100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (5 page)

9. The 39-Year Itch Is Scratched

Everything changed for the Cubs in 1984. And with the exception of a few gut-wrenching games in San Diego, the changes were for the better, at least on the field. The debate over the benefits of Wrigleyville as a national tourist attraction still rages, but this was the season that started it all.

This was the season the Lovable Losers, who hadn’t made a postseason appearance since 1945, transformed themselves almost overnight to become a phenomenon helped by Harry Caray’s popularity on the WGN superstation, the nationally televised “Sandberg Game,” and a tight race against
their 1969 nemesis, the New York Mets.

This was the season Sandberg started his run to the Hall of Fame, every move Jim Frey and Dallas Green made was golden, and every start that Rick Sutcliffe made—well, almost every—was right on the money.

This was the season that Steve Goodman’s classic “Go, Cubs, Go” pushed aside “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame” as the team’s anthem.

This was the season the 39-year itch was finally, mercifully, scratched.

The Cubs had lost 91 games the previous year and, with the exception of an 81–81 record in 1977, had suffered along with their fans through their 11
th
straight sub-.500 season. Their last postseason appearance was in 1945, and as spring training got underway in 1984, there wasn’t much hope anything would be different.

Not that the outcomes of Cactus Leagues games are indicative of regular-season success, but the Cubs were an embarrassment. They lost 11 straight at one point, finished 7–20, and endured a nasty brawl between 23-year-old outfielder Mel Hall and veteran pitcher Dick Ruthven.

In other words, it seemed to be the same old Cubs. But this wasn’t your grandfather’s team, and it certainly wasn’t former owner P.K. Wrigley’s.
Under the Tribune Co., which bought the team from the Wrigley family in 1981, the franchise actually had a baseball plan in place that was being led by executive vice president and general manager Dallas Green.

The first two years at the helm had been spent shedding dead weight and searching for what Green called “gamers,” players who didn’t need to be told to run out ground balls or put the team before their own stats.

During the off-season, Green acquired starting pitcher Scott Sanderson from Montreal in a three-team deal, a solid trade that would pay dividends. But his biggest move was firing Lee Elia and bringing in as skipper Jim Frey, who had led the Kansas City Royals to the 1980 World Series.

Still, the talent on the field from the previous season wasn’t that much different as Opening Day approached. That changed on March 26 when Green dealt aging reliever Bill Campbell and minor league outfielder Mike Diaz to Philadelphia for outfielders Gary Matthews, Bobby Dernier, and pitcher Porfi Altamirano.

It was a brilliant trade, with the Cubs getting two key starters for spare parts. Matthews immediately took over left field and became the veteran leader they needed while the speedy Dernier, who the Phillies were going to send to the minors, claimed the center-field job.

Not only did the deal remake the outfield, it also led to two in-season trades that dramatically altered the Cubs’ season. When Matthews and Dernier arrived, Hall remained a utility outfielder and promising rookie outfielder Joe Carter stayed in the minors. It also forced disgruntled Cubs veteran Bill Buckner to the bench.

Less than three months later, none of them were in the Cubs organization.

The first two games of the season—both victories—were started by Dick Ruthven and Chuck Rainey, bottom-of-the-rotation pitchers at this point in their careers. Aside from Sanderson, the only dependable starter they had was fun-loving left-hander Steve Trout. The Cubs needed pitching to contend.

On May 25, Buckner was traded to Boston for Dennis Eckersley, a fiery 29-year-old who won 20 games in 1978 but had endured some rough years and during the first few months of the season was just 4–4 with a 5.01 earned-run average.

Less than three weeks later, on June 13, Hall and Carter along with minor leaguers Darryl Banks and Don Schulze were traded to Cleveland for backup catcher Ron Hassey, reliever George Frazier, and a red-headed giant by the name of Rick Sutcliffe.

Sutcliffe was an All-Star with the Indians in 1983 and had been the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1979, but he was in the midst of a down season caused in part by a painful root canal. He was 4–5 with a 5.15 ERA in 15 starts for Cleveland.

