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.

The Double No-Hitter

HIPPO VAUGHN

     The cold, blustery afternoon of Wednesday, May 2, 1917, was not a promising one for baseball, and only about 2,500 fans came to Wrigley Field (then known as Weeghman Park) for the privilege of seeing something unique in baseball history.
     The Cubs and Reds each sent their ace to the mound—lefty Hippo Vaughn for Chicago and righthander Fred Toney for Cincinnati. Vaughn walked Heinie Groh twice, but each time the Cubs turned a double play to end the threat. Toney, a former Cub, walked Cy Williams twice, but allowed no other baserunners. An error by the Cubs put Greasy Neale on base, but he was promptly caught stealing.
     On and on it went, inning after inning, with neither team managing a hit. It was the ultimate pitcher’s duel. When the Reds were retired in the ninth (with Toney fanning for the final out), the sparse crowd cheered lustily, both for Vaughn’s magnificent pitching and for the prospect of a Cub rally in the bottom half of the inning. But the Cubs went down easily. Both Vaughn and Toney had gone a full nine innings without yielding a hit. But only Toney would go into the record books as having pitched an official no-hitter.
     Vaughn got the first batter in the 10th to pop out. Then Larry Kopf drilled the first hit of the game, a single to left center. After Neale flied out to Williams in center, Hal Chase hit another fly to Williams for the apparent third out. But Williams muffed it. Kopf took third on the error, and Chase stole second on the next pitch. Jim Thorpe was at bat (yes, the same Jim Thorpe who'd been the hero of the 1912 Olympic Games and was regarded as the world's greatest athlete). Thorpe swung and tapped a little dribbler down the third-base line. “I knew the minute it was hit,” Vaughn said, “that I couldn’t get Thorpe at first. He was fast as a racehorse. So I went over to the line, fielded the ball, and scooped it toward the plate. Kopf, running in, was right behind me and he stopped when he saw me make the throw to the plate. I didn’t see him or I could have just turned around and tagged him out.” Catcher Art Wilson wasn’t able to handle Vaughn’s throw; it hit his chest protector and bounded away, allowing Kopf to score. When Chase rounded third and tried to score too, Wilson finally recovered the ball and tagged him out. But the damage had been done.
     Toney set the Cubs down one-two-three in the bottom half of the inning to preserve a 1-0 victory and a 10-inning no-hitter. Vaughn went on to win 23 games that year, but there again he came up just shy of Toney, who won 24.
     There have been some 150,000 major-league ballgames in the 93 years since Toney and Vaughn staged their amazing duel, but no pair of opposing pitchers has equaled their feat of tossing nine hitless innings against each other. Given the scarcity of complete games in this day and age, it is safe to say that none ever will.

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

Citing Citation

CITATION WITH EDDIE ARCARO UP

     Yesterday was opening day at Arlington Park and tomorrow is Kentucky Derby day, so today's a good day to reflect upon the Sport of Kings. Horse racing is a game of odds, and each of the three-year-olds who enters the starting gate at Churchill Downs tomorrow will have overcome odds of 1,865-to-1. Of the 37,315 thoroughbred foals registered in North America in 2007, twenty are talented, lucky, and healthy enough to have made it to the Derby.

     The difficulty of getting to the Derby, let alone winning it, is illustrated by the unfortunate case of Eskendereya. He was the runaway winner of the Fountain of Youth Stakes and the Wood Memorial earlier this spring and would have been a heavy favorite in the Derby but for an injury sustained last week in training. Eskendereya's injury appears to be relatively minor, but even if he comes back and wins many more races, he will never add his name to the list of Kentucky Derby winners.

