The Fog Bowl

When Bears defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan resigned after the 1986 Super Bowl to become head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, the uneasy truce that he and Mike Ditka had observed for four years was fractured. Since they no longer had to work together, each man was now free to say just what he thought of the other. Both men made full use of the privilege in a series of recriminations back and forth through the media.
     The feud was good theater, and it sparked interest in the Eagles-Bears playoff game at Soldier Field on the last day of 1988. Unfortunately, the crowd of 65,534 and the national television audience saw only the first half. The second half was rendered all but invisible by fog.
    Neal Anderson’s four-yard touchdown blast put the Bears ahead 14-6 with 6:21 remaining in the second quarter. This took place under sunny skies. But when Kevin Butler added a field goal some four minutes later, the fog was rolling in from Lake Michigan and creeping over the stands. Within minutes, the whole field had been obscured.
    

KEVIN BUTLER KICKS A FIELD GOAL.

For the rest of the game, the spectators could not see a thing. Nor could the TV cameras capture the action going on behind the thick curtain of fog. “I felt like I was on another planet,” a CBS producer remarked. For the players and officials on the field, visibility was better—but still less than 20 yards. “Have I ever played in anything like that before?” said Butler. “I haven’t even driven in anything like that before.”
     Philadelphia’s Luis Zendejas kicked two field goals (his third and fourth of the game) through the mist in the second half, and Butler booted another to make the final score Bears 20, Eagles 12. The game was quite unremarkable but for the fog. Quarterbacks Mike Tomczak of the Bears and Randall Cunningham of the Eagles tossed three interceptions apiece. The Eagles outplayed the Bears in most aspects, but they frittered away one opportunity after another—particularly in the first half, when Cunningham had two touchdown passes called back for penalties and another would-be touchdown strike dropped in the end zone.
     Despite 430 total yards and 22 first downs, the Eagles never breached the Bears’ goal line. “Credit the Bear defense,” Ryan said. “Every time we got down there, we didn’t make anything happen. We stopped ourselves. The effort was there, the heart was there, but it just didn’t happen.”
     The Bears were delighted to have gotten away with the victory that few people saw. “One good thing will come out of this,” said center Jay Hilgenberg. “We’ll have a short film session tomorrow. I mean, what are the coaches gonna show us?”
     Bob Verdi of the Tribune had the last word on the game that was known forever after as the Fog Bowl. “Somewhere over there on the lakefront,” he wrote, “there’s a guy who left his seat late in the first half to find a restroom and he’s still out there, trying to find his wife.”

 

 

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Worth a Thousand Words: Halas and Lombardi

When the Bears defeated the New York Giants in the 1963 NFL championship game, it marked a brief interruption of the league’s dominance by Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers, who won the title in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, and 1967.      

     It had been 17 years since the Bears’ last championship. “I have waited a long time,” said head coach George Halas. “I guess today’s game proves that if you live long enough, everything nice you want to happen, will happen.” 

     Papa Bear was asked if he planned to retire, now that the monkey was off his back. “I guess I will have to hang on,” he replied. “Where could a 68-year-old find another job?” 

 

 

GEORGE HALAS and VINCE LOMBARDI.

  

 

 Halas finally did retire on May 27, 1968. He had played with the Bears for 10 years (1920-1929). He had been their head coach for 40 years (four periods of 10 years each, beginning in 1920, 1933, 1946, and 1958). He had won 324 games—95 more than Curly Lambeau, who ranked second at the time—and compiled a winning percentage of .671. He had won eight championships. (The Bears have captured one title in the subsequent 53 seasons.) 

When Halas retired, a man who belonged with him on the Mount Rushmore of pro football coaches paid his fierce rival and dear friend a touching compliment. “There is only one man I embrace when we meet,” said Lombardi, “and only one I call ‘Coach’—George Halas.”

