100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (19 page)

56. The Life and Death of Ken Hubbs

Given the measure of time the Cubs have been around it’s no surprise tragedy has struck on a number of occasions, just as it has many other clubs, but nothing has proved to be as profoundly tragic as the death of second baseman Ken Hubbs.

Two years after being named the National League Rookie of the Year, Hubbs and a childhood friend, Dennis Doyle, lost their lives when the single-engine Cessna Hubbs was piloting during a snowstorm crashed into a lake near Provo, Utah.

The February
13, 1964, accident took the breath out of a Cubs franchise that seemed ready to turn its back on years of futility. The previous season they had finished above .500 for the first time in 17 seasons, with Hubbs as much a part of the nucleus as guys named Banks, Santo, and Williams. There was actual hope on the North Side of Chicago. As the
Chicago Tribune
’s Ed Prell wrote in his preview of the 1964 club, “The main thing is they have made a move after all these bleak years.”

Hubbs was a big part of why fans were encouraged. He was only 20 when he made the jump from the Class B Northwest League to become the Cubs’ starting second baseman. In 1962, his rookie season, Hubbs hit a steady .260 with five homers and 49 RBIs, but it was his fielding that won him vast acclaim. Similar to the streaks fellow golden boy second baseman Ryne Sandberg would later put together, Hubbs thrilled Cubs fans by going 78 games and 418 consecutive chances without an error. Both were major league records for second baseman.

As the conservative 1950s waned and Vietnam beckoned, the crew-cut-wearing Hubbs was everything an owner could hope for in a ballplayer. A quiet and unassuming Mormon who didn’t drink or smoke, Hubbs was also a doting son whose wheelchair-ridden father was a constant presence in spring training as well as at Wrigley Field.

After finishing up with the Cubs in 1963, Hubbs decided to pursue his interest in flying, something that he had put off during the season. When he took off from Provo on the morning of February 13 after a visit with Doyle’s father in-law, he had been a licensed pilot for barely more than a month.

It was a day before anybody realized Hubbs and Doyle hadn’t turned up at their intended destination, and vigils were held as word spread in Chicago that the plane carrying the Cubs’ starting second baseman was missing. On February 15, the plane and their bodies were discovered.

Rookie second baseman Ken Hubbs was surrounded by young fans after he tied the National League record of 57 consecutive games without an error in Chicago on August 14, 1962. The record was set in 1950 by Red Schoendienst of the St. Louis Cardinals. (AP Photo)

The ensuing funeral drew 2,000 people to Hubbs’ hometown of Colton, California, including dozens of members from the Cubs organization. Teammates Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Don Elston
, and Glen Hobbie were among the pallbearers.

When spring training began days later, the Cubs were still in mourning. There was a season to prepare for, however, and head coach Bob Kennedy, the current prevailing member of the College of Coaches, didn’t mention Hubbs’ name during his first speech to the club.

“He wouldn’t want us brooding about him,” Kennedy told
the
Tribune
.

The Cubs would bleed through five different second baseman during the 1964 season, including future manager Joey Amalfitano, but none found any success. That paved the way for slick-fielding Glenn Beckert to win the second-base job the following year.

A few weeks after Hubbs’ death, the Cubs broke camp and were on their flight back to Chicago when the team found itself over the site where Hubbs’ plane had crashed a few weeks earlier.

“What a waste,” Kennedy remarked.

57. Mt. Lou Finally Erupts

Lou Piniella watched quietly, almost serenely, for more than two months in 2007, his first season as Cubs manager. He thoughtfully answered questions and appeared almost befuddled when asked about the troubles his hapless Cubs team was experiencing.

This wasn’t the same Lou who Cubs fans had hoped for and expected. They wanted the Lou whose hat-kicking, umpire-dusting, base-throwing outbursts would have generations of baseball fans googling “Lou Piniella ejection” for decades to come.

Instead of Crazy Lou they thought they got Placid Lou. What they really got was lulled to sleep.

In addition to expensive on-field acquisitions, GM Jim Hendry spent big to get Piniella, who twice won World Series rings with the New York Yankees as a player and in 1990 managed the Cincinnati Reds to a victory in the Fall Classic. He also was at the helm when the 2001 Seattle Mariners won 116 games then failed to get past the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

But the Cubs got off to such a slow start in 2007 that by late May Hendry was already fending off questions about whether the Cubs would be sellers at the late July trade deadline. By early June they hadn’t improved and internally appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

During a three-game weekend series against Atlanta at Wrigley Field, pitcher Carlos Zambrano and Cubs catcher Michael Barrett memorably brawled in the dugout as the series got underway on a Friday afternoon. Afterward, there were shades of Piniella reaching his breaking point.

“You don’t like to see that…you really don’t,” Piniella said about Zambrano and Barrett fighting. “As the same time, you don’t like to see the silliness on the field. I only have so many guys I can play. It’s about time some of them start playing like major
leaguers or we get somebody else who can catch a damn ball or run the bases!”

That set the tone for the following day, when Piniella had an even more memorable outburst. With the Cubs trailing 4–3 in the eighth inning, outfielder Angel Pagan was called out at third by umpire Mark Wegner in a close play that replays showed was the correct call. Then, almost as if it were planned, Piniella raced out, threw his Cubs cap to the ground, kicked it across the infield and was, of course, immediately ejected.

