....eight years old, to be exact. And I’d been into the Cubs for a couple of years, like many kids because the gams were on TV in the afternoon (but also because I liked playing ball a lot).

I had a kid’s perspective, obviously, but ‘69 totally felt special from where I was. I vividly remember Willie Smith’s HR on Opening Day, and how the whole team just seemed energized all summer. Tons of Cub-related promotions at the supermarkets and so forth. The newspapers would run the “magic number” on the front page every day, my friends and I were all into it, and (the most amazing thing of all) after school started again in September they would actually let us watch the start of the game on TV right at the end of the school day.

You have to remember that it was already a heck of summer – the first moon landing was in July, Woodstock was in August, the political tension was intense, and the radio was playing stuff like “Whole Lotta Love,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Come Together,” “Proud Mary,” etc.

The Cubs were so good that year – Fergie Jenkins was amazing, and so easy on the mound; Banks was still performing; Billy Williams was understated elegance, Ron Santo was, well, Santo; Kenny Holtzman, Kessinger & Beckert, etc. etc. It just seemed like destiny that they would win.

And when they didn’t, well, it was tough. Every day in September just got more frustrating, and the handful of kids I knew who weren’t into the Cubs had a great time teasing everyone else.

Thanks for asking about this – it was kind of a formative experience, and something I’ve thought about and talked about a lot over the years.

My followup question is, does anyone here remember 1945?

I do remember Holtzman’s no-hitter. And somewhere at my parents’ house, I do have an autographed mug of the ‘69 Cubs outfield (I think they were giving them away at Jewel). Don Young’s John Hancock is prominent on it, as I recall. Of course.

..... and saw a lot of games at Wrigley thanks to field trips and the Mt. Prospect Park District. I was at Holtzman’s no hitter where the ball blew back over Billy so he could catch it.

That year, because Leo Durocher had been Willie Mays’ first manager, there was some talk that the Cubs would try and get Mays to plug the hole in center field. I remember calling Bill Berg’s sports talk show on WGN radio and saying I thought it was a great idea because Mays was my favorite player. Berg indulged me, being a kid and all, and said while that would be a good idea, he wasn’t so sure it would happen.

What I remember most was coming home from school and the games being on WGN and getting into the sixth or seventh inning. Santo would click his heels at the end, Dick Selma would wave his towel and lead the Bleacher Bums in cheers, the Bums wearing their yellow hard hats (how many remember THOSE?), and Jack Brickhouse would do his “Hey-Hey call when a Cub homered. We lived for that Hey-Hey call. Durocher got the town excited with the 1967 team, so by ‘69 we all thought it was the Cubs’ time, Then they started losing with regularity, the Mets, just didn’t lose, and the papers kept playing up the Amazin’ Mets angle. You got the feeling it was the Mets’ destiny after a while.

A wasted opportunity to be sure, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Durocher was the best and worst thing for that club.

I sat in what was then “general admission” seats in the lower deck along the first base line, but probably about 30 rows up. I went with three friends from high school. Our parents called us in sick so we could go.

Ernie Banks hit home runs the first two times he batted that in that game, a 3 run job in the first, and a two run job in the third. After he hit the second one, as the Cubs took the field for the top of the fourth, the crowd (SRO – everyone knew this was the year the Cubs would break their drought) slowly came to its feet as he ran across the diamond to his position at first base and gave him a slowly building standing ovation. Ernie, in true classy fashion, touched the bill of his cap to acknowledge the fans (nothing more), and then went about his business.

The Cubs were leading in the top of the ninth, 5-2, when Don Money of the Phillies hit a three-run home to tie it. The Phils went ahead in the top of the 11th, 6-5 (the crowd really deflated but didn’t leave), and then Willie Smith hit his pinch hit two run homer to win it in the bottom of the inning. It still remains one of the biggest live sports thrills I’ve ever had. Everyone hung around the ballpark for hours afterwards because no one wanted to let that exquisite feeling go.

It was all we thought about that summer, that we were going to win it all. After each win, Santo’s jumping and clicking heels as he ran to the clubhouse (then down the left field line) always stays with me.

That time was such magic in Chicago. There was no envy from the Sox fans that I recall. Almost everyone wanted the Cubs to win. “CaughtintheVines” post above is right about the papers running the magic number for a long, long time, every day.

And then, the Mets got hot and the Cubs started to slump. I was working at Baskin-Robbins, and at one point when things were really bad, I got a bunch of change, went to the pay-phone in the store, and sent the Cubs a telegram in their clubhouse, just to try and cheer them up. A 16 year old kid thought he could cheer up major league ballplayers, and get them to change their luck.

