Imagine being a Cub fan in 1985, and looking forward
all week to watching This Week In Baseball
-- and seeing this in the closing montage every week.
October 6, 1984: A dark day in the long, gray history of the Chicago Cubs, 39 years to the day after the Day of the Goat. Leading the National League Championship Series 2 games to 1, needing only 1 more win to take their first Pennant since 1945, they are tied with the San Diego Padres in the bottom of the 9th at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. But closer Lee Smith gives up an opposite-field homer to former Dodger "hero" Steve Garvey, and the Padres win, 7-5, to tie up the series.
The Cubs had been on a magical run, led by Most Valuable Player Ryne Sandberg and Cy Young Award winner Rick Sutcliffe, and cheered on by broadcaster Harry Caray. The Cubs' broadcasts, led by Caray, were on "SuperStation" WGN, which sent Cub games all over the country. People from Chicago lived all over the country, and had spread Cub fandom, with their "Curse of the Billy Goat" from 1945, and other legends such as "Mr. Cub" Ernie Banks, all over the country. But now, you didn't have to be from anywhere near The Loop to become a Cub fan.
All season long, as they had in 1969, the Cubs battled the New York Mets for the NL Eastern Division title. Met fans, known for having as much arrogance as Yankee fans without having earned it, figured that, since it was the Cubs, the team of the '69 "September Swoon," their victory was inevitable. They even made up a team song, to the tune of the theme from one of the year's biggest hit movies, Ghostbusters: "Cub-busters!"
(Big mistake: Of the film's stars, Harold Ramis was from Chicago; Bill Murray was from the adjacent Evanston, Illinois; and Ernie Hudson was from Benton Harbor, Michigan, which is on the opposite side of Lake Michigan, and considerably closer to Chicago than to Detroit. Dan Aykroyd, who co-starred and co-wrote the film with Ramis, is from Ottawa, but, as a result of appearing with Wheaton, Illinois native John Belushi in The Blues Brothers, has become indelibly identified with Chicago. Of course, Murray, Aykroyd and the already-dead Belushi were veterans of Saturday Night Live. Director Ivan Reitman was born in Slovakia, but grew up in Toronto.)
Met fans tried to tell people that Darryl Strawberry was a better player than Sandberg. (More talented? Yes. Better? No.) They tried to tell people that rookie sensation Dwight Gooden, a.k.a. "Doctor K," was a better pitcher than "Red Baron" Sutcliffe. (Better? Not that season.)
In the end, the Cubs won 96 games, beat the Mets out by 6 1/2 games, getting a little bit of revenge for 1969. And the surge in the team's popularity probably saved their home ballpark, Wrigley Field, by far the oldest in the NL, for at least 2 more generations.
But it wouldn't have meant much if they didn't win at least the Pennant. And also riding an improbable wave were the Padres, who won the NL Western Division for the 1st time in their history, led by Tony Gwynn and a pair of ex-Yankees, 3rd baseman Graig Nettles and relief pitcher Rich "Goose" Gossage.
The Cubs blew the Padres away in Game 1 at Wrigley, 13-0. Game 2 was closer, but the Cubs still won, 4-2. They needed just 1 more win for the Pennant. But they didn't get it: In San Diego, Padre fans held up Cub-busters signs, and the Padres won Game 3, 7-1. And then game Game 4, the 7-5 Padre win on Garvey's home run.
In Game 5, 1st baseman Leon Durham hit a home run to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead, and they led 3-0 in the bottom of the 6th, and still led 3-2 going to the bottom of the 7th. But just as Durham giveth, Durham taketh away, letting a grounder by Tim Flannery roll through his legs to spark a 4-run Padre rally. The Padres won, 6-3, and they had their 1st Pennant. The Cubs? Someone had gotten their goat again.
Two years later, the man Durham replaced as the Cubs' 1st baseman, Bill Buckner, would have a similar error in Game 6 of the World Series, giving the Mets a win over the Boston Red Sox.
Fans of lots of teams hated Garvey, the former "Mr. Clean" and "Captain America" of the Los Angeles Dodgers, due to his smugness and, as it turned out, his hypocrisy. But I think Cub fans hate him even more than Philadelphia and Cincinnati fans do. Certainly, they hate him more than Yankee Fans do – and that's a lot.
The Cubs would again make the Playoffs in 1989, 1998, 2003 (leading to an even greater calamity), 2007, 2008 and 2015, before finally going all the way in 2016, ending their drought, and ending their curse.
