He had loved the Cubs all his life, less so the Pale Hose,
While lamenting, to varying degrees, both teams’ woes;
He politely gave lip service to Wynn, Pierce, and Shaw
To maintain a desired conversational thaw.

For me, those three names held a special allure,
Long after the pitchers had caused such a stir;
The ’59 Sox were a team to embrace
When they disposed of the Yanks and captured first place.

His opinions ranked low on the list of my cares,
For I had enjoyed each of Veeck’s scoreboard flares;
As the men of Comiskey, whose speed was revered,
Were applauded, praised, heralded, lustily cheered.

The term “Go-Go Sox” meant a team that was quick
Though some players weren’t fast, and some hit not a lick;
Big Klu and Sherm Lollar were slow on their feet,
But watching them play was always a treat.

“Little Louie” and Nellie, a slick DP combo,
Ended many a frame with a catch, toss and throw;
The hot corner was Bubba’s, while Landis chased flies,
Plucking spheres of horsehide out of the skies.

Flanking Landis were Smith and unique “Jungle Jim,”
Torgeson and Goodman hit when things looked grim;
Dick Donovan and Latman —took the mound for key starts
Lown and Staley nipped rallies, breaking enemy hearts.

In the dugout Al Lopez, often called “The Señor,”
Hoped for better than his Tribe had done five years before;
But the skipper was sadly denied the big prize:
After six games with the Dodgers, he’d again agonize.

But AL fanatics are resilient types,
(Necessarily so, unless their team wears pinstripes!)
White Sox fans bounced back and my spirits did, too…
And the memories—ah, the memories—I have quite a few!

FRANCIS KINLAW has contributed to 15 SABR convention publications (the number of double plays grounded into by Ernie Banks during the Cubs’ memorable 1969 season) and attended 19 SABR conventions (Banks’ doubles total that year). A member of SABR since 1983, he resides in Greensboro, North Carolina and writes extensively about baseball, football, and college basketball.

• Related link: Read SABR biographies of the 1959 Chicago White Sox by clicking here
  

Major League Baseball’s historian, John Thorn, posted this on Facebook in December 2014: “I did not know that as early as October 1920 a film about the Black Sox Scandal was in circulation.”

Indeed, an ad in the October 30, 1920, issue of Exhibitors Herald, a motion picture industry trade publication, advertises The Great Baseball Scandal, produced by the short-lived Celebrated Players Film Corporation and distributed by the equally obscure Federated Film Exchanges of America, Inc.

The ad, which encourages exhibitors to book the film, hypes it as “A Slow Motion Picture Expose” and “THE BIGGEST ONE REEL FEATURE EVER OFFERED.” While the Black Sox aren’t cited by name, the ad announces that the “speed camera used in photographing this picture shows the trickery of crooked baseball players in dishonoring America’s national pastime.” It also notes that the film was “EDITED BY THE WORLD’S GREATEST BASE BALL AUTHORITY” (who also is unnamed).

Regrettably, like too many films of the silent era, The Great Baseball Scandal is long-lost.

ROB EDELMAN teaches film history at the University at Albany. He authored “Great Baseball Films” and “Baseball on the Web,” and, with his wife Audrey Kupferberg, “Meet the Mertzes,” a double biography of I Love Lucy ’s Vivian Vance and famed baseball fan William Frawley. A frequent contributor to “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game,” he has written articles on baseball and pop culture for many publications.

In September 2014, Murray brought his latest film, St. Vincent, to the Toronto Film Festival. I got to briefly chat with him, and I asked him when his Cubs will win the World Series. Instead of a detailed response, which one might expect from a Cubs fan-atic, Murray — in his trademark deadpan manner — simply uttered, “In two years.”

What a Cubs fan! What a singular talent! What an optimist! And what a guy!

ROB EDELMAN teaches film history at the University at Albany. He authored “Great Baseball Films” and “Baseball on the Web,” and, with his wife Audrey Kupferberg, “Meet the Mertzes,” a double biography of I Love Lucy ’s Vivian Vance and famed baseball fan William Frawley. A frequent contributor to “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game,” he has written articles on baseball and pop culture for many publications.

Following 16 teams was a task by itself,
Yearbooks were plentiful on my bookshelf;
I memorized the stats of guys like Joey Jay,
And gave thanks for Mutual’s Game-of-the-Day!

Though I felt isolated down South from baseball’s great feats,
The radio in our house provided my necessary treats
In the form of broadcasts, day after day,
Each of a big-league matinee.

Wrigley Field, decades before the advent of cable,
Became the Mutual Network’s most common staple;
In the only ballpark with pure, natural light
Day games were plentiful, none played at night.

The Cubs were heard more often on my precious Philco
Than teams that won more in Frick’s acclaimed show;
That the Cubs often held the short end of the score
Mattered none to a youngster who loved the sport’s lore.

My mother, though no fan, showed little frustration,
Believing that listening increased one’s imagination;
And because that was true, I did “see” Stan Hack
Remove more than one pitcher, and Ernie Banks take a whack.

With every hit, pitch, catch, or Cubbie miscue,
I was transported off to Waveland Avenue;
Moved by the voices of men like Art Gleeson,
I relished events of each baseball season.

Bob Neal, Rex Barney, Gene Elston, John MacLean
Were key characters during each summer campaign
In a decade when the sun most clearly did shine
On an ivy-covered wall and unique baseball shrine.

The White Sox were consistently Chicago’s best team—
Of pennants their fans could reasonably dream;
Their games were broadcast once in a while
Sending Minnie and Nellie through my radio dial.

Many folks watched those games without giving a thought
To outland regions the big leagues forgot;
But we Southerners hungered for rare baseball meals,
Be it the Game of the Day or Frank Lane’s latest deals.

Mutual and the Cubs played a vital role
In bringing nourishment to my overlooked bowl—
Which, in my youth, was a brown radio
With sounds coming from it that made this fan glow!

FRANCIS KINLAW has contributed to 15 SABR convention publications (the number of double plays grounded into by Ernie Banks during the Cubs’ memorable 1969 season) and attended 19 SABR conventions (Banks’ doubles total that year). A member of SABR since 1983, he resides in Greensboro, North Carolina and writes extensively about baseball, football, and college basketball.

When Bill Veeck and Hank Greenberg arrived at Comiskey Park on March 11, 1959, as the new owners of the White Sox, Chuck Comiskey raced away in his Cadillac. Greenberg waved, but Comiskey did not return the gesture.1

It was as if Chuck, whose grandfather Charles had brought the White Sox to town in 1900, thought he could avoid parting with the family treasure simply by avoiding the men who wanted to buy it. Thus began what the Chicago Sun-Times declared “a stirring chapter in the history of the White Sox, replete with comedy and tragedy.”2

The Old Roman had left the team to his son and daughter-in-law, Grace Comiskey, who in turn left the team to their two children, Dorothy Comiskey Rigney and Chuck. Perhaps because she knew of Chuck’s propensity to make a mess of things after a few drinks, Mrs. Comiskey gave Dorothy—the older, responsible sister—500 more shares than Chuck. When Dorothy wanted to sell her 54 percent stake to Veeck and Greenberg, Chuck sued to stop her. A judge ruled in Dorothy’s favor; Chuck appealed. That didn’t work either.3

Chuck wanted Chicago insurance salesman Charlie O. Finley to control the team. Finley, later known for his meddling with the Kansas City and Oakland A’s, had seduced Chuck with the promise that he could stay with the Sox and tried to win over Dorothy with a sweeter offer.4 But Veeck and Greenberg already held the option, and in the end, the older sister sold her majority interest in the club to them for $2.5 million.5

Veeck, who had previously owned the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns, and Greenberg, a Hall of Fame player who had owned and run the Indians, wanted to buy out Chuck—or at least 26 percent of the remaining team stock—in order to save $1.3 million in taxes with Veeck’s clever scheme for depreciating players’ salaries.6 Nuh-uh, Chuck said. He called the partners “raiders” and sued them.7

The Detroit News called the situation “baseball’s strangest stalemate.”8 Throughout the 1959 season, during which the “Go-Go Sox” of Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox, and Early Wynn won the White Sox’s first pennant since the 1919 Black Sox Scandal and restored the team’s good name, the new owners tried to win over Chuck with no luck.

They let Chuck keep his office and raised his salary, but he still wasn’t happy.9 He developed an intense enmity for Veeck, a sentiment the maverick owner reciprocated. That left Greenberg, the team vice president and treasurer, to play peacemaker between the two adversaries. That wasn’t an easy role for Greenberg, since Chuck was suing him, too.10 The mess was further complicated by Chuck’s alliance with his father-in-law, Frank Curran (appointed to the board by Chuck as a minority owner),11 who constantly peered over Greenberg’s shoulder to check the team’s books.12

Chicago’s American reported the Sox’ February 1960 board meeting as having “had comic opera aspects altho [sic] the participants were deadly serious about the whole thing.” While the directors met, Chuck refused to join them and pouted in his office next door.13

Late in the 1960 season, Veeck began to suffer from a nasty cough and constant headache. Mayo Clinic doctors ruled out a brain tumor but decided that he had a chronic concussion and prescribed complete rest. He and Greenberg chose to sell their shares of the club to Arthur Allyn, Jr., in June 1961 for $2.5 million.14 (Allyn owned 30% of Artnell Corporation, which now became the majority owner of the team.) By that time, Comiskey had made himself so irrelevant that he was unaware of the sale. Greenberg agreed to stay on as general manager, but the strain of commuting from New York, where the divorcé was raising his three children, wore him out and he resigned two months later.15

Chuck also sold his shares to another group, believing he could eventually buy them back. He was wrong, and there ended the Comiskey family’s hand in the Sox. When Veeck regained his health and returned with Greenberg to purchase the White Sox in 1975, they were able to run the club without any Comiskey interference.16

JOHN ROSENGREN is the award-winning author of eight books, including “Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes.” You can find him at www.johnrosengren.net.

