100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (18 page)

53. The Gamer

It was rarely pretty and Lord, there were mistakes along the way, but Dallas Green came to Wrigley Field determined to dismantle a culture of losing he abhorred. And that’s exactly what he did.

Where the Cubs had been meek for the better part of 50 years, Green was ferocious and unwilling to let the past dictate his moves. He fired dozens of people when he arrived, made risky trades, and took on residents and politicians in an effort to get lights installed at Wrigley Field.

Right or wrong, Dallas put a giddy-up into the Cubs.

Green had been a lifer in the Philadelphia Phillies organization and managed them to the 1980 World Series title, so it was a tough decision to leave, and at first he turned down Tribune Co., which had bought the club a few months earlier. But Tribune chairman Andrew McKenna wouldn’t take no for an answer, and eventually he got a yes.

Green’s initial move was to hire Lee Elia as manager, a coach from his days with the Phillies. It was the first of many involving his old organization, and most of them proved fruitful for the Cubs. He brought in so many ex-Phillies, including Larry Bowa, Gary Matthews, Bobby Dernier, Ryne Sandberg, Dick Ruthven, and Dickie Noles, that the Cubs came to be known as Phillies West. More accurately, they were gamers, a type of player Green sought over all others.

“They’re the guys who can put all the frustrations, all the personal problems, all the garbage aside when they hit the white lines,” Green told the
Chicago Tribune
in early 1982, a few months after he was hired. “A gamer plays over the problems of life and baseball and gives you everything he’s got. He wants nothing more than to play baseball with gusto.”

The other major change Green made was to revamp an unproductive minor-league system by hiring Gordon Goldsberry, whose first pick was Shawon Dunston. Subsequent drafts reeled in prospects like Greg Maddux, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark Grace, Jamie Moyer, Jerome Walton, Dwight Smith, and Joe Girardi.

The 1984 season was a testament to Green’s ability to recognize talent as well as his impatience. Less than three years after Green took over, the Cubs had six new everyday players in the lineup and an entirely new starting rotation in Dennis Eckersley, Steve Trout, Rick Sutcliffe, and Scott Sanderson, each one acquired through trades.

Green tried to win again with pretty much the same crew the following season, but injuries decimated the rotation. A 13-game losing streak in June after a 35–19 start was the beginning of the end not just for the Cubs but for Green. He had been promoted to club president after 1984 and was spending more time on off-field activities.

The issue of lights at Wrigley Field started to consume more of Green’s time, and on June 19, 1985, he sent out a letter to Cubs’ season-ticket-holders, letting them know if the Cubs made it to the World Series that season it would be played in another city.

By 1987, most of the holdovers from 1984 were gone and the Cubs were rebuilding again. Green had already fired Elia in 1983 and then Jim Frey in June 1986. In 1987, Gene Michael was hired to manage the Cubs, but on
September 8, 1987, he announced he was quitting through a radio interview with Bruce Levine, then a freelance correspondent. Green didn’t even know.

It was an embarrassment to Green, who was faced with hiring his fourth manager in six seasons. His first choice for the job? Dallas Green. That option was rejected by his Tribune bosses, and a few weeks later it was clear he’d have to start sharing decision-making, so Green resigned.

Just like Leo Durocher 15 years earlier, a dominating figure had rolled into Wrigley Field and tried to shake things up. But unlike Durocher, Green had actually won something.

Dallas Green’s Five Best Trades:

1. January 27, 1982: Ivan DeJesus to Philadelphia for Larry Bowa and Ryne Sandberg.

2. March 26, 1984: Bill Campbell and Mike Diaz to Philadelphia for Porfi Altamirano, Bobby Dernier, and Gary Matthews.

3. June 13, 1984: Darryl Banks, Joe Carter, Mel Hall, and Don Schulze to Cleveland for Rick Sutcliffe, George Frazier, and Ron Hassey.

4. January 19,1983: Dan Cataline and Vance Lovelace to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Ron Cey.

5. March 26, 1984: Minor leaguers Stan Kyles and Stan Boderick to Oakland for Tim Stoddard.

54. The Perfect Home Run

Glenallen Hill was, if anything, an imperfect baseball player.