But, like Boston Red Sox fans for whom 2004 and 3 later titles didn't erase the memories of 1978 and 1986, and Philadelphia Phillies fans for whom 1980 and 2008 haven't erased the memories of 1964 and 1977 (and 2008 hasn't for 1993), the years 1969, 1984 and 2003 still leave scars on the hearts of Cub fans.
*
October 6, 1984 was a Saturday. This was the only baseball game played that day. The American League Championship Series had wrapped up the day before, with the Detroit Tigers beating the Kansas City Royals, 3 games to 1. The Tigers would beat the Padres in the World Series, in 5 games.
This would be the last year that the LCS would be best-3-out-of-5. The next year, it would be best-4-out-of-7. The '84 Cubs could have benefited from the '85 format; the '84 Royals did, coming from 3-1 down to beat the Toronto Blue Jays for the Pennant, and from 3-2 down to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
There was also college football on this day. Among the games:
* Number 1 Texas beat Rice, 38-13 at Rice Stadium in Houston.
* Number 2 Ohio State were upset by Purdue, 28-23 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana. Ohio State still won the Big Ten Conference title.
* Number 3 University of Washington beat Oregon State, 19-7 at Parker Stadium (now Reser Stadium) in Corvallis, Oregon.
* Number 4 Boston College were idle. Had there then been a Big East Conference as they would one day join, or had they been members of the Atlantic Coast Conference as they are now, they would have won it.
* Number 5 Oklahoma were idle. They went on to win the Big Eight Conference title, but lost the Orange Bowl to Washington.
* Number 6 Florida State were held to a 17-17 tie by Memphis State at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. (The school is now named the University of Memphis, and the stadium is Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.)
* Number 7 Brigham Young beat Colorado State, 52-9 at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado. BYU won the Western Athletic Conference, then beat Michigan in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego on December 21.
When the New Year's Day bowl games were over, BYU were the only undefeated team in Division I-A. Number 2 Washington had gone 11-1, but that 1 loss cost them the Pac-10 title. And Number 3 Florida were on probation, and ineligible for a bowl game. So, in spite of perhaps the weakest schedule of any team ever to finish with the Number 1 ranking -- even Michigan was only 6-5 going into the Holiday Bowl, and BYU only beat them 24-17 -- BYU were awarded the National Championship.
* Number 8 Nebraska beat Number 9 Oklahoma State, 17-3 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
* Number 9 Southern Methodist University (SMU) were idle. They finished in a tie for the Southwest Conference title.
* Number 11 Penn State beat Maryland, 25-24 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania.
* Number 12 Georgia Tech were upset by North Carolina State, 27-22 at Grant Field in Atlanta.
* Michigan State upset their arch-rivals, Number 13 Michigan, 19-7 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. As I suggested earlier, this was not a vintage Wolverine team, but the Spartans still counted it as a great victory.
* Number 14 and defending National Champions, the University of Miami, beat Number 16 Notre Dame 31-13 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. Miami went on to lose a rainy day-after-Thanksgiving thriller to Boston College on a last-play touchdown pass by Doug Flutie, which cinched the Heisman Trophy for him. Notre Dame went on to lose to SMU in the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu.
* Number 15 Southern California beat Washington State, 29-27 at Martin Stadium in Pullman, Washington. USC went on to deal Washington their only loss, and won the Pacific-Ten Conference title, and beat Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.
* Number 17 UCLA were upset by Stanford, 23-21 at the Rose Bowl in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California. UCLA went to the Fiesta Bowl, where they lost to Miami.
* Florida beat Syracuse, 16-0 at Florida Field in Gainesville, Florida. They won the Southeastern Conference title for the 1st time, but were on probation, and couldn't go to any bowl game. After the season, they were put on an additional probation, and stripped of this SEC title.
* Louisiana State were unranked and idle. But they went on to tie Florida for the SEC title, and were retroactively proclaimed sole champions after Florida's new round of rule violations were exposed. LSU went to the Sugar Bowl, and lost to Nebraska.
* The University of Houston beat Baylor, 27-17 at Baylor Stadium (later Floyd Casey Stadium) in Waco, Texas. UH tied SMU for the SWC title, and, since SMU had gone to the Cotton Bowl more recently, UH went this time, and lost to Boston College.
* In a battle of the service academies, Air Force beat Navy, 29-22 at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
* Army beat Harvard, 33-11 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Early in the 20th Century, this would have been hyped as the game of the year. But by the 1980s, or even the 1950s, few people cared.
* Among New Jersey teams, Rutgers lost to Kentucky, 27-14 at Commonwealth Stadium (now Kroger Field) in Lexington, Kentucky. And Princeton lost to Brown, 32-30 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
Also, in English soccer, North London team Arsenal beat Everton, the blue club of Liverpool, 1-0 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury.
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