Cubs vs. Yankees, 2003

    
     The New York Yankees are in town this weekend to visit the Cubs for the first time since the two clubs staged a memorable series in June 2003. This year’s Cubs appear hard-pressed to stay out of the cellar, but in 2003 the Cubs were destined to win a division championship. They would have met the Yankees again in that year’s World Series but for their unfortunate meltdown in Games 6 and 7 of the National League Championship Series against the Florida Marlins. All that was a long way off on the first weekend of June. 

ERIC KARROS (right) IS GREETED BY
MOISES ALOU AT HOME PLATE.

     Sammy Sosa’s suspension for using a corked bat was still pending when the New York Yankees invaded Wrigley Field just three days after the episode, so he was in the lineup against the 26-time world champions, who were playing the Cubs for the first time since the 1938 World Series.
     The park was absolutely packed for all three games, and the atmosphere was fully charged. The first game, on Friday, June 6, was played in a light mist under cloudy skies. The Yankees led 5-0 after two and a half innings, but Cubs starter Carlos Zambrano and four relievers held them in check after that. A two-run homer by second baseman Ramon Martinez in the third and a solo shot by center fielder Corey Patterson in the eighth got the Cubs back in the game. In the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs had the tying runs on second and third and the winning run at the plate when Hee Seop Choi struck out swinging.
     Saturday’s game matched Cubs righthander Kerry Wood against Roger Clemens, a six-time Cy Young award winner who was still potent as ever at the age of 40. Wood had exploded onto the scene five years earlier, striking out 20 Houston Astros on May 6, 1998, in just his fifth major-league outing. Only two Astros reached base, one on a scratch single off the glove of third baseman Kevin Orie and the other when he was hit by a pitch. Eight pitches were hit into fair territory, just two out of the infield. With 20 strikeouts in a single game, Wood had joined a very exclusive club whose only other member was Clemens. He’d won 13 games for the season, fanned 233 batters in 167 innings, and been named Rookie of the Year. He had battled injuries and inconsistency since then, but he was coming into his own by 2003, and he made the All-Star team for the first time.
     Wood admitted he was thrilled to be facing Clemens, a fellow Texan and (along with Nolan Ryan) his idol. Adding some spice to the mix was the fact that Clemens was seeking his 300th victory.
     Both pitchers were sharp. A solo homer by Hideki Matsui in the fifth was the Yankees’ lone hit off Wood for the first seven innings. Clemens retired 15 straight Cubs in one stretch and carried a two-hit shutout into the bottom of the seventh. With two on and one out, New York manager Joe Torre removed Clemens and handed the ball to reliever Juan Acevedo. Clemens did not appear to be happy, and he was less so when Cubs first baseman Eric Karros drove Acevedo’s first offering into the left-field bleachers to give the Cubs a 3-1 lead.
     The drama wasn’t over yet. With two on and two out in the Yankees’ eighth, Wood issued a walk to Derek Jeter. Cubs skipper Dusty Baker called for lefty Mike Remlinger to face the next hitter, Jason Giambi. Wood departed to a standing ovation; he had allowed just three hits and three walks while striking out 11. Giambi, a former American League MVP, had already clouted 14 homers on the season, including one the day before. After a swinging strike and a called strike, he waited out three deliveries that were off the mark. Then, with the crowd roaring, the baserunners going, and no margin for error, the crafty Remlinger threw a changeup, right over the heart of the plate. Giambi swung through it for strike three.
     The Cubs won 5-2. “The most electric game I’ve ever been a part of,” said Karros.
     The Cubs won again Sunday night, defeating the Yankees 8-7. Entertaining as it was, the series against the New Yorkers was hardly crucial, for there were still 101 games left in the season. But the Cubs were gaining credibility and confidence. “You don’t know,” Baker said, “if this is a defining moment or a turning point until down the road.”

Excerpted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports

(c) by Christopher Tabbert

The "Called Shot"

CHARLIE ROOT

     In Game 3 of the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field, Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees strode to the plate in the fifth inning under a barrage of lemons and other objects thrown from the stands and a hail of verbal abuse from the Cubs’ dugout. Bad blood had been stirred up between the two clubs over the Cubs’ decision to award shortstop Mark Koenig, a former Yankee, only a partial share of their World Series money because he had not played the entire season for the Cubs. Koenig had made key contributions to Chicago’s pennant drive, and Ruth, among others, was outspoken in his belief that the decision was petty and unjust—although those weren’t the exact words he used.
     The mighty Yankees had a 2-0 lead in the Series. The game was tied 4-4. Homers by Ruth and Lou Gehrig off Cubs ace Charlie Root had given New York an early 4-0 lead, but the Cubs had come back to knot it up in the fourth. When Ruth came up again in the fifth, the crowd and the Cubs’ bench were in an uproar.
     Root threw the first pitch for a called strike, then threw two balls. His next pitch was another called strike, and the jeering from the crowd grew louder. At this point Ruth made an ambiguous gesture with his index finger (or was it his middle finger?). Was he pointing toward the Cubs’ dugout, toward Root, or toward the center-field bleachers? Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett thought he heard Ruth say, “It only takes one to hit it.” Gehrig, who was in the on-deck circle, remembered it this way: “Babe was jawing with Root and what he said was, ‘I’m going to knock the next pitch down your goddamned throat.’”
     The next pitch was low and away. Ruth swung and hit a tremendous home run into the center-field stands—reportedly the longest ever hit at Wrigley Field to that time. Some in the crowd sat in stunned silence, while others (including presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt) cheered. Gehrig followed with another home run of his own, and the Yankees went on to sweep the Cubs, four games to none. “We should have gone home after winning the pennant,” Cubs second baseman Billy Herman said. “The World Series was a disaster.”
     Had Ruth really called his shot? Most newspaper accounts of the game made no mention of it, and Ruth himself neither confirmed nor denied it until much later, by which time the event had become so ingrained in baseball mythology that there was no turning back. Then he said, “Well, I guess the good Lord was with me.”
     For his part, Charlie Root swore until his dying day that Ruth had never pointed to the seats. If he had, said Root, “I’d have put one in his ear and knocked him on his ass.”

