit was sparked by stylish southpaw
Hal Newhouser ('Prince Hal') won 25 games during the regular season), the
hitting of Doc Cramer and the prodigious Hank Greenberg, who came back in
mid-season after four years in the service.
HANK
GREENBERG challenged Hack Wilson’s single-season RBI record when the slugging
right-hander drove in 183 runs in 1937. In 1938, he made a strong run at Babe
Ruth’s home run record, finishing with 58 and never getting a good pitch to hit the remainder of the season. He hit .318 in four World Series
with Detroit.⁹
“He was one of the truly great hitters, and when I first saw him
at bat, he made my eyes pop out.”¹⁰
—Joe DiMaggio
However, the overall quality of play in
the 1945 World Series was spotty, with the two teams committing a bunch of
errors of commission and omission. In one of these miscues, the over-40 Cub
Jack Hostetler tripped and fell rounding third base costing the Cubs a key run.
In those pre-television days, admired New York sportswriter Bill Corum made the
most incisive summation on radio, “We’ve had everything in this series but a
wedding at home plate.” Corum’s remark was likely an indictment of bush league
play. Before the war and for several years after, weddings at home plate were
commonplace in the minor leagues.
If you can't reach home plate, you can always get married there. The authors know of one hometown
ballplayer who played for Big Stone Gap in the Mountain States League back in
the day and got hitched to a local gal at home plate under the not-so-bright,
Friday-night lights. The reception after the game was held in the lounge of the
local bowling alley. The feature of that well-lubricated shindig came when the
catcher decked the shortstop with a straight right from nowhere over nothing in
particular.
ANOTHER
HANK, HANK WYSE, won 22 games for the Cubs in 1945, often on only two days
rest. This regimen took its toll on his arm. In 1946 he had elbow problems and
went to see a doctor. When Wyse returned to the clubhouse a teammate asked him
what the doctor found in his elbow. Wyse said, “bottlecaps.”
Lippy
and the Mets’ Hex. After a 24-year drought,
Chicago cruised toward the 1969 National League playoffs. The Cubs had solid
starters with Ferguson Jenkins (the only member of
the 3,000-strikeout club to have surrendered fewer than 1,000 walks),¹¹ Bill Hands, and Ken Holtzman. And with slugging
outfielder Billy Williams and the solid infield play and hitting of Ernie Banks
and Ron Santo, the Cubs were nine and a half games up on the New York Mets in
mid-August. Then the Cubs began to melt like ice cream in the bleachers. (The
1966-1970 Cubs may be the only team to play together that long with three
future Hall of Fame players:Banks,
Jenkins, Williams, plus Ron Santo who should be in the Hall, and
never win a pennant.)
A
REMARKABLE ATHLETE, Ferguson Jenkins (born 1943) had an illustrious career of
nineteen seasons as one of the top baseball pitchers in the Major Leagues
during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first Canadian to be inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame. 21 games in 1969. 284 total. 20 games seven times, six
in a row.¹²
Lippy and the black cat. For many Cubs’ fans, daytime
baseball was a new villain in the narrative of Cubs’ curses. In 1969, Wrigley
Field was still without lights, and the Cubs were the last team in baseball to
play only day games at home. Manager Leo Durocher had a well-established
reputation for preferring a set lineup composed of experienced veterans, and
little patience for grooming rookies. As a result, and with limited exceptions,
Durocher played the same eight-man lineup of war-horses, day in and day out,
throughout an enervating Chicago summer. The consequence of this strategy was
an exhausted starting lineup that had nothing left to give down the stretch.
Things got even more painful in September when the “Amazing Mets,” who finished
last in the National League in 1968, won ten straight. The Cubs lost eight in a
row and finished the season eight games back. In one of these losses at Shea
Stadium, a black cat ran in front of the Cubs’ dugout and right by Ron Santo
waiting in the on-deck circle. If 1969 wasn’t the worst late-season
disintegration, it ranks down there among classic baseball flops.
