1969 Mets: A Cubs Eye View

I didn’t even know that it would be so at the time, but looking back recently at my extensive 2,000-plus Cubs game scorecard collection, the very first one (it wasn’t my first game, but it’s the oldest surviving card) is from one of the saddest games in Cubs history

Not quite 13 years old and not yet beaten down by the ways of the world or baseball, I was taken to Wrigley Field by my dad on Sunday, September 7, 1969, the year the heroes of my childhood were supposed to, going to, absolutely had to, break the Cubs’ pennantless drought which at the time, stretched “only” 24 years—long, but not to the absurd extremes it now reaches, 40 years later.

It was nearing the end of what had been, and what was supposed to continue to be, a special season. The Cubs ran out to an 11-1 start after an incredible Opening Day in which they’d blown a 5-2 lead and trailed 6-5 in the 11th inning, only to see Willie Smith hit a two-run walkoff home run (even though we had never heard the term “walkoff” back then). The party continued for five months; on June 29, the Cubs honored Billy Williams with a “day” between games of a doubleheader, in which he tied and then broke Stan Musial’s record of 895 consecutive games played. Billy got a car, a boat, various appliances, and the adulation of 41,060 fans, the place packed to the rafters and tens of thousands turned away. He went 5-for-9 in the twinbill and drove in three runs as the Cubs swept their hated rivals, the defending NL champion Cardinals, and extended their record to 50-26 and their lead to 8½ games.

By mid-August, the lead had been stretched to nine games over St. Louis—the Cubs led by 10 over the Mets—and postseason play seemed inevitable. My dad promised he’d find me playoff tickets.

There had been fun early on, too: Pitcher Dick Selma, acquired from the Padres in May, started and relieved and when in the bullpen, led cheers with yellow-helmeted fans who dubbed themselves the “Bleacher Bums.” As George Langford described the scene in the Chicago Tribune, Selma would stand in the Cubs bullpen next to the left-field stands and …

jab his right hand in the air and spin it around like an airport ground crewman giving the signal for the pilot to rev up his engines. Taking their cue, the left field bleacher bums follow Selma’s lead, all circling their arms in the air. Then the Cubs pitcher jumps straight up and down, and slams his arm toward the ground and the irrepressible bleacherites burst into song. “Don’t keep kicking my dog around,” they sing.

Fun was tempered in July when the Cubs, in front of a raucous Shea Stadium crowd, blew a 3-1 ninth-inning lead and lost, 4-3, because Chicago’s rookie center fielder Don Young mishandled two easily catchable fly balls. Third baseman Ron Santo ripped him in public and was forced to apologize the next day; Young, having lost manager Leo Durocher’s confidence, was benched. Young’s replacement the next night, Jim Qualls, got the ninth-inning hit that spoiled Tom Seaver’s bid for a perfect game. Seaver won anyway, but the Cubs won the next day and were 4½ games up in the standings.

On August 28, a Thursday afternoon throng of 29,092—a very large weekday crowd for that era—attended a 3-1 win over Cincinnati; that crowd brought the season attendance to 1,502,222, breaking a record that had stood since 1929. Four wins later, the Cubs’ record stood at 84-52, 32 games over .500—the most it had been over .500 since the last pennant season in 1945 (and it wouldn’t get that far over .500 again until 2008).

Still, even with the Mets getting hot and the Cubs cooling off, the lead remained at 4½ games as August turned into September. I can recall playing in my back yard, bouncing a ball off the brick wall of my house, the day the Cubs lost 2-0 to the Reds in Cincinnati (September 3), thinking, “Well, they lost—but they’re still up five games, it’s OK!”

When Sunday, September 7 dawned—the day my father took me to Wrigley and I got (and kept) the scorecard—the Cubs had dropped three straight and the lead was down to 3½ games. It was nervous time. They lost the first two games of a series against the Pirates, and gingerly took a 5-4 lead into the ninth inning of the Sunday finale, having overcome 2-1 and 4-2 deficits. Ace reliever (they weren’t modern “closers” yet) Phil Regan was in the game to nail down the win—he had pitched the eighth, too, so he was in line for the victory, as the Cubs had taken the lead in the last of the eighth.

The first two batters went out on a popup and a groundout, and Regan got two strikes on the dangerous Willie Stargell. One more strike …

It never happened. Stargell sent a 1-2 pitch onto Sheffield Avenue, tying the game. A funereal silence dropped onto Wrigley Field. Even this 12-year-old felt the gloom. Still, the game was only tied, right? Sure, but when you blow a lead like that, jitters take over. An 11th-inning error by the usually sure-handed Don Kessinger led to two unearned runs, and the 7-5 loss sent the Cubs on a nine-game road trip only 2½ games ahead.

The first two games of the trip were in New York, where the Mets fans could sense something good coming for their team. They were right. In the first game, with the score tied in the sixth, Tommie Agee doubled and, on a Wayne Garrett single, tried to score ahead of Jim Hickman’s frantic throw.

Catcher Randy Hundley and tens of thousands of Cubs fans, this 12-year-old included, will tell you to this day that Agee was out. But plate umpire Satch Davidson didn’t see it that way. He ruled Agee safe; the normally mild-mannered Hundley jumped what seemed like a dozen feet in the air in anger, but to no avail. The call stood, and the Mets won, 3-2.

We didn’t know it then, but it was over. The Mets—and that damned black cat—jumped all over Fergie Jenkins the next night, and although the Cubs left New York still clinging to first place by half a game, we knew the fall was going to get worse.

It did. The losing streak reached eight. The last of these was lost to the awful Phillies in Philadelphia when Selma tried to pick a runner off third base— only there was no fielder there. Ron Santo hadn’t gotten the message, and the ball wound up in the left-field corner.

The Cubs, who once led the Mets by double digits, finished eight games out of first place. Give the Mets credit: they went 38-11 to finish the year, and…well, I don’t want to use that “A” word that Mets fans use to describe that year’s team, but it was an incredible run. The Cubs finished the year at home with a 5-3 win over the eventual world champions (otherwise, the Cubs would have finished 10 games out instead of eight) in front of 9,981, extending the attendance record to 1,674,993, a mark that would stand till the Cubs won the NL East in yet another star-crossed year, 1984. Although that year, it was the Cubs who passed the Mets in August and cruised to the NL East title.

But in 1969, the dreams of kids like me—and Cubs fans of every age—were crushed. We kept hoping our heroes, Jenkins, Kessinger, Beckert, Santo, Hundley, and Williams, among others who came and went, would somehow “put it together” over the next few years, but it never happened. Eventually, all of them were shipped to other baseball destinations, while we were left with bittersweet memories of the team that never won anything.

Today, those Cubs are revered, perversely, perhaps because they didn’t win anything. And, of course, 40 years later, no Cubs team has won it all.

The 12-year-old in me still yearns for that. Someday…

Editor’s note: The author and all Cubs fans finally got their wish in 2016.

AL YELLON began his life as a Cubs fan in what could have, should have, been a golden era for his team— watching Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, and the guy who should be in the Hall, Ron Santo. He’s seen many thrills over the years, but not the ultimate one, winning a championship. A television director at ABC-7 in Chicago by day, he is also the editor of the Maple Street Press Cubs Annual and co -author of Cubs By The Numbers from Skyhorse Publishing: stories of every Cub who has worn a uniform number since the Cubs first donned digits in 1932. He lives two and a half miles from Wrigley Field and can be found in the left-field bleachers for virtually every home game.