The Cubs of ’69

Time to pull the pitcher? - he is thinking.

The Cubs of ’69 -- Lately I have been wearing a Cubs hat – the true reasons are pretty random and uninteresting. Why do I share them? Cause you got to get from there to here, I guess.

It started with a layover at Chicago’s Midway Airport, where I bought Cubs and White Sox hats for my home folks. It gained momentum when in the restaurant off Monument Sq, I lost the White Sox hat I’d given Jake …. (the hat which he had declined because it had ‘gang thing’ aspect in this neck of the woods). As a result, with sun bright one day, I asked “C” to give me back the Cubbie cappie that she never seemed to wear. So here I am in the Cubs hat, looking for a non-random reason to be wearing it, and here it is:

There are a lot of 1969 anniversaries to consider in 2019. One is the Great Collapse of the ’69 Cubs.

That is why I am wearing the hat – remembering a good team that failed on an epic scale. It’s the 50th Anniversary of one of the Greatest Breakdowns in the History of America’s Pastime.
Baseball in 1969 was always on in our house. It was my sister’s main fun to watch the Cubs, who were on most every afternoon and who got off to a great start. She especially enjoyed Jack Brickhouse’s colorful play by play call: “Hey hey! Ernie!” I’d join her, and I got hooked too.

In 1969 we’d begun to get over the tragic departure of the Milwaukee Braves – and there was still a year to go before the transplanted Seattle Pilots spawned the Milwaukee Brewers, then of the (boring) American League. In Racine, Wisconsin, t was an okay time to like the Cubs, and the players.
It was also a good time to revisit baseball – which I’d given short shrift while reading poetry and thinking about the War, and collecting Fillmore posters and underground records. Baseball in the form of the Cubs was one of the few American things I could fully embrace. This renewal occurred as people, including people in my family, only half-jokingly urged me to ‘love it or leave it.’

Genuine guaranteed anecdote: In those days I wore a Cubs hat, and it was a bit strange, because, believe it or not, baseball hats were not as generally popular as they are now for wearing on the street every day. My high school history teacher saw me walking down 6th with my Cubs hat in 1969 and remarked to the whole class later that I ‘’looked like Charlie Brown” as I ambled to the public library.

We all chuckled, as this was good fun.

On the field, the ’69 Cubs were led by Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert, and, of course, Ernie Banks, who was finally surrounded by the caliber of team that he merited. They would pull out tough games in the late innings, and it was great sport. Off the field they were led by Leo Durocher, a colorful walking specter from baseball’s golden era, who knew Frank Sinatra, and who probably smoked cigarettes and shared obscure patter in the dugout.

In Sept, I went away to college, with the Cubs, in first place, as they were for 155 days of the season. The Marquette dormitory floor seemed a haven of Mets and Phillies fans, really more basketball fans than anything; I kept my reserve and observed.

What there was to observe, every day, was the Cubs sudden, heavy, demise. In Sept they lost 17 out of 25 games. Wikipedia says they lost 17 1⁄2 games in the standings to the Amazing and/or Miracle Mets – the eventual pennant and World Series winner -- in the last quarter of the season. The floor’s Nuawkers were happy, and I was perplexed – not watching games, only grabbing mournful morning box scores.

Today a strong consensus seems to be that Leo Durocher was a Perfect Asshole, that he overdrove the players. He never platooned players, and he didn’t give pitchers much rest, and he just spread albatross-like ill will -- though some will say the players could have sucked it up a bit more. To me it was just hard to understand how the happy warriors of the spring and summer fell so ignobly at the end.

And that is why I wear this hat – glad, of course, that Brookline’s own Theo Epstein set up the Cubs – as he had the Red Sox – for final immortal redemption one day. And now, as Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story under this hat.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/cubs/ct-cubs-mets-1969-spt-1018-20151017-story.html