100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (26 page)

80. Visit Catalina Island

For three decades, the Cubs began their journey toward what they hoped would be baseball glory at Chicago’s Dearborn Street Station. It was there they’d gather in front of reporters, photographers, and a multitude of fawning fans bearing gifts to board the Santa Fe and head off on a three-day train ride toward spring training on Catalina Island.

“An hour before the train pulled out of Chicago there were a thousand bugs and bugettes in the station,” wrote the
Chicago Tribune
’s Irving Vaughan in 1930. “All anxious to get one more closeup of men they have seen innumerable times before.”

The train would arrive in Los Angeles, and the players, coaches, and popular trainer Andy Lotshaw would then board the S.S.
Catalina
and arrive in Avalon Bay to be greeted by their adoring fans on the West Coast, the few thousand residents of Catalina Island.

Located off the shore of Southern California, Catalina Island is undoubtedly the most idyllic spring base any baseball team ever had. It was home to the Cubs from 1921 until 1951, the only gap taking place during World War II.

What drew them there was the balmy weather, comfortable housing, training facilities, and the fact that in 1919 the island had been purchased by Cubs owner William Wrigley Jr.

The baseball diamond where the Cubs used to train on Catalina is gone, replaced by a soccer field. A fire station and city hall are where the outfield used to be. The spot is only marked by a single commemorative plaque that has moved around over the years.

A skip and a jump away is the old clubhouse, which years ago was renovated and turned into the Catalina Country Club, now a public golf club with a dining room that’s lined with Cubs photographs and memorabilia. Phil Wrigley, who owned the Cubs from 1932 until his death in 1977, turned 88 percent of the island into a conservancy in the 1970s, while the rest of the island consists of the city of Avalon.

“It hasn’t changed that much,” said Jeannine Pedersen, curator of the Catalina Island Museum, which has Stan Hack’s glove and a signed baseball from the 1932 team among its Cubs treasures. “The town is pretty much how it was. Still kind of a quaint small town just like when they were here.”

Jim Vitti’s book,
Baseball on Catalina Island
, is packed with wonderful pictures and tales of mischievous behavior, and it is a treasure in itself. The photos, which often made their way into Chicago’s many daily newspapers, depict joyous players almost always in uniform whether they were at practice, playing golf, fishing, walking the beach, or hamming it up with the ostriches at the old Bird Park.

In one of the photos, 18-year-old Lolo Saldana and his buddies are wearing Cubs uniforms passed down to the kids over the years. Saldana, now 82, still lives on Catalina and regularly regales customers at his barber shop with stories from the Cubs years on the island.

He has many pieces of memorabilia, including his Hack Wilson uniform, a fungo bat used by Cubs manager Charlie Grimm, and many cherished memories, like the time Grimm gave him and one of his pals a tryout.

“Grimm says, ‘I want to work you two guys out—be at the ballpark at 2:00
pm
and see what you’ve got.’ We went out, and he gave us a workout,” Saldana recalled. “He made us feel real good.”

The Cubs last spring on Catalina was in 1952, it was no longer practical to hold spring training on an island that had only one baseball field and was far removed from the other teams. So off to Arizona they went.

“It was kind of sad when they left,” Saldana said. “They lit the whole island up.”

81. Who Killed Sosa’s Boom Box?

It’s not on par with what happened to Amelia Earhart, the true identity of Deep Throat, or even who shot J.R., but in the annals of Cubs history, there may be no greater mystery in need of solving than the identity of who destroyed Sammy Sosa’s boom box.

The background: Sosa’s selfishness on the field extended to the clubhouse, where he would play the same loud music over and over again. Remember, this was Sosa’s clubhouse, and nobody else had a say. Why would they? It was his house, as he liked to say, and he made the rules.

Doug Glanville, an outfielder with the Cubs in 1996 and 1997 and again in 2003, remembers giving Sosa a copy of “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees. “I didn’t realize he was going to play this song in a perpetual loop,” Glanville told
Chicago Magazine
. “He’d get stuck on a song, and even if it was a good song, people were like, ‘Okay, we kind of heard this 35 times today.’”

When Sosa deserted his teammates on the final day of the 2004 season, leaving Wrigley Field in the first inning and then lying about it later on, nobody knew it would be his last season with the Cubs. That decision wasn’t final until just before spring training when he was traded to Baltimore.

So when a teammate exacted some retribution that day by taking some big-league swings to Sosa’s boom box, it wasn’t a cowardly act done with the knowledge Sosa wouldn’t be returning. It was simply necessary and a wee bit cathartic.