I remember the pain of realizing the papers had stopped running the magic number anymore. I remember (as does “CaughtintheVines”) the few kids not into the Cubs razzing me mercilessly as they fell behind the Mets because they knew how I was hook, line and sinker into the Cubs (you know how cruel kids are). I believe that, on the day that the Cubs win it all, those kids will think of me, and realize that I was the definition of the hard-core fan, and they weren’t.

That team had four Hall of Famers on it, Jenkins, Banks, Williams and Santo (he’s getting there one day, we just don’t know when). When I posted about the ‘69 Cubs earlier this year, Al replied saying he thought that team may have been the greatest team that didn’t win it all. I agree.

When the Cubs do win, they’ll be winning it for all the Cubs’ teams from before, but I believe that the ‘69 Cubs will find it a little sweeter than most of the other teams. They were the first really good team since ‘45. I hope guys like Banks, Beckert, Kessinger and Hickman can share it with us.

It’s going to be great.

...from the “Go Cubs Go” of that era….

I had never been involved in a pennant race before. That season, I was in 8th grade, and couldn’t wait to get home to watch the end of the Cubs game on WGN. The whole year was - until a certain time – beyond belief. You just knew the Cubs would win - I can remember, to this day, while playing an intermural basketball game—listening to Willie Smith’s opening day walk-off game-winning HR on a tiny AM transisitor radio…the Mp3 player of the time.

1967 & 68 teased us with the promise of the future. It seemed that 1969 would be the year. (I always came home from school and flipped on WGN to see the end of the games…but before this era, you couldn’t tell the difference between the reruns of “The 3 Stooges” and the games that preceeded them. After all, both shows were in black & white…and both, were comedic, but in different ways.)

But then, came late August and September….It just seemed the Cubs would never win again. I will always hate the Mets for the first-ever anguish I suffered over a team. Sure, we can blame Durocher and the Cubs for fading. But…the Mets! They were only in the league SEVEN years…..(the comparisons to the 2003 Marlins are a bit too much sometimes)..how could this have happened?

But, I expected the Cubs to come back in the 70s. They did compete, for a few years….but that was it.

Talk about a Cubs-crazy city….in 1969, the White Sox were busy losing 100 games, and barely drew half a million people. Think about that. They averaged 6-thousand a game. It was as if Chicago had one baseball team. There were ChiSox games that were attended by under 1-thousand people.

In this day and age—that seems impossible, doesn’t it?

This fanpost is what I hoped it would be. Sure wish I couldv’e been around then, despite what ultimately happened.

An elder relative was a huge Durocher fan and he pulled me onto the Cubs bandwagon a couple of years prior in ‘67. As a youngster of 14 years, we experienced the ‘69 roller coaster ride from a living room in New Orleans on our huge new nineteen inch color television (big furniture back then for those that remember). I can remember that poster of Ernie Banks on my bedroom wall, and began my enduring admiration for Ron Santo. Nice memories until September…...

But I do have some hazy memories of that season. It was the season that I truly became aware of baseball. I remember Holtzman’s no-hitter, Santo clicking his heals after wins, Fergie’s strong pitching. I seem to remember Jim Hickman coming up with some big hits that year. The collapse was painful for me as it was for everyone else. Unlike many though, at the timeI didn’t realize the significance of ‘69 compared to the previous couple of decades. Now I realize it all too well.

I started following them in 1968 as a ten year old as a lot of my family were Cubs fans. 1969 was my first full season. I had pictures of Banks and Williams (still do), the press guide and a series of little biographies of each player that I cut out from one of the Chicago papers.

It’s enjoyable following the team now but it’s not the same as when you are a kid. The players seem so much bigger and better. It wasn’t until I got a lot older that I realized that Kessinger and Beckert weren’t good leadoff hitters. As a kid I though they were great.

I was 10½ years old that summer, I remember Opening Day, running home from school to finally see the Cubs on TV again after a long winter. Willie Smith’s homer electrified anyone that was a Cubs fan and that carried over most of the season. When they started winning, which felt like every day, it was a giddy feeling. It was all Cubs, all of the time on the radio stations, TV and newspapers.

The players would do autograph signings around the city, and I remember my Mom almost getting trampled in the Dunkin Donut parking lot on 63rd St., west of Midway, trying to get Ernie’s autograph. I got Ron Santo to sign a ball for me that summer (I still have it, of course) when he was at another promotion on the South SIde. We had the Cubs Power record, my brother and I played it all the time. If a gas station was giving away Cubs glasses or mugs, we were there.

