The Day Before the Day

    

DIZZY DEAN

     On September 27, 1938, the newspapers and the radio were full of news about the Munich Conference, where Great Britain and France were in the process of handing Czechoslovakia over to Nazi Germany. A second world war was not yet regarded as inevitable.
     At Wrigley Field, only the National League pennant hung in the balance. Under recently appointed player/manager Gabby Hartnett, the Cubs had surged from far back in the standings to draw within striking distance of the league-leading Pittsburgh Pirates.
     The Cubs had won seven in a row and 17 of their last 20 to advance within a game and a half of the Pirates, who were also surging, having won eight of their last 10. “If we win five of our remaining seven games,” said Pittsburgh manager Pie Traynor, “it doesn’t matter how many the Cubs win.”
     For the opener of the three-game series that would all but decide the pennant, the Cubs turned to Dizzy Dean. Several years earlier, Dean had said, “Anybody who’s had the pleasure of seeing me play knows that I am the greatest pitcher in the world.” Indeed, he averaged 24 wins a year for five years beginning in 1932.
     But the Dizzy Dean who was acquired from St. Louis before the 1938 season was just a shadow of his former self. In the previous summer’s All-Star Game, a line drive had shattered the little toe on his left foot. Because the Cardinals were in a tight pennant race, Dean had continued to pitch, altering his delivery to favor the broken toe. He had ruined his arm in the process.
     For the Cubs, Dean was able to pitch only occasionally, but he always gave his team an honest effort—and a full house. He had not started in five weeks when Hartnett gave him the ball for this “must” game. “In a spot such as this,” Warren Brown wrote in the Tribune, “Dizzy Dean was perfectly at home. Here was a park packed with pop-eyed fans. Here was a game on which the entire season might depend. If you had asked Dean—and many did—what he thought about being put on such a spot, Diz had but one answer: ‘Gabby’s getting smarter every day. Who else would he pick to beat these guys but old Diz?’”
     “His arm was hurting him badly,” teammate Phil Cavarretta recalled. “The thing I remember best watching this man pitch, his presence on that mound encouraged us to go out there and play hard. Watching him pitch was an inspiration. You could see the man was suffering out there. You’d say, ‘My God, let’s go out and win it for Diz.’”
     Getting by on guts and guile, Dean held the Pirates scoreless for eight and two-thirds innings before running out of gas. As he left the field, a tumult of cheers rang down from the standing-room-only crowd of 42,238. “It was an incredible performance,” said Cavarretta. Dean’s teammates congratulated him in the dugout, but he was disgusted that he hadn’t been able to finish.
     With the Cubs clinging to a 2-0 lead and the tying runs on second and third, the ubiquitous Bill Lee relieved Dean. Lee had logged a complete-game victory just 24 hours earlier, and would end up 22-9 for the season with a league-leading 2.44 earned run average and nine shutouts. If the Cy Young Award had existed in 1938, Lee would have won it. As it was, he finished second in voting for the Most Valuable Player award.
     Pirates catcher Al Todd was up to bat. Lee's first offering to Todd was a wild pitch, scoring one run and moving the tying run to third. Then, with the crowd roaring its approval, he struck out Todd—the only strikeout of the game on either side—to narrowly preserve a 2-1 victory. It was Dean’s seventh win of the year against only one loss.
     The Cubs were now only a half game behind the Pirates, and the stage was set for perhaps the most dramatic game ever played at Wrigley Field. That game featured Hartnett's unforgettable “Homer in the Gloamin’,” which put the Cubs in first place to stay.

Reprinted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports

The Homer in the Gloamin'

 

GABBY HARTNETT NEARS HOME PLATE AFTER HIS GAME-WINNING HOME RUN.

Seventy-two years ago today, on September 28, 1938, the Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates met in perhaps the most dramatic game ever played at Wrigley Field. The Cubs were finishing fast under player/manager Gabby Hartnett, and they had sliced Pittsburgh's lead in the National League pennant race to but half a game. What happened next was, in Hartnett's words, “the greatest thrill of my life.”

