100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (8 page)

19. There Really Was a Harry Caray

There’s never going to be another Harry Caray, and sometimes it’s hard to imagine there was even one of him.
Who would have thought that a short, stout former Cardinals and White Sox broadcaster with enormous glasses and an inability to pronounce the names of ballplayers—forward or backward—would be the most beloved figure in the history of the Cubs franchise?

Think about any player, and their popularity pales compared to that of Harry Caray. Nobody even comes close. In fact, take any three of the most popular Cubs players of all time, and their combined popularity wouldn’t exceed that of Harry, who could never take more than three steps before getting mauled by adoring fans. And he loved every minute of it.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Caray spent the first 25 years of his career broadcasting Cardinals games. He was the enemy of Cubs fans then, for his allegiances and an annoying little refrain that went “
The Cardinals are coming, tra la tra la
.”

It was the Cubs good fortune that St. Louis let Caray go and that after one season in Oakland he came to broadcast White Sox games in 1971. It set him up perfectly to replace Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse, who retired following the 1981 season.

Caray was close to returning to the White Sox for the 1982 season, but new Sox owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn had plans to put the South Siders on pay TV, a move that might earn money but would certainly shrink the viewing audience. On the other hand, the Cubs were on WGN-TV, a cable superstation. That troubled Harry, who told Reinsdorf and Einhorn it wouldn’t work (it didn’t) and his thoughts turned to the Cubs.

There was only one problem: The Cubs hadn’t called Harry about their broadcasting job. So Harry called them. A few days later, a deal was struck and a 16-year party began at Wrigley Field.

There was initially some thought that the staid Tribune Co. wouldn’t want Harry singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the
seventh-inning stretch, a Harry Caray staple that former White Sox owner Bill Veeck helped launch. But from his perch behind home plate, Harry was soon leading fans as only he could, waving his microphone and belting out the tune before finishing with, “Let’s get some runs!”

Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray sits in the broadcast booth on Tuesday, May 19, 1987, at Wrigely Field during the first inning of the Cubs-Reds baseball game. This was Caray’s first day broadcasting that season after recovering from a stroke he suffered during spring training. (AP Photo)

Along with singing the stretch, Harry brought his trademark “Holy Cow!” with him and a rapturous home run call that went, “It might be! It could be! It is! A home run!” Harry’s commercials for Budweiser turned him into a “Cubs fan and a Bud man,” and he became so popular longtime broadcast partner Steve Stone titled his autobiography,
Where’s Harry?

A statue to Harry Caray greets fans at the corner of Waveland and Sheffield outside Wrigley Field, and there are successful Harry Caray’s steakhouses in Chicago, all filled with photos, memorabilia, and a smiling bronze bust of the legend himself. And make no mistake, he was a legend even to other legends.

Shortly after Harry’s death in 1998, longtime Cubs fan and actor Bill Murray was reminiscing about the day in 1987 that he spent filling in for Harry in the broadcast booth. Murray was just one of many celebrities who filled in for several weeks while Harry recovered from a stroke.

“It was sort of like when you come down on Christmas morning and you look and the milk has been drunk and the cookies have been eaten and there’s a bite out of the carrot that you have left for the reindeer,” Murray told the
Chicago Tribune
. “It was like that when I went into the booth at Wrigley Field and sat in his chair and noticed there was a small refrigerator under the table and there was beer in it. It was like there really was a Santa Claus.

“And there really was a Harry Caray.”

20. Baseball’s Sad Lexicon: Tinker to Evers to Chance

These are the saddest of possible words:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double—

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

—
Franklin P. Adams,
New York Evening Mail
, July 12, 1910

For the record, they did have first names. It was Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance—the “trio of bear cubs”—who gained baseball immortality together thanks to Chicago native Franklin P. Adams’ simple eight-line poem.

Now it would stand to reason that this double play combination, the most famous in baseball history, was exceptional, and surely it was. Each man had a long, distinguished playing career, and at one time each managed the Cubs. But has their prowess as a double-play combo been overstated?

In 1947, Evers published a piece for a college magazine that was reprinted in the
Chicago Tribune
. He wrote,
“We set a mark for double plays that has never been equaled. I don’t recall the exact number, however.”

As is the case in baseball, you could look it up. And in 1954, a National League publicist, Charles Segar, did just that. A review of the box scores revealed that during their heyday—from 1906 to 1909—Tinker, Evers, and Chance only participated in 54 double plays. Even more incredible, the specific combo of Tinker to Evers to Chance—that’s a 6–4–3, if you’re scoring at home—
only turned 29. They never led the National League in double plays in any season.

