Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs Royse Parr Doug Feldman. Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. 275 pp. Cloth, $24.95. After finishing my reading of Doug Feldman's book, I had one regret—if only I had read the book before I embarked on the baseball adventure of my life. I attended Randy Hundley's Chicago Cub fantasy baseball camp in Mesa, Arizona, for one glorious week in January of 1994—a fifty-eighth birthday gift to me from my two sons. At the camp I met, among other former Cubs, six members of the ill-fated 1969 Cubs—catcher Randy Hundley, third baseman Ron Santo, second baseman Glen Beckert, Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, outfielder Jim Hickman, and Hundley's backup catcher, Gene Oliver. The primary topic of discussion among this group of baseball veterans, nearly a quarter century past the misdeed, was how they, their teammates, and manager Leo Durocher could have possibly lost the 1969 National League East pennant to the f—g Mets. Rubbing salt into their own mental wounds, the old Cubs joked about their betrayal by Hundley's son, Todd, the then Mets catcher who they had helped raise from a pup. From the opening day in 1969 when the Cubs, defeated the Phillies 7–6 behind pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, Feldman describes the Cubs steady march for a pennant that had been denied them for twenty-four years. By the end of April, the Cubs had a 16-7 record and a 2.5 game lead over the second-place Pirates and 5.5 games over the Mets. The lead would grow to 9 games over the defending National League champion Cardinals and 10 games over the Mets by August 15. From then to the end of the season, Feldman aptly describes a free fall for the Cubs as they finished the season 8 games behind the Mets. The Mets finished up the final month of the season with a record of 24-8; the Cubs were 10-18 over the same stretch, the worst in baseball. The Mets won the first National League Championship Series in a 3-game sweep of the Braves and then beat the Orioles 4 out of 5 games in the World Series. Did the Cubs really have a "Miracle Collapse" or was it just another predictable year of failure for the long-suffering Cubs? One of Feldman's prevailing themes is that no team in baseball could match the quality of the Cubs' infield. He writes that the title of "All-Star" infield began to swell in early 1969 as some forecasters envisioned that all four players—third baseman Ron Santo, shortstop Don Kessinger, second baseman Glen Beckert, and first baseman Ernie Banks—would be headed to the midsummer classic at Washington, DC, in July. Beckert, Kessinger, Banks, Hundley, and Santo went a combined 0 for 9 in the game won by the National League, 9–3. Coming down the stretch in September, Beckert, Kessinger, Banks, and Hundley had stark dropoffs in their batting averages. Some of the most revealing [End Page 152] remarks documented by Feldman support the conclusion that Durocher's non-platooning may have led to fatigue. Kessinger said it best: "What I remember most is that we were a tired ball club. It's the sun that does it. I just feel that when you play eight guys in the hot sun most every day, you had to be a lot better than anyone else to win. We may have been better, but unfortunately we weren't a lot better." Like the old Cubs at the 1994 fantasy camp, author Feldman does not place blame on the shoulders of anyone in particular for the "Miracle Collapse." He regards Randy Hundley as the "leader of the leaders and a Durocher favorite." Feldman asserts that Durocher did not believe in a platoon system, but rather he relied on putting his best eight position players out on the field. If a player was slightly injured or tired, Durocher did not want to hear about it. Gene Oliver asserted that it wasn't the loss of a pennant...