The Cubs as Literature

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989).

Editor’s Note: Why are Cub books different? Because Cub fans are different. No team in baseball has such a long-term tradition of efficient losing as the Cubs. So Cub fans don’t write books full of poetry about Babe Ruth (or about losing Babe Ruth). Chicago fans are jealous of their suffering. The result is a reverse snobbery, underlined by their secret they have something we don’t have. Chicago folk talk about how hard it is to be a Cub fan and fans from other cities can kind of understand. They tell you how lovely Wrigley is, and that’s easy to grasp if you can see. But what they’re really saying is how much fun it is to duck out of work and spend the afternoon being a kid again. (Hide your briefcase in the mailroom.) With only a handful of night games, the only place in the country where grownups with high-paying jobs still play hookey to see baseball is in Chicago. It makes a difference.

 

Reading books about the Chicago Cubs in 1989 is a bittersweet experience. After only four seasons, the 1984 Eastern Division Championship season is glimpsed through a golden haze of nostalgia.

Next year was a very brief year.

Cubs fans are nothing if not resilient, however. We are strong. We have character. Above all, Cubs fans are creative! Cub writers have created a literature with a form and style for every taste – from the dullest compilation of statistics to the most free-form of prose, all the way, in fact, to cartoons.

It was instructive to read “The Chicago Cubs” by Warren Brown. Published in 1946, it proves that things never change. Points he made then could have been made in 1956, 1966, 1976 or 1986. Following are some “Brownies,” with their modern-day commentary.

“In the modern (1900-1945) era of the Cubs, nothing they have accomplished has caused as much commotion as their player deals. It would seem from some comments, that whenever they went into the market, they were played for suckers by everyone with whom they dealt…”

And that was written before Brock for Broglio! That one trade haunts everyone’s memory and a paragraph or two about it appears in virtually every column written about current deals, most recently Palmeiro to Texas. Is this another one? is the constant fear.

Most of the books written since the trade state their opinion as well. Gifford (“The Neighborhood of Baseball”) seems to take the Brock trade as a personal affront. Year after year, he enjoys flagellating himself with the man’s stab.

Back to Brown. “Gallagher refrained from issuing any statements, though in their fine frenzy the critics, or some of them, were now polling the National and American Leagues to show the number of former Cubs who were performing with varying degrees of success.”

Forty-three years later, this is still being done. What Chicago sportswriter can resist comparing Eckersley’s and Smith’s save totals for 1988 to that of the entire Cub bullpen? One newspaper highlights the “Ex-Chicago Player of the Week” although the “honors” are shared by ex-White Sox.

In the last several years, it’s become a fall tradition to pick league and World Series winners based on the “Ex-Cubs Factor”: the more former Cubbies on a team, the greater the odds against its survival.

“Another source of criticism of the Cubs has been their managerial changes.”

Ahh, yes. From the everlasting hope that Charlie Grimm would once again work his magic and bring another pennant to Chicago, to the College of Coaches (more about them later), to the hiring of Gene Michael, “who stuck out like a sore thumb,” the managerial parade has provided much column fodder.

“In concluding this interlude it might be well to take up another favorite criticism of the Cubs, that of front-office interference with the manager.”

Phil Wrigley traded players he didn’t like. Dallas Green threatened to take over as field manager. Things haven’t changed much here, either.

Speaking of managers, why is everybody so critical of the Cubs’ College of Coaches? It was merely an intra-organizational version of baseball’s revolving management plan, under which a man is fired by one club and hired by another shortly thereafter. Or, in the case of the Yankees, Martin and Piniella took turns sitting in the dugout. Sounds a lot like the college to me.

The books reviewed here fell into two categories: those written by professional sportswriters and those written by men outside Organized Baseba1l. It is my opinion that “OB” includes those assigned to cover the game. Players, executives, sportscasters, writers all share the same attitudes, prejudices and cliches.

With the exception of Wheeler (“Bleachers”), possibly because it’s a subjective look at Cub fans, one definite difference between the professional sportswriters and the fans is their pretentious use of words. Brown’s men never merely “try,” they “essay.” Men don’t go home; they “return to their domicile.” Enright, as noted in the review of Chicago Cubs, falls into the same pattern, although not nearly so often. In “The Golden Era Cubs,” and “The New Era Cubs,” Gold uses puns, cloying alliteration and strange descriptions: i.e., “pounding the pines.”

Are the pros trying to prove they’re worth their pay? Or that each can afford a thesaurus?

Two common themes in the literature infuriated me. One was the widely-held image of a Cub fan as a bleacherite. The bleachers hold less than ten percent of Wrigley’s crowd. Are we to believe there are only 3,000 Cub fans? That’s ridiculous. Let’s end this myth right now and replace it with the truth: True Cub fans sit in the upper deck!

