Cubs Historic Photos: Tenth In A Series

I was looking at the uniform of #8, not the outfield wall numbering. I knew this was Beck & Kess, but I thought it was against the Mets. Agee was #8, wasn’t he? That’s where my mind went.

That was quite the infield. Yeah, I know the first baseman Ernie Banks was not as good as the shortstop Ernie Banks, but Mr. Cub could still play some in the late 1960’s. Santo was great. For their time, Kessinger and Beckert were good, not great. I realize that Kessinger’s offensive statistics with his lack of power and low OBP are far less than impressive. Kess was an all-star six times.

Since then, we’ve had the Garvey-Lopes-Cey-Russell Dodgers infield that stayed together for about 10 years. These days, it’s hard to keep a good infield together for any length of time. The Yankees infield of Tino Martinez, Knoblauch, Brosius, and Jeter was only together as an infield from 1998-2000 with Knoblauch moving to left field and Soriano playing second base in 2001.

Roseboro was 1 for 7 in SB attempts in 1965. Of course, maybe he was still shaken up by his harrowing encounter with Mr. Ed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVm-HwAkVp8

Johnny Roseboro was involved in what might possibly be the worst benches-clearing brawl in baseball ever.

Dodgers at Giants, in August 1965. Sandy Koufax (LA) vs. Juan Marichal (SF).

During the game, Marichal nearly hit Dodgers batters Maury Willis and Ron Fairly with pitches. When Marichal came to bat, Koufax didn’t attempt to retaliate. Roseboro, however, returned pitches to Koufax dangerously close to Marichal’s head.

Marichal, in one of the ugliest incidents ever in baseball, took the bat and began attacking Roseboro. Koufax and Willie Mays had to rush in to play peace-makers.

Roseboro required fourteen stitches and had to go to the hospital.

Link to the game’s box score.

Amazingly, years later, Marichal and Roseboro became close friends, and Roseboro campaigned to get Marichal elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. When Marichal was indeed elected in 1983, he thanked Roseboro for his support.

The Cubs finished 8th that year even though they had a trio of 100 rbi men. Williams, Santo, & Banks. Very rare during that era.

on WGN in that era than Sox games. Every Cubs home game — since all games were played in the day — were on. I have a WGN schedule from that era, and I will check it…when…I’m…not…at…work…

Is anyone old enough to remember the winter ( must have been in ’58, or ’59) when games were televised from Cuba? I vaguely remember a cute little blonde manually hanging up the score of each inning. Many major leaguers played in this league, like Tony Taylor Jose Valdevielso, George Altman, Pancho Herrera, etc. Played for teams like the HAvana Cubans, Cienfuegos Elephants, etc.

That’s the longest current streak of avoiding being no-hit – maybe the longest such streak in ML history. It’s just strange to think that with as bad as they’ve been over the years, the Cubs have still gotten at least one hit in every game since my parents were both in elementary school.