     That prestigious roll will add its 136th name tomorrow. The previous 135 include eleven that have gone on to win the Preakness and Belmont Stakes, thus completing the Triple Crown. Will this year's Derby winner join that extremely select club? Probably not. No horse has since 1978, when Affirmed followed Seattle Slew (1977) and Secretariat (1973) to make it three Triple Crown winners in six years. Prior to that, there was a Triple Crown drought stretching back to Citation in 1948.
     And now we've gotten to the point, which is to recall Citation, one of the very greatest race horses of all time (most experts rank Man O' War above him, and some rank Secretariat above him, but few rank any others above him). A recap of Citation's career in Chicago can be found below.

     Owned by Chicagoan Warren Wright and named after the baking-powder company he had founded, Calumet Farm was the most illustrious stable in racing history. A long line of champions carried its devil-red and navy-blue silks to glory in the forties: Whirlaway, Armed, Twilight Tear, Coaltown, Bewitch, and Citation. The last of these was exceptional even by Calumet’s rarefied standards. While it was not uncommon at the time for the best horses to compete in one top race after another with hardly a pause to catch their breath between starts, it was quite uncommon for any horse to win 19 races in a single year, as Citation did. “He could outsprint the fastest,” Edward L. Bowen wrote, “outstay the stoutest, and do it all with a mechanical rhythm invested of perfection.”
     Citation first came to Chicago in the summer of 1947, his two-year-old season. On July 24, he captured the Sealeggy Purse at Arlington Park, covering the five furlongs in 58 seconds flat for a new track record. He won his first stakes race, the Elementary, six days later at Washington Park. On August 16, he and two stablemates entered the Washington Park Futurity. They were trained by the famous father-and-son team of Ben and Jimmy Jones, who won the Kentucky Derby eight times between them.
     “We ran three horses in the Futurity that year,” Jimmy Jones later recalled, “and we figured we’d take the first three places with Citation, Bewitch, and Free America. So we told the riders before the race that we would split the fees three ways. That way nobody would do anything foolish in the drive. Bewitch, with Doug Dodson up, got the lead and finished a length in front of Citation, with Free America third. Steve Brooks, on Citation, said he could have gone by [Bewitch] at any time.” It was the only defeat of the year for Citation, who went eight-for-nine and was voted champion two-year-old colt. Bewitch was champion two-year-old filly.
     In 1948, Citation enjoyed the greatest three-year-old campaign of all time. He won 19 of 20 starts and earned $709,470 (the previous record for earnings in a single year was $424,195). He not only swept the Triple Crown races with astonishing ease, but he also won the Jersey Derby between the Preakness and the Belmont! “Citation is by far the greatest horse I’ve ever ridden,” said jockey Eddie Arcaro, and even curmudgeonly old-timers began to mention him in the same breath as the legendary Man O’ War, who had died at the age of 30 the year before.
     Fresh from his Triple Crown triumph, Citation returned to Arlington Park for the Stars & Stripes Handicap against older horses on July 5. That no three-year-old had won, and only one had run in the money, in the 20-year history of the event was of no concern to Citation. Before a huge crowd of 46,490, he romped to a two-length victory and tied the track record for a mile and an eighth at 1:49.2.
     Citation got a well-deserved six-week vacation, then devastated his rivals in an allowance sprint at Washington Park on August 21. A week later, the entry of Citation and Free America was sent off at odds of 1-10 in the American Derby, also at Washington Park. The race went true to form, as Citation scored by a length over Free America in a brisk 2:01.6 for the mile and a quarter. It was his ninth consecutive win. By the end of the year, the streak had reached 15, and Citation’s career mark stood at 27 wins and two seconds in 29 starts.
     An ankle injury sidelined Citation for all of 1949, but, because his owners were intent on making him the first equine millionaire, he came back to race 16 more times in 1950 and 1951. He lost on several occasions, in the words of racing writer Joe Hirsch, to “horses who couldn’t warm him up when he was right.” Nonetheless, he went out in style, winning his last three races to bring his lifetime earnings to $1,085,760.
     Citation made his final public appearance on July 29, 1951. While thousands cheered, he galloped down the home stretch at Arlington Park, then was led to that place he knew so well—the winner’s circle.


