100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (29 page)

91. Smilin’ Stan Hack

There may not have been a more joyous, pleasant man to be around in Cubs history than Stanley Camfield Hack, a leadoff man extraordinaire who patrolled third base at Wrigley Field for a generation.

Hack lived with two nicknames over the course of his long, productive career—one that seemed true but wasn’t, and another that made sense the moment you gazed at his face. Charlie Grimm dubbed him “Stanislaus,” and for many a teammate that’s what he was called.

But he’s remembered best as Smilin’ Stan, who wore a permanent grin on his face in the same way that Dave Kingman wore a scowl.

“I enjoy playing baseball,” Hack once said. “And this is my way of showing it.”

During his 16 seasons with the Cubs—the only team he ever played for
—Hack had plenty to smile about. The Cubs made it to four World Series from 1932 to 1945—they also went in 1935 and 1938—and Hack was the only player to appear in all four, though his entire line in the ’32 Series was a single appearance as a pinch-runner.

Fast, smart, and possessing one of the best batting eyes in the game, Hack was the quintessential leadoff man in an era that rewarded station-to-station baseball. In 8,506 career plate appearances, he only struck out 466 times while drawing 1,092 walks, still the most ever by a Cub.

Between 1938 and 1945 he finished in the top 20 in MVP voting seven times, and the only time he didn’t crack that barrier was in 1944 when he had quit baseball for the first two months of the season. Some alleged it was because he disliked Cubs manager Jimmie Wilson, but Hack’s version was that he needed to tend to an Oregon farm he had recently purchased.

Wilson only lasted 10 games into the 1944 season before getting fired following a 1–9 start and was replaced by Hack’s old buddy Grimm. Within a few weeks Hack was indeed making plans to return to the Cubs, and in 1945 he led them to the World Series again.

Hack’s play in his first two World Series where he was a starter were mixed. In 1935 against Detroit, he only hit .227 with two runs scored and in the decisive Game 6, he was involved in two plays that could have altered the outcome. In the top of the sixth with the Cubs up 3–2, Hack hit a two-out double and went for third on Billy Jurges’ grounder to Tigers third baseman Flea Clifton. Hack was able to elude the tag, but he was called out for leaving the base line.

In the ninth, Hack again got an extra-base hit, this time a leadoff triple in what was now a tie ballgame. After Jurges struck out, Grimm was expected to use a pinch-hitter for starting pitcher Larry French. But Grimm went with French, who tapped out to the pitcher, and Augie Galan flew out to end the inning. The Series ended when the Tigers pushed across a run in the bottom of the inning.

In the 1938 and 1945 World Series, Hack was one of the best players on the field. He hit .471 in a four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees in ’38 and in 1945 had a team-high 11 hits while batting .367.

Hack’s last hurrah with the Cubs wasn’t as a player but as a manager. He took over for Phil Cavarretta just before the start of the 1954 season and skippered the club through three miserable seasons before turning over the reins to Bob Scheffing, who would fare no better.

Smilin’ Stan also played a role in one of Bill Veeck Jr.’s ingenious promotions. In 1935, Veeck had some small mirrors with Stan’s face on the back put up for sale in the Wrigley Field bleachers. The promotion—
dubbed “Smile with Stan Hack”—ended when umpires realized bleacherites were using the mirrors to blind opposing hitters.

“I’ve always hoped Stan saved one of those mirrors so he could occasionally look at it and enjoy his own smile,” Veeck told the
Chicago Tribune
after Hack passed away in 1979. “As so many of us did.”

92. Attend Randy Hundley’s Cubs Fantasy Camp

You look to your left, and there’s Ryne Sandberg spitting out batting tips. Then you look out at the mound and you see Fergie Jenkins, leg kicked high, ready to throw high heat your way.

And just when you think it’s time to wake up, you remember that you’re not dreaming. The fantasy of playing for the Cubs is real. Well, sort of.

In 1982, former Cubs catcher Randy Hundley stumbled upon a ridiculously brilliant idea that has been copied by practically every major league team whose starry-eyed fans happen to have a few thousand dollars lying around.

Hundley, the gritty West Virginian who served as the Cubs catcher on Leo Durocher’s star-crossed teams, was instructing little kids at a baseball camp when innovative Chicago
restaurateur
Rich Melman suggested he have a camp for men who were still little kids at heart. And that’s how an industry was spawned.

By January 1983, Hundley had organized the first Cubs Fantasy Camp in Scottsdale, Arizona, where 63 men who were 35 or older (the age limit has since been lowered to 30) brought their wrinkled gloves, worn hats, and tender hamstrings to pretend to be Cubs for a week.