California
Dreaming. In 1984, Cubs’ second baseman
and future Hall-of-Famer Ryne Sandberg was the National League MVP. His
inspired play and Rick Sutcliffe’s masterful pitching helped the Cubs finish
first in the East (39 years after their World Series loss to the Tigers). Only
a few pitchers have won 20 games in a season while pitching for two different
teams. Rick Sutcliffe is one of them. He came to the Cubs during the 1984
campaign with a 4-5 record and made it a career year by going 16-1 and winning
the National League Cy Young Award as a unanimous selection.¹⁴
The
Cubs’ playoff opponent was the Western Champion San Diego Padres led by Tony
Gwynn who hit .351 to win the first of eight batting titles. The Cubs won the
first two games at home, and the final three games were in San Diego. All the
Cubs had to do was win one more and they would capture the National League
pennant. They surely wouldn’t lose three straight, would they?
Their
second best chance came in game four, but the Padres’ Steve Garvey spoiled the
Cubs’ dreams with a game-winning home run in the last of the ninth inning. The
image of Garvey circling the bases with his brawny right arm held high looms in
the Cubs’ collection of bad dreams.
In
their best chance, the Cubs led in the seventh inning of game five, but were
overtaken by a San Diego rally in which the key event was an unusual Chicago
error committed by the typically sure-handed first baseman, Leon Durham. The
inning appeared to have come to a harmless conclusion when a routine ground
ball that should have been the inning’s third out was hit directly to Durham.
When Durham bent down to pick up the baseball, it mysteriously skidded off his
glove and rolled into the outfield, and it
was Katie bar the door from there. And what turned out to be the reason for the
error? It seems that Durham had been drinking Gatorade in the dugout, and some
of it spilled onto his glove. Because Durham had been less than fully attentive
while wiping it off, a residue remained, and when that dried it left a sticky
surface. When the routine ground ball came in contact with that sticky place,
it unexpectedly skidded off Durham’s glove, resulting in the fatal error. Why
didn’t the stickiness help retain the baseball. Hey, it’s the Cubs, also known
to many of their fans as “The Lovable Losers.” A string of hits followed, and
the Cubs didn’t get into the playoffs again until 1989.
The Boys of Zimmer. Paced by 19-game winner Greg
Maddux, the Cubs won the National League Eastern division in 1989 and met the
San Francisco Giants for the pennant. The Cubs, known as “The Boys of Zimmer,”
so-named for manager Don Zimmer, split the first two games in Chicago. As
discussed in chapter two, game five is pivotal in seven-game series in all
sports, and game three is crucial in five-game series. The Cubs led by a run in
the seventh inning when the Giants got a runner on. Cubs’ pitcher Rick
Sutcliffe went to 2-0 on the next batter, and Zimmer lifted him. (Sutcliffe was
in the final year of his successful career and taking lots of time between
pitches. When asked why later, Sutcliffe said he was waiting for the pain to
leave his shoulder.)
Reliever
Les Lancaster wasn’t told, or didn’t understand, or something that the count
was 2-0, thought it was 3-0, and delivered a cookie to the Giants’ Robby
Thompson who cowtailed it for a game-winning home run. The Giants went on to
win the next two games and the pennant, and the Cubs waited nine years for
their next chance.
1998. The Cubs and San
Francisco Giants (led by future Cubs’ manager Dusty Baker and National League
Manager of the Year in 1998) ended the regular season with identical records
and met in a one-game playoff game for the National League wild-card berth that
the Cubs won. The Atlanta Braves then swept them in the first playoff round.
Gregg Maddux won game three (see “The Man That got Away” later in the book).
“The
last time the Cubs won a World Series was in 1908. The last time they were in
one was in 1945. Hey, any team can have a bad century.” -Tom Trebelhorn, 1990’s
Cubs’ manager, was fired soon after he said it. (Longtime Cubs’ announcer Jack
Brickhouse is credited for coining “Any team can have a bad century.”)
