100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (4 page)

7. Mr. Cub

Ernie Banks is as positive and joyful a man as has ever graced the Friendly Confines, a nickname fittingly given to Wrigley Field by Banks himself. His signature baseball-affirming mantra “Let’s Play Two” succinctly captures a childlike spirit, which Banks has never strayed from since first joining the Cubs nearly 60 years ago.

A graceful shortstop until his knees betrayed him, Banks’ powerful bat whipped around faster than you can say 512 home runs. Nobody ever played in more games or wore the uniform with more pride.

Deservedly, Banks is and forever will be Mr. Cub.

Yet the one thing that’s missing from Banks’ Hall of Fame career—
a postseason appearance—can’t be overlooked when set against the public perception that the Cubs were a bunch of lovable losers, a devastating description that still haunts the franchise.

Banks played in 2,528 games for the Cubs, the vast majority of them losses, and not once was he ejected. While steam could almost be seen coming from Ron Santo’s ears after a loss, Banks never stopped smiling.

Hall of Famer Ernie Banks poses in front of his newly unveiled statue in front of Wrigley Field during ceremonies on Monday, March 31, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

In a profile of Banks in the October 1967 issue of
Ebony
, writer David Llorens relayed how after the Cubs had lost seven in a row a “star player stormed into the clubhouse the morning after and went into a tirade.”

“Don’t let the past influence the present,” Banks cheerfully told him.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” the player responded. “You like losing?”

Banks just walked away, muttered something about it being a nice day out—even though it was raining—and said it was time to go “beat the Pirates.”

Ernest Banks was born January
31, 1931, and raised in racially charged Dallas when segregation was a way of life. He spent his youth playing every sport except the one that would be his calling. A scout spotted him playing softball and Banks was persuaded to try his hand at baseball, eventually joining the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League.

When Banks joined the Cubs as a wiry 22-year-old in 1953 to become the team’s first African American player—six years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier—the team hadn’t finished above .500 for six seasons. The run mercifully ended in 1963
with an 82–80 record.

Through those lean years—in Banks’ first nine full major league seasons the Cubs finished below .500 each year and went an astonishing 587–806—he became the face of the franchise while putting up numbers for a shortstop that were previously unthinkable.

During a six-year run from 1955
–60, Banks averaged 41 homers and 116 RBIs, numbers every bit as dominant as those of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, or Mickey Mantle, the other top sluggers of the era. He was named the National League’s MVP in 1958 and 1959 to become the first NL player to win the award in consecutive seasons.

Banks played 424 straight games to start his career, a record that was only recently broken by the New York Yankees’ Hideki Matsui. From 1956–61 Banks had another streak—this time 717 consecutive games
—until his knees forced him to start taking days off and necessitated a move to first base.

Even though Banks is best known for being a shortstop, he played more games at first base (1,259) than at short (1,125) and didn’t play any at short during the final 10 seasons of his career. It didn’t really matter where Banks played; he never complained. In 1957, third baseman Gene Baker, Banks’ roommate and best friend on the team, was traded to Pittsburgh. The Cubs tried desperately to find a replacement, and they did: Ernie Banks.

Banks played 58 games at third base that season, the most of any player on the team. He committed just three errors and despite moving all over the infield still hit .285 with 43 homers and 102 RBIs.

As the Cubs became a contender in the late 1960s, their dependence on Banks decreased. Irascible Cubs manager Leo Durocher was, to say the least, not a fan of Banks. After Durocher took over the club in 1966 he tried to trade Banks several times and only played him because he felt he had no choice.

In his autobiography,
Nice Guys Finish Last
, Durocher wrote of Banks, “He couldn’t run, he couldn’t field; toward the end, he couldn’t even hit. There are some players who instinctively do the right things on the base paths. Ernie had an unfailing instinct for doing the wrong thing. But I had to play him. Had to play the man or there would have been a revolution in the street.”

Banks was not the same hitter he had been but during the failed campaign of 1969, when Durocher deserted the team on at least two occasions during the season, Banks showed up every day and hit 23 homers with 106 RBIs.

There was never a time, not even when Durocher was riding him, that Banks became cynical about the Cubs or baseball. During the 1969 season, a couple months before the collapse, Banks wrote a column for the
Chicago Tribune
and professed his love for the game and Wrigley Field.

“When I come to the ballpark, I leave all the world’s troubles and mine behind,” he wrote. “I enjoy baseball so much and the enthusiasm of the fans that I’d be happy to stay nights in Wrigley Field if they’d roll out a cot for me near first base.”

The man just loved to play. In 1962 Banks was hit in the head by a Moe Drabowsky pitch and was hospitalized for two nights. Four days after the beaning, with a batting helmet on for the first time in his career and a throbbing headache, Bank returned to the Cubs’ lineup and went 4-for-5 with three homers and a double.

By the time Banks retired in 1971, he was the Cubs’ all-time leader in games played (2,528), at-bats (9,421), total bases (4,706), and extra-base hits (1,009)
, and he ranked second in hits (2,583) and RBIs (1,636). His 512 homers were also the most ever until Sammy Sosa, with 545 in a Cubs uniform, eclipsed him.

After retiring, Banks briefly served as a Cubs coach and minor-league instructor. Since 1976 he has been a goodwill ambassador for the team, except for a brief period in 1984 during the Dallas Green regime when he was inexplicably fired. A public uproar ensured that Banks’ absence didn’t last long.

The softball player who left Texas and grew up to become the greatest player in Cubs history turned 80 in 2011, still full of good cheer and still reeling off slogans—“Santo’s in heaven, so we’re going to win in ’11!”
—that are as sure a sign as any that Opening Day is near.