Bending over was a challenge for the soft-spoken outfielder with the sculpted physique; as a result, he was atrocious in the field, committing 57 errors in 13 major league seasons. On the other hand, Hill did have an ability to do one thing very well—hit home runs
—a skill that led him to play for seven franchises, including the Cubs for two stints.

It was during his second term with the Cubs that he crushed what many believe was the longest baseball ever hit and what Hill would describe as the “perfect” home run.

The Cubs were 14–22 when they faced Milwaukee on May 11, 2000, and they got off to a rough start that Thursday afternoon with help from Hill’s fielding misplay in the second inning. He stumbled on his way to catch Ron Belliard’s line drive, turning an out into a double and eventually a run that put the Brewers up 3–0.

When he came to bat the next inning against Milwaukee right-hander Steve Woodard, Hill was angry. And despite his better judgment, he swung angry.

There are times in which it takes a few seconds to realize if a baseball, rising into the air, will be able to find the distance to gently fall into the stands. Many occasions you don’t know until the final moment. This was not one of those occasions.

Hill didn’t just hit the ball, he obliterated it. The ball didn’t just leave his bat, it exploded off it. And when the ball came down, which from the way it went up was not always a certainty, it wasn’t in Wrigley Field and it wasn’t even a souvenir for ball hawks pacing Waveland Avenue.

The baseball, incredibly, ended up on the rooftop of the building at 1032 W. Waveland Avenue with a few stunned rooftop freeloaders suddenly charged with chasing it down.

“I was so mad, I swear I was blind,” Hill told the
Chicago Tribune
after the game. “Nine out of 10 times when you come to the plate like that, you don’t get a hit. But when you do, it’s perfect.”

Hill’s homer, estimated at 490', is the only one ever to land on a rooftop, but there’s debate over whether it’s the longest in Wrigley Field history. On April 14, 1976, Dave Kingman, while with the New York Mets, clubbed a shot that landed four houses down on Kenmore Avenue.

Hall of Famer Billy Williams played for the Cubs from 1959 until 1974 and was a coach and front office employee for many years. He said it was the longest he had ever seen.

There’s no doubt Hill will be remembered for his long Wrigley Field clout, but he’ll also be remembered for two inglorious events, one comical and the other sad. In 1990, Hill had to go on the disabled list after getting cuts and scrapes suffered during a fall. The fall didn’t occur during a game but during the course of a nightmare in which he was trying to escape from spiders chasing after him.

The other event actually casts somewhat of a black cloud over Hill’s incredible homer. In 2008, while working as a coach with the Colorado Rockies, Hill admitted that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his playing career.

It’s unclear if Hill was taking them at the time of the rooftop shot. Former New York Yankees pitcher Jason Grimsley, who spilled the beans on several players, told baseball investigators Hill used steroids. The pair became teammates in 2000 after the Cubs dealt Hill to the Yankees in a mid-season trade.

Tom Browning Has Left the Building

No opposing player has ever put a ball on a rooftop during a game. But an opposing player once put himself on a rooftop during a game.

During a Cubs-Cincinnati game on July 7, 1993, Reds pitcher Tom Browning departed Wrigley Field—in full uniform, mind you—and wound up on top of a Sheffield Avenue building where TV cameras spotted him hanging out with fans and waving to his teammates. Since he had started three days earlier and wasn’t going to be needed anyway, Browning decided to visit his favorite neighborhood rooftop.

A quintessentially kooky left-handed starter, Browning, who once pitched a perfect game and in 1986 tossed a one-hitter against the Cubs, was perhaps motivated by an ongoing feud with Reds’ management over money and playing time. After the game he was chewed out by Reds manager Davey Johnson and fined $500. He made his next start two days later.

Afterward, Cubs manager Jim Lefebvre was asked what he’d do if any of his players turned up on a rooftop during a game.

“They’d better not,” Lefebvre told the
Chicago Tribune
. “The way we’re going, our guy would fall.”

55. King Kong (aka Dave Ding Dong)

When the Cubs signed Dave Kingman prior to the 1978 season, he brought along with him a mammoth bat capable of sending baseballs flying into windows of rooftop buildings across Waveland Avenue.

But he also brought his crusty personality, which was capable of striking out just as often as he did.

“Dave has the personality of a tree trunk,” former teammate John Stearns once told
Sports Illustrated
. “He’s not a bad guy, but if you try to talk to him, about all he does is grunt.”