Notes

Chicago is a city of icons.

A hotbed of popular culture, the Windy City owns a curriculum vitae rarely paralleled concerning characters, real and fictional, responsible for defining the American experience.

Al Capone rose to kingpin status in Chicago’s underworld during Prohibition in the 1920s. His was a household name, a celebrity status recognizable nearly a century later as a description—or an exaggeration—of the criminal persona.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert birthed film criticism to the masses with their newspaper columns and syndicated television program offering insight, banter, and approval (or disapproval) signified by a thumbs-up/thumbs down paradigm.

Catherine O’Leary’s cow, according to Chicago folklore, kicked over a lantern in 1871 while being milked in a barn, sparking a fire that consumed everything in its path. In the chronicle of natural disasters, it’s on par with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Baseball, too, offers fertile territory for Chicago popular culture, especially those myths, legends, and tales involving the Cubs. Superstition, for example, dictates that a curse hovers over Wrigley Field, the Cubs’ home, sourced from an incident during Game Four of the 1945 World Series. William “Billy Goat” Sianis, owner of the famed Billy Goat Tavern, entered Wrigley Field with his pet goat Murphy and even paraded him through the box seat section before being ejected shortly after the game began. The Cubs had informed the well-known Sianis before the Series that the presence of a goat would not be tolerated. An appeal to Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley failed. “Because the goat stinks,” Wrigley explained. Sianis, in turn, prompted a curse. “The Cubs ain’t gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field.”1 The Cubs have not won a World Series since.

In 1997, Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko—a Windy City newspaper institution—denounced the curse as the reason for the Cubs’ absence from the World Series since Harry S. Truman was President of the United States. Rather, Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley deserves the blame, according to Royko. The columnist’s key reason was the team’s lateness in signing black players. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier on April 15, 1947, but Ernie Banks debuted as the Cubs’ first black player on September 17, 1953, nearly six and a half years later.

During this delay, the pool of black talent got shallower, siphoned by other teams more readily adaptable to a changing sociological paradigm in baseball. “So what might have been wasn’t,” Royko wrote. “It had nothing to do with a goat’s curse. Not unless the goat wore a gabardine suit and sat behind a desk in an executive suite.”2

TELEVISION

NBC’s television series Chicago Fire paid homage to the Billy Goat curse in the 2012 episode Mon Amour. Sardonically nicknamed “Otis” because of his dislike of elevators, Firefighter Brian Zvonecek expresses disappointment to his fellow firefighters at Firehouse 51 regarding Truck 81’s crest incorporating a goat. Firefighter Christopher Herrmann, a Firehouse 51 veteran, passionately explains that the goat crest will unlock Sianis’ curse.

During NBC’s sitcom heyday of the 1990s, Chicago Sons used the setting of a North Sheffield Avenue apartment building overlooking Wrigley Field. The Kulchak brothers boasted a formidable cast—Jason Bateman as Harry, an architect seeking love; D.W. Moffett as Mike, a construction worker seeking refuge after his wife throws him out because of his obsession with televised sports; and David Krumholtz as Billy, a recent college graduate seeking his next moneymaking opportunity. Chicago Sons, a mid-season replacement, lasted only a few months.

CBS’ drama series Chicago Hope featured Wrigley Field in an early episode of its debut 1994–95 season. Neurologist Aaron Shutt (played by Adam Arkin) and surgeon Jeffrey Geiger (played by Mandy Patinkin) hit golf balls from home plate under the Wrigley Field lights. A live broadcast of NBC’s ER in the 1997–98 season featured a simultaneous Cubs game on WGN.

THEATER

Chicago’s vibrant theater scene provided the platform for the Organic Theater Company’s 1977 play Bleacher Bums, a work of fiction deeply grounded in reality. Bleacher Bums debuted at Organic on August 2, 1977. It depicts a group of Cubs fans during a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. To better prepare, members of the Organic did research in Wrigley Field’s bleacher seats to build a story around banter, betting, and baseball.

The main characters are: Decker, a middle-aged businessman; Melody, a busty blond initially more interested in tanning than baseball until she slowly gets immersed into the intricacies until she’s talking like she was born and raised on Waveland Avenue; Greg, an amiable blind man in his 20s; Zig, a man in his 50s who compulsively gambles on the slightest of happenings during the game; Rose, Zig’s wife who proves to be more knowledgeable about baseball than her husband; Richie, a man in his 20s whose inattention to hygiene compounds his offensiveness to the group; and Marvin, a professional gambler who bets against the Cubs if he thinks the odds warrant it.3

Though written by an ensemble at the Organic Theater Company, Bleacher Bums owes its genesis to Joe Mantegna. “Stuart Gordon was the head of Organic at that time. During a meeting, he said that we were almost out of money but we might have enough for one more show in the season,” explains Mantegna. “He asked if anyone had an idea for a show that could be done cheaply. Well, I had been going to Cub games since I was five, but I looked at games in a whole different light once I became an actor. I was banging around this idea of a story revolving around the fans at Wrigley Field and capturing their excitement for something that’s not a quality product.

“I distinctly remember putting my hand up and saying, ‘Let me take you to a ballgame and sit where I sit and tell me if you don’t think there’s a play.’ Once they saw the characters in the stands, they agreed. We did improvs and based the characters on real people. Zoz became Zig. Becker became Decker. Initially, the title was ‘The Year the Cubs Won the Pennant’ but ‘Bleacher Bums’ became the actual title.

“We sat most of the audience on the stage of the arena theater we had, then we took seats out of one section of the audience and had the cast sit on the cement levels where the seats used to be. So, the cement levels acted as bleacher seats. The sets cost next to nothing. We bought the costumes from the Amvets National Foundation store. On Tuesdays, you could get stuff cheap. The entire play probably cost less than $200 to produce. Based on longevity, Bleacher Bums is the biggest moneymaker for the Organic. It ran in Los Angeles at the Century City Playhouse for ten years, from 1980 to 1990.”4

In her review of the Performing Garage version in 1978, Sports Illustrated’s Sarah Pileggi noted, “Marvin, of course, winds up with all the money, but by and large the nice guys win in the end.”5 Mantegna furthers the point. “Everybody comes in as an individual, but at the end, Marvin is left alone with everyone else leaving as part of a pair. They all made a connection. For those couple of hours, they were a family.”6

The story ends with an eloquent speech by Greg in response to Marvin’s offer of a ride home. He speaks of tomorrow, when the Cubs will win. In Greg’s paradigm, the Cubs will continue to win until they reach the World Series and play the Chicago White Sox. With the championship on the line in the seventh game, the Cubs will bring Ernie Banks out of retirement in the 23rd inning. Banks will hit a home run. And that’s when Marvin can give him a ride home, Greg finishes, with the paradoxical hopefulness of a Cubs fan.

Mantegna and his Organic Theater Company cohorts went beyond the bleachers to the broadcasting booth for research. They talked to Cubs broadcasting legend Jack Brickhouse, who dreamed of a fantasy scenario for the Cubs. “That speech came from Brickhouse—it was verbatim except for the last line. So the night Jack Brickhouse came to the play was a special night. Just to see his reaction,”7 Mantegna said.

Bleacher Bums resonates because of the universal appeal of different characters bonding over a similar goal—to root for the Cubs. Sourced in the pathos that appears to exist in every Cubs fan’s DNA, Bleacher Bums merits respect from the theatrical community. “A great thing that happened to me years ago, around 1983 or 1984, was a call from Jason Miller, the playwright for That Championship Season,” says Mantegna. “An anthology of sports plays included Bleacher Bums and Jason read it. He told me that he had a theater in Malibu and he wanted to produce the play. Ironically, his son is one of my daughter’s best friends.”8

Since its 1977 debut, Bleacher Bums has seen various versions in theatres, updated since 1988 to reference the installment of lights after 74 years of day games at Wrigley Field. In 2001, Showtime aired a version starring Peter Riegert, Wayne Knight, and Matt Craven.

FILMS

The Break-Up, a 2006 comedy film starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, features a Cubs game at Wrigley Field in the opening scene. Billy Crystal dons a Cubs jersey in the 1986 buddy cop film Running Scared. As 12-year-old Henry Rowengartner, Thomas Ian Nicholas realizes the dream of every Cubs fan in the 1993 comedy film Rookie of the Year. When Henry follows Wrigley Field tradition and throws back a home run ball, it reaches home plate—his power resulted from his tendons tightening while healing a broken arm. The Cubs sign Henry, promptly.

In the 1986 comedy film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—written and directed by John Hughes, Hollywood’s conduit for the angst, hope, and humor of mid-1980s teens—a Chicago Cubs home game is one of many stops for the title character, a high school student whose experiences escalate to adventures with suburban myth status in the Windy City’s environs.

Ferris (Matthew Broderick) persuades his parents that he has an illness serious enough to stay home, but not serious enough to warrant a trip to the doctor. It’s a ruse, of course, so that Ferris can ditch school on a picture-perfect day, to the consternation of Dean of Students Ed Rooney, who prioritizes catching Ferris away from the home where he is presumably resting. Ferris’ gifts of persuasion extend to his gorgeous girlfriend Sloane and his best friend Cameron, who exudes anxiety the way Marilyn Monroe exudes sexuality.

On a visual level, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off may be considered a Chicago travelogue, as it depicts trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sears Tower, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the Von Steuben Day Parade—an annual September celebration honoring Chicago’s German-American population—where he mounts a float to lip-sync Wayne Newton’s Danke Schoen and the Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout in what ranks as one of the greatest all-time music scenes on film, right up there with Gene Kelly splashing around in Singin’ in the Rain, Elvis Presley singing the title song in Jailhouse Rock, and any song from Grease.