The First (Acting) African American Manager

When Frank Robinson was hired as a player-manager of the Cleveland Indians in 1975, he broke an important color barrier by becoming Major League Baseball’s first African American manager.

But he wasn’t really the first. Ernie Banks beat him to the punch by nearly two seasons.

On May 8, 1973, Banks was a coach with the Cubs when manager Whitey Lockman was ejected in the 11
th
inning at San Diego. The two coaches who would have taken over for Lockman were Larry Jansen and Pete Reiser. According to George Langford of the
Chicago Tribune
, Jansen missed the game due to his wife’s illness and Reiser had got hurt in a recent melee against San Francisco.

The only two coaches left on the bench were Banks and Hank Aguirre, who incidentally were born on the exact same day. Banks took over, and in the top of the 12
th
inning Joe Pepitone’s run-scoring double broke the tie and the Cubs went on to win 3–2.

Acting managers don’t get credit for a win, and as a result Banks doesn’t have a managerial record. That doesn’t change the fact that the first time a black man managed in the major leagues, the win actually went to a man named Whitey.

8. The Most Dominant Game Ever Pitched

If someone tells you they were at Wrigley Field to watch 20-year-old Kerry Wood throw a one-hitter and strike out 20 Houston Astros in his fifth major league start, you might want to ask for proof.

Chances are they weren’t there. Few people were.
Only 15,758 were in the park on May 6, 1998, to see perhaps the most dominant pitching performance in the history of Major League Baseball, certainly the most dominant by a boy who barely needed to shave yet.

And who would have been clamoring to be at Wrigley Field on a chilly, rainy Wednesday afternoon in May? Sure, Wood was a former first-round pick out of Texas who had developed into an exciting prospect, striking out 329 hitters in 54 minor league starts.

But just 12 days earlier, in his third major league start, Wood looked like a lost boy while getting only five outs and giving up seven earned runs in a 12–4 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. There would be time for greatness to arrive. Nobody had any idea it would arrive so soon.

The game began with Wood striking out the side, which was somewhat tempered by the fact that Houston pitcher Shane Reynolds did the same to the Cubs in the bottom of the first. So maybe it was just the cold.

But Wood fanned the first five hitters he faced, and if not for an infield hit by Ricky Gutierrez that Cubs third baseman Kevin Orie couldn’t handle to lead off the third inning, Wood would have been working on a no-hitter.

After six innings, Wood had 12 strikeouts. That’s a tremendous day for anyone, but to challenge Roger Clemens’ mark of 20 strikeouts in a game he would have to strike out practically every hitter he faced for the remainder of the game. That’s just what he did. With an array of fastballs, curveballs, and sliders, Wood struck out the side in the seventh and eighth innings and then in the top of the
ninth fanned his seventh straight hitter to get within one of the record.

Houston’s Craig Biggio managed to make contact and grounded out to short to end Wood’s bid to break the mark. But the next batter, Derek Bell, didn’t have a chance. He missed wildly on a sweeping curve to become Wood’s 20
th
strikeout victim.

After the game, Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell, who struck out in each of his three at-bats, wasn’t just impressed that Wood had filthy stuff but that he had filthy stuff when he wasn’t supposed to.

“He threw breaking balls behind in the count for strikes,” Bagwell told the
Chicago Tribune
. “You can never expect that, and I won’t expect that the next time we face him. You can’t expect anyone to keep doing that. If he does, then he may never lose.”

So how good was this performance? According to Game Score, a metric created by legendary baseball statistical peoneer Bill James, Wood’s was the most dominant nine-inning game ever pitched. Wood didn’t walk a batter and only allowed two base runners—Gutierrez on his third-inning single and Craig Biggio, who was hit by a pitch in the sixth. Only two Astros even hit the ball out of the infield. Clemens didn’t walk a batter in either of his 20-strikeout games but gave up three and five hits, respectively.

The final out brought on the look and feel of a no-hitter with Cubs catcher Sandy Martinez, first baseman Mark Grace, and the rest of the team swarming the mound to acknowledge what Wood had just accomplished.

When you watch that moment it’s not hard to be struck by the look on Wood’s face. There’s an absence of emotion, as if he can’t understand why everyone’s so excited. And that’s because he didn’t know he had broken the record until he did a post
game interview.

“After the first inning I knew I had three, but I lost track after that,” Wood said after the game. “I wasn’t real worried about getting strikeouts. I knew it was getting up there. I was just glad we were able to get a win out of it.”

More than a win came out of Wrigley Field that day. There was an insatiable amount of joy, not only for what had just happened on the field but for what Cubs fans hoped and imagined was still to come.

The Forgotten 20-Year-Old

When Kerry Wood tied the major league record for strikeouts in a game he broke the Cubs’ record of 15, a mark held by Rick Sutcliffe, Burt Hooton, and a name that doesn’t ring as many bells: Dick Drott.

On May 26, 1957, Drott struck out 15 Milwaukee Braves, including Hank Aaron three times. Like Wood, Drott had a wicked fastball and a big curve that buckled the knees. They also shared the distinction of being 20-year-old rookies when they set their strikeout marks. Wood was making his fifth career start, Drott his seventh.

The other thing they would have in common was arm trouble. Wood came back from Tommy John surgery in his second season to become an above-average starter for several years before more injuries forced a move to the bullpen.

Drott’s arm problems also surfaced in his second season following a 15–11 rookie campaign. However, he never really recovered. Drott went 7–11 in 1958 and then missed most of the 1959 season. He returned to go 0–6 in 1960 and 1–4 in 1961, alternating between starting and relieving.

He was selected by Houston in the 1962 expansion draft and retired after the 1963 season when he went 2–12. Drott passed away in 1985 at the age of 49.