Scott Mermel, then 35, attended that first camp and spent the week before trying to get in shape with a friend, former Cubs pitcher Rich Nye, a reliever and spot starter on the ’69 team who was working at the camp as one of the instructors.

Mermel remembers walking into the clubhouse and immediately being in awe to see he had his own locker and his own uniform with his name on the back. Then he noticed his locker mate was Billy Williams, good ol’ No. 26. Between the two of them, Mermel and Williams hit 426 career home runs.

One of Hundley’s not-so-hidden reasons for having that first camp was so his old pals from the ’69 club could get together again, and almost without exception they all showed up. Even the crusty old Durocher came out toward the end of the week and got emotional talking about the old club during a speech at a banquet held at the camp.

The failure of 1969 was still fresh on the minds of anybody who loved that most memorable of Cubs teams, and it was so recent that Jenkins was still an active player. Durocher, who was 77, tried to use the opportunity to mend some old wounds.

“He apologized to the guys for not being a better manager,” Mermel recalled. “And maybe working them too hard. We just got the feeling there was a lot going on between the lines.”

There is certainly a ton of baseball played at camp. The campers break up into teams, and the coaches—whether it’s Lee Smith, Don Kessinger, Rick Reuschel, or Bobby Dernier—
easily fall back into the same competitiveness that surely helped them to the big leagues.

Playing baseball with a Cubs uniform on isn’t the real fantasy; it’s being just one of the guys recalled Tom Levy, who attended the 2003 camp. One of his favorite memories is seeing Jose Cardenal waltz into the locker room casually holding Joe Pepitone’s hairpiece. But even more than the hijinks was hearing the stories and getting to know his boyhood idols as real people, not just some face on a baseball card.

“You’re allowed in their world for that short period of time,” said Levy, a budding seven-year-old Cubs fan in 1969. “I left with a better understanding of who they are and what they were like. When I see stuff about the ’69 club, it makes my heart ache even more because I heard them talk about it.”

More heartache? That’s all too real.

93. Throw It Back! Throw It Back! Throw It Back!

You spend your whole life waiting to catch a home run ball, always trying to find the seat most likely to give you a chance, and when that glorious moment finally comes and the Baseball Gods have smiled upon you, thousands of strangers start a chant telling you what to do with your treasure.

“Throw it back!” they yell. “Throw it back!”

So you take a deep sigh, wind up, and heave the demon ball as far as you possibly can to great cheers from your fellow bleacher mates. And immediately you know it was the right thing to do.

It’s generally accepted that this grand, irreverent tradition of throwing back visitor’s home run balls was started at Wrigley Field, but exactly when and by whom isn’t clear. Longtime sports radio broadcaster Mike Murphy claimed in author Dan Helpingstine’s
The Cubs and the White Sox: A Baseball Rivalry, 1900 to the Present
that the first to throw it back was Ron Grousl, one of the original Bleacher Bums.

“It was totally unplanned,” Murphy told Helpingstine. “I was standing next to Ron when it first occurred. Hank Aaron hit a home run into the left-field bleachers, which Ron caught on the fly. He looked at the ball and said, ‘We don’t want this stinking ball…it’s an enemy homer!’ With that he wound up and flipped it on the fly behind second base.

“There was a stunned silence for a moment—no one had ever seen anything like this before. Then the crowd went nuts. Cheering, laughing, jeering the great Hank Aaron…from then on, enemy home runs hit into the Wrigley Field bleachers were expected to be thrown back.”

That first incident allegedly took place on June 1, 1969
, when Aaron did, indeed, hit his 521
st
home run. But Helpingstine points out some inconsistencies in Murphy’s story so take it with a grain of salt.

However, if that was the first time an opposing ball was thrown back the tradition seemed to have taken hold a week later. A
Chicago Tribune
story from June 7, 1969, about the emergence of the Bums began, “A strange thing happened yesterday in Wrigley Field. A fan in the left-field bleachers caught a home run ball and immediately threw it back on the field—scornfully.”

Whatever the origin, the truth is that if you go to Wrigley Field and catch a visitor’s home run ball, you’re going to have to cough it up. Unless, of course, you came ready for such a possibility and throw back a fake one while pocketing the real one for yourself.

But you would never do such a thing, would you?

94. Go to a Minor League Game

During the final month of the Tennessee Smokies’ 2009 season, the Cubs decided to move up a skinny shortstop named Starlin Castro to see how he’d handle Double-A pitching.

