June 5, 1985: Braves, Cubs work overtime on ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’

“Life moves pretty fast,” the title character of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off says after fooling his parents into thinking he is too sick to go to school. “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris, a high-school senior from a Chicago suburb, refuses to miss that day’s Cubs game. Hours after his parents leave for work, he takes girlfriend Sloane and best friend Cameron to Wrigley Field. They get seats near the left-field foul pole.

Their school nemesis almost spots them. Dean of Students Ed Rooney dines at a pizzeria that has the game on TV. But thanks to a Ferris lookalike who spits soda on him, Rooney is too busy wiping his face. He has no clue that the screen in front of him shows the real Ferris catching a foul ball bare-handed – and celebrating with a jig.

“Heyyybattabattabattasawinggggbatta!” Cam and Ferris chant as the at-bat continues.

Though the 1986 film is fictional, more than a few sleuths have tried attaching Ferris’s “day off” to an actual date. The shots of Ferris, Cam, and Sloane at Wrigley Field were filmed during the Cubs’ real-life 17-15 loss to the Montreal Expos on September 24, 1985.1 A scene of Ferris hopping onto a float and singing two songs, Wayne Newton’s “Danke Schoen” and The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” was filmed at downtown Chicago’s Von Steuben Parade on September 28, 1985.2

Baseball Prospectus published its own conclusion in 2011: Wednesday, June 5, 1985. Writer Larry Granillo cited the real-game footage shown on the pizzeria’s TV in the moments before Ferris’s catch:

On the screen we see Chicago first baseman No. 10 Leon Durham holding on an Atlanta Braves player wearing No. 18 Paul Zuvella. The announcer Harry Caray pipes in: “Runner on first base, nobody out. That’s the first hit they’ve had since the fifth inning, and only the fourth hit in the game. … 0-and-2 the count.”

Chicago pitcher No. 46 Lee Smith] throws the pitch to a left-handed Atlanta hitter with a two-digit number ending in “5” and what appears to be a long last name. The batter swings at the pitch and hits a long fly ball to left. “That’s a drive! Left field … twisting … and into foul territory.” …

The foul ball that Ferris caught was hit by Atlanta right fielder Claudell Washington (No. 15) in the top of the 11th inning.3

Based on Granillo’s research, catching a foul ball would have been a bright spot in an otherwise frustrating game for Chicago.

The Cubs, despite second baseman and reigning National League MVP Ryne Sandberg being out with sore ribs, had entered the June 5 contest with ripe potential.4 They had taken only 2 hours and 19 minutes to beat the Braves the previous day, 5-3. This time their starting pitcher was Scott Sanderson, who had begun 1985 with a 3-1 record and a 2.20 earned-run average. So far in the season, the defending NL East Division champions had gone 7-2 in the games Sanderson started. As long as they won that afternoon and the first-place New York Mets lost, Chicago would be tied for the division lead.

The Braves, meanwhile, ranked last in the NL West. They had lost 10 of their last 13 games. Rumors emerged that another bad streak could cost rookie manager Eddie Haas his job. “We’ve been in a bad run,” shortstop Rafael Ramírez told the Chicago Tribune. “We try to give 100 percent and do everything we can. But when you lose a lot of games, people say things like, ‘Fire the manager.’”5

The pressure was on Atlanta starter Steve Shields. He had made his major-league debut just four days earlier, in a 6-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. At 26 years old – and having collected a 54-73 record over nine minor-league seasons – the 6-foot-5-inch, 220-pound product of Hokes Bluff, Alabama, suspected that this game would decide his future as much as Haas’s. “I didn’t know when I came up here if I could retire big-league hitters,” he said later that day.6

The early innings boosted Shields’ confidence at the Cubs’ expense. He retired six of his first seven batters. Larry Bowa singled to start the third, but after a pop fly by Sanderson led Bowa to get doubled off at second base, the bases were clear again. Shields allowed another single in the fourth, only this time no Cub reached second.