Another erroneous belief is that Cub fans are exclusively male. Look around! In every Wrigley Field crowd, at least half the people there are women! I’ve got news for you — we aren’t dragged there by our significant others. Lots of us bring our SOs.

“Bleachers” is the only book that takes women fans seriously. Jack Brickhouse, in his foreword to “The Cub Fan’s Guide To Life,” writes of a Cub fan holding hands (in the bleachers!) with his Cub fan girlfriend. Doesn’t that give her equal status?

Gold and Ahrens take note of women only as they swoon over cute Cub players. Schwab seems to hate all women, including his wife. Most of the other writers don’t notice the existence of women at all.

Then there’s Brown:

“Wrigley not only invited ’em out, he practically insisted on it. Since there has never been anyone concerned with the presentation of major league baseball wiser to the ways of promotional advertising than the Wrigleys, not even a sale of nylons in early 1945 was as productive of mass turnouts of women as were those Ladies Days at Wrigley Field.”

Growing up, I remember listening to Brickhouse say things: “It’s going to be noisy here today. It’s Ladies’ Day.”

Women’s lot as baseball fans: be ignored or be patronized.

With the exception of Langford’s “The Game is Never Over,” the objective books about the Cubs are mostly forgettable, to be used mainly as reference. For enjoyable reading give me a subjective book any time. They can be read again and again and savored. The writing comes from the heart and reaches another fan’s heart.

The further a writer gets from pure chronological accounting, the better the writing and the longer-lived. Left-brained readers will, of course, disagree, but my point is easily proven.

Take, for instance, the famed double play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance. Sometime between 1905 and 1909, Franklin P. Adams, a writer with the New York Evening Mail, penned these lines:

These are the saddest of possible words
Tinker to Evers to Chance.
Trio of bear cubs and fleeter than birds
Tinker to Evers to Chance.
Thoughtlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble
Making a Giant hit into a double
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble
Tinker to Evers to Chance.

In “Chicago Cubs,” Enright records the trio’s totals: “In four years, at the height of their prowess, Tinker, Evers and Chance made the 6-4-3 and 4-6-3 double play only 56 times!” But the poem lives on, proving that the way something really happened means little, compared to the way it’s perceived.

Brown, in one of his more readable sentences, agrees. “Don’t let anyone tell you the poet’s pen isn’t mightier than the official scorer’s pencil.”

Finally, one cartoon from “How Many Next Years Do You Get in Baseball?” sums up Cub fandom perfectly: The Perfesser is at the box office buying tickets: “one child … and one childish.” Cub fans never grow up.

These reviews are arranged from objective books about the Chicago Cubs to the more subjective. In each category they are listed chronologically by publishing date.

“The Chicago Cubs,” by Warren Brown (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1946) begins with a heartbreaking dedication: “To P.K. Wrigley and the world’s championship yet to come.” It then goes on to include some of the most heartrending prose ever to be set in type.

Brown was a sportswriter for more than 50 years. He knows his facts, and tells the inside stories, but a reader wades through to pages to find yet another example of his opaque wordiness.

“And thereby he moved himself into the Wrigley empire to become, before his death, one of the most imporiant front-office men in that part of it known as the Chicago Cubs.”

“He had come to the Reds as a coach and certainly had no idea of trying to recapture his lost youth and again essay a daily stint as a catcher when the World Series began.”

“Veeck’s utter frankness in his discussions of baseball business and his availability for interviewers made his office a happy hunting ground for item seekers in the years that followed Bill Veeck’s death and up to the installation of James T. Gallagher as general manager.”

It is especially interesting to read a book from 40 years back and note that it contains only eight pages of statistics. (Maybe the Forties were the Good Old Days?)

“Baseball’s Great Teams: Chicago Cubs,” by Jim Enright, (Collier Books, New York, 1975) is another of the books written by a sportswriter. As such he’s prone to the same occupational disease – pretentious and cute language. Mixed in with solid, workmanlike prose, we find things like, “…for the Cubs’ most memorable home run was struck when sunlight had all but abandoned the Wrigley Field solarium.”

“Chicago Cubs” is heavily illustrated, both with Cubs and their opponents referred to in the accompanying text. This is wonderful, but since the book is only 192 pages long, it forces Enright to cover his material “once over lightly.”

As history, “Chicago Cubs” only whets a reader’s appetite for more.

Jim Langford’s “The Game Is Never Over: An Appreciative History of the Chicago Cubs” (Icarus Press, South Bend, Indiana, 1982) has a chapter on “Beautiful Wrigley Field.”