Ferris et al. attended the Cubs-Braves game on June 5, 1985; Atlanta right fielder Claudell Washington smashed a foul ball that Ferris caught, further illustrating the good-natured teenager’s ability to float carelessly through life while garnering the fortunes of good luck, good will, and good friends.9

That is, the film portrays the WGN broadcast of the June 5, 1985, game. But the close-up of Ferris catching the Washington foul ball may come from another contest. Baseball writer Al Yellon posited this theory in 2011 while referencing a July 12, 1985, article in the Chicago Tribune declaring the film’s production to be set in Chicago. “So the announcement of the filming of “Ferris Bueller” wasn’t made until more than a month after the June 5, 1985 game was played,” wrote Yellon. “The article says filming would begin in Chicago in September, and the parade in which Bueller jumped onto a float and sang took place during a real parade on Sept. 28, 1985.”10

In 2014, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress added Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to its list of iconic films.

Taking Care of Business, a 1990 comedy starring Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin, illustrates the depths of Cubs loyalty and the lengths to which a loyalist will go to preserve it. Belushi plays California prisoner Jimmy Dworski, a die-hard Cubs fan convicted of grand theft auto with just a few days left on his sentence. After winning two tickets to Game 6 the 1990 Cubs-Angels World Series in a radio contest by being the first person to name the two Cubs pitchers threw no-hitters in 1972—Milt Pappas and Burt Hooton—Jimmy risks freedom by escaping prison to see the game in Anaheim. If Jimmy gets caught, he’ll wind up back in prison governed by a warden who simply, but intensely, dislikes Jimmy; an extension of his sentence would be certain upon capture.

When uptight advertising executive Spencer Barnes (Grodin) leaves his Filofax organizer at the airport, Jimmy finds it, keeps it, and uses it as a platform to impersonate Spencer; without the Filofax, Spencer is like a rudderless ship—he has no information, no credit cards, no cash. Jimmy, as Spencer, takes business meetings, stays in the beach house courtesy of the key in the Filofax, and sleeps with the boss’ beautiful daughter, and botches an account with a major client. Initially furious at the impostor who has thrown his life upside down and backwards, Spencer reconciles with Jimmy; they go to Game 6, which the Cubs win.

Belushi also appeared in the 1986 film About Last Night starring Brat Packers Rob Lowe and Demi Moore. A meet-cute takes place at a softball game in Chicago’s Grant Park between Lowe’s restaurant equipment salesman Danny and advertising professional Debbie. It leads to a one-night stand, which leads to a tumultuous one-year relationship. An early scene shows Danny and Debbie watching a Cubs game from a rooftop on North Sheffield Avenue.

LITERARY

Franklin Pierce Adams created a cornerstone item in Cubs popular culture when he scribed the double-play ballet of Tinker to Evers to Chance in That Double Play Again for the July 12, 1910, edition of the New York Evening Mail; it later became known by its more popular title—Baseball’s Sad Lexicon. Adams was a Cubs fan from the Midwest; he moved to New York City in his 20s. In J.G. Taylor Spink’s “Looping the Loops” column in the March 2, 1944, edition of The Sporting News, Adams explains, “I didn’t like [New York Giants manager John] McGraw. I was a Cub fan, for I had come from Chicago, and I got particular delight out of every game the Cubs won from the Giants.”11

Other literary offerings regarding Cubs Nation include the prominence of Wrigley Field in Randy Richardson’s mystery 2014 novel Wrigleyville and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski novel series about a female private investigator. The 1991 film V.I. Warshawski—starring Kathleen Turner as the title character—had one scene filmed inside Wrigley Field. Unfortunately, it did not make the final cut.12

THE FUTURE?

2015 is a landmark year for Cubs popular culture. In the 1989 comedy film Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) transports 30 years into the future, from 1985 to 2015, when he finds out that the Cubs won the 2015 World Series. “That’s my favorite bit about the Cubs in popular culture, other than Bleacher Bums,”13 says Joe Mantegna.

So, will life imitate art in 2015? We’ll see in October.

DAVID KRELL is the author of “Our Bums: The Brooklyn Dodgers in History, Memory and Popular Culture.” David has also written for “Memories and Dreams” (the magazine of the National Baseball Hall of Fame), the “Baseball Research Journal,” and the New York State Bar Association’s “Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal.”

Notes

The majority of Chicago-set baseball films have included (and occasionally showcased) the Cubs. Among them are Joe E. Brown’s Elmer, the Great (1933) and Alibi Ike (1935), the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic The Winning Team (1952), the Dizzy Dean biopic The Pride of St. Louis (1952), and the family comedy-fantasy Rookie of the Year (1993). Sometimes, a fictional Chicago club is depicted. One example is Boulevardier from the Bronx (1936), an eight-minute Warner Bros. cartoon featuring the exploits of the Chicago Giants, whose star pitcher—a rooster—is named Dizzy Dan. (At the time, Dizzy Dean still was pitching in St. Louis; he did not join the Cubs until 1938.)

The town’s other big league nine has not been completely shut out onscreen. But it should surprise no one that two of the highest-profile Chisox films spotlight the Black Sox Scandal, and are worth comparing because they offer vastly different points of view. Eight Men Out (1988), based on the Eliot Asinof book, is one movie about baseball history that does not glorify its subjects. The Sox are portrayed in ensemble style as a rowdy, hard-playing bunch, easily the best major league team of the era. As depicted by director-writer John Sayles, however, they are also victims, oppressed as much by jowly Charles “The Old Roman” Comiskey (Clifton James), the team’s penny-pinching owner, as by underworld kingpin Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner).

Meanwhile, Field of Dreams (1989), adapted from W.P. Kinsella’s novel, deals with the Black Sox from a wholly different perspective. Field of Dreams is the It’s a Wonderful Life of baseball movies, a wistful fantasy about love, hope, and the timelessness of the game. Here, the defamed ballplayers are restored to their glory when their spirits come to play in an eternal, pastoral ball field. Their sins are not dramatized and, consequently, an idealized vision of American innocence is recaptured.

Eight Men Out is deeply cynical. At one point, Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) observes: “I always figured it was talent made a man big, you know. … I mean, we’re the guys they come to see. Without us, there ain’t a ballgame … but look at who’s holding the money and look at who’s facing a jail cell. Talent don’t mean nothing.” A heckler yells at Shoeless Joe: “Hey, Jackson! Can you spell ‘cat’?” Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) retorts: “Hey, Mister! Can you spell ‘shit’?”

In the nostalgia-tinged Field of Dreams, however, Shoeless Joe (Ray Liotta) utters “Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money” and “I used to love traveling on the trains from town to town. The hotels … brass spittoons in the lobbies, brass beds in the rooms. It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I’d play for nothing!”

Various non-baseball films also reference the scandal. In The Godfather: Part II (1974), gangster Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) declares: “I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, filmed four times (in 1926, 1949, 1974, and 2013) and as a 2000 made-for-TV movie, includes the character Meyer Wolfsheim, said to have fixed the series and clearly based on Rothstein. In the 1926 film, the character is named “Charles Wolf.” In the 1949 version, he is “Myron Lupus.”

The disparate depictions of real-life ballplayers in Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams serve to emphasize that films featuring real-life individuals offer the subjective views of their creators. They also usually present skewed representations of history. Sometimes, inaccuracies result from sloppy scholarship; more often, they exist to keep the storyline lean and comprehensible.2 Both are the case in The Stratton Story, a biopic about White Sox hurler Monty Stratton.

The real Stratton, a Texas farm boy, was in 1937–38 a promising major league pitcher. But in November 1938, while target-shooting on his mother’s farm, he shot at a rabbit and his revolver accidently discharged while returning it to its holster. The bullet severed the femoral artery in his right leg, gangrene soon set in, and the leg was amputated above the knee.3

Though Stratton played for the Pale Hose in the 1930s—specific years and dates are not cited in the screenplay—The Stratton Story, made in 1949, is more a reflection of post-World War II America. Douglas Morrow, who earned an Academy Award for the film’s story and scripted it with Guy Trosper, had attended a game at the Sawtelle Soldiers Home, a Southern California facility for disabled GIs. “Seeing the armless and legless spectators, Morrow had the desire to find a film story that would give them hope,” wrote film industry reporter-biographer Bob Thomas. “He thought the story should be divorced from the war. Then he remembered Monte [sic] Stratton.”4

Stratton is played in the film by James Stewart. The ex-big leaguer was the film’s technical advisor and coached Stewart on the art of pitching. He noted that the actor “did a great job playing me, in a picture which I figure was about as true to life as they could make it.”5 Despite this hype, however, The Stratton Story is loaded with misinformation. In an effort to ensure narrative clarity, none of Stratton’s siblings are present onscreen and only two of the five seasons he spent in Chicago are represented. The hurler played in the minors in Omaha and Galveston (in 1934) and St. Paul (1935), yet only Omaha is cited in the script.

Other changes are historical revisions designed to make the scenario more acceptable to viewers. In the film, Stratton shoots himself with a hunting rifle rather than a revolver. The film ends with his return to the sport in a Houston exhibition pitting the “Southern All-Stars” and “Western All-Stars,” but he really did so in a White Sox-Cubs charity game, held in Comiskey Park, organized to raise money for him.

Other “facts” also reflect the 1940s rather than 1930s. One example: Stratton’s comeback game took place in 1939. In the film, his mound opponent is Gene Bearden, who did not pitch in the majors until 1947. The last batter he faces is Johnny Lindell, whose first big league appearance was a one-game looksee in 1941. Still others are even less explicable. When Stratton is recalled from the minors, a Clark Gable-Lana Turner film, Honky Tonk, is screening in a movie theatre. The film was released in 1941, three years after Stratton threw his last major league pitch.