Chicago’s half of the fifth inning, however, tested Shields and awakened Wrigley’s crowd of 25,557. With Atlanta up, 2-0 – on Ramírez’s two-run double in the third – Jody Davis led off with a single. Ron Cey followed up with his 11th home run of the year, a game-tying shot over the left-center-field wall.

Bowa prolonged the Cubs’ rally with a single, but an attempt to put him into scoring position backfired. Though the 39-year-old Bowa successfully reached second base on Sanderson’s sacrifice, he didn’t stop there. He went for third and got caught for a double play. “Bowa was trying to be aggressive,” manager Jim Frey said after the game. “If you’re running on the pitch, you’ve got a chance to go to third on the play. But he wasn’t running on the pitch. It was a sacrifice. I think he was just trying to make something happen.”7

Cubs speedster Davey Lopes also tried. After walking in the sixth, the 40-year-old Lopes ran to second for his 500th career steal. A groundskeeper removed the base so Lopes could have it as a souvenir.8 The bag was replaced, play resumed, and Shields intentionally walked Leon Durham. On a pitch to Keith Moreland, Lopes stole third and Durham took second. Chicago had two runners in scoring position and one out.

And again the Cubs failed to break the 2-2 tie. Moreland struck out and Davis grounded to short to end the sixth.

Shields’ outing was done. He had held the Cubs to just two runs – and kept Atlanta in the game. In so doing, he helped his mentor Haas stay employed a bit longer. “I know I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Eddie,” Shields said of the guy who had managed him a year earlier in Triple A.9

The Braves’ pitching change didn’t help the Cubs’ bats. After a single by Cey to begin the seventh, reliever Bruce Sutter – six seasons removed from winning the 1979 NL Cy Young Award with the Cubs – didn’t allow another baserunner through the ninth.

It was off to extra innings.

Unfazed was the Chicago starter Sanderson. Seven of his first nine innings had been hitless. He hadn’t let anyone on base since the fifth. He entered the 10th with eight strikeouts and ended it with two more. Another one-two-three frame was in the books.

The Cubs had a chance to thank Sanderson with a walk-off victory. Cey walked. Pinch-runner Chico Walker stole second base. Thad Bosley was intentionally walked. A groundout by Bob Dernier sent Bosley to second and Walker to third. But Chris Speier’s fly ball into Braves center fielder Dale Murphy’s glove quashed the crowd’s hopes.

Lee Smith relieved Sanderson in the 11th. Because the ninth inning had passed and the Cubs were the home team, this was not a save situation for the closer, who eventually became baseball’s all-time saves leader.10 His goal this time was to keep Atlanta quiet in the top half of the inning – so Chicago could make game-ending noise in the bottom half.

Smith’s plan went awry. Zuvella singled to lead off the frame. Moments after his soon-to-be-famous foul ball, Claudell Washington flied out to left fielder Lopes, which summoned a clutch hitter to the plate one more time. Ramírez, already responsible for the Braves’ first two runs, delivered two more by sailing a 0-and-2 pitch over the left-field wall.11 “It seemed to be Ramírez’s day,” Frey told the Atlanta Constitution. “He hit four balls right on the nose. He was actually the only guy who hit the ball hard all day.”12

The Cubs never caught up. Lopes began the Chicago 11th by flying out. Durham grounded out. Only Moreland reached base, on a walk by Braves reliever Jeff Dedmon. And with a fly out to left by Davis, Chicago’s 4-2 defeat became final.

Dedmon had his third win of 1985, though the rest of the year gave the Braves little to celebrate. They stayed in or near the NL West cellar through the season’s end. Haas was fired that August and never managed a big-league club again. Atlanta finished with a 66-96 record, four games ahead of the last-place San Francisco Giants.

The June 5 game marked Smith’s first loss of the season – and an omen for Chicago’s North Side. Though the Cubs reached first place in the NL East within the week, a stretch of 20 games in 20 days cost them their rank.13 They lost 12 consecutive contests, had a long-awaited day off on June 24, and lost their 13th straight the next day. By July 5 they had dipped to fourth place. The onetime division leaders finished the season fourth, at 77-84.

