Entangled in Poison Ivy and Curses, Cubs Need Exorcism

Stuff keeps happening to the Chicago Cubs, and that stuff keeps happening in brutal ways. Even before the decades of gloom thickened over Wrigleyville this weekend after Lou Piniella bolted more than a month before his scheduled retirement as a sure-fire Hall of Fame manager, I've been thinking about something.

I've been thinking the Curse of the Bambino was overrated, along with whatever forces were behind The Interception, The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot and The Decision around Cleveland.

I've also been thinking the Cubs really are jinxed.

If somebody looked deep behind all of the ivy, they might discover that Wrigley Field is the unofficial home of Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Michael Myers, the Blair Witch and Jason.

Scarier than that, we know the Cubs' little house of horrors features the worst baseball you'll ever see over a series of years. Their forefathers clearly did something to a werewolf -- or dare I say a billy goat -- to cause all of this.

"Well, I don't believe in ghosts or black cats or anything like that," said Oscar Gamble, laughing over the phone from Montgomery, Ala., where he is 41 years removed from playing for the Cubs when their present and future looked as eternally bright as Wrigley's sunshine.

1969.

It always goes back for the Cubs to 1969.

You probably don't remember Gamble. Actually, you might, but only if you were a baseball disciple of the 1970s when the biggest Afro this side of Link on the Mod Squad belonged to this left-handed slugger.

Gamble evolved into one of the game's all-time elite platoon players along the way to exactly 200 career home runs for seven different teams through 17 seasons. He made a couple of World Series trips with the New York Yankees (1976 and 1981). He even became a pinstriped icon during the early part of the 1981 playoffs when he single-handedly destroyed the Milwaukee Brewers with his bat.

I'll return to Gamble in a moment, because he'll help us determine why the Cubs haven't won a world championship in 102 years. Not only that, we want to know why they haven't reached a World Series since 1945. We also wouldn't mind knowing why they keep getting rid of Lou Brocks for Ernie Broglios, and why they have Steve Bartmans touching catchable balls and Lou Piniellas quitting over night.

None of the answers you always hear for the "whys" make sense -- which means you can forget about those Wrigley things.
Those things begin with the naive claiming the Cubs' heavy dose of day games at home (which was an exclusive dose before they put lights in the place during the late 1980s) wears out their players near the end of a season because of the overwhelming heat.

The counter: Puh-leeze.

Chicago isn't Las Vegas in the summer. Plus, all teams played day games prior to 1935. And during the next 40 years or so, most weekend games during the regular season were in daylight in addition to the majority of postseason games. You never heard players from that generation complain about getting too much sun.

As for another Wrigley Thing, the naive like to mention the tricky winds, which can spend an afternoon shoving anything in the air from home plate onto the pavement of Waveland or Sheffield avenues beyond left and right fields. Either that, or those winds can blow in and turn the rockets from hitters into sparklers along to becoming pop-ups.

The counter: No place had nastier winds for baseball than Candlestick Park, and the San Francisco Giants made their way to two World Series while playing at the place. They also reached another at their current ballpark, which also is noted for swirling gusts.

Then you have the ballpark's quirkiness cited as a Wrigely Thing, with its ivy-filled walls changing the trajectory of line drives, and with its pedestrian training room and indoor batting-cage situation compared to their peers, and with its tight
clubhouses.

[The team's] forefathers clearly did something to a werewolf or -- dare I say a billy goat -- to cause all of this.
The counter: Tropicana Field. It's a dump filled with catwalks and ugliness, and it belongs to the Tampa Bay Rays. Not only did they reach the World Series in 2008, but they are loaded enough to come close again this year while chasing the Yankees at the top of the AL East.

There also is that huge non-Wrigley Thing expressed by Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and others forever. According to them, the Cubs just have lacked talented teams through the years.

Wrong.

There was 1969, for instance, when Gamble was 19. He joined the streaking Cubs as a highly-touted rookie on Aug. 27, just eight days after Ken Holtzman pitched a no-hitter to make Chicago's north side heroes even more of a World Series certainty. They had an 8 1/2 game lead over the second-place St. Louis Cardinals in the NL East and a 9 1/2 game lead over the third-place New York Mets.

You know the rest. Somehow, when the season was over, the Cubs finished eight games behind the Mets.

Here's what many forget: The Cubs also blew it in 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973. All of those teams had the same core players with the outrageously great resumes, but all of those teams had the same results.

No world championships, no pennants, no division titles.

Nothing but frustration.

And they were loaded.

"I stayed in a hotel, and as a 19-year-old rookie, I couldn't believe it, because Ernie Banks came by every day to give me a ride to the ballpark," Gamble said, referring to the Hall of Fame first baseman. After they would pull into Wrigleyville, filled with songs, posters and T-shirts proclaiming the greatness of the '69 Cubs, they'd walk into a clubhouse with many of baseball's Whos' Who.

You had Randy Hundley, a Gold Glove catcher. You had the game's best double-play duo in second baseman Glenn Beckert, who was a four-time All-Star, and shortstop Don Kessinger, who was a six-time All-Star.

Ron Santo was the third baseman, and he sits at the front door of Cooperstown, where Billy Williams already resides, and Williams was the left-fielder. Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins led a solid pitching staff that included Holtzman and noted reliever Phil Regan.

Did I mention Leo Durocher was their Hall of Famer manager?

Oh, and you had Banks, along with the Cubs' hot-shot, can't-miss, rookie outfielder named Oscar Gamble.

"It was great coming in, because I didn't play that much minor league ball, and here were guys I idolized growing up," said Gamble, who was discovered in Montgomery by Buck O'Neil, the Negro League legend turned Cubs scout. "It was something else. You had all of these name players, so a lot of people thought we were going to win it since we had that big lead, but the Cubs didn't play night games at that time.

"I don't like to say this, but we just ran out of gas. It looked like the heat and stuff caught up with our team as far as compared to other teams playing night games. If you want to know the truth, the day games hurt us."

Yeah, well. I'm not buying it.

We're back to hexes, goblins, voodoo.

In case you're wondering, the Cubs panicked after that 1969 season in search of trying to become an instant winner with an old team. "Leo loved veterans," Gamble said, recalling how he was swapped during that offseason for ancient Johnny Callison, a 31-year-old outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Callison had two mediocre seasons for the Cubs before he retired two years after that. Gamble lasted 16 more years in the majors.

Typical Cubs.

Spooked ... OK, by incompetence.

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