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

Splendid Seasons: Blackhawks MVPs

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

Max Bentley,
1946

     Except on the ice, where he was the slightly superior stickhandler and playmaker, Max Bentley always followed his older brother. Doug joined the Hawks in 1939, Max in 1940. Doug won the NHL scoring title in 1943, Max in 1946 and 1947. Doug was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1964, Max in 1966.
     On January 28, 1943, Max had four goals and three assists, Doug had two goals and four assists, and their linemate Bill Thoms settled for five assists as the Hawks blistered the New York Rangers 10-1. That season, Max compiled a grand total of two penalty minutes and, not surprisingly, received the Lady Byng Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player. He missed the next two seasons while serving in World War II, then returned to center the Blackhawks’ famous Pony Line, with Doug at left wing and Bill Mosienko at right wing, in 1945-46. Max won the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s top scorer, with 61 points on 31 goals and 30 assists. He also managed to lead the Hawks to a winning season—their only one between 1940 and 1961. For that feat, he received the Hart Trophy as Most Valuable Player.
     Max was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs (for five players) on November 3, 1947. “It had to be done,” said coach Johnny Gottselig, “because we needed fresh blood and no other club wanted any of our players except Max Bentley.” The Maple Leafs went on to win their second of three straight Stanley Cups that season; they would win four in five years. The Hawks finished last for the second straight year; they would finish last nine times in eleven years.

Al Rollins,
1954

     In 1953-54, the Hawks had the worst year of the bleakest decade in their history. They set a franchise record with 51 losses, against 12 wins and 7 ties, for their sixth last-place finish in the past eight seasons. They were outscored 242 goals to 136. Yet Al Rollins, the Hawks’ goalie, was voted the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player—“apparently,” as George Vass wrote, “for extraordinary gallantry under fire.”
     Rollins posted a respectable goals-against-average of 3.23 while losing a league-record 47 games. In the four games he missed due to injury, the Hawks surrendered an average of more than seven goals.
     Only the third goalie to win the MVP, Rollins had looked at life from both sides now. In 1951 with Toronto, he’d won the Vezina Trophy with a sparkling record of 27-5-8 and a goals-against average of 1.77 as the Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup. Traded to the Hawks in 1952, he endured five seasons as their regular goalie, during which time they averaged fewer than 18 victories (out of 70 games) per year.
     Crowds at the Stadium dwindled to 4,000 a game, and rumors were rife that the Hawks would move to St. Louis or withdraw from the league altogether. To the rescue came Tommy Ivan, who had coached Detroit to six first-place finishes and three Stanley Cups in six years. Named general manager of the Hawks in July 1954, Ivan engineered a rebuilding program that culminated in a Stanley Cup championship in 1961.

Bobby Hull,
1965, 1966

     Handsome, personable, and extraordinarily talented, Bobby Hull was the first glamorous hockey star of the television age, ranking with such other luminaries of the sixties as Arnold Palmer, Jim Brown, Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, and Wilt Chamberlain. He was the prototypical goal scorer—the fastest skater in the league, possessed of tremendous physical strength, able to shoot the puck at truly frightening speeds (almost 120 miles per hour). His 50 goals in 1961-62 tied the single-season record, which he broke with 54 in 1965-66. He led the NHL in goals scored seven times, in total points three times, and was selected MVP twice.
     Hull and teammate Stan Mikita monopolized the league’s top individual awards for most of the sixties. To say that Hull was the more electrifying of the two is no disrespect to Mikita. The Golden Jet drew people to the edge of their seats merely by stepping onto the ice. There was always a buzz in the arena in anticipation of what he might do—and he usually did something. “I get as big a kick out of watching Bobby as anybody else does,” Mikita said, dismissing rumors of jealousy between them. “I’d hate to play against him.”
     In 1968-69, Hull demonstrated that he was as tough and courageous as he was entertaining. After suffering a broken jaw on Christmas Day, 1968, he missed only one game (while his jaw was being set and wired), then played for six weeks during which he could eat no solid food. He finished the season with 58 goals, setting yet another new record.
     Hull was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983.