Scape, Rather than Billy, Goat.The
Cubs most promising chance for a crown since the 1945 World Series and the
1969, 1984, 1989, and 1998 season-ending disappointments came in 2003. They
upset the Braves (avenging the 1998 playoff sweep) in the National League
Division Series to win their first post-season series since 1908.
In the 6th game of the NLCS,
the Cubs led the Florida Marlins three games to two. Cubs’ star Mark Prior
pitched into the 8th inning with a 3-0 lead and one out. Was this
the year? Was the curse finally lifted?
After a leadoff double, the Marlins
caught a break. A high fly near the left-field stands might have saved the inning.
The ball went foul into the stands and was deflected by a fan. The fan didn’t
reach out over the field. He did what anyone else would have done. He went for
a souvenir. What the fan didn’t see was Cubs’ left fielder Moises Alou leaping
with his glove high above and inside the railing. Alou might have made the
catch if the fan hadn’t interfered, but the fan’s attempt didn’t cause the Cubs
subsequent implosion (although the hateful abuse poured down upon the poor
devil showed that the crowd wanted a scapegoat). The reprieved batter walked. A
single scored a run. Prior looked perturbed. The next Marlins’ hitter grounded
to short, and the usually sure-handed Alex Gonzalez booted what looked like an
inning-ending double play.
”When
troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” -William
Shakespeare
Then future Cub Derrek Lee tied the
score with a two-run double, and Prior was finally lifted. Manager Dusty Baker
brought in reliever Kyle Farnsworth who didn’t have much time to get loose,
eventually gave up a three-run double, and the Cubs lost what turned into a
one-sided game.
The hugely talented Kerry Wood started
game seven for the Cubs and didn’t have it that day. Led by their dominating
right-hander, Josh Beckett, the upstart Marlins went on to beat the Yankees in
the World Series. (2003 was the year when the fans’ amusement with Cubs’
failures turned to frustration.)
Kerry Wood developed arm
troubles, went through surgeries, missed the better part of two seasons, and it
was feared his career was over. Cubs’ fans were surprised and elated when the
popular Wood returned in mid-2007, pitched well in short relief, and helped the
Cubs win the National League Central Division title. Wood became the Cubs’
closer in 2008 and continued to pitch effectively as the team had their best
start in 100 years.
The defense rests. The score
was 1-1 after six innings in game one of the 2007 best-of-five Division-Series
against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Cubs’ ace Carlos Zambrano had given only a
few hits on 85 pitches. Because they couldn’t do much with him, the
Diamondbacks were delighted when manager Lou Piniella lifted Zambrano,
presumably to rest him for a game four. Arizona homered off the reliever in the
seventh and added another run to seal the win. There never was a game four.
Updating Wrigley and the team. With new owners, the Cubs are renovating Wrigley Field, adding more seats, a mechanical scoreboard and more. We'll be looking to see if the improved team led by former Red Sox ace Jon Lester can reverse the curse and deliver a World Series to Chicago. Dare we think it could be against the Red Sox? No one could win that one, and it would go on forever with the Billy Goat butting his head against the Green Monster.
(This story was excerpted from Guts in the Clutch: 77 Legendary, Triumphs, Heartbreaks and Wild Finishes in 12 Sports, with a Foreword by Drew Olson of ESPN
http://amzn.to/19QmSVH
@rnoyes1
Sources:
CURSE OF THE BILLY GOAT
mack_connie.htm,
available as of 5/13/05
3
Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=124412
4 Courtesy
of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, available as of 12/8/07,
http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=118904
5 Courtesy of the
National Baseball Hall of Fame, http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=112437,
avahof, available as of 7/10/07
6 Courtesy
of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=115572,
available as of 7/12/07
7 Courtesy of the
National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=113168,
available as of 7/12/07
8 HOF, Dean
9 Courtesy of the
National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=115096,
available as of 7/12/07
10 HOF, Greenberg
12
Library Canada, Ferguson Jenkins
13
Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame,
Cooperstown,
http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=121283
available as of 8/10/2007
14 Courtesy of http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/awards/mlb_awards_content.jsp?content=cy_history
available as of 7/15/06