Perhaps the most egregious error involves Stratton’s major league debut on June 2, 1934. This was his lone big league appearance that season, coming against the Detroit Tigers, and Stratton surrendered four hits and two runs in 3 1/3 innings. Stratton entered the game with two outs in the sixth inning, relieving Phil Gallivan. Hank Greenberg had just walked and promptly stole second on Stratton. Jo-Jo White then lined out to left field.6

In The Stratton Story, the hurler comes in to pitch in relief against the New York Yankees. “Dickey, DiMaggio, Gehrig. You can’t power past them, kid,” Barney Wile (Frank Morgan), Stratton’s fictional onscreen mentor, advises the hurler. “If you’re gonna get by,” Wile adds, “you gotta out-think ‘em, cross ‘em up, give ‘em what they don’t expect.” (According to the Chicago Tribune, the real-life Wile was “Jockie Tate, a former Texas leaguer, who always had a blank contract handy in case something good suddenly turned up.”)7

Wile’s advice may be sound, but what follows is pure fiction. The first batter Stratton faces is Bill Dickey (appearing as himself). The Bombers’ backstop homers on Stratton’s first pitch. (Stratton allowed no round-trippers in his actual debut.) Also included in the sequence is stock footage of Joe DiMaggio belting a dinger and circling the bases. There is a catch, however: The Yankee Clipper did not debut in the majors until 1936.

So Monty Stratton’s real debut was not nearly as disastrous as depicted in The Stratton Story. The question is: Why rewrite history? Simply put, having Stratton face Hall of Famer Dickey and the New York nine is more dramatically potent than having him pitch to Jo-Jo White.

The Yankees’ success also allowed for some repartee that surely would have delighted George Steinbrenner. Stratton tells his wife, “Honey, do you know there’s a tailor in Chicago that gives a suit of clothes away to any ballplayer that hits the scoreboard in center field? As of yesterday the New York Yankees are the best-dressed team in baseball.”

In June 1948, during the film’s pre-production, Roy Rowland—assigned to direct The Stratton Story—shot footage of the White Sox at Comiskey Park. By the time filming began, Sam Wood had replaced Rowland. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter announced that Gregory Peck would be playing Stratton while Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio producing the film, hyped Van Johnson for the part. But in the end, Stewart got the role.

The studio also reported that 72 pro ballplayers appeared onscreen. Many were at one point or another affiliated with Chicago teams; the list begins with Merv Shea, Hank Sauer, Peanuts Lowrey, Catfish Metkovich, Gene Mauch, Tuck Stainback, Lou Novikoff, Bobby Sturgeon, Steve Mesner, Lou Stringer, Red Kress, Al Zarilla, and Gus Zernial. Most significantly, Jimmy Dykes, who became the Sox player-manager fifteen games into the 1934 season and helmed the team into the 1946 campaign, appears as himself. Of Stratton’s teammates, Ted Lyons has the most screen time, but the real Lyons is not in the film. Instead, he is played by actor Bruce Cowling.8 Legend has it that Ronald Reagan, who three years later played Pete Alexander in The Winning Team, desperately wanted the Stratton role. But he was under contract with Warner Bros., which refused to lend him to MGM.9

Across the years, other real-life Chicago ballplayers have appeared onscreen. The Giants-White Sox Tour (1914) is the first notable feature-length documentary to spotlight big leaguers. Variety, the motion picture trade publication, described it as a “long reeled picture of the baseball players’ trip around the world the past winter… with here and there snatches of a baseball game played between the natives and the teams in foreign countries. The well-known ballplayers who went along are shown individually at different times, with Germany Schaefer always in the foreground whenever the camera was working…”10 (Schaefer had played for the Chicago Orphans [aka the Cubs] in 1901 and 1902.)

Some onscreen Chicago ballplayers are more obscure: Frank Shellenback, Ray French, and Smead Jolley had small roles in Alibi Ike; Shellenback also appeared in Joe E. Brown’s Fireman, Save My Child (1932). Others are Hall of Famers; Ernie Banks has appeared in over a dozen feature films, television movies, and television series. (He was billed as “Steamer Fan” in Pastime [1990], a baseball film, and played a cabbie in a 1985 Hill Street Blues episode.) A highlight reel of other Cooperstown inductees with Chicago connections begins with Rube Waddell, who pitched for the Chicago Orphans in 1901 and appeared as himself in the documentary shorts Rube Waddell and the Champions Playing Ball with the Boston Team (1902) and Game of Base Ball (1903); Leo Durocher, who managed the Cubs from 1966–72 and was seen in Whistling in Brooklyn (1943), The Errand Boy (1961), and such TV series as Mister Ed, The Munsters, and The Beverly Hillbillies; and Frank Thomas, who played The Rookie in Mr. Baseball (1992).11

Some films have actually featured the ballparks themselves. In this regard, Wrigley Field far outweighs Old Comiskey Park and its successor as onscreen locations or references. (Wrigley Field Chicago should not be confused with Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, built in 1925. Besides serving as a Pacific Coast League park, it was a playground for exhibition games featuring Tinseltown celebs. Countless films and TV shows were shot there, from the Babe Ruth feature Babe Comes Home [1927] through “The Mighty Casey,” a 1960 Twilight Zone episode, the Home Run Derby TV show, and “Herman the Rookie,” a 1965 installment of The Munsters.)12

An infinitesimal number of films feature on-location images of Old Comiskey. But one—a non-baseball film—is extra-special. Only the Lonely (1991) includes a sequence shot not long after the 1990 season, just prior to the park’s demolition. The hero is a Chicago cop (John Candy) who shares his first date with the woman he is courting by taking her to Old Comiskey, where they share an on-field picnic.

The then-new ball yard briefly appears, but the focus is on the soon-to-disappear park, which is paid homage via the line, “Boy, it’s a shame they’re gonna tear this all down.” The sequence reportedly was filmed on a Friday, with the demolition beginning the following week. Jacolyn J. Baker, an Only the Lonely location manager, described it as “a special night,” adding: “Everybody knew that this was going to be the last time anybody would be in Comiskey Park… In between takes, people were playing catch on the field. You felt that this was about to be taken away. It was really special.”13

Wrigley Field’s iconic status has more than occasionally been celebrated onscreen. The Chicago location of While You Were Sleeping (1995), a Sandra Bullock-Bill Pullman romantic comedy-drama, is established via a series of city landmarks. One, of course, is The Friendly Confines, as much a symbol of its town as Yankee Stadium is to New York. In Sleepless in Seattle (1993), baseball is a byword for romance, a loving family, and bliss. As the film opens, Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks), a Chicago architect, has just lost his wife to cancer. As Sam mourns the loss of his beloved, there is a split-second flashback to a memory of a happier time as he, his late wife, and their young son pose outside Wrigley Field.

The first onscreen image in The Break-Up (2006) is a long shot of Wrigley during a game. The second is the red-and-white Wrigley sign. Die-hard Cubs fan Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn) is in the stands, and he rests his face in his hands in agony as a fly ball drops between three Cubs fielders. His pal Johnny O (Jon Favreau), who is garbed in White Sox regalia, laughs hysterically.

One of the more celebrated Wrigley references occurs in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), in which the title character (Matthew Broderick), a high school senior, cons most of the world into thinking he is deathly ill so that he can skip school. Ferris is joined by his girlfriend and best pal and the trio spends a day enjoying Chicago’s amenities. How could the afternoon pass without a Wrigley visit?

Ferris’ main nemesis is Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the pompous school dean determined to bust him. Rooney happens to be inside a pizza parlor and beside a TV set on which the Cubs contest is being broadcast. The home nine are in the field, the inimitable voice of Harry Caray notes that Lee Smith is on the mound, and the unnamed batter hits a long foul ball into the leftfield stands. Who do you suppose nabs it? None other than Ferris Bueller! But Rooney is oblivious. He asks the score and is told “nothing-nothing.” His doltishness is ever-apparent by his next question: “Who’s winning?” The not-amused pizza man tells him, “The Bears.”

Not all screen characters seeing a live Cubs game actually do so inside the park. About Last Night… (1986), a romantic drama based on David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, is framed by softball games in Grant Park during successive summers in which Danny (Rob Lowe), the hero, and Debbie (Demi Moore), the heroine, meet and then become reacquainted after breaking up. In between, they watch a Cubs game not from Wrigley but from a nearby rooftop, where they can be alone. About Last Night… also features a peek into what some women might discuss at ballgames. Debbie and her pal Joan (Elizabeth Perkins) are chatting, and Debbie observes: “That second baseman’s got a really nice ass.” To which Joan responds: “I refuse to go out with a man whose ass is smaller than mine.”

In Hardball (2001), aimless Conor O’Neill (Keanu Reeves) finds direction in coaching pre-teen Little Leaguers from the Cabrini-Green housing project. At one point, Conor escorts the kids to a Cubs game. The boys are close enough to the field to attract the attention of what then was a premier Cubbie. “Yo, check it out,” one of the boys yells to his pals. “That’s Sammy Sosa over there … right there.” Alas, another boy points out that it is not Sammy, and the Sosa spotter is dissed by his pals. But then he spots the real Sosa, garbed in a warm-up jacket and wielding a bat. Quickly, the kids grab Sammy’s attention. He smiles, kisses his fingers, moves them to his heart, and shoots them a “V” for victory. The music swells on the soundtrack, and the boys are in baseball heaven.

Not only is The Blues Brothers (1980) among the higher-profile Chicago-set films of recent decades, it also features a baseball reference that is the equivalent of a grand-slam homer. At one point, the brothers Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) elude the police but are not trouble-free; Jake points out to Elwood, “Those cops have your name, your address …” But not to worry. As Elwood explains: “They don’t got my address. I falsified my renewal. I put down 1060 West Addison.”

