DaDeacs
Dickie Hemric
I was ignoring the cowboys jerseys.
Eight cheerleaders. Cubs have eight rookies?
Buchanan would make seven, maybe? That's a lot of rookies.
67. Old fart.
Spent the summer of 1969 working in a paper manufacturing plant. Everyone in the plant was a blue collar Met fan. Except me. Great summer until the Cubs visited Shea in August and dropped a four game series to the Mets to start the slide. The team disintegrated after the Saturday game. A rookie centerfielder named Don Young made an error on a fly ball in the eighth that cost the team the lead and the game. Ron Santo went ballistic about the play and the player with the press after the game. NY press put it as the sports headline in the Sunday papers. Needless to say, the team split apart and it showed in a doubleheader loss on Sunday. The slide began. Young went to the minors and was never seen in the majors again. The split remained for the duration of the season and the Miracle Mets were created. As big a momentum change as I have ever seen in sports. I suspect it received little or no coverage in Chicago or nationwide. Santo was the team captain. But the damage was done.
The 'black cat' incident occurred on the next road trip to NY after the choke had begun. Kind of a cover for the initial incident. I believe that Santo was never elected to the HOF by the writers because of the incident. After Santo died and a couple of months before his own death, Ernie Banks opened up and told this same story in SI or ESPN to set the record straight about the '69 collapse. That was the first I had heard of it in the press since 1969.
Lester v Cueto
Hendricks v Shark
Arrieta v MadBum
Let's effing go.
Cubs need to and should win the first two.
If the Giants split and head back to SF to face MadBum in AT&T Park, the Cubs are going to have to fight off the weight of heavy expectations and endless negative questions.