Like others have said, the summer of 1969 was special for other things. The Apollo 11 mission, the music, things like that. I am still hooked on the moon missions, I read everything I can on them.

We went to a couple of games that summer, and I remember the excitement the night before. My brother and I couldn’t sleep. My Mom would make meat loaf sandwiches and we would get up early to take the Rock Island downtown and then get on the bus. We would get there before the gates opened, and would watch batting practice. By the time we got home that night, it was a long day for a kid. I would take the scorecard from the game and a piece of notebook paper and trace the lines to make a new card for the next game so I could score at home. Eventually, I would get bored again with scoring after a few games.

We all felt in our hearts we would go all the way. When the team finally wore down and that sinking feeling hit us (kind of like this year after the ASB LOL) we kind of went into denial, that this isn’t happening. I, too, felt the Cubs choked, but when I got older and read Rick Talley’s book, I realized that the Mets played unbelievable ball down the stretch, and as much as the Cubs maybe had given it to them, they won so many games in those last 2 months that I guess they deserved it. I dislike the Mets, but I don’t have the level of hate that Ronnie has.

We watched Holtzman’s no-no, that was one of the most exciting games I have ever seen. We watched every inning of every game that we possibly could. I remember listeng to the games on the radio in bed when they were on their West Coast swing (IIRC, those games weren’t televised). Jack, Vince and Lou were the best. I miss them all to this day.

Good times, and this year feels pretty much the same, except now I’m older and have had my heart broken a few times by this team. I can’t imagine the joy I’ll feel when we do win it all. In all honesty, it will be one of the best days of my life. To hear “Go Cubs Go” resonating through Wrigley Field after winning the WS will surely bring me to my knees.

Go Cubs!

and not really a fan yet (I consider ‘71 my “rookie season”) but I do have vivid memories of that summer anyway. I remember that the local Jewel stores had stands set up near the entrance where they sold Cubs memrobalia- my Dad would try to not-so-subtley start my brother and I down the road to fandom by buying us “Cub Power” t-shirts and hats. I still have mugs with the facsimile autographs of the ‘69 infield and bullpen on my shelf.
Another vivid memory of that summer would be watching my Mom and Dad watching Holtzman’s no-hitter in August and wondering why they were insisting that I be quiet, etc.
In a way though, I’m almost gald I wasn’t more aware of the season-it saved me some heartbreak.
My worst moment as a Cubs fan would definitely be when they dropped game 5 to the Padres in ‘84. I remember being so sure that they were finally going to the World Series that year and already making plans to road trip home from college to experience. That’s the one that still hurts for me.

I was 12 years old and living in Los Angeles putting up with all my friends who were Dodgers fans. My family left Chicago when I was 7 but my brother who was 14 at the time would not tolerate me becoming a Dodgers fan so he basically brainwashed me into becoming a Cubs fan. In a previous post, I did mention going to Wrigley Field before we moved and seeing Ernie hit three homeruns so my brother didn’t have to work to hard to make sure I stayed a fan.

My brother and I were so excited that year but when they started losing the pain was so bad I still feel it. It was bad enough that we were losing but to have my friends ribbing me about it was just horrible.
My favorite player was Ernie Banks but I just loved all the guys on that ‘69 team.

The 1984 season ending pain was plenty bad too but I was much older then and could handle it better.
So because of 1969, I am cautiously optimistic about this year and at times find myself getting really excited but then remind myself of what I could be setting myself up for. The script has to change sometime dosen’t it? I sure hope so.

I was around but just a little too young to have gotten into the Cubs. For whatever reason ( and there was little reason) I became a Cubs fanatic in 71. I lived close enough
to just start going to games on my own ( luckily my parents figured it was safe for a 10 year old to do that). I certainly heard enough about 69 back then but I could just watch
many, many years of really bad teams without that particular memory.

Alabebo… alabebo… ala bibo… ala be bo bi bo bum!

My family left La Grange in 1956 and moved to northern New Jersey. As a 4th generation Cubs fan, I stayed loyal to the Cubs over the ensuing years, enduring the taunts and ridicule of the Yankee fans in my neighborhood and in my school.

A write-up about the Cubs successful season even appeared in the NY Times Sunday Magazine that August, and I thought for sure that it was finally going to happen.

As my dad and I drove back to my college that Labor Day weekend, the Cubs were still clinging to first place – a position that they had held since Opening Day.