Surely, those cops are not real Chicagoans; if they were, they would not need Elwood Blues to tell them: “1060 West Addison. That’s Wrigley Field.”

ROB EDELMAN teaches film history at the University at Albany. He authored “Great Baseball Films” and “Baseball on the Web,” and, with his wife Audrey Kupferberg, “Meet the Mertzes,” a double biography of “I Love Lucy’s” Vivian Vance and famed baseball fan William Frawley. A frequent contributor to “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game,” he has written articles on baseball and pop culture for many publications.

Notes

1. J. Weintraub, “Why They Call It the Second City,” Chicago Reader, July 29, 1993.

2. Rob Edelman, “The Winning Team: Fact and Fiction in Celluloid Biographies,” The National Pastime, Number 26, 2006.

3. “Stratton’s Leg Amputated Above Knee,” Chicago Tribune, November 29, 1938.

4. Bob Thomas, “Hollywood Highlights.” Spokane Daily Chronicle, February 24, 1948.

5. “Monty Stratton, 70, Pitcher Who Inspired Movie, Is Dead,” The New York Times, September 30, 1982.

6. www.retrosheet.org.

7. Irving Vaughan, “Plowboy to Mound Ace Is Story of Stratton’s Career,” Chicago Tribune, November 29, 1938.

8. Patricia King Hanson, Executive Editor, American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films, 1941–1950, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999.

9. “Monty Stratton, 70, Pitcher Who Inspired Movie, Is Dead,” The New York Times, September 30, 1982.

10. Rob Edelman, “The Baseball Film to 1920,” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Volume 1, Number 1, 2007.

11. www.imdb.com.

12. www.wikipedia.org.

13. Michael Corcoran, Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013.

Researchers in the social sciences who have investigated the effects of sports fandom acknowledge the positive impacts of team allegiances on psychological health.1 Classic studies in social psychology have demonstrated that fans will bask in the reflected glory of a winning team by making others aware of their affiliation with it2, or will, conversely, distance themselves from a losing team.3

Fans employ these processes of image enhancement and protection (Basking in Reflected Glory, or “BIRGing” and Cutting off Reflected Failure, or “CORFing”) in order to maintain their mood, self-esteem, and social capital.

Some research suggests that highly identified, or “die-hard,” fans engage in these strategies more frequently than less identified, casual fans4; other studies, however, find that CORFing is not an option for the staunchest fans.5

When their favorite team performs poorly, sports fans can maintain their psychological health by modifying their association with the team6. While the processes of associating and distancing from sports teams has been examined in a number of contexts, fewer studies have been conducted on fans’ beliefs in whether a team is somehow “cursed.” Moreover, belief in an external cause of failure is adaptive; belief in a curse can serve as a buffer against negative emotions associated with a team’s shortcomings.

Two of the most well-known sports curses have implicated the Boston Red Sox (“The Curse of the Bambino”) and the Chicago Cubs (“The Curse of the Billy Goat”)7. Beliefs in team curses are highly publicized in the media8, and fans even go to great (and disturbing) lengths in their attempts to reverse curses.9 Less understood, though, is the nature of these beliefs and the purposes they can serve for fans. Few researchers in sport psychology have studied beliefs in team curses; an exception is Daniel Wann and Len Zaichkowsky’s work on fans’ perceptions of the Red Sox curse.10

Wann and Zaichkowsky hypothesized that highly identified Red Sox fans would be more apt to utilize the Curse of the Bambino as a coping strategy than would less serious fans. Their rationale is that it is easier for fans to attribute a loss to a curse rather than blame players, the manager, or the front office for poor performance.

Data from Wann and Zaichkowsky’s (2009) study revealed three key trends. First, those fans who believed in luck and magic tended to believe in the Curse of the Bambino; second, those with a high sense of baseball fandom (regardless of beliefs in mysticism or team identification with the Red Sox) also reported increasing belief in the curse. Third, and most notably, the level of team identification accounted for the greatest variance in curse beliefs. That is to say, people who most strongly identified as Red Sox fans were most likely to believe in the Curse. Baseball fans will note that the Boston Red Sox’ 2004 World Series victory11 put an end to this curse.

The current study12 examined Cubs fans’ beliefs in the still-active Curse of the Billy Goat. In particular, this research addressed the possibility that sports curses serve a mood-enhancing function. Sports fans, one reasons, should be in a more positive mood if they can blame losses and poor performance on an outside force. It was hypothesized that highly identified Cubs fans presented with information about the Curse of the Billy Goat (i.e., the Curse Salience condition) would exhibit a less negative mood state than those highly identified fans who did not receive information about the Curse (i.e., No Curse condition).

This experiment employed a pre-test/post-test control group design. Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment group (Curse Salience condition) or a control group (No Curse condition) by the experimenter. Participants included 119 undergraduate students at Concordia University—Chicago (River Forest, IL), who took part in this study for psychology research credits or course extra credit. All participants went through the informed consent process and completed Peter Terry and colleagues’ (1999) Profile of Mood States for Adolescents (POMS-A).13

This initial assessment of participant mood with the POMS-A (“Time 1 Mood State”) was taken for two reasons. First, these pre-test data determined whether any of the participants’ moods were unusually positive or extremely negative. Extreme moods would affect subsequent stages of the study. No outliers were observed in the data.14 Second, these pre-test data determined whether systematic differences in mood existed between the two groups. The treatment group (Curse Salience) did not differ significantly from the control group (No Curse). See the Figure for a graphic depiction of the Time 1 Mood ratings. It was then concluded that any observed differences in mood at Time 2 could be attributed to conditions of the study.

Figure 1

Next, participants were presented an 18-item Baseball Fan Survey consisting of open-ended and Likert-type items on a seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Survey subscales included Degree of Cubs Fandom (measured by number of years watching Major League Baseball and the Chicago Cubs, number of Cubs games viewed on television/ heard on radio, and number of Cubs players on one’s fantasy baseball team), and Identification with the Cubs items patterned after Daniel Wann and Nyla Branscombe’s Sport Spectator Identification Scale (1993)15 (e.g., “How strongly do you see yourself as a fan of the Chicago Cubs?” “I like the Chicago White Sox”). In addition, a Superstition subscale was created by adapting items from Tobacyk and Milford’s (1983) Paranormal Scale.16

Participants either received information about the Cubs’ performance that blamed the Curse of the Billy Goat (Curse Salience condition) or information that provided no mention of it (No Curse condition).

Key to this research study is that one experimental condition made the Curse of the Billy Goat salient to participants and the other did not. Participants randomly assigned to the Curse Salience condition read that the Curse of the Billy Goat explains why the Cubs have neither won a World Series since 1908 nor even played in one since 1945. Participants also read that this is the longest drought in Major League Baseball. The Cubs performance data were then presented for two time periods: from 1876–1945 and 1946–2009. The former period was emphasized as “Pre-Curse” and the latter “Post-Curse.” An additional sheet outlined the history of the curse, beginning with Billy Sianis and his goat Murphy’s ejection from Wrigley Field prior to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. The Curse of the Billy Goat Timeline ended with the Cubs being swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2008 National League Division Series.

Participants in the No Curse condition also read information about the performance of the Cubs franchise. It was reported that the Cubs had not won a World Series since 1908 nor returned since 1945 and that these are the longest such droughts in Major League Baseball. Performance data were then presented for two time periods: from 1876–1945 and 1946–2009. There was no mention made of a Curse of the Billy Goat, or of such a curse’s history.

Immediately after reading the information in the Curse Salience or No Curse condition, participants completed Peter Terry and colleagues’ (1999) Profile of Mood States for Adolescents an additional time. This second assessment of participant mood (“Time 2 Mood State”) would test whether participants who read about the Curse would exhibit a more positive mood state than those who were presented Cubs performance data alone.

Finally, participants were given a full oral debriefing by the experimenter, had all their questions answered to their satisfaction, and left the laboratory.

Results revealed that higher levels of superstition were associated with stronger beliefs in the Curse of the Billy Goat. This finding is consistent with Wann and Zaichkowsky’s (2009) data on the Curse of the Bambino. It makes sense that people who believe in magic and mystical phenomena would also believe that Billy Sianis’ curse on the franchise has prevented the Cubs from returning to the postseason. Additionally, highly identified Cubs fans in the Curse Salience condition reported a less negative mood state relative to highly identified Cubs fans in the No Curse condition. This difference was statistically significant. See the Figure for a graphic depiction of the Time 2 Mood State.17 Because no statistically reliable differences in mood ratings existed between the groups at Time 1, there is greater confidence in the study conditions and interpretation of the results. It was concluded that this laboratory study effectively evoked frustration and disappointment within participants in the No Curse group and less negative emotions in participants in the Curse Salience group.

In sum, these findings on the Curse of the Billy Goat replicate past research conducted on the Curse of the Bambino18 and are consistent with the notion that sports curses are used as a coping strategy.19 These findings suggest that die-hard Cubs fans may point (either playfully or seriously) toward Billy Sianis and his goat after a heartbreaking loss instead of the club’s inconsistent pitching staff, anemic lineup, poor management, or just an untimely error. Research in the social psychology of sport reminds us that fans will not distance themselves from their beloved team for long.20 Instead, Cubs fans shift their causal attributions from the players, manager, and front office to a goat. And this strategy is adaptive.

JEREMY ASHTON HOUSKA, PH.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey. An experimental psychologist, he conducts most of his research in the laboratory and within the realms of cognitive and social psychology. Houska roots for his hometown Dodgers but has built allegiances to the Cubs and Mets as a result of his relocations and his preference for NL baseball.

