El Mago Joins Cubs Gold Glovers

Javier Baez has always said that he is naturally left-handed, which would explain his lightning-fast and acrobatic tags with his glove hand. It doesn't explain the strength of his throwing arm or the quickness of his feet, but maybe some things don't need to be explained. After all, Baez's nickname is "El Mago" (the Magician).

     Baez bounced around at second base, third base, and shortstop for the first few years of his career, became a full-time shortstop in 2019, and now has won his first Gold Glove Award for excellence at that position. 

     Baez is the first Cubs shortstop to win a Gold Glove since Don Kessinger in 1970. He and first baseman Anthony Rizzo are the first Cubs teammates to win Gold Gloves in the same year since Rizzo and Jason Heyward did so in 2016. 

 

JAVIER BAEZ

Below is the complete list of Cubs Gold Glove winners by position.

Pitchers
1990 - Greg Maddux
1991 - Greg Maddux
1992 - Greg Maddux
2004 - Greg Maddux
2005 - Greg Maddux
2006 - Greg Maddux

Catchers
1986 - Jody Davis

First Basemen

1992 - Mark Grace

1993 - Mark Grace

1995 - Mark Grace

1996 - Mark Grace

2005 - Derrek Lee

2007 - Derrek Lee

2016 - Anthony Rizzo

2018 - Anthony Rizzo

2019 - Anthony Rizzo

2020 - Anthony Rizzo

 

 

Second Basemen

1962 - Ken Hubbs

1968 - Glenn Beckert

1983 - Ryne Sandberg

1984 - Ryne Sandberg

1985 - Ryne Sandberg

1986 - Ryne Sandberg

1987 - Ryne Sandberg

1988 - Ryne Sandberg

1989 - Ryne Sandberg

1990 - Ryne Sandberg

1991 - Ryne Sandberg

2012 - Darwin Barney

 

Shortstops

1960 - Ernie Banks

1969 - Don Kessinger

1970 - Don Kessinger

2020 - Javier Baez   

 

Third Basemen
1964 - Ron Santo
1965 - Ron Santo
1966 - Ron Santo
1967 - Ron Santo
1968 - Ron Santo

Outfielders

1984 - Bob Dernier

1987 - Andre Dawson

1988 - Andre Dawson

2016 - Jason Heyward

2017 - Jason Heyward 

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.

A Shout-Out to Luis Salazar

     Former White Sox and Cubs third baseman Luis Salazar, currently a minor-league manager in the Atlanta Braves organization, suffered a horrific injury last week when a line drive struck him flush in the face as he watched a spring-training game from the dugout. Salazar was said to have been unconscious for 20 minutes, and some of the Braves feared that he had died.
     Salazar was airlifted from the ballpark in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, to a hospital in Orlando, and he seems to be out of danger. It's not entirely clear as yet how much damage was done or how arduous his recovery will be. Naturally, our best wishes go to Luis and his family.
     Below is a tip of the cap to Salazar's role in the Cubs' 1989 division championship, reprinted from the recent book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports.


