100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die Read Online Free Page A

energy that has been vented toward my family, my friends, and myself into the usual positive support for our beloved team on their way to being National League champs.”

6. The Homer in the Gloamin’
    At 5:37 pm on September 28, 1938, with darkness falling over a Wrigley Field that wouldn’t be afforded the benefit of lights for another 50 years, Gabby Hartnett swung through the evening haze to hit the most famous home run in Cubs history.
    It’s not possible to overstate how dramatic Hartnett’s homer was, whether looking at its importance to the National League pennant race at the time or its everlasting place in Cubs lore.
    To set the table for this tale, we’ll go back a little more than two months to July 20, 1938, when the Cubs trailed the Pittsburgh Pirates by 5 1/2 games and owner Phil “P.K.” Wrigley decided manager Charlie Grimm would have to step down. Wrigley wanted shortstop Billy Jurges to be Grimm’s replacement, but Jurges turned down the job. Instead, Jurges came back with a recommendation of Hartnett, a 37-year-old catcher in his 17 th season with the Cubs.
    After first checking with Grimm, Wrigley handed over the Cubs to Hartnett. The team remained uncomfortably far behind the Pirates, and on August 15, Hartnett broke his thumb on a foul tip. He didn’t return until September 8 when the Cubs still trailed by five games.
    The lead had been pared to 1½ games on September 27 when the Pirates, alone in first place since July 18, arrived at Wrigley Field for a three-game series. There was no mystery; this series would decide the pennant. The Cubs took the opener 2–1 behind the pitching of Dizzy Dean, and first place was just one win away.
    At the time, the Cubs often scheduled weekday games for 3:00 pm and without long breaks for television or an endless march of relief pitchers slowing the pace down it was still possible for the contests to reach their inevitable conclusions without lights. It wasn’t rare for a game to finish in less than two hours. Indeed, the Cubs win in the opener took just 98 minutes to complete.
    On September 28, however, the Cubs went to the bullpen early and used six relievers along the way. They needed a pair of runs in the bottom of the eighth to knot the score at five, and when the ninth arrived with the sun setting, both managers were informed it would be the last inning.
    At this point in baseball history a tie game didn’t result in a suspended game to be completed later. If the Pirates and Cubs ended at a tie, the game would have to be replayed in its entirety as part of a doubleheader the following day.
    This created urgency on both sides, but Charlie Root set down the Pirates in the top of the ninth, and Pittsburgh’s Mace Brown quickly retired Phil Cavarretta and Carl Reynolds in the bottom of the frame. Then up strode Gabby Hartnett.
    Hartnett was so tough, Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell once said he could turn a bat into sawdust with his bare hands. But toughness doesn’t matter a whole lot if you’re fighting a ghost, and with the “gloamin’” settling in, Hartnett whiffed on Brown’s first pitch and barely got a piece of the second, both curveballs.
    On the 0–2 pitch, Brown tried to get another curveball past Hartnett.
    “I swung with everything I had, and then I got that feeling—the kind of feeling you get when the blood rushes to your head and you get dizzy,” Hartnett recalled. “A lot of people told me they didn’t know the ball was in the bleachers. Well, I did. I knew the minute I hit it.
    “When I got to second base I couldn’t see third because the players and fans were there. I don’t think I walked another step. I was almost carried the rest of the way. But when I got to home plate I saw [home plate umpire] George Barr taking a good look. He was making sure I touched the platter.”
    Fans poured onto the field as bedlam broke out at Wrigley Field, and Hartnett had to be surrounded by a circle of ushers and several other men