“The fashions change, but the fans remain. Come to the field on a day when the Cubs are losing and, with two outs in the ninth, look around. There they sit. Complaining, but alert. Frustrated, but attentive. Dejected, yet happy. For Cub fans know, together, sitting there in that wonderful green field, the game is never over. Never.”

Yeah! That’s us, all right!

Langford relates Cub history from 1875 to 1949 in Chapter Three. Thereafter, he covers the team by decade, including the Opening Day lineup for each year from 1950 through 1981. He includes statistics and an index of Cub players from 1948.

Naturally, in writing about more than a century of baseball only a season’s high points can be included. Working within this constraint, Langford still manages to convey some of the excitement of each year’s race. That’s quite an accomplishment.

“Day by Day in Chicago Cubs History,” by Art Ahrens and Eddie Gold, is a “Gold mine” (Eddie’s been a Chicago Sun-Times reporter for 39 years) of Cubs information. As the name implies, it goes through the calendar and lists happenings for each day of the year.

In addition to the chronological listings, there are page after page of the inevitable statistics. Ahrens’ and Gold’s numbers don’t always match those in other books; they have .240 as Randy Hundley’s lifetime BA, while the Baseball Encyclopedia lists it as .236. That’s one of the few stats I know.)

“Day by Day” has a lot of old photos as well. If you’re into statistics and/or trivia, it’s a good reference book.

“Cub Fan Mania: A Pictorial Portrait of Baseball’s Most Dedicated and Vocal Fans,” is by Bob Ibach and Ned Colletti (Leisure Press, New York, 1983). Both Ibach and Colletti were employees of the Cubs, though the former left after the 1988 season.

This is a slim little book (only 96 pages), containing some trivia, though mercifully free of statistics. These people are capable, corporate writers. No one will ever quote them. Their words do not stir the blood.

The best part of “Cub Fan Mania” is the photographs: fans, vendors, scoreboard, grandstand, bleachers, seats, streets. Anyone who’s been at Wrigley has witnessed many of these scenes. The vendor on page 58 – I saw him!

In “You Gotta Have Heart: Dallas Green’s Rebuilding of the Cubs,” (Diamond Communications, South Bend, Indiana, 1985) Ned Colletti does the impossible: he makes the 1984 Cubs championship season a dull read.

He does have the ability to write on command. Dallas Green (the world’s tallest two-year-old) no doubt told Colletti to write a book praising Green’s superior executive ability in putting together the 1984 Eastern Division champions.

Shortly after this book reached print, however, the Cubs lost their entire starting rotation to injuries, the skids were greased for their fourth-place finish, and the “Dallas Green for President’ signs disappeared from the bleacher fences. Talk about being on the wrong bookshelves at the wrong time.

On the other hand, had the Cubs done well in 1985, more innocent people might have wasted $15.95 on “You Gotta Have Heart.”

“The Golden Era Cubs — 1876-1940” and “The New Era Cubs — 1941-1985” by Eddie Gold and Art Ahrens are based on the same format: “Pictures, biographies, statistics, and the anecdotes that go with them.” They provide valuable reference allowing a reader to learn more about Cub players (although not all of them) than the dry columns of numbers in “Day by Day.

One of the book’s irritations is that the writers sometimes get too cute with language. Example:

“Steven Michael Stone was a player of many facets – all turned on.” Picture him a poet, a ping pong prodigy, a pitcher, and a proud possessor of the national pastime’s Cy Young Award. In addition, the chunky, curly-coiffured Clevelander was a collegian at Kent State, a chess connoisseur, and a creative chef.”

By page 186 of the second volume (page 366 of a total 454), the guys were getting giddy.

Bob Logan was, at the time of writing “a 24-year veteran sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune.” “So You Think You’re a Die-Hard Cub Fan” (Contemporary Books, Inc., Chicago, 1985) is written in the typical matter-of-fact style found on any sports page in the country. Even its format is similar to a newspaper, mixing text with photos, sidebars and short items; at times, this mix is slightly confusing.

A quick once-over of Cub history, it concentrates most heavily on the last several decades. Logan ends each chapter with a few trivia questions.

“So You Think..” refers to Chapter 2: “Cub Superfans – The Tenth Man.” He writes about us true fans and (gasp) the others.

“After decades of obscurity, the team created a national craze in 1984 and thousands flocked to join the Die-Hard Fan Club. The real die-hards, those who had been rooting for the Cubs since childhood glimpses of them at Wrigley Field, viewed the trendy newcomers with attitudes ranging from amused tolerance to ill-concealed scorn.”