     On September 8, 1989, one month to the day after the Cubs took over first place in the National League East, they opened a three-game series with the St. Louis Cardinals to determine whether they would stay there. Like any weekend series between the Cubs and the Cardinals, it was sold out well in advance, long before anyone knew that these would be the most important games of the year for either club.
     The Cardinals, who came into town only a game and a half behind the Cubs, rallied from a 7-1 deficit Friday afternoon to win 11-8 and reduce the margin to half a game. It was a horrendous defeat for the Cubs, who gave up four runs in the seventh inning and another five in the eighth as victory slipped away. Their collars were a little tighter when they took the field on Saturday, September 9, knowing that a loss would drop them into second place.
     It was a dark, drizzly afternoon, and Wrigley Field’s one-year-old lights were on from the first pitch at 3:05. Both starting pitchers, Rick Sutcliffe for the Cubs and Jose DeLeon for St. Louis, performed admirably. The Cubs pushed across a run in the first, and the Cardinals scored two in the sixth. That was all the scoring for the first seven innings.
     DeLeon maintained the precarious 2-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth. Dwight Smith led off with a single to right—a good start for the Cubs that almost turned disastrous when Smith took a wide turn around first base, then inexplicably stopped halfway to second. Cardinals right fielder Tom Brunansky hesitated to throw the ball back in, not sure whether Smith was headed to second or back to first. Finally, Smith bolted for second—and made it when Brunansky’s throw was off the mark. “I waited too long,” Brunansky admitted after the game. For his part, Smith justified the seemingly ridiculous risk he had taken. “If I screw up, I’m going to get a lot of questions for it,” he said. “But if you’re afraid to make a mistake, then you can’t win.”
     So Smith, representing the tying run, was on second with nobody out. But Mark Grace fanned and Andre Dawson grounded out, and suddenly Smith was on third with two outs. Enter Luis Salazar, a veteran third baseman who had been acquired ten days earlier to bolster the Cubs’ bench. Salazar’s line-drive single to left tied the score at two apiece.
     The game remained tied through the ninth inning and into the tenth. Grace led off the bottom of the tenth by popping out. Dawson coaxed a walk. And then Salazar stepped up to the plate again. With a count of 2-and-1, Cardinal lefty Ken Dayley threw a fastball well away from Salazar, who reached out and stroked it down the right-field line and up against the ivy. While Brunansky dug the ball out of the corner, Dawson ran for all he was worth. Dawson turned for home and kept on chugging as second baseman Jose Oquendo took the relay from Brunansky and fired it toward the plate—too late. Dawson’s aching knees had carried home the winning run.
     Shawon Dunston, the on-deck batter, leaped into Dawson’s arms behind the plate while the rest of the Cubs piled on top of Salazar. The unlikely hero had batted but twice, delivering clutch hits that tied the game in the eighth and won it in the tenth.
     “We were better than yesterday,” said manager Don Zimmer. “There were a lot of little things that happened in this ballgame.” It was a year in which a lot of little things added up to make the Cubs division champions. All season long, rookies and no-names like Smith, Jerome Walton, Joe Girardi, Mike Bielecki, Les Lancaster, Lloyd McClendon, Steve Wilson, and Salazar came through when it counted. The Cubs never looked back after the dramatic win on September 9. They won the division title going away, lengthening their margin to six games by the end of the season.

Class of 2010

ANDRE DAWSON

     Andre Dawson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday, and in accepting this honor of a lifetime he showed the same dignity, humility, maturity, and gratitude that were constants throughout his 21-year playing career. You can boil it all down to one word: class.
     Dawson broke in with the Montreal Expos as the prototypical five-tool player who could hit for average, hit for power, and run, field, and throw with the best of them. A succession of knee injuries eventually compromised his speed, but nothing ever compromised his furious desire to succeed. Dawson was the National League's Rookie of the Year for Montreal in 1977 and Most Valuable Player for the Cubs in 1987. He was an eight-time All-Star, won eight Gold Gloves, and underwent 12 knee surgeries. “No player in baseball history worked harder, suffered more, or did it better than Andre Dawson,” said teammate Ryne Sandberg, himself a Hall of Famer. “He's the best I've ever seen.”
     Dawson was a true professional who, as they say, played the game the right way. He played hurt, always hustled, never showed anyone up. He didn't boast when he was going good and he didn't make excuses when he was going bad.
     There has been much discussion of the fact that Dawson's Hall of Fame plaque depicts him in a Montreal cap, and Dawson himself expressed some disappointment at not being portrayed in a Cubs cap. “I don't feel a sense of loyalty to either one of those organizations,” said Dawson. “I left both organizations on bitter terms. My love affair was with the Chicago Cub fans. That's why I would prefer to put a Cubs cap on, to represent those fans.”
     A nice sentiment, to be sure, but after all Dawson played 11 years for Montreal and only six for the Cubs, so the decision was pretty clear-cut to Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson. It also in no way diminishes Dawson's achievements as a Cub or the esteem in which he is held by Cub fans. If it is true--as has been reported--that the Cubs have decided not to retire Dawson's uniform number because of the Expos' cap on his plaque, they should be ashamed of themselves. Either Dawson deserves the honor or he doesn't, but it's hard to see how a picture on a plaque would tilt that equation either way.
     If the Cubs really are pondering whether to retire Dawson's number, they might want to think too about Gabby Hartnett, a Hall of Famer who played 19 years for the Cubs--during which time they won four pennants, one with Hartnett as National League MVP and another with him as player/manager. He was by consensus the greatest catcher in N.L. history prior to 1950.

Splendid Seasons: Cubs MVPs, Part 3

We're remembering the 19 Chicago athletes whose splendid seasons have earned them the Most Valuable Player award for their respective leagues. Nine of these players have represented the Cubs, and three of them are remembered below.