So who were these men who rode Franklin P. Adams’ pen all the way to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Frank Leroy Chance was undoubtedly the greatest manager in Cubs history and bore a nickname by which newspapers of the day often referred to him: Peerless Leader. It was under their Peerless Leader, who became manager in 1905, that the Cubs won four NL pennants and their only two World Series titles in 1907 and 1908.

He joined the Cubs in 1898 and spent five unspectacular seasons mainly as a backup catcher before his predecessor as manager, Frank Selee, permanently moved him to first base. Through parts of 17 seasons, his final two starting in 1913 as player-manager of the New York Yankees, he hit .296 and stole 403 bases.

John Joseph Evers, known as “The Crab” both for the way he chased after ground balls and for his usually sour disposition, joined the Cubs in 1902 and became player-manager in 1913 after Chance was forced out after a feud with owner Charles W. Murphy.

Though he had good speed and stole 324 bases during his career, Evers only hit better than .300 twice and had a lifetime batting average of .270. He was a heady ballplayer who, if “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” had never been penned, would probably be best known as the player who realized Fred Merkle had failed to touch second base during the famous “Merkle’s Boner” game of 1908.

Joseph Bert Tinker, who played more games at shortstop than any other Cub until Don Kessinger broke his mark, was nearly identical to Evers as a ballplayer. Smart and with an overwhelming desire to win, he too joined the Cubs in 1902 and depended on great speed to make up for an average bat, stealing 336 bases while only hitting .262.

While Chance started to sit himself more and more starting in 1909, Tinker and Evers remained regulars until the end of the 1912 season when Tinker was shipped to Cincinnati. The pair also engaged in a feud that, according to legend, began when Tinker took a cab without waiting for Evers. Some accounts say the pair didn’t speak for 30 years; others say it was just a few years. What seems certain is the pair, despite playing side by side for 11 seasons (or rather because of it), didn’t like each other very much.

On April 12, 1912, Tinker, Evers, and Chance appeared in a game together for the last time. Chance was still the Cubs’ player-manager but only played in two games. At the end of the season he wasn’t given a new contract, and he went on to manage the New York Yankees the next two seasons.

Chance’s health began to fail soon after he left the Yankees and he didn’t manage again until 1923 when he took over the Boston Red Sox. The following season, he was hired to manage the Chicago White Sox when he again fell ill. Stepping in for him was his old pal Johnny Evers. A few months later, Chance was dead at the age of 48.

In 1946, baseball writers failed to elect anyone to the Hall of Fame. Chance had come the closest, followed by Evers, while Tinker only garnered the 15
th
-most votes. A special committee was impaneled to select some old-timers, and on April 23, 1946, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance were elected to the Hall of Fame. Together.

21. 8/8/88

Shortly after the first night game was played at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field on May 24, 1935, Bill Veeck Jr. went to owner Phil Wrigley and told him he wanted lights for Wrigley Field.

“Just a fad,” Wrigley responded. “A passing fancy.”

For the next 53 years many people had a hand in denying night baseball at Wrigley Field, including mayors, aldermen, and residents who lived near the ballpark. But nobody played a bigger role than Wrigley.

There was a brief attempt to install lights in 1941 and the necessary materials were ordered, but when World War II broke out he donated it all to the war effort and by the time the war ended he had evidently changed his mind.

“We believe that baseball is a daytime sport and will continue to play it in the sunshine as long as we can,” Wrigley said after the 1945 season. By 1948, after the Detroit Tigers added lights to Briggs Stadium, every other major league ballpark had lights. Still, Wrigley wouldn’t budge.

Wrigley Field, the last major league ballpark with day-only games, glows under the lights during the first night game in the 74-year history of the park on August 8, 1988, in Chicago. (AP Photo/John Swart)

During the 1962 winter meetings, the National League owners practically pleaded with Wrigley to add lights. They compared the Cubs woeful attendance of 609,802 to that of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who drew 2,755,184. Wrigley, who wasn’t present at the meetings, replied the following day: “We don’t need lights in Wrigley Field; we need a contender.”

In 1966, a Cubs stockholder, William Shlensky, filed suit to force the Cubs to install lights. The suit was thrown out and Wrigley responded by saying the Cubs indeed planned to put lights in one day—but only so day baseball games could be completed.

It wasn’t until after Wrigley’s death in 1977 and the subsequent sale of the team to Tribune Co. in 1981 that talk of adding lights grew serious and contentious. Cubs General Manager Dallas Green became a fierce advocate for lights, while state legislators passed a noise pollution law in 1982, the purpose of which was to ban night baseball.