When the Cubs traded for Sutcliffe, they were 34
–25 and 1½ games up on the New York Mets in the NL East race. Sutcliffe’s first start didn’t come until June 19 when they were stuck in a four-game losing streak and had fallen out of first.

As he would do all season—seven of his victories came after losses—Sutcliffe rejuvenated the Cubs. He allowed one earned run and struck out nine over eight innings in a 4–3 win over Pittsburgh to right the ship.

Four days later, Sandberg hit a pair of homers off Bruce Sutter in a 12–11 win over St. Louis—
the mythical “Sandberg Game”—and the city was overcome by Cubs mania.

Sandberg deservedly won praise for his offense, but he didn’t lead the Cubs in homers or RBIs. The offense was distributed almost perfectly with six players—Keith Moreland (80 RBIs), Matthews (82), Sandberg (84), Jody Davis (94), Leon Durham (96), and Ron Cey (97)—driving in at least 80 runs.

The Cubs took over first place for good on August 1. As in 1969, the Mets were their fiercest competition but this time there would be no collapse. A four-game sweep over their rivals at Wrigley Field in early August increased their lead to 4½ games, and after
August 24 the Cubs never led by fewer than five games.

The clincher came on September 24 at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, fittingly a complete-game shutout by Sutcliffe, whose 14
th
straight win touched off a wild night as fans poured out of the bars to surround Wrigley Field in celebration.

That was the end of a glorious regular season. The playoffs were a different story, the epic collapse against San Diego only serving to burn the 1984 season deeper into the mind of every Cubs fan.

For Starters, 1985 Was Also Painful

In 1985, the Cubs brought back the entire starting rotation that led them to the 1984 division title—and one by one the entire starting rotation got hurt.

Rick Sutcliffe went down first, tearing his right hamstring in May, and a couple days later Steve Trout landed on the disabled list with a sore elbow. By August, Dennis Eckersley was on the DL with a sore shoulder, and Dick Ruthven joined him the same day when a line drive broke his left toe.

On August 17, Scott Sanderson’s chronic bad back laid him up, and the entire starting rotation was on the disabled list at the same time. Sutcliffe alone was on the DL three times, and during the course of the season the original five-man rotation missed a combined 60 starts.

The lineup was also hit as outfielders Gary Matthews and Bobby Dernier missed a significant number of games. After a 35–19 start, the Cubs lost 13 games in a row and finished in fourth place in the National League East with a 77–84 record.

10. “We Either Do or We Don’t, But We Are Going to be Loose”

In an era when air travel still wasn’t commonplace, it wasn’t the least bit rare for a ballclub to spend several weeks at home and if the baseball gods were smiling, maybe fatten up their record a bit.
This is what the 1935 Cubs had in mind, and sorely needed, as they returned to Wrigley Field for a 20-game homestand in third place, trailing St. Louis and the New York Giants. An up-and-down season was on the upswing—a 24–3 stretch in July had seen to that—but the Cubs still trailed the Cardinals by 1½ games and the Giants by a half-game in the National League pennant race.

Cubs manager Charlie Grimm made the decision to ride his four-man rotation—Larry French, Charlie Root, Lon Warneke, and Bill Lee—and hope the Cubs would still be in contention when they closed the season with five games in St. Louis.

The first two games against Cincinnati didn’t portend much when the Cubs split a
doubleheader against the Reds, but the morning after an off day Grimm called a clubhouse meeting and found just the right words to light a fuse.

“We’re home for the last long stand and we either do or we don’t,” Grimm said. “But we are going to be loose.”

Augie Galan was pretty loose that afternoon as he hit two home runs, including a grand slam and drove in six runs, and French went all nine innings in an 8–2 win over Philadelphia. The next day Root went the distance in an 11-inning 3–2 win, and Warneke followed that with his own extra-inning complete game, another 3–2 triumph over the Phillies. Lee’s 4–0 shutout the next day completed the sweep of the Phillies.

That was pretty much how it went for the next three weeks as the Cubs marched to the World Series with an incredible 21 straight wins. Only the 1916 New York Giants have ever won more consecutive games, but they finished a distance fourth that season. No team in baseball history has ever turned it on like the Cubs did so late in the season with so much on the line.