 

 

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Windows in Time: The Cubs Decade-by-Decade

The Cubs of the early twentieth century featured such legendary names as Frank Chance, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Mordecai Brown. As baseball statistics guru Bill James has pointed out, those Cubs established major-league records for the most wins in one year (1906), two years (1906-1907), three years (1906-1908), four years (1906-1909), five years (1906-1910), six years (1905-1910), seven years (1904-1910), eight years (1904-1911), nine years (1904-1912), and ten years (1904-1913). Each of these records still stands. (The 2001 Seattle Mariners equaled the 1906 Cubs' 116 wins, but they lost ten more games than the Cubs.)

   

FRANK CHANCE

This information gave us the idea to survey the Cubs' performance for each ten-year period in franchise history. 

     Immediately below is the log by decades, which illustrates what we already knew--that after a sustained run of success and even dominance for many years, the Cubs entered a long period in which mediocrity or worse was the norm and respectability or better the exception. From 1876 through 1939, the Cubs (and their forerunners, the White Stockings and Colts) were 1,163 games over the .500 mark. Notwithstanding the Cubs' recent successes, they are 577 games under .500 since 1940. 

 

Years                     W.         L.         Pct.        Championships

1876 - 1879          154       110       .583         N.L. 1876

1880 - 1889          691       395       .636         N.L. 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885, 1886

1890 - 1899          710       654       .521         none

1900 - 1909          879       592       .598         N.L. 1906; World 1907, 1908

1910 - 1919          826       668       .553         N.L. 1910, 1918

1920 - 1929          807       728       .526         N.L. 1929

1930 - 1939          889       646       .579         N.L. 1932, 1935, 1938

1940 - 1949          736       802       .479         N.L. 1945

1950 - 1959          672       866       .437         none

1960 - 1969          735       868       .459         none

1970 - 1979          785       827       .487         none

1980 - 1989          735       821       .472         Div. 1984, 1989

1990 - 1999          739       813       .476         none

2000 - 2009          807       811       .499         Div. 2003, 2007, 2008

2010 - 2019          817       803       .504         World 2016, Div. 2017

 

When we review every ten-year stretch of franchise history, we find the period that Bill James pointed to and also a stretch in the nineteenth century--the days of Cap Anson--in which the club's winning percentage was even higher (while the total number of wins was lower because of shorter schedules).

     The first ten-year stretch in Cubs annals to produce a losing record was the period from 1939 to 1948. From then on, every ten-year stretch through 2009 produced a losing record--with the single exception of the .502 mark achieved between 1967 and 1976. 

    

ERNIE BANKS

The Cubs' worst ten-year run of all time was from 1953 through 1962. It certainly was no reflection on Ernie Banks that these were the first ten years of his career. Few if any players ever performed so brilliantly for such bad ballclubs and before so many empty seats as Mr. Cub, who was an All-Star every year from 1955 through 1962 and won back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards in 1958 and 1959.  

     How bad would the Cubs have been in those days without Ernie? One shudders even to imagine it, but former White Sox manager Jimmie Dykes summed it up nicely. "Without Ernie Banks," Dykes remarked, "the Cubs would finish in Albuquerque."

 

Years                     W.         L.         Pct.        Notes

1878 - 1887          623       335       .650         Six seasons over .600

1903 - 1912          980       533       .648         Worst season = .594

1904 - 1913          984       542       .645         Eight seasons over .600

1953 - 1962          652       895       .422         Best season = .481

 

Chicago Cubs year-by-year history on Baseball-Reference.com

 

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Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Jake LaMotta

 

Jim Norris, a gregarious, bushy-browed Irishman, was co-owner with Arthur Wirtz of the Blackhawks and Chicago Stadium, owner of numerous thoroughbreds, and, for more than a decade, the de facto czar of boxing. As president of the International Boxing Club (IBC), Norris arranged and promoted 47 of the 51 championship bouts held in the United States between 1949 and 1955. He was also creator of “Friday Night Fights,” which was broadcast live from the Stadium and became one of the most popular television shows of the fifties.