Sources

Aharon Bizman and Yoel Yinon, “Engaging in Distancing Tactics Among Sports Fans: Effects on Self-Esteem and Emotional Responses,” The Journal of Social Psychology 142 (2002): 381-392.

Gil Bogen, The Billy Goat Curse: Losing and Superstition in Cubs Baseball Since World War II (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009).

Ben Brumfield, “Curses! Goat’s Head Found at Wrigley Field” CNN.com, last modified April 11, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/11/justice/chicago-goat-curse/index.html

Robert B. Cialdini, Richard J. Borden, Avril Thorne, Marcus Randall Walker, Stephen Freeman, and Lloyd Reynolds Sloan, “Basking in Reflected Glory: Three (Football) Field Studies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34 (1976): 366-375.

Mike Dodd, “Finally! Red Sox win World Series,” USA Today, October 27, 2004.

Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham, eds., Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs’ Glory Years, 1870-1945 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012).

C.R. Snyder, MaryAnne Lassegard, and Carol E. Ford, “Distancing After Group Success and Failure: Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting Off Reflected Failure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (1986): 382-388.

Peter C. Terry, Andrew M. Lane, Helen J. Lane, and Lee Keohane, “Development and Validation of a Mood Measure for Adolescents,” Journal of Sports Sciences 17 (1999): 861-872.

Jerome Tobacyk and Gary Milford, “Belief in Paranormal Phenomena: Assessment Instrument Development and Implications for Personality Functioning,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44 (1983): 1029-1037.

Mark Van Selst and Pierre Jolicoeur, “A solution to the effect of sample size on outlier

Estimation,” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Section A: Human

Experimental Psychology 47 (1994): 631-650.

Daniel L. Wann, “Understanding the Positive Social Psychological Benefits of Sport Team Identification: The Team Identification-Social Psychological Health Model,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 10 (2006): 272-296

Daniel L. Wann and Nyla R. Branscombe, “Die-Hard and Fair-Weather Fans: Effects of Identification on BIRGing and CORFing Tendencies,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 14 (1990): 103-117.

Daniel L. Wann and Nyla R. Branscombe, “Sports Fans: Measuring Degree of Identification with the Team,” International Journal of Sport Psychology 24 (1993): 1-17.

Daniel L. Wann, Merrill J. Melnick, Gordon W. Russell, and Dale G. Pease, Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators (New York, NY: Routledge).

Daniel L. Wann and Len Zaichkowsky, “Sport Team Identification and Belief in Team Curses: The Case of the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino,” Journal of Sport Behavior 32 (2009): 489-502.

Angela Ware and Gregory S. Kowalski, “Sex Identification and the Love of Sports: BIRGing and CORFing Among Sports Fans,” Journal of Sport Behavior 35 (2012): 223-237.

Tom Weir, “What the ‘Hex’ is Going on?” USA Today, October 16, 2003.

Notes

1. Daniel L. Wann, “Understanding the Positive Social Psychological Benefits of Sport Team Identification: The Team Identification-Social Psychological Health Model,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 10 (2006): 272-296.

2. Robert B. Cialdini, Richard J. Borden, Avril Thorne, Marcus Randall Walker, Stephen Freeman, and Lloyd Reynolds Sloan, “Basking in Reflected Glory: Three (Football) Field Studies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34 (1976): 366-375.

3. C.R. Snyder, MaryAnne Lassegard, and Carol E. Ford, “Distancing After Group Success and Failure: Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting Off Reflected Failure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (1986): 382-388.

4. Angela Ware and Gregory S. Kowalski, “Sex Identification and the Love of Sports: BIRGing and CORFing Among Sports Fans,” Journal of Sport Behavior 35 (2012): 223-237.

5. Daniel L. Wann and Nyla R. Branscombe, “Die-Hard and Fair-Weather Fans: Effects of Identification on BIRGing and CORFing Tendencies,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 14 (1990): 103-117.

6. Daniel L. Wann, Merrill J. Melnick, Gordon W. Russell, and Dale G. Pease, Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators (New York, NY: Routledge).

7. For more on the Curse of the Billy Goat, see Gil Bogen, The Billy Goat Curse: Losing and Superstition in Cubs Baseball Since World War II (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), and Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham, eds., Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs’ Glory Years, 1870-1945 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012).

8. Tom Weir, “What the ‘Hex’ is Going on?” USA Today, October 16, 2003.

9. Ben Brumfield, “Curses! Goat’s Head Found at Wrigley Field” CNN.com, last modified April 11, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/11/justice/chicago-goat-curse/index.html.

10. Daniel L. Wann and Len Zaichkowsky, “Sport Team Identification and Belief in Team Curses: The Case of the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino,” Journal of Sport Behavior 32 (2009): 489-502.

11. Mike Dodd, “Finally! Red Sox win World Series,” USA Today, October 27, 2004.

12. Portions of this research were presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, Illinois, May 2011.

13. Peter C. Terry, Andrew M. Lane, Helen J. Lane, and Lee Keohane, “Development and Validation of a Mood Measure for Adolescents,” Journal of Sports Sciences 17 (1999): 861-872.

14. Van Selst and Jolicoeur’s (1994) z-score criterion for outlier exclusion was used.

15. Daniel L. Wann and Nyla R. Branscombe, “Sports Fans: Measuring Degree of Identification with the Team,” International Journal of Sport Psychology 24 (1993): 1-17.

16. Jerome Tobacyk and Gary Milford, “Belief in Paranormal Phenomena: Assessment Instrument Development and Implications for Personality Functioning,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44 (1983): 1029-1037.

17. See the bar graph for a graphic depiction of mood states for participants in the Curse Salience and No Curse conditions.

18. Daniel L. Wann and Len Zaichkowsky, “Sport Team Identification and Belief in Team Curses: The Case of the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino,” Journal of Sport Behavior 32 (2009): 489-502.

19. Daniel L. Wann, “Understanding the Positive Social Psychological Benefits of Sport Team Identification: The Team Identification-Social Psychological Health Model,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 10 (2006): 272-296

20. Aharon Bizman and Yoel Yinon, “Engaging in Distancing Tactics Among Sports Fans: Effects on Self-Esteem and Emotional Responses,” The Journal of Social Psychology 142 (2002): 381-392.

JAMES T. FARRELL

For most of his youth, Farrell lived with his grandmother and a maternal uncle in several neighborhoods, all close to Comiskey Park. He attended as many as 40 White Sox games a year, sometimes even following the team to spring training.1

The death of Ed Walsh prompted Farrell to write about his baseball memories, such as attending the 1910 opening of the “Baseball Palace of the World.” Farrell also saw Walsh’s no-hitter on August 27, 1911, which he fictionalized in A World I Never Made. On his way to the game, Danny O’Neill walks down 35th Street and becomes uncomfortable due to the presence of African Americans (not the term he used). A dramatic account includes an outfield collision that took Tris Speaker out of action.

Farrell also received permission to be absent from school for the first game of the 1917 World Series. In 1920 Farrell saw Joe Jackson leaving the park after the news of the Black Sox had broken and heard a fan calling out, pleading: ‘It ain’t true, Joe.’”2

Many years later, Farrell recounted details of the 1919 White Sox, such as “The Perfect Catcher” (Ray Schalk) and the player who was on his way to becoming the greatest third baseman ever (Buck Weaver). Eliot Asinof was amazed at how clearly Farrell remembered that team when he was encouraging Asinof to write Eight Men Out.

Ralph Kiner, a friend of Farrell’s, said Jimmy became a novelist only after he realized that he could never be the second baseman for the White Sox. While playing in a game for St. Cyril’s (today known as Mt. Carmel), Farrell struck out three times with the bases loaded, just as Danny O’Neill did in fiction. Farrell’s sandlot career included playing for the son of Sox manager Pants Rowland at Armour Square Park, the field right behind White Sox Park.

Schalk accompanied Farrell to interview Helen McCuddy, who owned the bar on 35th Street where Babe Ruth was known to send word to have a cold one ready because it was the ninth inning. “They Called Her Ma” is a superb portrait of the woman who was a surrogate mother to Schalk and other White Sox and a hostess to generations of White Sox fans.

Farrell’s posthumous novel, Dreaming Baseball, follows the fictional Mickey Donovan, who plays on the White Sox beginning in 1918, blending with the actual Sox players and playing through the 1919 series and the subsequent decline in Sox fortunes. Donovan narrates the novel as an old man living in Florida, recalling his successful major league career.

And I didn’t get a raise until 1924. In 1923 the team was bad, and I was .321. But my record is in the books, and who wants to hear an old timer like myself talk about how he hit .292 and .321 and .300 when, what the hell, look at what Eddie Collins hit and look at Ty Cobb’s record, a lifetime average of .367.3

White Sox players interact with Donovan both on and off the field. Guidance from Ray Schalk and Eddie Collins helps him avoid serious trouble with his marriage as a result of carousing with Babe Ruth in 1925.

Clearly Farrell got his dream of playing with the White Sox, even if only through fictional alter egos.

RING LARDNER

Another novel blending real White Sox players with fictional characters was Ring Lardner’s justly celebrated You Know Me Al, a collection of letters by Sox pitcher Jack Keefe to a friend back in Bedford, Indiana. Keefe pitches well for the most part, but when he fails, someone else is always to blame. When Ty Cobb gets the only hit of the game off Keefe, it is because Buck Weaver didn’t come in on the ball fast enough. A poor performance is blamed on the manager who forces him to pitch with a sore arm. Hall of Fame umpire Billy Evans is responsible for other problems because “blind Evans don’t know a ball from a strike.”4 A scorekeeper “must be McMullins brother in law (sic) or something because McMullin ought to of throwed Milan out from here to Berlin on that bunt.”