Piniella didn’t stop there. He started kicking dirt onto Wegner’s shoes and drew enough contact that he would later serve a four-game suspension. The Wrigley faithful couldn’t have asked for a better show and roared their approval as Piniella finally, and calmly, walked off the field.

“The umpire was correct; the guy was out,” Piniella admitted after the game. “I was going to argue whether he was out, safe, or whatever. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

Oh, but it did make a difference The Cubs still lost that day, but something had changed. They beat the Braves 10–1 the following afternoon, and the season seemed to pivot on Mt. Lou’s eruption. The suddenly vibrant Cubs went 63–46 the rest of the way and won a weak NL Central with an 85–77 record.

58. Watch a Game from a Rooftop

It’s pretty special to watch a Cubs game on any one of the 16 Wrigleyville rooftops even if it can feel more like you’re at Club Med than at Wrigley Field.

There’s an aura of exclusivity when you’re on a spacious rooftop that you don’t get when you’re in a cramped Wrigley Field skybox, which is why tickets start just shy of $100 and head close to $300. Murphy’s Rooftop Company, which sits atop Murphy’s Bleachers at 3649 N. Sheffield Avenue, charged $15,000 for a pair of Yankees games in 2011, according to its website.

If you have that kind of cash to spend go right ahead, but chances are if you wait long enough you can snag an invite since many of the rooftops are booked exclusively for corporate outings. There’s no question the rooftops have become big business, but what’s more remarkable is that it took decades for anyone to figure out they had value.

Watching a game from a rooftop is nearly as old as baseball itself in Chicago. When the Cubs played at the old West Side Grounds from 1893 to 1915, fans would gather on buildings much like they do now.

The Chicago Whales of the Federal League were Wrigley Field’s first tenants when it opened in 1914 with some of the buildings you see now already standing, and the Cubs moved in two years later. For decades, the rooftops were little more than a curious place for WGN to focus its cameras and a place for the lucky few who lived there to see Cubs games for free.

Many empty seats are seen on the bleachers on the rooftops of the buildings across from Wrigley Field outfield during a baseball game between New York Mets and Chicago Cubs on Friday, September 3, 2010, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Scott Bieber was one of the lucky ones. From 1980 to 1982, Bieber, then a chemical salesman, rented a three-bedroom apartment at 1032 W. Waveland with a couple of his buddies who were in medical school. He remembers the day he got a call to come by and see their new apartment and was told, “You will not be disappointed.”

“Oh my God,” Bieber said when he saw the yellow three-story building right beyond the left-field bleachers. “Don’t tell me it’s this building.”

The owner of the building was a guy named Phil Pappas who was a friend of a friend’s sister, Bieber said years later. He charged them $695 in rent. Total. Pappas had put in a deck the previous summer but was paranoid that something bad might happen. The tenants in the building could go to the roof whenever they wanted, but the limit was 20 people, Bieber recalls.

“It’s funny to see these enormous bleachers that might hold 100 people,” he said.

Elevators have now been installed in many of the buildings to comfortably zip patrons up to the top floors, but in Bieber’s day all his building had was a back stairway that led toward the roof. The final part of the journey was on a steep wooden ladder that took you to a hatch that opened onto the roof. It was such a tight fit to get up there that Bieber doesn’t recall ever bringing a keg up except on Opening Day. There were some days, incredibly, when he would have the rooftop all to himself.

“It was just a really, really nice thing,” said Bieber, who now lives in Houston where he works as a marketing manager for a chemical company. “We had great parties but it never got way out of control. It was just very relaxed, very pleasant, and it wasn’t that big a deal. The Cubs just weren’t that big a deal.

“But we knew what we had. We knew how cool it was.”

Eventually, so did the rooftop owners.

The Rooftops

Wrigleyville Rooftops
Website: http://www.wrigleyvillerooftops.com/
Address: 1032 W. Waveland, 3609 N. Sheffield and 3643 N. Sheffield

Beyond the Ivy
Website: http://www.beyondtheivy.com/
Address: 1010 W. Waveland, 1038 W. Waveland and 1048 W. Waveland

Brixen Ivy
Website: http://www.brixenivy.com/
Address: 1044 W. Waveland

Wrigley View Rooftop
Website: http://wrigleyview.com/
Address: 1050 W. Waveland

Wrigley Field Rooftop Club
Website: http://www.wrigleyfieldrooftopclub.com/
Address: 3617 N. Sheffield

Sheffield Baseball Club
Website: http://www.sheffieldbaseballclub.com/
Address: 3619 N. Sheffield

Down The Line Rooftop
Website: http://www.downthelinerooftop.com/
Address: 3621 N. Sheffield

Skybox on Sheffield
Website: http://www.skyboxonsheffield.com/
Address: 3627 N. Sheffield

Lake View Baseball Club
Website: http://www.lakeviewbaseballclub.com
Address: 3633 N. Sheffield

Ivy League Baseball Club
Website: http://www.ivyleaguebaseballclub.com/
Address: 3637 N. Sheffield

3639 Wrigley Rooftop
Website: http://www.3639wrigleyrooftop.com/
Address: 3639 N. Sheffield

Murphy’s Rooftop Company
Website: http://www.murphysrooftop.com/
Address: 3655 N. Sheffield