On the cover, Logan notes that his book is “not for the faint-hearted.” That’s probably due to the opening page of Chapter 7, “The (Sometimes) Friendly Confines,” in which he bluntly states:

“The Cubs won’t be the same without Wrigley Field. Baseball won’t be the same. Neither will Chicago. Now the question is not if, but when, the North Side museum of so many happy memories and unhappy endings will vanish. It’s apparent that the Cubs will have to leave the cozy, ivy-covered cottage they’ve lived in since 1915.”

He predicts “a new stadium for the Cubs and Bears — with the White Sox frozen out – seemed to be in the cards, perhaps as early as the 1992 Chicago World’s Fair.” I hope he didn’t bet money on it. Wrigley Field still stands, while the new stadium (and the Fair) are history. By the way – Logan’s left town, too.

“Here Come the ’86 Cubs” by Fred Mitchell (Bonus Books, Chicago, 1986) could well have been a larger version of the 1985 Cubs Media Guide, with more photos and expanded text.

Written during spring training Mitchell merely introduces the Cub starters and hopefuls, quoting them about their goals for the year, and adding the opinions of the management. Everybody said the same thing: we’re going to do better than 1985.

If an expert is one who knows more and more about less and less, Jim Langford is, indeed, an expert on the Chicago Cubs.

In “Runs, Hits & Errors: A Treasury of Cub History and Humor,” (Diamond Communications, Inc., South Bend, Indiana, 1987) he again takes us all the way back to 1875 and continues to the end of the 1987 season.

Calling himself a “compiler,” he’s raided every clipping file and library shelf in Chicago, Indiana and beyond. He’s included whole chapters from Charlie Grimm’s “Grimm’s Baseball Tales.” He quotes, in their entirety, newspaper columns from as far back as 1880.

With its subtitle, “A Treasury of Cub History and Humor,” I picked up the book with great anticipation. Of history, there’s more than enough. Of humor … it must have been very subtle.

“Runs, Hits & Errors” is far from being the worst book about the Cubs, but Langford should stick to writing his own words rather than quoting others (at least at such length.)

If your idea of fun is to throw Cub questions at your friends, “The Cub Fan’s Quiz Book” by David Marran (Diamond Communications, South Bend, Indiana, 1985) is the book for you. It has questions to which every Cub fan knows the answer, i.e., “Wvhat was Ernie Banks’ number?” Plus things like, “After the final out in The Clincher, the Cubs charged the field in celebration. When Cub manager Jim Frey ran onto the field, where did he put his cap?” Now, that’s trivia!

“The Cubbies: Quotations on the Chicago Cubs” (Atheneum, New York, 1987) by Bob Chieger is nothing more than a collection of quotes by and/or about the Cubs. Some are funny, some are irritating. If one reads (or has read) almost anything about the Cubs, two-thirds or more of them are familiar.

When Dorothy Parker said, “This is not a book to be cast aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force,” she may have been talking about “Stuck on the Cubs,” by Rick Schwab (Sassafras Press, Inc., Evanston, Illinois, 1977).

Heralded as “A story told by a fan for the fans,” “Stuck” is full of self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement and self-adoration. Does Schwab really think anyone cares that he “moved to a suburb of Chicago near an expressway system that will whisk me downtown, catapult me to work, or eject me onto the Indiana dunes”? The cover blurb that states this is “an outrageously funny book” is false billing, too.

He says a few things one can agree with. “Baseball is the greatest game in the world.” “I have seen thousands of players come and go. None of them has affected my life and given me the vicarious thrills as has Ernie Banks.” “Cub fans’ pet peeves – 1. Front Runner Fans.”

Schwab spews his vitriol in all directions. He rails against: Chicago sportswriters, Cub catchers (all of them!), Harry Caray (even before he announced Cub games), gamblers in the bleachers, the three managers who came after Leo Durocher, Leo Durocher, the College of Coaches (nobody liked them!), Jack Brickhouse, commercials, Astroturf, Bowie Kuhn, stupid trades, Sunday drivers, Chicago police, Puerto Ricans, Wrigley Field usherettes, ushers, his 1965 Dodge Dart, his wife before she learned about baseball (“to Diane, a special is a seven-piece iced tea set for $3.99”), his wife now that she knows more about baseball than he does (“better barefoot and pregnant”), woman athletes, Women’s Lib, public restrooms, and people who watch Cub games from neighborhood rooftops. That’s only a partial list.

“The Neighborhood of Baseball: A Personal History of the Chicago Cubs,” by Barry Gifford (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1981) is half a good book The first few chapters are absolutely delightful. Gifford writes about the era that I remember best – the Cubs of the ’50s and early ’60s. These were my guys! Hank Sauer! Dee Fondy! Dale Long! Ernie Banks! So what if the Cubs always finished in the second division those years?