But on Sept. 10th – a day that Cubs fan and columnist George Will once said “will live in infamy” – the Cubs lost and the National League team from New York won, and the Cubs were never to see first place in 1969 again.

Years later, it still hurts and stays with me.

they would gone 100-62 (if they were 84-52 on Aug 2nd, then that’s on pace to win 100 games). The mets won a 100 games that year, so following the pace of the Cubs it would of been a tie (of course some of those wins were agianst the Cubs). As hot as the mets were, they could have caught the Cubs even if they had played well down the strech. Being that close one small thing could have decieced the season either way. I don’t know if that makes anyone feel better (I dought it).

Thanks for all the stories about the ‘69 Cubs, I wasn’t born yet but somehow I almost feel like I lived through it because I’ve read so much about them over the years.

I remember the excitement and the crushing disappointment, not unlike other years. My favorite Cub was Ron Santo then and in many ways he still is. I got to meet him a few years ago at Spring Training and it was one of the highlights of my life. That’s me and Ron in the picture here. I was so excited I almost cried. I think when Ron talks about 1969 he captures it perfectly. I will never forgive the Mets. This year is so exciting and surprisingly I have no “feeling of dread” or waiting for the collapse. This team is so good and this is so much fun.

so obviously I have no memory of that year, but I feel obligated to just say thank you to everyone who posted on this page. This is the best thread I have ever read on BCB and I will be printing it out for my scrapbook. Just great! Thanks to CaliCub especially for getting the ball rolling…

It was the stars over Wrigley Field that steered me to the Cub harbor, and you might say it was my density, but I kid you not.

It was August 19, 1969, one of those sweltering dog days filled with screaming cicadas and an endless starchy yellow sky, in which my life forever changed. My DNA code wonderfully shifted – my weltanschauung became a cosmic consciousness that transcended space and time. It was on my 9th birthday, when Ken Holtzman’s no-hitter and a brand new Ferguson Jenkins mitt initiated me into the Cubs Nation for good.

My parents sat transfixed before the shipping crate sized old color TV set at the house. I cradled that mitt on the floor by the TV. It smelt fresh and clean and was the color of Cracker Jack the way they made it at Sears and had Jenkins’ potent, boldly defined signature embossed black and stark in it’s palm.

It’s now old and cracked and covered in autographs, and it is the living connection to those first days of admiration, which, after a lifetime of citizenship in the Cub Nation I have never regretted. The suspense was there and Ken did his thing. And my father made sure I understood that the man who signed it was part of a baseball team we were watching that very day doing battle at a place called Wrigley Field.

Mike Royko would tell me later it was called Cubs’ Park. No matter.

If baseball stadiums were cathedrals, Cubs’ Park became to me and still is Notre Dame. From the bleachers to the big red sign out front, there is no greater house that passion has built. Fenway Park? Feh! Yankee Stadium? Don’t make me laugh.

I watched the ever accursed Mets wreak their havoc, but never flinched as my nine year old optimism knew the Cubbies would be back. I came to love those bricks and that big green scoreboard as surely as my hearth itself. And family always knows you’ll come home – and we’re all awaiting that day when 1908 will once more be just a date and the Nation will let out a collective explosion of jubilation unseen since that day.

Since that hot day in 1969, I’ve been possessed by that conviction. I’ve never looked back. My four brothers and mom never did. No real Cub fan will. We know this unlike the “baseball fans” of clubs who don’t even see half their own raggedy tribe at their soulless stadia until playoff time looms. The Cubs didn’t need marketing strategies or sausage races to keep us connected. We’ve watched breathlessly with the Nation all of the efforts of those journeymen of the 1970’s, the boys of summer in the 1980’s and witnessed the 1990’s unfold into this 21st century chase for the ultimate fruit of their labor: a return to the World Series.

When the Chicago Cubs do so, as they eventually will (remember, you gotta wait until next year!), they will get there backed by the most longsuffering yet diehard fans this world will ever know: the Cubs Nation. And I will be right there with us all, still screaming, weeping, laughing, sighing but ever rooting them on .. we will enjoy that moment like no one else will.

Our Cubs and our Nation will overcome.

We shall be Number One.

(this is from my essay on what it means to be a Cubs fan ..)

I’ve really enjoyed reading this post. Although I was probably a bit older than most of those who’ve supplied comments (I was born in ’45—maybe the reason I’ve always felt my own destiny so tied to the Cubs); the emotional highs and lows so many of you have described still give me goose bumps.