Weaver might have thrown a game away “from spitework” because he preferred one of his friends to be the team’s leading winner. Keefe is not impressed when he sees Christy Mathewson, who makes him think it must be easy to pitch in the National League. Walter Johnson has nothing but a fastball.

Lardner’s friend, White Sox Coach Kid Gleason, is always portrayed favorably. He tries to teach Keefe how to hold men on base. “I don’t think he could learn me nothing, but I promised I would go with him.” Keefe loses a 1–0 game in the tenth inning when he intentionally beans a romantic rival with the bases loaded.

Like many small town boys moving to the big city, Keefe cannot get used to the high prices, complaining about fifteen-cent lunches and the hired girl who sticks him and his wife up for $8 a week. He feels that he is underpaid and threatens to jump to the Federal League, even though he has signed a contract with the White Sox.

Sox owner Charles Comiskey resists Keefe’s demands of $5,000 a year, bargaining him down to an agreement to continue his present salary of $2,800, locking the rising star into a three-year contract with the customary ten-day release clause. Comiskey, whom Lardner also liked, is not portrayed as particularly cheap, but he does take advantage of the reserve clause.

Lardner grew up a Cubs fan in Niles, Michigan, but when he got a job as the Chicago Tribune’s beat writer, he moved closer to the White Sox:

… and the Cubs, whom I had idolized all my life, became non-existent as far as I was concerned. Ed Walsh, formerly an object of hatred, was now my hero and soon to be my friend.5

Lardner also became friends with Sox pitcher Doc White. In 1909 he wrote the lyrics to White’s tune “Gee! It’s a Wonderful Game,” their attempt to supplant the recent hit “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Lardner even wrote a poem instructing his readers on how to pronounce the name of Eddie Cicotte. “Alibi Ike,” perhaps his best known story, is set on a fictional version of the Cubs, but he was moving away from including actual players in his fiction.

Lardner covered the Sox and Cubs on a daily basis until 1913, but then he took over the Tribune’s more general “In the Wake of the News” sports column. He still mentioned baseball but no longer on an everyday basis. The Black Sox scandal caused Lardner to withdraw from baseball, and he rarely returned to it in his fiction. His later baseball stories, written under financial pressure, never measured up to his earlier work.

NELSON ALGREN

Algren’s prose poem Chicago: City on the Make, written in 1951, captures at least a part of the spirit of the city, describing the origin of the town:

Till between the waters and the wind came the marked down derelicts with the dollar signs for eyes.

Looking for any prairie portage at all that hadn’t yet built a jail.6

Algren relates how he moved from the South Side to North Troy Street, near the alien bleachers of Wrigley Field. With him, he carried his treasures: a Louisville Slugger Bat signed by Swede Risberg and a July 1920 program that proved he had attended a game at Comiskey Park. Defending his American League allegiance, he adopted the nickname “Swede” and sought to play shortstop.

When the scandal broke, his Cub fan tormentors pointed to Risberg’s 0-for-4 day, which included being picked off and making a wild throw. Hadn’t he known that Risberg was losing on purpose?

During the 1959 World Series, Algren wrote a newspaper piece entitled, “Go! Go! Go! Forty Years Ago,”7 reflecting on how sure the city had been that the White Sox were going to beat Cincinnati. The occasion also brought back memories of another disaster, the 1915 capsizing of the Eastland, which killed more than 800 people.

In a piece called “Ballet for Opening Day,” Algren drew portraits of the principal characters involved in the Black Sox Scandal. Joe Jackson allegedly had said he didn’t expose the scandal because he was afraid of Risberg, and “the Swede was a hard guy.”

Perhaps the best of the individual portraits was that of Weaver:

Kid Gleason had developed him into a .300 hitter
By switching him at the plate
And into the finest fielding third baseman in either league.
His habit of grinning, while inching up on a batter
So unnerved Ty Cobb that he refused to bunt against Weaver:
The only third-baseman whose throws Cobb couldn’t outrun.8

The article is preceded by a quotation from Eliot Asinof, whose version of the scandal Algren largely accepts. What matters is not any rendition of the facts, but the mythic proportions of the event.

In a short story elegantly entitled “a lot you got to holler,”9 the youthful narrator tells how he had to trade an entire strip of ten baseball pictures to get one of Joe Jackson. After the scandal became public, he needed to trade the Jackson, a Buck Weaver, and two Happy Felsches to get one of Schalk, who had been on the strip he originally traded.

And nobody cared any more whether Ray Schalk was a good guy or a bad guy anyhow. The feeling grew that he may have been a sucker.10

HONORS, AWARDS, AND OPINIONS

Toward the end of his life, Farrell was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with the Emerson-Thoreau Medal, an honor he shared with writers like T.S. Eliot.11 Carl Van Doren called Farrell “the American city’s truest historian.”12

No less a critic than Virginia Woolf said that Lardner had written “some of the best prose that has come our way.13 V.S. Pritchett said “…the specifically American contribution to literature is ‘talk,’ and that it began with Ring.”14

Hemingway ranked Algren as the second greatest American writer of the century, behind only Faulkner.15 In all, the White Sox may have inspired more great American writers than any other baseball team.

JAMES HAWKING, a lifelong White Sox fan, is a retired professor from Chicago State University. He is the author of “Strikeout: Baseball, Broadway and the Brotherhood,” a historical novel about John Montgomery Ward.

Notes

1. Landers, Robert K., An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell, San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004.

2. Farrell, James T., A Baseball Diary, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998, 106.

3. Farrell, James T., Dreaming Baseball, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2007, 287.

4. Hilton, George W. (editor), The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner, 1914–1919, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995.

5. Yardley, Jonathan, Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner, New York: Random House, 1977, 26.

6. Algren, Nelson, Chicago: City on the Make, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

7. Algren, Nelson, The Last Carousel, New York: Putnam’s, 1973.

8. Ibid, 268–98.

9. Algren, Nelson, Neon Wilderness, New York: Hill and Wang, 1960.

10. Ibid, 110.122

11. Landers, op cit. 421.

12. Fanning, Charles, “Introduction” to A World I Never Made, Urbana: University of Illinois, 2007.

13. Yardley, op cit. 170.

14. Ibid, 391.122

15. Asher, Colin, “But Never a Lovely So Real,” The Believer, January 2013

Not long after D-Day, in June 1944, Esquire magazine summoned 16- and 17-year-old boys from all over the country to New York for the first Esquire All-American Boys Baseball Game.

Chicago was one of 29 cities to send players to this game. A local newspaper would select a deserving local player and pay their travel expenses. In 1944, the Windy City’s rep was first baseman Charlie Perchak, who had three hits in the game. 1 Perchak’s eye-popping fielding in a practice game caught everyone’s attention, and manager Connie Mack was impressed enough to name him team captain. He later signed with the Cubs, but in four minor league seasons, interrupted by two years in the military, rose only to Class B. His dream of stardom ended in 1950.

This is a story of Chicago’s relationship with youth all-star games many years ago. Nearly 30 players represented Chicago in these games and three made it to the majors. Most, like Charlie Perchak, did not. But these games also launched the careers of two dozen players, from other locales, who went on to play with the Cubs and White Sox.

Before the 1944 Esquire game, a photographer snapped a picture of the day’s starting pitchers with the managers. The pitcher for the East team, number 19, was known as “Mr. Zero” due to his numerous shutouts. He pitched six scoreless innings for the win, striking out seven and allowing only three hits. He was named the game’s MVP. 2

Along with the award came a four-year college scholarship. Rather than attend school, however, Billy Pierce signed with the Detroit Tigers and pitched for them in parts of the 1945 and 1948 seasons before being traded to the White Sox, where he blossomed. In 13 years with Chicago, Pierce fashioned a 186–152 mark with a 3.19 ERA. He was named to seven All-Star teams and led his league with 20 wins in 1957, 186 strikeouts in 1953, and a 1.97 ERA in 1955). At age 35, when it looked like he was slowing down, Pierce was traded to the Giants and his 16–6 record sparked the Giants’ 1962 National League pennant run. As for his #19, it is one of ten numbers the White Sox have retired.

The selection process for the Chicago representative to the 1945 Esquire game emerged from a youth All-Star contest at Comiskey Park on July 28. In the event, sponsored by the Peoria Journal, the CYO All-Stars defeated the American Legion All-Stars 1–0 in seven innings. Bloomington High School’s sophomore pitching star John Neal, a two-way player, started the game in the outfield, getting two hits and then pitched a hitless last inning in the seven inning contest. He was selected to go to New York. 3 In batting practice before the game in New York, Neal turned heads, depositing balls into the outfield stands. The hitting display impressed team manager Babe Ruth so much that the Bambino elected Neal to play outfield in the game.

Neal, batting cleanup, did not disappoint. He went 2-for-4 with a single and a double and was right in the middle of a rally that resulted in his team scoring its first two runs in the fourth inning en route to a 5–4 win.

In 1945, Jim Crosset took over promotion of the game for Esquire and was instrumental in moving it to Chicago for 1946. What was to be the last Esquire game was played before 28,211 at Wrigley Field in Chicago on August 10, 1946. Six of the 16 players on the East team eventually made the majors.

In the days prior to the game, the young players got to see two games between the White Sox and the Indians, attended a performance of the Ringling Brothers Circus, took a two-and-a-half hour boat ride on Lake Michigan, and attended a practice of the College All-Stars football team.

Ty Cobb, manager of the West squad, applauded the game. “When any event makes it possible for boys from all sections of the country to meet on common ground, and where all have a common interest, it is a big step forward in making this country a better place for our coming generation to live in.” 4 Honus Wagner managed the East Squad, assisted by coaches Luke Appling and Mike Tresh.