This is prose that can be quoted. It is my favorite writing about the Cubs. My family patiently sat through my reading portions of “The Neighborhood of Baseball” aloud. They know me.

Gifford saw his first game at Wrigley when he was five: “As for me, I had no choice, I was hooked. At five years old I could hardly go anywhere on my own, and I’d been exposed to the Chicago Cubs.” The exact same things could have been written about thousands of Cub fans, several generations worth. Including me. Throughout, Gifford complains about the Cubs starting strong and fading as the season winds down. Ironically, “The Neighborhood of Baseball” does the same thing. The first chapters explode in the reader’s mind. Then Gifford leaves town and after that, the book just disappears.

When you hit Chapter 34, stop reading. Whereas the former half of the book had been written with love and personal remembrance, the latter half was reconstructed from research. He has no personal involvement with any of it, and it was obviously added to pad the manuscript out to book length – always a poor excuse for writing.

Gifford’s lack of feeling for his subject is typified by his 1980 visit to Wrigley Field – he waited for the Cubs to send press credentials! – proof that he was doing it for money, not love.

“The Cub Fan’s Guide to Life: The Ultimate Self-Help Book,” another by Jim Langford (Diamond Communications, South Bend,Indiana, 1988) is a parody of self-help books. The reader begins by testing her Cub Fan Quotient. Having scored 91, I’m “already a great person!” It’s “impossible to score 100 on the test just to remind you that nobody’s perfect, as every Cub fan knows.

This is a hilarious little book (90 pages), in which Langford proves, again and again, how well he understands Cub fans. “Psychiatrists tell us that two essential ingredients in mental health and personal happiness are self-esteem and the virtue of hope. Cub fans have the patent on hope. If it didn’t exist, we would have invented it.” He knows his history, too (of course, he wrote a book on it!)

Langford, a one-fan industry (Diamond Communications offers Cub calendars and other items, as well as books by other writers, most notably Curt Smith) can be believed when he says: “There is no such thing as an ex-Cub fan!”

“Bleachers: A Summer in Wrigley Field” (Contemporary Books, Inc., Chicago, 1988) has a book-jacket bio of author Lonnie Wheeler that immediately made me dislike both writer and book. He lives in Cincinnati!

Cub fans writing about the Cubs! Yes! Chicago sportswriters writing about the Cubs? Natch. A Cincinnati sportswriter writing about the Cubs? No way! I hope he burned and peeled all summer long!

In his introduction, however, Wheeler makes one good point:

“Perhaps it had to be done by somebody to whom the bleachers were not a familiar fact of life, but a fetching image.” That’s true enough. No Cub fan would write it. Bleacher denizens aren’t trusted with pencils and those who sit in the grandstand wouldn’t waste time writing about the obnoxious, beer-soaked loudmouths who sit in the cheap seats.

He, himself, acknowledges this bleacher fact of life. “We tried to hash out why the bleachers were the unique contemporary cultural phenomenon that they were. We tried out a lot of theories and decided the best one was beer.”

He would, further, have us believe that: The only true Cub fans sit in the bleachers. The only knowledgeable Cub fans sit in the bleachers. The only friendly Cub fans sit in the bleachers. The bleachers are full when the grandstand is virtually empty. The only Cub fans who appreciate green grass sit in the bleachers. The best view is from the bleachers. Any one of those statements is hard to believe. All of them put together really strain the seams of credulity.

“How Many Next Years Do You Get in Baseball? Shoe Goes to Wrigley Field” (Bonus Books, Inc., Chicago, 1988) by Jeff MacNeely, features Cub fans like P. Martin Shoemaker, Perfesser Cosmo Fishhawk and his nephew Skyler, characters from the highly successful, widely syndicated comic strip Shoe.

MacNeely knows well the bittersweetness of being a Cub fan. The Perfesser: “A good Cubs fan accepts defeat and disappointment in the belief that tomorrow will be a better day. Do you know what that’s called, Skyler?” “Self-delusion.” “Optimism is the word I was looking for.”

Alas, the Perfesser is always sneaking off to the ballpark “to soak up some rays!” The present ownership is doing its best to see that line relegated to history.

“How Many Next Years …?” is an absolutely wonderful book. No matter how many times I read it, it still makes me laugh. Nor is it possible to look at one strip and put it down. Like peanuts, popcorn or Cracker Jack, one leads to another, then to another. Finally I gave up, and starting at the beginning, read it all the way through.

What more could anyone ask of any book?