 

JAKE LaMOTTA AND SUGAR RAY ROBINSON.

One of the highlights of Norris’s reign was the sensational middleweight title bout between Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta on February 14, 1951, which went down in Chicago boxing lore as “the second St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

When Robinson stepped into the Chicago Stadium ring that night, his record as a professional was a stupendous 122-1. LaMotta was responsible for the “1”—he had defeated Sugar Ray in the second of their five meetings in the early 1940s. Now, after six years, their paths crossed again because Robinson had outgrown the welterweight class, of which he was world champion, in two ways—it was difficult for him to stay under the 147-pound weight limit, and it was impossible for him to find worthy challengers.

Both fighters were 29 years old, but that was all they had in common. Robinson was tall, lean, lithe, and even elegant; he was now carrying 154 pounds on his five-foot-11 frame, but his chest was only 36½ inches and his waist 28½. LaMotta was built like a fireplug; though only five-foot-eight, he sported a 42-inch chest and 33-inch waist. After strenuously reducing for several weeks, he came into the fight just half a pound below the middleweight maximum of 160.

The fight drew a crowd of 14,802 and a national television audience of millions. From the opening bell, LaMotta forced the issue. The man later portrayed by Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull stalked Robinson, battering him with body blows and forcing him to retreat from lefts to the head. LaMotta dominated for the first eight rounds.

The tide turned in the ninth. Now LaMotta’s spirit was willing, but not his body. All of a sudden he was a stationary target for Robinson’s harassing jabs and punishing shots to the midsection throughout the ninth and 10th rounds. LaMotta flashed back to life in the 11th, briefly backing Robinson into a corner and flailing at him with both hands. When Sugar Ray broke free, he took command for good. “I came out fast and got going after that,” he said.

“LaMotta was finished,” Wilfrid Smith wrote in the Tribune, “but he would not quit. Throughout the 12th round Robinson hit the fading champion with either hand. He jabbed and hooked and all that saved LaMotta was an ingrained desire to walk toward the man who dealt him punishment.” LaMotta did not land a meaningful punch in the 12th, but he absorbed plenty. Late in the round, Robinson was hammering him so savagely that George Gainford, Robinson’s manager, yelled, “Stop the fight! Stop the fight!” Referee Frank Sikora, however, did not act.

LaMotta had never been knocked down in his career, and against Robinson he retained this distinction by sheer stubbornness. By the 13th round he was virtually defenseless. For two minutes Sikora glanced nervously at the Illinois boxing commissioners sitting ringside, as if looking for advice, while Robinson continued to pound LaMotta. Jake was bleeding from the mouth and from the left eye when he staggered back against the ropes with his arms at his sides. Finally, Sikora moved in and stopped the contest.

     Robinson was awarded a technical knockout. It was later suggested that LaMotta’s reputation for occasional brutality in the ring had led Sikora and the other officials, perhaps unconsciously, to allow him a taste of his own medicine before calling a halt to the carnage.           

     “You never got me down, Ray,” LaMotta said as the two fighters bumped gloves. (This was memorably re-enacted by DeNiro in Raging Bull.) “You never got me down.” 

     Back in the locker room, LaMotta admitted that this had been the toughest of his six fights with Sugar Ray. “I just ran out of gas,” he said. He had lost 17 pounds in the past few weeks, including four pounds the day before the bout. The drastic weight loss had sapped his strength, and no fighter could hope to beat Sugar Ray Robinson at less than a hundred percent.

It took more than two hours for the exhausted LaMotta to summon the energy to get dressed and leave the Stadium. Robinson spent a portion of that time soaking his left hand in a bucket of ice. “No bones broken,” Dr. Vincent Nardiello assured reporters. “He just hit Jake so hard and so often with it that it’s thoroughly bruised.” 

 

  

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