As it happened, I was on active duty in the USAR in ’69 from mid-April to mid-August. I vividly remember the euphoria after Willie Smith’s opening day walkoff HR, but I was quite literally in boot camp just days afterwards. All I could find out about the Cubs would generally come only sporadically through newspapers that were days, sometimes even weeks, old. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Kessinger, Beckert, and Williams were on an unbelievable tear; a rejuvenated Ernie was more productive than he’d been for several years; Santo was very good—and great defensively at third; Hundley a rock behind the plate with some punch as a hitter; and Fergie, Hands, and Holtzman a great 1-2-3 in the days of complete games and four-man rotations. I do remember getting to see one televised mid-summer night game on a scratchy black & white TV in a depressing army PX. The Cubs were either playing at Houston or Cincinnati and trailing by a run when Sweet Swinging Billy Williams—my favorite as my avatar would suggest—hit a game tying HR with two outs in the top of the ninth. The Cubs went on to win in extra innings. I was one happy crew cut army dude—the high point of my army career as far as I’m concerned.

When I got out in August, I headed to Wrigley one of my first days back home—a mid-week series opener against the Braves. Cubs were still flying high. Crowd was going to be big but, feeling lucky, I managed to get a bleacher ticket. Normally, I’d head for either left or right field (one had lots of options on those under 10,000 games), but this day was a full or near full house so I had to settle for a seat in center field almost directly under the scoreboard. As some of you may have by now surmised, the game I’d gone to was Kenny Holtzman’s no-hitter . Sitting where I was, I had a great view of Hank Aaron’s long drive that the wind kept in the park. The ball appeared to be over the ivy, and Billy Williams appeared to have given up on it, but somehow the wind held it up for what seemed like forever, and Billy adjusted in time to make the catch.

I don’t know whether other fans who remember Kenny’s no-no would agree with me, but I didn’t think Holtzman was at his very best that day. In addition to Hammerin’ Hank’s, there were several had hit balls hit right at people and some good defense needed to bail Kenny out. I also believe he walked 4-5 as well. I’ve always felt too much good Cubs mojo got used up that day. They dropped the next two games of the series to the Braves, and it was downhill from there.

By the time I moved back to Madison in September where I was a grad student, the season was pretty much gone. Worst part was all the crap I had to take from two of my best buddies who were from New York and rabid Mets fans. They would invariably greet me by putting their hands around their throats and allude to the "Cubbies" as chokers. Back then, at least in Chicago, I don’t recall the Cubs being referred to as "the Cubbies," as they are now, so the reference still carries a slightly pejorative memory for me. And I still hate the Mets despite now living in upstate New York. Like Ron Santo, I rejoiced when the Mets collapsed last year. I even sent one of the above mentioned New Yorkers a copy of Santo’s comments to that effect. He wrote back and said that both Ronnie and I were candidates for "Irish Alzheimer’s" where you "forget everything but the grudge." He’s probably right.

I truly appreciate them. I’m proud to be a fan.

Let’s face it. In 1969, Chicago was hardly a Cubs town or Sox town. It was a Blackhawks town. They were the most popular team in Chicago.

n/t

I Grew up in the 50’s and 60’s on the North side and was always a die hard Cub fan. My great grandfather, Tom Carey had his 100th birthday at Wrigley Field in 1962. My gradfather, also Tom Carey died in 1994 and we buried him with a Cub shirt under his suit and a Cub hat in the coffin. He was the last person alive I knew that had seen the Cubs win the WS at the Westside Grounds. I now live in SoCal and enjoy the weather, but miss my family and friends especially when it comes to the summer and Cub games. I used to deliver the Chicago American and before that the Daily News and always finished my route near Clark and Irving and rode down Seminary along the railroad tracks that are now a linear park and locked by bike near the fire station on Waveland Avenue and met the business men coming out of the game to get their ticket stubs. I must have seen over 1,000 games over the years and most between 1960-1969, the year my heart broke when the Cubs lost it in September to the Miracle %&*$# Mets. I used to bring a paper in to give to the Cubs, usually Ernie, Ron, Billy or Fergie and they read it while they played, not so well most years, but in ‘69 they really took off and I got a job at North Avenue Beach as a lifeguard for the Chicago Park Service and did not see many games since I worked on the 1-10pm shift. I did get to see a lot of White “W” flags until late August when they started turning into "L"s more often than not. Well, I can tell you this is the year. Hey every team can have a bad century and the Cubs have had theirs! It’s our turn now….