Hazen "Kiki" Cuyler is one of the lesser known Hall of Famers. The nickname is a play on the first syllable of his last name (pronounced "Cuy-cuy", not "kee-kee"). Acquired by the Cubs in a lopsided deal after the 1927 deal from the Pirates (largely because he and his manager Donie Bush did not get along), he dominated the National League through 1932, until injuries curtailed his production from 1933 and on. He was on only one All-Star team, but that's because there wasn't an All-Star Game until 1933; he'd certainly have made several before then, and might have won MVP awards in the late 1920s if there had been any.

His .321 lifetime batting average is 51st all-time, and his .325 mark as a Cub ranks sixth among all Cubs who have had at least 1500 at-bats in a Cubs uniform.

Before Gabby Hartnett's "Homer in the Gloamin'" in 1938, this game was widely considered the greatest game in Cubs history. Today, it's been all but forgotten, so I've decided to bring it back to modern memory with this retro recap. You'll see why after the jump.

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Spring training is just three weeks away -- Cubs pitchers and catchers will report on Feb. 18 -- and on Monday, the Cubs issued 21 non-roster invitations to spring training. Some of these have been posted here at BCB before, including Rodrigo Lopez, Matt Tolbert, Bobby Scales and Trever Miller, who was just issued the invitation today.

Here's the complete list:

Nine pitchers: righthanders Marco Carrillo, Manuel Corpas, Jay Jackson, Rodrigo Lopez, Trey McNutt, Blake Parker and Dae-Eun Rhee and lefthanders Trever Miller and Chris Rusin

Three catchers: Michael Brenly, Jason Jaramillo and Blake Lalli

Five infielders: Alfredo Amezaga, Edgar Gonzalez, Jonathan Mota, Bobby Scales and Matt Tolbert

Four outfielders: James Adduci, Jae-Hoon Ha, Brett Jackson and Joe Mather

Realistically, most of these players have very little chance of making the 25-man roster; most of them are in camp to provide players to spell the starters after the early innings of the first games of spring training, as well as to start split-squad games. Some of them will wind up filling out the roster at Iowa and be injury protection.

It will be worth watching Brett Jackson's performance in particular, as he is the best prospect on the list.

The 1966 season, like the 1962 season, was among the worst in team history. Both teams lost 103 games, still the club record and still the only 100-loss years in Cubs history.

And yet, toward the end of the 1966 season, if you looked very closely, you could see signs of the renaissance to come. Fergie Jenkins was installed in the rotation to stay at the end of August and made nine starts; the team went 6-3 in those games and Fergie posted a 2.13 ERA and 0.916 WHIP. Ken Holtzman, just 20 years old, spent the entire season in the rotation and pitched credibly, giving hope for the future.

This game is one that Holtzman started and won. I chose it, though, for another reason...

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At the suggestion of a BCB reader in the comments to yesterday's random recap, I'm going to recap the last game of the first 100-loss season in Cubs history.

The 1962 season was notable for a number of things; it was the second of the comical "College of Coaches", which led to a combined 123-193 record under five different "head coaches" -- Vedie Himsl, Harry Craft, El Tappe, Lou Klein and Charlie Metro. None of them was any good at it, though Craft later managed the Houston Colt 45s for their first three seasons. The rotating system confused both players and coaches. Metro wound up as "head coach" for the final 112 games of 1962 and hoped to be retained, but P.K. Wrigley and his "athletic director" Robert Whitlow replaced him with Bob Kennedy. The "head coach" system technically stuck around until Leo Durocher declared, "I'm the manager!" at his introductory news conference in October 1965, but the rotating system ended after 1962.

1962 was also an expansion year in the National League, with the Houston squad and the New York Mets added. Both teams were bad, but the Cubs managed to be worse than Houston, allowing them to finish eighth while the Cubs were ninth.

And for the final three days of the 1962 season, a unique thing in major league history occurred -- it has not been repeated. The three games between the Cubs and Mets were the only time that two teams that lost 100 games in a season met after both had already lost 100 games. The series began with the Cubs at 57-102 and the Mets at 39-118.

The photo above was taken on Sept. 14, 1962, about two weeks before the game I'm recapping here, during a Cubs/Dodgers game. Attendance that day was 5,356, only about 1,400 more than showed up for the 1962 season finale between the Cubs and Mets.

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The 1994 Cubs season was pretty miserable. They lost their first 12 home games, not winning at Wrigley Field until May 4 in an overall 6-18 start; by then manager Tom Trebelhorn had had his famous firehouse chat after a Friday afternoon April loss to the Rockies.

By July things had begun to improve, a little, though the team was still far out of contention. Dark clouds were beginning to hover over the game as the possibility of a strike loomed.

But on one sunny Sunday at Wrigley Field, a young pitcher with hope for the future pitched one of the best games of his life. (And yes, I know the photo is from a road game.)

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30 years ago today, January 27, 1982, under new general manager Dallas Green, the Cubs and Phillies swapped veteran shortstops Larry Bowa and Ivan DeJesus.

DeJesus was coming off a miserable offensive season in the strike year of 1981 -- by far the worst of anyone with more than 400 PA in that shortened season (.509 OPS, and even for that lower-offense era, that was awful).

Bowa, at 35, hadn't been much better offensively and was getting old, but he had been Green's shortstop as Phillies manager for their 1980 World Series championship team, and Green liked Bowa's aggressiveness and leadership qualities.

There was a third player involved in that trade, a skinny 2B/SS who had put up middling numbers for Triple-A Oklahoma City in the Phillies organization, and coincidentally had registered his first major league hit against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on September 27, 1981.

I think you've probably heard of him.

Cuban outfielder Yoenis Cespedes defected from his home country after putting up some eye-popping numbers in both a Cuban league and in the 2009 World Baseball Classic (where he hit .458/.480/1.000 with a double, 3 triples, 2 home runs, 5 runs and 5 RBI. Small sample size, of course: six games).

On Wednesday, Cespedes established residency in the Dominican Republic and became a free agent.

That started a frenzy for fans of various teams to say, "Sign him! ZOMG he's the best thing EVAR!" Various news outlets reported many teams were interested; the Detroit News said the Cubs, Marlins and Tigers were "most active", and Cespedes himself about a week ago said the Cubs had shown the "most" interest, although the Marlins were reported to be wanting to be "aggressive to the point of stupidity" on Cespedes.

I say, let 'em. Follow me past the jump to find out why.

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