Kingman both loved and hated the idea of playing at gusty Wrigley Field, knowing the temptation to hit solely for home runs could be too great to resist. Not that he hadn’t been striking out a lot already, having fanned 853 times in his first 798 big-league games.

Before joining the Cubs, Kingman played for five franchises in seven seasons, and in 1977 he was either the most wanted or unwanted player in baseball, going from the New York Mets to the San Diego Padres to the California Angels before heading back to New York—this time with the Yankees—for the final three weeks of the season.

So when he arrived on the North Side there was little mystery about what the Cubs were getting—an all-or-nothing slugger who wouldn’t win any popularity contests. And that’s exactly what they got. Kingman’s first season with the Cubs was free of controversy, although it wasn’t free of injury. He missed 43 games yet still finished with a team-high 28 home runs on a Cubs team that saw no other players reach double figures.

The 1979 season was Kingman’s tour de force but it got off to a bad start, at least with the press. The
Chicago Sun-Times
ran a list of best and worst on the club and Kingman, who usually came to Wrigley Field straight from his boat on Lake Michigan, was named worst-dressed by his teammates.

Naturally, he took out his anger on the print reporters and refused to speak with them the entire season. This posed a problem because he made news all year long, pounding a career-high 48 home runs and hitting .288, a remarkable accomplishment for a .236 career hitter. Twice, he homered three times in a game and incidentally, both times the Cubs lost.

Dave Kingman and Bill Buckner (22) at home plate in the sixth inning after Kingman hit his first of three home runs against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Los Angeles on May 14, 1978. (AP Photo/ Wally Fong)

By 1980, Kingman was growling about his contract, which still had three years left at $225,000 annually. His demands to get an extension were met with deaf ears by Cubs’ management, who may have also been put off when Kingman dumped a bucket of water on the head of
Daily Herald
sportswriter Don Friske during spring training. Aside from a stiff reprimand, Kingman went unpunished.

That season he also started writing—or at least putting his name at the top of—a column that appeared in the Sunday editions of the
Chicago Tribune
. This made him a competitor of legendary Cubs fans Mike Royko, then a
Chicago Sun-Times
columnist. He preferred to call Kingman “Ding Dong” rather than King Kong so he began a series of parody columns with the byline, “Dave Ding Dong.”

In 1980, Kingman missed 81 games due to an injured shoulder. During his second stint on the disabled list, he chose to attend a boat show instead of Wrigley Field on the same day the Cubs gave away 15,000 Dave Kingman T-shirts. He had all but checked out and as the following spring training grew near, his complaints about his contract grew angrier and he threatened to hold out. On February 28, 1980, he was traded to the Mets for Steve Henderson.

And with that King Kong was gone. All that remained was a new ice cream parlor called Kingman’s Landing he had just opened at the corner of Irving Park Road and Western Avenue. Less than a year later, that closed, too.

What a Relief!

So many amazing things took place during a Pirates-Cubs game on July 6, 1980, at Three Rivers Stadium that it’s hard to know where to start. So let’s start with the outcome, which remained in doubt for 20 innings.

The 5-hour, 31-minute affair—to that point the longest in Cubs history—ended in the bottom of the 20
th
when Cubs left fielder Dave Kingman couldn’t handle Omar Moreno’s one-out single off Dennis Lamp and Ed Ott raced home with the winning run.

Now, to the fun stuff.

• The Cubs struck out 18 times, including 12 against Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven, who finished his career with 3,701 strikeouts.

• Kingman, one of the easiest men to whiff in the history of baseball, went 0-for-9 yet didn’t strike out once despite facing Blyleven five times.

• The Cubs trailed 4–3 with two outs in the top of the ninth until Cliff Johnson’s homer off Blyleven sent the game to extra innings.

• In the top of the 16
th
, the Cubs had Mike Vail on third with one out but chose to let pitcher Bill Caudill, who finished his career with a grand total of five hits, attempt a suicide squeeze. He missed, and Vail was a dead duck at home.

• Last, but in no way least, after John Milner’s two-out single off Cubs starter Rick Reuschel in the bottom of the sixth, the Pirates didn’t get another hit until Lee Lacy’s one-out single off starter-turned-emergency-reliever Lamp in the 19
th
inning.

That’s right. Cubs pitchers threw 1
2
2
/
3
innings of consecutive no-hit ball in a single game—and lost.