There was intense interest in the culprit from the start, and an anti-Sosa website even started selling T-shirts that declared, “I smashed Sammy’s boombox.” Nobody has publicly admitted being the boom-box executioner, though there have been some attempts at outings that have always met with swift denials.

One of the immediate prime suspects was Kerry Wood, a veteran in the clubhouse whose hot temper some thought might lead to, you know, bashing a boom box. Shortly after the season ended, and before Sosa was traded, Wood was asked point-blank if it was him by
Chicago Tribune
’s Cubs beat writer Paul Sullivan.

“I don’t have the balls to do that,” said Wood, who added there were times when he felt like doing that.

In 2009,
Chicago Sun-Times
Cubs beat writer Gordon Wittenmyer spoke with Paul Bako, backup catcher with the 2004 Cubs and a suspect because of the proximity of his locker to Sosa’s locker. Bako denied it was him.

‘‘I shouldn’t even say this much,” Bako said. “But I can tell you it was not me.’’

There have been other suspects as well, notably former Cubs catcher Michael Barrett who had been guilty of engaging in two notorious fights, one with White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski and the other with teammate, pitcher Carlos Zambrano. Whether he’s guilty of bludgeoning Sosa’s boom box is just speculation.

In the spring of 2005, Sosa was asked about the incident and his response, as you might expect, did not help solve the mystery and even led to another.

“I don’t really care,” Sosa said. “You know why? Because when the man is not in the house, the chickens are jumping around.”

The chickens are jumping around? What does that even mean? The world may never know.

82. Let’s Play Two!

Forgive the misleading title, this isn’t about Ernie Banks. It’s just hard to resist getting a little silly when you’re preparing to tell the story of one of the craziest plays in Cubs history.

On June 30, 1959, as the Cubs approached the first All-Star break (there were two midsummer classics played for several years), they were treading water. They were 36
–36 and trailed the Milwaukee Braves by six games en route to a 74–80 record and a fifth-place finish.

The only exciting baseball to be found in Chicago came from the Go-Go White Sox, who were cruising to the American League pennant, and from Banks, who was cruising to his second straight National League MVP award.

Banks was so dominant and the rest of the team so mediocre that his 45 homers and 143 RBIs were 31 homers and 91 RBIs more than the next highest totals on the club. It was a rather quiet summer at Wrigley Field.

That is, except for the time a Laurel and Hardy routine broke out one Tuesday afternoon.

The Cubs trailed St. Louis 2–1 in the fourth inning when Cardinals legend Stan Musial came to the plate with one out against Bob Anderson. Musial ran the count to 3–1 and then took an inside pitch that also got past catcher Sammy Taylor.

According to the July 1, 1959, edition of the
Chicago Tribune
, instead of going after the ball, Taylor started arguing with home-plate umpire Vic Delmore over whether the ball had hit the bat of Musial, who in the meantime had drawn a walk and had jogged to first base.

The baseball, ignored for a time by every Cubs infielder, was picked up by bat boy Bob Schoenfeldt, who tried to toss it to longtime field announcer Pat Pieper, the man responsible for furnishing baseballs to the umpires.

Musial, meanwhile, realized nobody was paying attention to him and took off for second. Cubs third baseman Alvin Dark, who later managed the Oakland A’s to the 1974 World Series title, grabbed the ball from the ground in front of Pieper and threw to second to try and get an advancing Musial. This is when hilarity began to ensue. Umpire Delmore, thinking a new ball was needed, gave one to Anderson, who also had the good sense to try and throw out Musial at second.

So to be clear, at this point there are two live balls in play. For those of you new to baseball, that’s one too many.

The ball that Anderson threw sailed far over second baseman Tony Taylor’s head and into center field as Musial pulled up safely at second. Meanwhile the ball Dark threw—the original live baseball—
bounced into second base where Banks, playing shortstop, fielded it and put a tag on Musial, who had taken off for third after seeing a baseball land in center field.

The umpires gathered and after a discussion that took place with animated managers and players milling about, Musial was finally called out. The Cardinals played the game under protest, which was a moot point since they ended up winning the game 4–1. In
the
Tribune
write-up the next morning, reporter Ed Prell relayed several accounts from the participants.

Musial:
“I heard our bench yelling for me to run. When I slid into second base, I saw [Taylor] had the ball. I got up and started for third, never feeling a tag...the umpires finally told me to go back to first and later that I was out.”

