Bill Sianis, the great-nephew of late Billy Goat Tavern & Grill owner and goat-escort William Sianis, says breaking the curse for good might require the Cubs to let the current goat, Billy, into a ballgame. The last time the Sianis family tried, and failed, to get a goat into a Cubs game? The 2003 NL Championship Series, Game Six – the Bartman game.";
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1964 was an extreme example of the kind of hard luck that seemed to befall Cubs acquisitions. On Feb. 13, former Rookie-of-the-Year second baseman Ken Hubbs crashed the plane he was piloting, dying at age 22. Nothing the Cubs could do about that.
But the team is still getting flayed for what is often considered the worst trade of all time: a June 15 six-player deal whose shorthand is Ernie Broglio-for-Lou Brock. Who knew that Brock, a semi-disappointing Corey Patterson or Felix Pie of his time in Chicago, would catch fire with St. Louis, helping a team behind the Cubs in the standings win the World Series?
He would go on to collect 3,000 hits in a Hall-of-Fame career, while Broglio, who was 18-8 in 1963 and 21-9 in 1960, would fall apart because of arm trouble, going 7-19 with the Cubs before quitting baseball (and burning his Cubs uniform) in 1966.
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The 1964 Phillies and the 2007 Mets are truly the gold standard in gagging, proving that insurmountable leads with less than 20 games left are actually, well, surmountable. However, they failed to gack with quite the flair of the 1969 Cubs.
Specifically, those teams did not have an enduring image such as the black cat that crossed the path of Ron Santo in the on-deck circle at Shea Stadium, and then ambled in front of the Cubs' dugout before disappearing. The Miracle Mets had already cut an eight-game deficit (as of Aug. 15) to two-and-a-half by that Sept. 9 game. But the cat hexed the Cubs into two straight losses to New York, who on Sept. 10 took over the NL East lead for good.
Today, Santo appears in car ads in Chicago where he describes 1969 as “a special time.” It says something about the frustration of Cubs fans that such an excruciating event would be accepted as “a special time,” like how the collapse of the housing market is a special time for the American economy.
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Should Wrigley Field have lights? This question got greater traction during these two seasons, when fast starts led to slow finishes in the summer, day-game heat in a phenomenon called the \"June swoon.\"
Actually, the swoon wasn't in June. In 1977, the Cubs peaked with an eight-and-a-half game lead in the NL East on June 29, and in 1978, they had a two-and-a-half game lead as late as June 23. It was more like a July and August swoon that sent these teams back down to mediocrity as the Philadelphia Phillies each year warmed up to first place. Still, it was enough to have some fans wonder if maybe some night games would help keep the Cubs alert in the second half of the season.
";
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Finally, one futility streak was broken: this was the first Cubs' playoff appearance since 1945. With the best record in the NL, a Cy Young Award winner in mid-season acquisition Rick Sutcliffe (a better-than-CC-Sabathia 16-1), an MVP in Ryne Sandberg, and playoff experience in veterans Larry Bowa, Ron Cey and Gary Matthews, what could go wrong?
How about Sandberg spilling a bucket of Gatorade on first baseman Leon Durham's glove before the fifth and deciding game, thus preventing Durham's heavy, soaked glove from getting down to field a seventh-inning ground ball that ended up tying the game at 3, sparking a four-run inning for San Diego in a 6-3 victory? The New York Giants a few years later showed that Gatorade is better poured onto a coach's head after a victory is in hand.
";
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Poor Steve Bartman. Talk about being as unlucky as your team. At least six Cubs fans tried to catch that foul ball going into the Wrigley left-field stands during the sixth (and possibly deciding, the for the Cubs) game of the NL Championship Series, and he's the unlucky, Walkman-wearing schmuck who happened to get a hand on it.
The poor guy still can't walk the streets of Chicago, while five other fans can work, play and complain about Bartman with impunity. Sometimes, when it's late and they aren't yet asleep, hopefully they will feel some pang of guilt for their good fortune. So should shortstop Alex Gonzalez, who botched a sure double-play grounder that would have ended the inning, kept the Cubs ahead, and probably put them in the World Series.
Poor Steve Bartman.
";
// END editorial data