Cobb’s squad exploded for five runs in the sixth inning and coasted to a 10–4 victory. Walter Pocekay went 4-for-5 with a double and two RBIs and was named the game’s MVP 5 . Pocekay played in parts of nine minor league seasons, mostly on the West Coast, and batted .308 overall, but never reached the majors.

Chicago’s representative in the game, Pete Pantos, played for the West squad. He signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1948, but only got as far as Class C in his one minor league season.

Several players from this game did make the majors, however: Hobie Landrith, Chuck Stobbs, Harry Agganis, Pete Whisenant, John Powers, and Harold “Tookie” Gilbert.

Esquire had hoped to take the game to a different city each year, but these hopes were dashed in December 1946 when the magazine officially pulled the plug on the project.

Two other youth tournaments, however, had their inaugural contests in 1946.

“Brooklyn Against the World,” a yearly three-game series held at Ebbets Field in both 1946 and 1947, featured players from all over the United States (including the territory of Hawaii) and Canada facing Brooklyn’s finest. The Chicago Daily News sent Art Sepke in 1946. Sepke was selected for the game by Rogers Hornsby, the director of the Chicago Daily News Free Baseball School.

Sepke had batted .405 in his senior year of high school and hurled his team to five wins. At the end of the season, when his squad was depleted by injury, he even stepped behind the plate for a couple of games. Sepke played for parts of two seasons in the Class D Sooner State League, but his pro career ended in 1949.

The Chicago Daily News sent Joe Naples to the 1947 game. Naples, a shortstop, had batted .455 in his senior year at Chicago Vocational High School. 6 Although not signed by a major league team, he pursued his baseball dream to Class D in 1949, playing in the Alabama State League and the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League. Over the course of the season, he batted .234, and it became clear that he would not be the next Marty Marion.

In 1946, the Brooklyn team had so much good pitching that one of its hurlers only saw action in one game, playing right field. He signed with the Yankees later that summer and soon, Edward “Whitey” Ford had “made it.”

The Hearst Sandlot Classic was the most enduring of these youth games. Each season from 1946 through 1958, Hearst Newspapers from around the country sent players to New York’s Polo Grounds to face a New York contingent sponsored by the Journal-American . Chicago’s Hearst paper the Chicago Herald-American, sent two players to the game each year. In 1959, the Classic was moved to Yankee Stadium where it was contested through 1965, as the New York Journal- American ceased publication in early 1966.

Chicago’s Herb Adams was the starting pitcher for the U.S. All-Stars in the first Hearst game. Adams, who had earned his way on to the squad by virtue of his performance in an All-Star game at Wrigley Field on July 1, signed with his hometown White Sox in 1947 as an outfielder and batted .405 in his first minor league season with Class D Madisonville, Kentucky. That opened a few eyes and he was promoted to the White Sox in 1948. He played parts of three seasons with the Sox before his major league career concluded in 1950 at age 24. After two years in the military, he returned to the minors and played through 1959. Over 11 minor league seasons, he batted .312.

Another Chicago player sent East in 1947 really made the headlines. The Weber High School senior earned his way to New York by winning the Herald-American ’s “Home-Run King” Contest in March 1947. He became the first person to homer in the Hearst Classic, banging a ball to deepest center field and circling the bases for an inside-the-park homer as the U.S. All-Stars defeated the Journal-American All-Stars 13–2 before more than 31,000 spectators, including the game’s honorary chairman, Babe Ruth.

Who was this kid? None other than Bill “Moose” Skowron, who signed with the Yankees in 1950 and tore things up on the farm. In 1952, at Kansas City, he hit 31 homers and drove in 134 runs, adding a .341 batting average. He eventually joined the Yankees and played with them for nine seasons. Over the course of his 14-year career in the majors, he hit 211 homers.

In the ensuing seasons, Chicago continued to send players to New York. Their 1949 representative, Bobby (later “Bob”) Will, took a while to get to the majors. He was the game’s Most Valuable Player, driving in three runs with a single and a double. His bases-loaded single in the seventh inning plated two more and tied the game 5–5. The next batter, Ralph Felton, plated the game’s final two runs with a single.

There wasn’t much big money in baseball in those days, so Will elected to pursue his education at Mankato Teachers College in Minnesota and Northwestern University. He signed with the Cubs in 1954 and first reached the majors in 1957, appearing in 70 games. In 1959, he played 162 games at Triple-A Fort Worth, batting .336 and winning American Association MVP honors. He spent the next three full seasons with the Cubs.

Will was the last of the Hearst Game players from Chicago to reach the majors, but the annual contest launched the careers of other Cubs and White Sox. In 1954, Los Angeles was represented by Barry Latman and Jim McAnany. Both signed with the White Sox. Latman pitched six years in the majors and compiled a 59–68 record, fashioning an 8–5 mark for the pennant-winning 1959 White Sox. McAnany had the best year of his career for those same Sox, batting .276 in 67 games.

But the real bonanza for the Windy City was 1958. In that year, Boston was represented by Len Merullo, Jr. (His father, Lennie Merullo, committed four errors in one inning the day his son was born.) The young Merullo was the youngest player on the U.S. All-Stars that year, as the game (in New York) was played a month prior to his sixteenth birthday. The senior Merullo accompanied his son to New York, and the younger Merullo’s teammates—particularly a kid from Seattle named Ron Santo—were thrilled to be around the former big leaguer.

Prior to the trip East, Santo was not considering signing with the Cubs, but the influence of the senior Merullo was such that the Cubs’ West Coast scouts had little trouble convincing him. Not only did the Cubs ink Santo, they also signed Paul Popovich and John Boccabella.

Glenn Beckert first played in the 1958 game in Pittsburgh, and in 1959 was selected to play in New York. Originally signed with the Boston Red Sox in 1962, he was taken by the Cubs in the first-year draft after the season. He joined the Cubs in 1965. In nine seasons with the Cubs, “Bruno” was named to four All-Star teams, won one Gold Glove, and batted .283.

While several games featuring five, or six, Hearst alums have been found, the most to appear in a big-league game appears to be eight. On August 9, 1972, the Cubs hosted the Montreal Expos at Wrigley Field, and each team was represented by four former Hearst Sandlot Classic players. Santo, Beckert, Popovich, and Tommy Davis took the field that day for the Cubs, while the Expos featured Ron Fairly, Mike Jorgensen, John Boccabella, and Mike Marshall. Four of them started the game: Fairly, Santo, Beckert, and Jorgensen.

When it comes to players from kids’ All-Star games showing up at the same place, however, nothing tops the 1957 World Series. Tony Kubek, Gene Conley, Frank Torre, Bill Skowron, and Bob Grim had played in the Hearst Games, while Whitey Ford and Don McMahon had played in “Brooklyn Against the World.”

Yet another player from the 1958 Pittsburgh All-Star game which produced Popovich and Beckert wound up in Chicago. An outfielder chosen as an alternate for the 1958 Hearst Sandlot Classic, he went on to play football at the University of Pittsburgh. As noted in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, he was “easily the biggest man on the field…the 6-foot, 3-inch 215-pounder, who’ll probably play an end at Pitt this fall, showed speed and a healthy swing. He couldn’t get hold of one in the game but demonstrated his power in batting drills. He sent two over the wall to the right of the scoreboard in left.” 7

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he was drafted by the Chicago Bears. Mike Ditka went on to a very successful career that did not include baseball.

The games in New York continued through 1965, but the Journal-American ceased publication in early 1966. In New York, annual games between the Yankees Juniors and the Mets Juniors were played through 1970. In Boston, the Hearst program continued through 1971.

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in sandlot baseball. In New York, the Greater New York Sandlot Athletic Alliance sponsors kids’ programs as well as an annual dinner at which young players receive scholarship awards and old-timers swap stories of the Journal-American days.

We shall close this brief history with a story of the 1971 game in Boston. The experience of a youngster from Everett, Massachusetts in that contest is the stuff from which miracles are made.

Picked for the 90-man squad was a 16-year-old infielder who would not be denied his place. He went to tryout after tryout before being selected as one of the 90 semi-finalists. 8 In a game the morning of July 29, the youngster went 1-for-2, scored the winning run, made the best fielding play of the game, and was selected as one of the 30 young men to play in the finals. 9

The personification of persistence, he eventually became far better known for his ice hockey skills, and Mike Eruzione captained the United States Olympic team to the Gold Medal in the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980.

Do you believe in miracles? For Hundreds of Esquire, Brooklyn Against the World, and Hearst Participants in games from 1944 through 1971, the answer is a loud, resounding, “YES!”

ALAN COHEN, a retired insurance underwriter, has been a member of SABR since 2011. He has written more than 20 biographies for SABR’s BioProject. His article about the Hearst Sandlot Classic, which launched the careers of 88 major leaguers, appeared in the Fall 2013 “Baseball Research Journal.” A Long Island native, he now resides in West Hartford, Connecticut with his wife Frances, two cats, and two dogs.

Sources

Books

Peary, Danny. We Played the Game: 65 Players Remember Baseball’s Greatest Era—1947–1964, New York: Hyperion, 1994.

Articles

Royal Brougham, “Western Club Wins Esquire Boys Classic,” The Sporting News, August 21, 1946, 32.

Cohen, Leonard. “Bill Pierce: Pro Ball or Medicine? Esquire Ace Undecided,” The Sporting News, August 17, 1944, 8.

Dugo, Andrew. “Popovich, Kuntzler Picked for Hearst All-Star Game,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 8, 1958, 15.

Martin, Whitney. “Baseball World Against Brooklyn,” Altoona Tribune, August 7, 1946.

Newspapers and Periodicals

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The New York Journal-American

The New York Times

The Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner

The Pentagraph (Bloomington, Illinois)

The Sporting News

Other

Baseball-Reference.com

Interviews

Len Merullo Jr., October 21, 2014

Notes