Schoenfeldt:
“I saw Dark flying toward me, but I had already thrown the ball away.”

Pieper:
“I let the ball lie right there after the boy threw it toward me. Dark yelled at me, ‘Give me the ball.’ I told him to pick it up. I never touched it.”

Umpire Al Barlick, the crew chief, had the final say: “When Dark charged in from third base I thought he was joining the argument. But he picked the ball up in front of Pieper. Musial was safe, but as he rounded the bag, Banks tagged him with the ball Dark had thrown. This was the ball that was in play. The other ball was not.”

Got it?

83. Wild Thing

On Opening Day 1989, three days before
Major League
premiered around the country with Charlie Sheen portraying intense closer Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, Mitch Williams made his Cubs debut. The timing was perfect, and by its imperfection so was Williams’ execution in his initial outing.

Williams, a left-hander whose full-bodied delivery often ended with him flat on the ground, entered in the eighth inning with one out and the Cubs leading Philadelphia 5–4. Between a pair of fly outs, Williams walked a pair and committed a balk. That was a state of grace compared to what came in the ninth.

The first three hitters all singled, leaving the bases loaded for Mike Schmidt, a fearsome Cub killer who hit 50 homers at Wrigley Field during his career, tied for the second-most ever with Hank Aaron and trailing only the 54 hit by Willie Mays.

After going 2–0 to Schmidt, Williams struck him out on three pitches and proceeded to strike out Chris James on a 3–2 pitch and then fanned Mark Ryal to end the game. It was pure Williams, who would save 36 games but help Cubs fans become very familiar with the edge of their seats all season long.

At 24, Williams was far from a proven commodity. In three seasons with the Rangers he had just 32 saves, and though he averaged more than a strikeout an inning he had also walked 220 batters in 274
2/3
innings. The connection to Sheen’s “Wild Thing” character from
Major League
, which became a box office hit, was instantaneous and within a few days there was talk that Williams would also enter games to The Troggs’ classic song.

“If it was that loud and people screaming, it would feel great,” Williams told the
Chicago Tribune
on April 18. A few weeks later, on May 10, it became a reality. With “Wild Thing” blaring over the loudspeakers, Williams came on in the eighth inning with one on and the Cubs nursing a 3–2 lead against San Francisco, their eventual opponent in the 1989 National League Championship Series.

It was a disaster. Williams gave up two singles and then balked in what would be the winning run. But hey, at least a cool, albeit brief, tradition was started.

Mitch Williams came to the Cubs on December 5, 1988, in a multi-player deal that sent Rafael Palmeiro, Jamie Moyer, and Drew Hall to Texas for Steve Wilson, Curtis Wilkerson, Paul Kilgus, and two minor leaguers.

Chicago Cubs pitcher Mitch Williams flies off the mound in the ninth inning during a game against the New York Mets at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on July 29, 1989. Williams got the last four Mets out for his 26th save, tops in the major leagues. The Cubs defeated the Mets 6–5.
(AP Photo/John Swart)

The Cubs were in dire need of a bullpen ace after a horrific trade the previous winter in which longtime closer Lee Smith went to Boston for Calvin Schiraldi and Al Nipper. Eight different pitchers saved games in 1988, including an aging Goose Gossage, who had a team-high 13 saves.

Williams gave Cubs manager Don Zimmer the closer he needed, not to mention an ulcer he didn’t need. Williams was such a source of frustration that Cubs fans began to boo him when he had several untimely breakdowns during the heat of the divisional race. He walked at least one batter in 17 of his 36 saves and along the way blew 10 other save opportunities.

There haven’t been many clinching moments in Cubs history, but Williams was on the mound for one of them. On September 26, he got the final two outs in a 3–2 victory over Montreal, striking out Mike Fitzgerald to end the game.

That was the last great moment Williams had in a Cubs uniform. He was a non-factor in the NLCS against the Giants until Game 5 and the Cubs were facing elimination when he was called upon to face left-handed hitter Will Clark with the bases loaded in the eighth inning of a tie game. Clark, who hit an incredible .650 in the series, ripped a single up the middle to make it 3–1, and an inning later the series was over.

After a 1990 season in which he walked 50 in 66 ⅓ innings while saving only 16 games and missing a month to knee surgery, Williams was traded to Philadelphia for Chuck McElroy and Bob Scanlan.

Williams got his groove back with the Phillies and would later meet up with another ex-Cub, Joe Carter, in the 1993 World Series. But that’s a tale for another book.