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

Damn Yankees

The New York Yankees won the American League pennant 14 times in 16 years between 1949 and 1964. Now that’s what you call a dynasty. Al Lopez took both of the pennants that escaped the Yankees’ grasp during this period, as manager of the 1954 Cleveland Indians and the 1959 White Sox. A four-game series that took place 51 years ago this weekend at old Comiskey Park proved that the ’59 Sox were for real.



AL LOPEZ

     The White Sox entered the 1959 season as clearly a team on the rise. After five straight third-place finishes from 1952 through 1956, they’d moved up to second in 1957 and 1958. But standing between the Sox and their first American League championship since 1919 were the mighty New York Yankees, winners of four pennants in a row and nine in the past 10 years. The Yankees were managed by the legendary Casey Stengel, and their roster included future Hall-of-Famers Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle. It was said that rooting for them was like rooting for that other fifties powerhouse, U.S. Steel.
     The U.S. Steel analogy was apt, for the Yankees and most teams played baseball with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The White Sox were the exception that proved the rule. In an era dominated by lead-footed sluggers who launched tape-measure home runs, the Sox excelled at “small ball”—they had solid pitching, played airtight defense, and led the league in stolen bases every year. They were a throwback to teams of 40 and 50 years earlier. “In modern baseball,” Sox owner Bill Veeck wrote, “the winning equation is Power + Pitching = Pennant. Teams like the White Sox which depend upon speed and defense delight the hearts of all old-timers and generally finish in the second division.”
     But Veeck’s manager was convinced that his club could beat the Yankees, and he said so. “I should have listened to Al Lopez,” wrote Veeck. “Al told me from the beginning that we were going to win it. ‘This,’ he kept telling me, ‘is my kind of team.’” Lopez’s opinion carried some weight. In eight seasons of managing, first with Cleveland and then with the Sox, he had never finished lower than second place, and he had guided the Indians to the flag in 1954 for the lone interruption in the Yankees’ decade of dominance.

     Throughout the first half of the season, Cleveland set a rather leisurely pace with the White Sox close behind. Even the lowly Kansas City A’s and Washington Senators remained within 10 games of the front. It was a case of “man bites dog” on May 20, when the Yankees found themselves in last place. They soon climbed out of the cellar but continued to flirt with the .500 mark. Nonetheless, many fans assumed that it was just a matter of time before the Yankees took up residence at the top of the standings.
     When New York invaded Comiskey Park for a four-game series on the last weekend of June, the race was starting to take shape. The Indians clung to a one-game lead over the White Sox, with the surprising Baltimore Orioles a game and a half out, and the resurgent Yankees only two games back. On Friday night, June 26, Sox center fielder Jim Landis went four-for-four to no avail, as New York won 8-4 to draw even with Chicago at 36-32.
     On Saturday, though, the Sox bounced back in dramatic fashion. They trailed 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth when Nellie Fox walked with two outs and nobody on. First baseman Earl Torgeson followed with a single, and catcher Sherm Lollar walked to load the bases. Then Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, a seldom-used outfielder, lofted a wind-aided grand slam off the upper-deck railing in right field. New York’s Norm Siebern and Bill “Moose” Skowron clouted back-to-back homers to open the ninth, but the Sox held on for a nerve-wracking 5-4 win that moved them into a second-place tie with Baltimore.
     Sunday belonged to the White Sox, who swept a doubleheader by scores of 9-2 and 4-2. In the first game, Early Wynn bested Whitey Ford. “If I had to win one game,” Stengel remarked, “I’d have to say I’d want Wynn to go. He knows just about all there is to know about pitching.” In the second game, Dick Donovan surrendered only one hit through the first seven innings and only five altogether before he began to falter in the ninth. Turk Lown retired the last two Yankees to preserve the win.
     The White Sox’ three-out-of-four weekend left them only a game out of first place and dropped New York to four games out. More importantly, it damaged the Yankees’ aura of invincibility in the minds of the Sox players. The Sox were on their way.

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