Stan Mikita,
1967, 1968

     “The guy has such tremendous reflexes and so much talent,” goalie Glenn Hall said of Stan Mikita, “that he can change his mind in mid-stride when he’s skating or shooting. And believe me, a guy who can do that drives goalkeepers nuts.” Mikita teamed with Bobby Hull to give the Blackhawks the most feared scoring duo in hockey during the sixties.
     Born in Czechoslovakia, Mikita was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Canada at the age of eight, escaping the Communist subjugation of his homeland. When he joined the Hawks 10 years later, at five-foot-eight and 152 pounds, he made up his mind to hit rather than be hit. “Either they were going to kill me and carry me out in a box, or I was going to survive,” Mikita recalled. “Luckily, I survived.” Mikita was among the most penalized players in the league early in his career, earning the nickname Le petit diable (“the little devil”) from French-speaking fans. Then, in 1966-67, he suddenly decided that he needed to spend more time on the ice and less in the penalty box.
     The new Mikita was a revelation. His high-powered Scooter Line, featuring Ken Wharram on right wing and Doug Mohns on left wing, accounted for 91 goals and 222 points as the Blackhawks broke the NHL record for goals scored in a season. The Hawks won their first Prince of Wales Trophy as regular-season champions, and Mikita was rewarded with three trophies of his own: the Art Ross as the league’s top scorer, the Lady Byng as its most gentlemanly player, and the Hart as the player “adjudged to be most valuable to his team.” No player had swept the three coveted awards in one year before, and no one (not even Wayne Gretzky) has done it since 1968—when Mikita repeated the feat.
     After Bobby Hull defected to the upstart World Hockey Association in 1972, Mikita stayed on for almost another decade. In all, he played for the Hawks from 1959 to 1980. Mikita is Mr. Blackhawk. Like Hull, he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983.

Lincoln, Washington, and Monday

RICK MONDAY RESCUES OLD GLORY

     As the United States prepared to mark its Bicentennial, most Americans were not in a particularly celebratory mood, their confidence having been shaken by the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the energy crisis, and other recent reversals. Then, a strange thing happened to cheer everyone up.
     It was April 25, 1976, and the Cubs were playing the Dodgers in Los Angeles. A man and his son climbed out of the stands and onto the field. “One of them had an American flag tucked under his arm,” recalled Rick Monday, who was watching the pair from his vantage point as the Cubs’ center fielder. The two went to a spot in left-center field, about halfway between Monday and left fielder Jose Cardenal, where the older man spread the flag out on the grass and began to sprinkle lighter fluid over it.
     “The next thing I saw was the glint of the [lighter fluid] can,” said Monday. “I figured it wasn’t holy water. That’s when I took off. They couldn’t see me coming from behind but I could see one had lit a match. The wind blew it out, and just as they lit another and were about to touch it to the flag, I grabbed [the flag].”
     Monday scooped up Old Glory just before it would have been set afire. He sprinted to the left-field bullpen and handed the flag over to Los Angeles pitcher Doug Rau. As the fans in the ballpark realized what had happened, they rose to give Monday a standing ovation. The Dodger Stadium message board flashed, “RICK MONDAY, YOU MADE A GREAT PLAY.”
     The would-be flag burners were arrested and charged with trespassing. “If you're going to burn the flag,” Monday later said, “don't do it around me. I've been to too many veterans' hospitals and seen too many broken bodies of guys who tried to protect it.”
     In the following weeks, ceremonies honoring Monday were held in every city the Cubs visited. Jose Cardenal, who'd witnessed the attempting flag burning up close, understood why Monday's actions had struck a chord. He had left his homeland of Cuba at the age of 17 in 1960, a year after it became a Communist dictatorship, never to return. Cardenal loved his adopted country and wasn't embarrassed to admit it. “Now we have three great patriots,” he said. “Lincoln, Washington, and Monday.”