Yeah, that might have been a good time to go see one of the Cubs’ minor league teams play.

One of the best Cubs of recent years spent time with Peoria, Daytona, Tennessee, Iowa, and the Cubs’ Rookie League club in Arizona. Unfortunately, that player was Kerry Wood, and most of that time was spent rehabbing from injuries.

But that would have been a pretty cool time to see one of the Cubs’ minor league teams, don’t you think?

You never know if you’ll find a Hall of Famer managing, as Ryne Sandberg was with Peoria in 2007 and 2008, Tennessee in 2009, and Iowa in 2010. Or if you’ll discover someone like former Cubs closer Rod Beck, who in 2003 would invite fans into his trailer for a beer while living behind the Iowa Cubs’ outfield wall during his comeback attempt.

It’s inexpensive, it’s fun, and it’s worth the trip. Time to stop talking about it and just hop in the car one day and go.

The Cubs’ minor league affiliates at the start of the 2012 season:

1. Iowa Cubs (AAA) Affiliate since 1981

2. Tennessee Smokies (AA) Affiliate since 2007

3. Daytona Cubs (High-A) Affiliate since 1993

4. Peoria Chiefs (A): Affiliate since 2005

5. Boise Hawks (Low-A) Affiliate since 2001

6. Arizona League Cubs (Rookie)

7. Boca Chica South of the Dominican Summer League (Rookie)

8. Boca Chica Baseball City of the Dominican Summer League (Rookie)

95. Be a Guest Conductor of the Seventh-Inning Stretch

Hey, if Ozzy Osbourne can butcher it, so can you.

After Harry Caray died a few weeks before the start of the 1998 season, how the Cubs would handle the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the post-Harry era became a hot topic of discussion.

The first choice was perfect. Dutchie Caray, Harry’s widow, led the Wrigley Field faithful in an emotional rendition and after she was done, as she hugged Harry’s grandson, Cubs broadcaster Chip Caray, “Amazing Grace” was performed by bagpipers. “I’m sure he was watching me,” Dutchie said afterward. “And guiding me waving that microphone.”

That first season was generally well-received as 85 different people or groups ranging from Cardinal Francis George to Bill Murray to Mike Ditka, whose rushed, off-key rendition on July 4 became the standard by which future awful renditions would be measured.

It’s accepted now that the celebrity-laden singing of the stretch will endure, but after that first year the Cubs went so far as to announce it would return. “One of the many things that Harry Caray left behind was this legacy of the Seventh Inning Stretch and we would just like to keep it alive and have some fun with it,” Cubs vice president of marketing John McDonough told the
Chicago Tribune
.

You’d think having to come up with singers for 81 games would be difficult and well, it is. If having to come up with people who can sing is the goal. But the Cubs have had no shortage of willing celebrities looking to promote themselves or their projects even if they didn’t seem to mind embarrassing themselves.

Just being bad isn’t an issue. Being bad and showing your ignorance is. Osbourne’s unintelligible version is an all-time great. NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon famously called it “Wrigley Stadium” before launching into an awful version that led to merciless booing throughout.
American Idol
reject Kellie Pickler sang about “popcorn and cracker jacks.”

There has been one ejection in guest conductor history. On August
7, 2001, former Bears defensive lineman Steve McMichael entered the booth an inning after umpire Angel Hernandez had made a controversial call in a game against Colorado. McMichael looked menacingly down to the field and threatened that he was “going to have some speaks” with Hernandez after the game. Hernandez stared back at the booth then told the Cubs McMichael had to go, and they complied.

Since guest conductors began they have been invited to stay for a post-stretch interview that encompasses the bottom of the seventh inning. Whoever sings the stretch joins current Cubs broadcasters Len Kasper and Bob Brenly, who simultaneously conduct an interview while attempting to broadcast an actual game.

For those of us who just want to watch a Cubs game nearing its conclusion, that’s more painful than listening to Ozzy Osbourne.

Sing the National Anthem at Wrigley Field

While there’s no application process to become a guest conductor for the seventh-inning stretch, the Cubs are looking for people who would like to sing the National Anthem.

According to cubs.com, here’s what you need to do in order to get your shot at singing before 40,000 at Wrigley Field:

“
Any person(s) wanting to perform the National Anthem prior to a Cubs game must submit a videotape, CD, or DVD of the singer(s) performing an “a cappella” version of the National Anthem. Mail your videotape/CD/DVD to: National Anthem, Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, 1060 West Addison Street, Chicago, IL 60613. For more information, call (773) 404-CUBS. Please be aware that your submissions will not be returned.”