After legal tussles and threats to move the Cubs out of Wrigley Field, the Chicago City Council voted 29–19 on February 25, 1988, to allow eight night games to be played during the 1988 season and 18 games per year in subsequent seasons.

The race to 8/8/88 was on.

During the next few months the Cubs set about the physical task of installing lights, but that was a piece of cake compared to the battle being played out among Cubs fans and armchair psychologists. The question being asked everywhere: Would lights ruin Wrigley Field? Everyone had an opinion, including Cubs broadcasters Harry Caray and Steve Stone, who didn’t agree on what lights would mean.

“The kids who ride the ‘L’ to come to the park in the daytime are not going to do that at night,” Caray said. “And their parents can’t drive to the ballpark, because there’s no place to park. I think what you lose when you play a lot of night games is that kids develop other interests.”

Stone disagreed, arguing Wrigley Field wasn’t changing at all and one of its greatest advantages could never be altered by night baseball. “I don’t think that will be changed by turning on lights at 7:30,” Stone said.

The anticipation for the first night game was all anyone could talk about in Chicago during the summer of ’88, and the mad scramble for tickets delved into madness. Cubs manager Don Zimmer even changed his answering machine message to include, “And I ain’t got no tickets for the first night game.”

Cubs pitcher Rick Sutcliffe said it best. “It’s history,” he declared. “You know there’s going to be a World Series X, World Series XI and so on. There’s only going to be one
[first night game]. This is it.”

When it was finally time to get the game between the Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies underway, 91-year-old Harry Grossman, a season-ticket holder who went to his first game in 1906, hit the switch that lit up Wrigley Field as the crowd screamed out, “Let there be light!”

After the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played the National Anthem, the mechanics of a baseball game got underway. The fourth pitch of the game from Sutcliffe was hit out of the park by Philadelphia’s Phil Bradley, and in the bottom of the inning Ryne Sandberg hit a two-run homer to keep the frenzied crowd on its feet.

The early scoring was exciting but hardly atypical. There was just no way the game could possibly be memorable enough to live up to expectations. But then in a weird way it actually did. Seventy-five minutes after the first pitch, a torrential downpour stopped the ballgame and after a two-hour rain delay the umpires called it. The first official night game would not be played for another 24 hours.

The rain didn’t dampen the spirits of those at Wrigley Field even if it did deprive them of night baseball. Fans in the bleachers basked in the rain while some jumped to the field and successfully outran security guards to dive onto the wet tarp before being arrested. On the other hand, four Cubs—Jody Davis, Les Lancaster, Al Nipper, and Greg Maddux—avoided arrest despite diving on the tarp themselves to the delight of the crowd.

In the end, it was a memorable night—if not a memorable game
—as lights finally came to Wrigley Field.

6/25/43—The Real First Night Game

When 6:00
pm
rolls around, it’s night. Even if it’s not dark. So wouldn’t you agree if the Cubs scheduled a game for 6:00
pm
it would qualify as a night game?

Okay, maybe we can quibble about the definition of what a night game is, but it’s a matter of historical record that on June 25, 1943—a Friday—the Cubs played a home game at light-free Wrigley Field that started at 6:00
pm
.

Most games in those days began at 3:00
pm
to accommodate work schedules but in 1943 the Cubs experimented with “off-time contests,” as the
Chicago Tribune
called it. They had a couple of
11:00 am
starting times during June, as well.

The summer solstice had passed just a few days earlier so there was plenty of sun left when Hi Bithorn took the mound against the St. Louis Cardinals. The game ended two hours and seventeen minutes later, or at roughly 8:22
pm
, with Bithorn still on the mound to finish off his two-hitter, a 6–0 win in the first night game at Wrigley Field.

Or not.

Lights Out

After manager Herman Franks quit the Cubs at the end of the 1979 season, the first choice to replace him was Whitey Herzog, who had just been fired by Kansas City after—the horror—coming in second place after winning three straight American League West titles.

A brilliant motivator loved by his players, Herzog may have brought some stability to the Cubs, who had gone through three managers in less than eight seasons since the firing of Leo Durocher in 1972.

Before the Cubs could approach him, however, he was quoted as saying, “I’d become an alcoholic if I managed in Chicago and had my nights free.” The sensitive Cubs’ management looked elsewhere and instead hired Preston Gomez—then fired him midway through his first season.

Going without lights may have cost the Cubs one of baseball’s best managers, Herzog was instead hired by the hated St. Louis Cardinals and led them to three NL pennants and the 1982 World Series title.