Ryne Sandberg,
1984

     “Ryne Sandberg is the best player I have ever seen,” said St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog on June 23, 1984. In an uncanny performance, Sandberg had homered off ace reliever Bruce Sutter with the Cubs trailing in the bottom of the ninth and repeated the feat in the tenth, tying the game both times. The Cubs had won 12-11 in eleven innings, with Sandberg going five-for-six and driving in seven runs.
     Prior to 1984, Sandberg was an opposite-field hitter who’d hit only 15 homers in his two years in the majors. Then the Cubs’ new manager Jim Frey encouraged him to pull more pitches and consequently hit more home runs. Sandberg’s breakout season resulted. He pounded out 19 homers and 19 triples, scored 114 runs, knocked in 84, and batted .314 as the Cubs achieved their first championship since 1945. The first three hitters in the lineup—Bob Dernier, Sandberg, and Gary Matthews—each scored over 90 runs; Sandberg and Matthews were among six Cubs who had 80 or more RBIs.
     Ryno had an even better year in 1985, but the Cubs lost all chance to repeat as N.L. East champs when their entire starting rotation fell victim to injuries. He got only one more shot at postseason play, in 1989, but continued for years thereafter as one of the most durable and reliable players in the league. Sandberg abruptly retired early in the 1994 season, then returned in 1996 and played two more years. By the time he retired for good, Sandberg had hit more home runs than any other second baseman in history (that record has since been broken). He was also a swift, heads-up base runner (he scored more runs than any other Cub of the 20th century) and the finest fielding second baseman of his era, and possibly of any era.
     A ten-time All-Star and nine-time Gold Glover, Sandberg was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2005.

Andre Dawson,
1987

     The strange thing about Andre Dawson was that a man so quiet and gentle off the field smoldered with such intensity on it. His knees were so bad for most of his career that he could hardly walk from the car to the clubhouse—yet once the game started he went all out all the time.
     So sure was he that he wanted to play for the Cubs, that Dawson came to their spring training camp in 1987 and offered himself for whatever salary they would condescend to pay him. A free agent after a decade in Montreal as one of the league’s best all-around players, he had received no offers that winter. (It was later revealed that he, like all free agents that year, had been a victim of collusion by the owners.) Dawson wanted to play in Wrigley Field because he loved day baseball and because the natural grass would be relatively easy on his ravaged knees. Hat in hand, he signed a blank contract and asked the Cubs to fill in a salary figure of their own choosing.
     For their $500,000, Dawson gave the Cubs a monster season: 49 homers, 137 RBIs, a .287 average, and his seventh Gold Glove for fielding excellence. He became the first player to win the National League’s MVP award while toiling for a last-place club. Dawson put an exclamation point to his storybook season on closing day at Wrigley Field. As he stepped up to the plate for his final at-bat of the year, the fans signified their respect and gratitude with a standing ovation. Dawson responded by blasting a long home run into the bleachers in left center.
     Dawson was elected to the Hall of Fame earlier this year and will be inducted this summer.

Sammy Sosa,
1998

     No one ever doubted that Sammy Sosa had tremendous physical gifts; he was a prototypical “five-tool” player who could hit for average, hit with power, and run, field, and throw with the best of them. For nine long years, however, immaturity and inconsistency tarnished his brilliance. Then, in 1998, he exceeded the wildest dreams of even his most ardent supporters.
     Sosa cracked 20 home runs in June, the most ever in a single month, and for the rest of the season he joined Mark McGwire of St. Louis in a relentless assault on Roger Maris’s 37-year-old record of 61 homers in a season. When McGwire hit No. 62 against the Cubs on September 8, Sosa offered his congratulations. “Mark is my idol,” he said. “He’s the man!”
     Although McGwire eventually outhomered him 70-66, Sosa led the league in RBIs with 158 (highest total in the majors since 1949), in runs scored with 134, and in total bases with 416. He also established career highs in batting average (.308), hits (198), and walks (77) as the Cubs rebounded from a disastrous season the year before to win 90 games and a wild-card playoff berth.
     Sosa was elected the National League's Most Valuable Player and achieved a level of celebrity that had rarely been attained by any baseball player.
     As time went on, though, the record-smashing feats of Sosa, McGwire, Barry Bonds, and others were tainted by the well-founded suspicion that they had been helped along by the use of steroids. If many of the unprecedented performances of recent years seemed too good to be true, fans concluded, they probably were. Sosa tried to laugh off questions about his own transformation from the 160-pound greyhound who joined the White Sox in 1989 to the 235-pound block of solid muscle he’d become. He credited the change to a daily regimen of Flintstones vitamins.