“The contending days were over,” SABR researcher Chris Jaffe wrote years later. “Call it the curse of Bueller.”14

The 3-hour 9-minute game’s end, which came shortly after 4:30 P.M., has raised questions about the rest of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Even if the three truants were to leave Wrigley moments after Ferris’s foul-ball catch, the protagonist would still have less than two hours to perform in the parade; visit the Art Institute, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Sears Tower, and a beach; return Cam’s father’s $100,000 Ferrari; try unsuccessfully to rewind the odometer; walk Sloane back to her house; and run home before his own parents returned from work at around 6 P.M.

“But seeing as Ferris has the magical ability to sound exactly like both a young Wayne Newton and a young John Lennon,” Granillo wrote in his 2011 article, “I’m willing to believe he could make the schedule work.”15

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Len Levin. Additional thanks to John Fredland for his input.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the 1986 Paramount Pictures film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, written and directed by John Hughes. The author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for box scores and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN198506050.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1985/B06050CHN1985.htm

Photo credit: André Natta/Creative Commons

Notes

1 Ken Collins, a second assistant director for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, confirmed the September 24, 1985, filming date in a 2011 email to SB Nation Chicago. Al Yellon, “Ferris Bueller Cubs Game Mystery Definitively Solved!” SB Nation Chicago, February 8, 2011, https://chicago.sbnation.com/chicago-cubs/2011/2/8/1983179/ferris-bueller-cubs-game-mystery-definitively-solved.

2 Information on when the parade scene was filmed comes from Yellon. Though Ferris Bueller actor Matthew Broderick lip-synched “Danke Schoen” and “Twist and Shout,” a copy of the film’s script suggests that – in the fictional film’s universe – the character is singing. (A copy of the script is available at “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” DailyScript.com, accessed March 2025, https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/ferris_bueller_shooting.html.)

3 In the article that introduced his June 5 theory, Granillo noted a discrepancy. The score during Washington’s actual 11th-inning at-bat was 2-2, though when Rooney asks what the score is, a pizzeria employee replies, “Nothing-nothing.” Larry Granillo, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at Wrigley Field,” Baseball Prospectus online, February 6, 2011, https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/12877/wezen-ball-ferris-buellers-day-off-at-wrigley-field/.

4 Sandberg had been out since June 1. He returned June 9, ending what had been his longest stretch of time off the field since Opening Day 1982.

5 Bill Jauss, “Hold the Cheers: Braves Rookie Can’t Celebrate,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1985: 5.

6 Jauss.

7 Fred Mitchell, “It’s Gone, So Are Cubs in 11,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1985: 1.

8 Mitchell.

9 Jauss.

10 Smith broke Jeff Reardon’s major-league career saves record with his 358th on April 13, 1993. He retired in 1997 with 478. Trevor Hoffman surpassed Smith in 2006, retiring in 2010 with 601. Mariano Rivera became the record holder in 2011, retiring in 2014 with 652 saves.

11 Mitchell.

12 Gerry Fraley, “Braves, Haas Get Needed Life from Ramírez’s Power Hitting,” Atlanta Constitution, June 6, 1985: 1C, 6C.

13 The Cubs played from June 4 to June 23 with no days off. This streak was the maximum allowed under a 1981 collective-bargaining deal. “According to Article 4A-10 of the agreement, you can’t schedule more than 20 [straight] games, or you can’t reschedule during that period if it’s practical,” John Westhoff, associate counsel for the Major League Baseball Players Association, told the Chicago Tribune. Fred Mitchell, “Frey Submits His (Sand)Paperwork to League, “Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1985: 3.

14 Chris Jaffe, “10,000 Days Since the Ferris Bueller Game at Wrigley Field,” Hardball Times, October 21, 2012, https://tht.fangraphs.com/tht-live/10000-days-since-the-ferris-bueller-game-at-wrigley-field/.

15 Granillo.