The starting pitchers, which also included Roy Henshaw for two spot starts, were so good they only needed the bullpen in three games, and in one of those it was Warneke who came on in relief. In all but one of the 21 wins the Cubs gave up three or fewer runs. When Root had an off day and allowed nine runs against Brooklyn, he still got a “W” as center fielder Freddie Lindstrom drove in five runs in an 18–14 victory.

The offense that season was led by a pair of veterans in catcher Gabby Hartnett and outfielder Chuck Klein, who led the Cubs with 21 homers. Hartnett’s .344 average and 91 RBIs earned him the NL MVP award, which he won despite missing nearly two weeks in August with torn ligaments in his ankle.

The 1935 club also benefited from 18-year-old Phil Cavarretta, who drove in 82 runs after taking over first base from
veteran Charlie Grimm. The affable Grimm clearly enjoyed the attention his clubhouse speech got, which was as legendary in its time as Lee Elia’s rant was 47 years later. Following the 16
th
consecutive win, Grimm told the
Chicago Tribune
, “After I give the boys this slogan about being loose, I keep a sharp eye for symptoms of unlooseness, and as victory is piled upon victory I see the boys are getting looser and looser and better and better.”

The Cardinals didn’t go down without a fight. They won 8-of-10 as the Cubs started their streak and didn’t give up first place until September 14. The pennant hadn’t been decided when the Cubs arrived in St. Louis on
September 25, but Warneke’s 1–0 shutout that day put them up four with four to play, and two days later Lee beat Dizzy Dean in the first game of a doubleheader to clinch the pennant.

The Cubs also took the nightcap to win their 21
st
straight, not to mention their 100
th
game of the season, a milestone they haven’t reached since.

11. Lou Brock and Greg Maddux: The Ones Who Got Away

Every team has players they gave up on for whom a crystal ball surely would have come in handy. But not every team gave up Lou Brock for a sore-armed pitcher or let Greg Maddux—arguably the greatest pitcher of his generation—walk away in his prime for nothing.

Lou Brock

In the history of the Cubs, no name has been more maligned than that of Ernie Broglio, at least until Steve Bartman came along. As with Bartman, it’s unfair to look askance at Broglio since he didn’t pull the trigger on the June 15, 1964, deal that sent Brock, Jack Spring, and Paul Toth to St. Louis for Broglio, Doug Clemens
, and Bobby Shantz.

Broglio, a right-handed starter, was neither old nor a mere prospect when he came to the Cubs. He had gone 21–9 in 1960 and the year prior to the trade won 18 games with a stellar 2.99 ERA. He was, however, finished. The first sign of a problem came in his second start with the Cubs when he retired the first batter—and nobody else. He gave up four singles, a double, a homer, and walked a man before being mercifully pulled.

Nobody knew he would only go 7–19 over three seasons with the Cubs before his major league career ended due to arm problems, and keep in mind that Cubs general manager
John Holland wasn’t the only one excited about the deal. The headline in the
Chicago Daily News
the morning after the trade declared, “Now we have two contenders!” and one in the
Chicago Tribune
read, “Santo Jubilant About Trade for Broglio.”

“With our pitching staff,” said excitable Cubs third baseman Ron Santo, then 25, “now we can win the pennant.”

What did happen was the Cubs finished in eighth place and the Cardinals, with Brock hitting .348 and stealing 33 bases in 103 games, won the pennant and defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series.

Should the Cubs have known what they had in Brock? Unequivocally, yes. Brock was signed by the Cubs and came through their farm system, reaching the majors in 1961 at the age of 22. He was not a prototypical lead-off man due to his high strikeout rate, but his blazing speed was always present.

Brock stole 50 bases in 72 attempts during parts of four seasons with the Cubs, a 69.4 percent success rate. Not as good as the 75.7 percent success rate (888 stolen bases in 1,173 chances) he had with the Cardinals, but not too far off.

The strikeouts continued with the Cardinals, as well; he averaged 112 whiffs in his first eight seasons in St. Louis. The big difference was that the Cardinals didn’t care. They played in a huge ballpark at the time—Busch Stadium—and told him to run, run, run. And that’s what he did, all the way to the Hall of Fame.