     On the gloomy afternoon of September 28, the Cubs trailed 3-1 when Gabby Hartnett opened the bottom of the sixth with a double to center. Rip Collins followed with a double off the right-field wall to score Hartnett. Collins advanced to third on a single by Billy Jurges and scored the tying run on a forceout. The Cubs missed a chance to go ahead when Jurges, trying to score from second on a single to left-center, was thrown out at the plate by shortstop Arky Vaughan.
     The skies continued to darken as the game remained tied through the seventh. In the eighth, the Pirates scored twice, and only an inning-ending double play prevented further damage.
     Leading 5-3, the Pirates needed only six more outs to all but knock the Cubs out of the pennant race. But the Cubs came right back in their half of the eighth. Collins led off with a single. Bill Swift relieved Pirates starter Bob Klinger and walked Jurges. Tony Lazzeri was sent up to bunt the runners to second and third. His first attempt was foul. He missed the second pitch altogether, but the ball got away from catcher Al Todd, and Collins went sliding into third. Lazzeri, having failed to sacrifice, then swung away and delivered a double to right, scoring Collins and sending Jurges to third.
     The tying and lead runs were now in scoring position for the Cubs. After Stan Hack drew an intentional walk to load the bases, Billy Herman singled to right. The fans were delirious—for an instant. Herman’s hit scored Jurges with the tying run, but Joe Marty (pinch running for Lazzeri) was out at the plate on a perfect throw by right fielder Paul Waner. Now Hack was on second with the go-ahead run, and Herman on first. But Mace Brown came on to pitch for the Pirates and induced Frank Demaree to tap into a double play to end the inning.
     By now it was very dark (it would be 50 more years before lights were installed at Wrigley Field). The umpires conferred and decided to let the teams play one more inning, after which it would certainly be impossible to continue.
     Charlie Root, the Cubs’ sixth pitcher of the day, got through the ninth unscathed, thanks in part to Hartnett, who nailed Paul Waner trying to steal second for the third out. In the bottom half of the inning, Cavarretta hit a long drive to center that was caught by Lloyd Waner. Then Carl Reynolds grounded out to the second baseman. One more out and the game would go into the books as a tie, and the Pirates would still be in first place. The teams would have to play a doubleheader the next day, with the Cubs needing a sweep to move into first place.
     Up to the plate strode Gabby Hartnett. “I swung once and missed,” he later recalled. “I swung again, and got a piece of it, but that was all. A foul and strike two. I had one more chance. Mace Brown wound up and let fly; I swung with everything I had and then I got that feeling you get when the blood rushes out of your head and you get dizzy.”
     “Hartnett swung,” Paul Waner remembered, “and the damn ball landed in the left-field seats! I could hardly believe my eyes. The game was over, and I should have run into the clubhouse. But I didn’t. I just stood out there in right field and watched Hartnett circle the bases, and take the lousy pennant with him. I just watched and wondered, sort of objectively, you know, how the devil he could ever get all the way around to touch home plate.”
     Hartnett’s home run gave the Cubs a 6-5 victory. There was pandemonium in the stands and on the field. “When I got to second base I couldn’t see third for the players and fans there,” Hartnett said. “I don’t think I walked a step to the plate—I was carried in. But when I got there I saw [umpire] George Barr taking a good look. He was going to make sure I touched that platter.”
     “The crowd was in an uproar,” said Waner, “absolutely gone wild. They ran onto the field like a bunch of maniacs, and his teammates and the crowd and all were mobbing Hartnett, and piling on top of him, and throwing him up in the air, and everything you could think of. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
     It took dozens of Andy Frain ushers, as well as the entire complement of Cub players, to protect Hartnett from the hundreds of fans who had swarmed onto the field. The ushers and the other players tugged and shoved and elbowed their way through the mob to the Cubs’ clubhouse. A mailman who had caught the home run came and presented the ball to Hartnett, who gratefully gave him an autographed ball in return.
     For the first time since July 12, Pittsburgh was out of first place. The next day, the Cubs routed the demoralized Pirates 10-1 for their 10th straight win and their 20th in the last 23 games. Appearing on the mound for the fifth time in a week (including three complete game victories and two relief stints), Bill Lee had an easy time of it as he went the distance. “The heart was gone out of Pittsburgh,” Hartnett said. Two days later, the Cubs clinched the pennant with a victory at St. Louis. It was their fourth flag in the past 10 seasons, each coming at three-year intervals.
     On the evening of October 3, thousands of fans greeted the Cubs when their train pulled into the Illinois Central station. The following day, a ticker-tape parade down LaSalle Street drew tens of thousands.

Excerpted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c)2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert.

Stretch Drive

BILLY HERMAN

     On the morning of September 4, 1935, the Cubs had a record of 79-52 and were in third place in the National League, two and a half games behind the St. Louis Cardinals and half a game behind the New York Giants. That afternoon, the Cubs began the most sensational stretch drive in baseball history. “We suddenly got hot,” said second baseman Billy Herman. “I don’t mean just hot—we sizzled! All of a sudden we got the notion that we couldn’t lose.”
     The Cubs won every game of an 18-game homestand.
     “You ever go 75 miles an hour on the highway when everybody else is doing 50?” first baseman Phil Cavarretta said. “That’s how we felt. We passed the Giants and caught up to the Cardinals right at the end of the season. With everything up for grabs, we went into St. Louis for a five-game series.”
     The Cubs needed to win just two of the five games to sew up the pennant. On September 26, an eighth-inning home run by the 19-year-old Cavarretta was all that Lon Warneke needed as he blanked the defending world champions 1-0 for his 20th victory of the year. In the first game of the next day’s doubleheader, Bill Lee bested St. Louis ace Dizzy Dean 6-2 for his 20th victory of the year. Although the pennant was already clinched, the Cubs also took the second game for good measure.
     On the morning of September 28, the Cubs had a record of 100-52. They had won 21 games in a row and were National League champions.
     The Cubs led the league in runs scored, batting average, and earned-run average. Five regulars hit better than .300: catcher Gabby Hartnett (.344 with 91 RBIs), Herman (.341 with a league-leading 227 hits and 57 doubles), right fielder Frank Demaree (.325), left fielder Augie Galan (.314 with a league-leading 133 runs scored and 22 stolen bases), and third baseman Stan Hack (.311). But it was pitching that really made the difference down the stretch. Lee won five games, Larry French five, Warneke four, Charlie Root four, Roy Henshaw two, and Tex Carleton one during the streak. The Cubs allowed three or fewer runs in all but one of the 21 games, and in all but three of those games the starting pitcher also finished.

Reprinted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert