The Bears were not good in 1980, but there was a limit to how bad a team could be with Walter Payton on the roster. It was the sixth year of Payton's career and the fifth straight in which he carried the ball more than 300 times and gained more than 1,390 yards.
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| WALTER PAYTON |
For three quarters of the season, like clockwork, the Bears lost two-thirds of their games. They were 1-2 after three games, 2-4 after six games, 3-6 after nine games, and 4-8 after 12 games. Hopes for a second consecutive visit to the postseason floated away.
The Bears rebounded slightly to win three of their last four games,
including two memorable wins over division foes and longtime rivals.
In Detroit on November 27, Thanksgiving Day, quarterback Vince Evans scored from four yards out on the final play of regulation, and Bob Thomas's extra point tied the score at 17-17. The overtime session was brief, to say the least. Dave Williams took the opening kickoff 95 yards to the Lions' end zone.
At Soldier Field on December 7, the Bears trounced the Packers 61-7.
Payton had a great game even by his lofty standards, rushing 22 times
for 130 yards and three touchdowns. Evans had a career game, completing
18 of 22 passes for 316 yards and three touchdowns (with no
interceptions).
The Bears ended up 7-9, making head coach Neill Armstrong an even 24-24 for his tenure to date. After the season, Payton was joined at the Pro Bowl by defensive end Dan Hampton and safety Gary Fencik. Two rookies, linebacker Otis Wilson and fullback Matt Suhey, were headed for long and productive careers.
Ray Meyer and the DePaul Blue Demons were arguably
more popular than the Bulls in this pre-Jordan period. Virtually
every DePaul game was now televised, and a crowd of reporters followed the team
even on the road. The Demons left the cozy 5,500-seat Alumni Hall at Belden and
Sheffield, moving to the Rosemont Horizon,
which held 18,000. The trickle of prize recruits coming to DePaul had become a
torrent. Whereas Meyer’s previous teams had carried the aura of gritty underdogs
with perhaps more heart than talent, these Demons were a bunch of thoroughbreds.
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| MARK AGUIRRE |
For the 1979-80 season, DePaul was loaded as never before. Superstar Mark Aguirre and mainstays Clyde Bradshaw and James Mitchem were back. Meyer had also landed guard Skip Dillard, forwards Teddy Grubbs and Bernard Randolph, and a real keeper, forward/center Terry Cummings. One that got away was the brilliant point guard Isiah Thomas, who narrowed his choices to DePaul and Indiana before picking the latter.
The Blue Demons won their
first 25 games before losing in double overtime at Notre Dame. Then they beat Illinois State to end the regular season with a
record of 26-1 and a No. 1 national ranking.
When the Demons lost 77-71 to
UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament, it was the start of a wrenching and
uncanny string of postseason failures that plagued them for the next several years.
The Blackhawks were Chicago's only pro team to finish over .500 in 1980. They went 34-27-19 for a total of 87 points, 78 of which were earned with the great Tony Esposito between the pipes. Esposito, 36, was 31-22-16, with an outstanding goals-against-average of 2.57 and six shutouts. He was named a first-team All-Star and finished third in voting for the Hart Trophy, the NHL's most valuable player award. (The trophy was won by 19-year-old Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers for the first of eight consecutive times.)
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| TONY ESPOSITO |
Aside from Tony O, the Hawks' top players were centers Terry Ruskowski and Tom Lysiak, wingers Grant Mulvey and Rich Preston, and defensemen Doug Wilson and Bob Murray. Rookie Keith Brown, 19, had a fine season and joined Wilson and Murray to give the Hawks a solid core of backliners for the next decade.
The Hawks made the playoffs for the 11th straight year. They swept their first-round series against the St. Louis Blues and then were swept themselves by the Buffalo Sabres in the second round.
Defenseman Keith Magnuson, the heart and soul of the team since he and Esposito came aboard as rookies in 1969, was forced to retire due to a succession of injuries. After the season, he was named to replace Eddie Johnston as the Hawks' head coach for 1980-81.
The 1980 White Sox finished 70-90, but they had enough building blocks in place to suggest better days ahead. Tony LaRussa, 35, was in his first full season as manager. He would eventually log 33 years in the role (with the Sox, Oakland Athletics, and St. Louis Cardinals) and end up in the Hall of Fame.
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| BILL VEECK and TONY LaRUSSA |
The South Siders had very young, promising pitching. Of their top three starters (Britt Burns, Steve Trout, and Richard Dotson), the oldest was 22. The back end of the rotation was held down by 25-year-olds Ross Baumgarten and Lamarr Hoyt. Reliever Ed Farmer saved 30 games and was the Sox' lone representative in the All-Star Game.
Now for the bad news. The Sox were last in the league in runs scored by a wide margin. Third baseman Jim Morrison and outfielder Wayne Nordhagen tied for the club lead in home runs with 15; designated hitter Lamar Johnson led in RBIs with 81. The only bright spot on offense was center fielder Chet Lemon, just 25 but already in his fifth year as an everyday player. Help was on the way, though, in the form of 21-year-old rookie rightfielder Harold Baines.
This was the fifth and last year of Bill Veeck's second stint as owner of the White Sox (he also owned the club from 1959 through 1961). He had literally saved the franchise during the winter of 1975-76. The Allyn family was going to sell come hell or high water, and Veeck and his group were the only potential buyers interested in keeping the Sox in Chicago. It was a close call, but they got the franchise.
A member of the original Bulls team in 1966, Jerry Sloan played his butt off for ten years and became known as "Mr. Chicago Bull." He retired as a player in 1976 and his number 4 was retired in 1978.
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| JERRY SLOAN |
If the Bulls of 1979-80 are noteworthy for anything, it would be that they were the first NBA team for which Sloan served as head coach. Like Tony LaRussa with the White Sox, Sloan got his first big break in coaching with the Bulls and went on to a long and distinguished career, mostly elsewhere.
Sloan's starters were shooting guard Reggie Theus, point guard Ricky Sobers,
center Artis Gilmore, small forward Scott May, and power forward David Greenwood. Greenwood, a rookie from UCLA, had been drafted second overall, behind Magic Johnson and immediately ahead of future Bulls center and head coach Bill Cartwright.
Gilmore was injured in the fourth game of the season, and (coincidentally or not) the Bulls then dropped 11 of 12. The future Hall of Famer missed 33 games, and the Bulls were mired at 12-25 when he returned to action. They played only marginally better for the rest of the way and finished at 30-52, one game worse than the previous year's team finished under Larry Costello and Scotty Robertson.
The Cubs of 1977, 1978, and 1979 each stayed in contention for most of the season before fading to finish right around .500. The 1980 Cubs offered fans only a brief glimmer of hope by going 21-21 through June 1, then started the fade a couple months earlier than in the past several years.
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| RICK REUSCHEL |
Manager Preston Gomez was fired after 90 games, of which the Cubs had won 38 and lost 52, and replaced by Joey Amalfitano, who fared worse--winning 26 and losing 46. The North Siders' final record was an unsightly 64-98.
As usual, the burly righthander Rick Reuschel was blameless. A gamer if there ever was one, the man known as "Big Daddy" made 38 starts and logged over 25o innings, going 11-13 with an earned-run average of 3.40. His wins above replacement (WAR) figures place him as the most valuable Cub for seven of eight years from 1973 to 1980.
First baseman and fan favorite Bill Buckner led the National League in hitting with a .324 average. Closer Bruce Sutter and left fielder Dave Kingman represented the Cubs in the All-Star Game. Both players were in their last year with the Cubs.
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Why isn't Aguirre in the Hall of Fame??
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