Cubs Historic Photos: Fourth In A Series

In today’s game, I doubt you would ever see this type of crowd for a home team hero who sat at 499 home runs at the start of the day. The marketing and exposure of baseball (all sports) has really changed in the age of cable and the Internet.

It must have been VERY briefly…

I was 8 years old at the time. I’m guessing I was home sick from school because there was no way I could have conned my mom into letting me stay at home because I had a feeling Ernie would hit #500. It was pretty exciting at the time.

the photographer was probably in the stands near home plate instead of the photographer’s well. Likely with the small crowd.

Does anybody know when photographers stopped shooting from the field? I’ve seen shots of them with the big Graflex press cameras as late as the Dimaggio-Williams era.

(at least it looks like him at the front of the dugout)

.. saying to himself “Thank god that’s done, now I can start easing Ernie aside”, or something like that.

it’s amazing that his teammates didn’t come out to mob him at home plate. I wonder when that practice started.

BTW, I was in 8th Grade when that took place, and I remember that a couple of guys from the local high school played hooky to go to the game. They were sitting close to the field and wound up in a photo on the Tribune sports page. The principal saw the photo and suspended them.

I saved this paper when I was 11.

First, Willie Smith (#25) is heading to the bullpen to retrieve the ball for Ernie, which had bounced out of the first row of the bleachers and back onto the field. The extended WGN film of the home run (which is on the Cubs DVD collection of great games) shows Smith returning to the dugout with the ball, as Ernie is being congratulated by teammates, and Jack Brickhouse says, “Willie Smith is presenting the ball to Ernie.”

Second, regarding Ernie hitting the home run in front of such a small crowd, a day or two earlier, he had barely missed hitting #500 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in front of a crowd of over 30,000. From what I read, he hit one very similar to his 500th home run ball except a bit lower and on a line. The ball hit high off the left field wall and took a strange bounce back toward left center, allowing Ernie to get all the way to third for a triple, and for a moment it looked like it may be an inside-the-park home run (it might have been for a younger, faster player). I always liken Ernie’s 500th home run to Kerry Wood’s 20 strikeout game, which was also witnessed by a very small crowd at Wrigley Field, almost exactly 28 years later. Another weekday game, early in the season, off and on rain all day. (that game is also on the Cubs DVD collection).

It hit some sort of drain pipe at the top of the wall, which is why it took the sideways bounce. If I remember right, right around the same time he hit another ball that just missed being #500 and he wound up with a triple on that one as well. At that time, his knees were so bad that nobody had expected him to ever hit another triple, let alone two.

many times but never this picture. Thanks for showing it.

You be the judge:

“Let’s Play Two”

or

"I just pray the game is nine innings, so I can be out there the least amount of time as possible and go home."

When you look at what nice, nice people were in the starting lineup of the ‘69 team, isn’t it a complete travesty that most all of them have no ring to show for thier efforts? Ernie Banks has to be one of the greatest sports ambassadors ever—I know first hand that Ron Santo is an absolute prince—Billy Williams, a quiet classy man—Kessinger, another unassuming, class act..Beckert and Hundley—pretty darn good guys. Maybe Durcocher was right—nice guys finish last.

I think you could make an argument that the photograph represents the greatest baseball event in Wrigley Field history. The other biggest baseball events in WF history include the Whales winning the Federal League pennant on the last day in 1915 (the only professional baseball championship won in WF); the Toney/Vaughn double no-hitter on May 2, 1917(no-hitters more common during the deadball era); the Cubs over the Phillies 26-23 on August 25, 1922; Ruth’s “called shot” in the 1932 series (he really didn’t call it—but the homer was the longest in park history up to that time); Hartnett’s “Homer-in-the-Gloamin” on September 28, 1938 (it didn’t clinch the pennant but it crushed the Pirates) ; the Cubs in first place on July 2, 1967 (it didn’t last but Banks himself called it his greatest baseball memory); Phillies over the Cubs 23-22 on May 17, 1979; Game 1 of the 1984 playoffs (13-0 over Padres); Pete Rose’s 4,191st hit on September 8, 1985; Kerry Wood’s 20 strikeouts on May 6, 1998 (by some statistics the greatest pitched game in ML history). Ernie’s 500th can be in the running because he carried the team through some of the most desolate times in franchise history. Many years he was the only reason to come out to Wrigley Field. His 500th allowed long-suffering fans to believe that all the gloom was worth it—Mr. Cub reached his milestone.

…by a true gentleman. Ernie seems almost embarrassed to be showing up the opposition in his supreme moment of triumph, in much the same way Roger Maris had to be shoved out of the Yankees dugout to take a bow when he broke Ruth’s record in ’61.

It’s a wonderful photo that illustrates some of the changes in sports and society that have occurred in the last 40 years.

take teams away based on the current attendance. if that were the proper trend always, the Cubs would not be here today