Greg Maddux

Unlike Lou Brock, Greg Maddux had some great years with the Cubs. He went 19
–12 to help them to the NL East title in 1989, won 20 games and a Cy Young Award in 1992, and returned in 2004 to win 38 more games in a Cubs uniform at the tail end of his career. But he’ll always be most remembered by Cubs fans for what he did in an Atlanta Braves uniform and how Larry Himes thought three allegedly above-average players were equal to one superstar.

Maddux was baseball’s top free agent during the winter of 1992, a situation that should never have come to pass. A year earlier, Maddux’s agent, Scott Boras, and the Tribune Co. had agreed on a five-year, $25 million contract before the Cubs corporate owners yanked it off the table.

The deal would have been a bargain as Maddux responded by winning his first Cy Young and sparking a bidding war for his services. The main pursuers were the Cubs, Braves, and New York Yankees, who at the time could only outbid teams by millions instead of tens of millions.

Greg Maddux throws against the Cincinnati Reds in the first inning of a baseball game on Friday, June 9, 2006, in Cincinnati. Four-time Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux was traded from the Chicago Cubs to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday, July 31, 2006, for infielder Cesar Izturis.
(AP Photo/Al Behrman)

The Yankees, who hadn’t finished above .500 in four seasons and were not a perennial playoff team, weren’t Maddux’s first choice and he ultimately turned down a five-year, $34 million offer from them. Boras turned his attention to the Braves and Cubs.

Himes, to his credit, offered Boras a five-year, $27.5 million deal before free agency began, and Boras rejected it. Shortly after, Himes announced he was on the prowl for other pitchers. The problem, which Boras recognized and Himes didn’t, was that Maddux was a rare pitcher.

“The Cub franchise is in dire straits without Greg Maddux,” he told the
Chicago Tribune
. “There is no one in this existing free-agent market that can replace him.”

As offers were being knocked about, Himes announced on December 1 that he had signed right-hander Jose Guzman to a four-year deal worth $14.35 million, money that had been earmarked for Maddux. Eight days later, Maddux signed with the Braves. But not before Boras called the Cubs one last time. It was too late, Himes told him. The Cubs had just signed closer Randy Myers to a three-year, $10.7 million deal and the last of the Maddux dollars had been spoken for.

So to sum up, Himes elected to go with Guzman, Myers, and Dan Plesac over Maddux.

“If this had been a trade,” Himes told
Tribune
columnist Bernie Lincicome in the spring of 1992, “I would have had to take it.”

Hindsight’s a funny thing, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got. And hindsight tells us that Maddux went 89–33 with a 2.13 ERA during the course of his first contract with the Braves, and the three players who got his money did, shall we say, far worse.

Guzman actually pitched a one-hitter in his first start as a Cub but finished the season a mediocre 12–10 and started only four games in 1994 before a shoulder injury ended his career. Plesac had a 4.68 ERA in 111 relief appearances, gaudy stats that only several hundred, if not thousands, of other players have produced during the course of a career.

Only Myers, who saved 112 games, lived up to his contract. Himes, who was removed as the Cubs’ GM less than two years after letting Maddux go, did not.

Joltin’ Joe Should Have Been a Cub

Think about how different Cubs history, not to mention baseball history, might have been if Joe DiMaggio had played his Hall of Fame career at Wrigley Field. It almost happened.

The Cubs had obtained Augie Galan from the minor league San Francisco Seals in 1933 and, as Warren Brown wrote in his seminal 1946 book,
The Chicago Cubs
, were content to deal with the Cubs when it came to DiMaggio, a rising star.

The only problem was that Joltin’ Joe had hurt his knee and the Cubs weren’t sure he was still healthy. So according to Brown, the Seals made the Cubs an offer.

“Take DiMaggio on trial,” a Seals representative told the Cubs. “Give us so many players and so much cash. Keep DiMaggio until July and give him a thorough looking over. If you are not satisfied that he can make the grade, the deal’s off.”

The Cubs said no. A short time later, the Yankees said yes.