Soz

As I recall, Brickhouse always worked alone. Vince Lloyd (later Lloyd Pettit, then Joe West) would do the Leadoff Man and the eighth inning, when Brickhouse took a break. Brickhouse had quite a workload in those days: he did The Tenth Inning, then, I think, he went to the radio studio and did a daily entertainment hour with Eddie Hubbard. He also did a radio sportscast at 6 p.m. I don't remember if he did the 10 p.m. sports on Channel 9, but he covered the political conventions for WGN, did talk shows and just about everything else. Until 1967 or '68, when the Sox left Channel 9 for UHF (a suicidal move), Brickhouse worked the Sox games, too. If you only heard Brickhouse in the early '80s, at the end of his career, you don't realize how good he really was. As for the crowd noise: the WGN booth was open on two sides, and you had a ballpark full of kids in those days. In 1960, bleacher tickets were 75 cents. For years, 22,000 seats went on sale the day of the game, and, with all those day games, the ratio of kids to adults was higher than it is today. That's very noticeable when you listen to the old broadcasts. The crowd for the Cardwell game, on a Sunday, was 30,000+, which was unusual in those days, The upper deck rarely was opened during the week.

Don Cardwell's no-hitter was the second game of a doubleheader on my first visit to Wrigley Field. I was 9 years old. I remember everyone being on the field after the game. My dad told me to scoop up some dirt from the pitcher's mound and put it in my pocket to save. On the way home, I naively told my dad that I wanted to get more dirt next time. He told me, "Son, you'll never be on that field again." Of course, he was right. Nineteen years later, when I was sports editor of the daily paper down in Carbondale, I tracked down Cardwell for an interview. I also tracked down Joe Cunningham, who made the last out for the Cardinals, and Moose Moryn, who caught Cunningham's sinking liner to left on his shoetips. All were very gracious. Cardwell sent me an autographed picture ... but he was wearing the uniform of the hated Mets! I'll never forget May 15, 1960. Here is video of the ninth inning, with Jack Brickhouse at his peak: http://108mag.typepad.com/the_southpaw/2007/05/don_cardwells_n.html.

Agreed. It took 38 years, and it sure is sweet!

Will you Mizzou guys let an old guy (MU BJ 1973) sit in? I'm an hour away. Post when and where you're going to be. --Bensenville native

Don't forget that Murdoch almost destroyed the Sun-Times when he bought it from Marshall Field in 1983 or '84. The Sun-Times has never recovered from that disaster. The last thing Chicago needs is for Murdoch to ruin another of its newspapers.

In the Wrigley era, 22,000 seats went on sale the day of the game, including Opening Day. You just had to get there early enough, although even that wasn't a problem until post-1969. But it did start getting ugly in the late '70s when some of the first ones to gain access to the bleachers would urinate onto the lines below. Hard to believe bleacher tickets were only 75 cents, then a buck, then two bucks in those days. The bleachers weren't even sold in advance for the '62 All-Star Game. My dad dropped me off at the bleacher entrance about 7:30 a.m. I got in for $2. Sat in the normally closed-off section of center field, which was opened that day for the only time since the '40s and never again for baseball. Can you imagine an 11-year-old kid going to the all-star game by himself today? Thanks for allowing me to reminisce a little.

Something to keep in mind about a possible Tribune sale of the Cubs is the impact it would have on the broadcasts on WGN and WGN-TV. Cardinals fans learned that the hard way this year when the team bought a major interest in its own radio station and dropped its games from 50,000-watt KMOX after a half-century. If you don't live in the St. Louis metro area, Cardinals games are hard to find on the radio now. I know that in today's world of satellite TV/radio and Internet broadcasts, access to games of any one team isn't as difficult as it used to be, but I keep thinking back to some of the broadcast mistakes the White Sox made and how many decades it took them to recover market share in Chicago (moving their TV games from WGN to UHF in the late '60s, before everyone had UHF, or Harry Caray's first year in Chicago, when the only Sox radio outlets were three tiny FM stations that didn't even blanket the Chicago market).

If you're just starting out, and want to limit yourself to one brand, you can't go wrong with Topps, which is the only brand produced continuously since 1952. You also can focus on just Cubs cards, which is what I do. It took me 20 years to rebuild my collection -- I don't have any from my childhood -- but I now have every Topps Cubs card from 1952 to the present and the other major brands from when they were introduced to the present. Pick up a copy of Sports Collectors Digest and you can find dealers who sell cards that way. I've used the same dealer since the 1980s; I send him a check a couple of times a year, and he sends me all the Cubs whenever they come out. I wouldn't worry about value that much. A kid needs to be able to play with his cards to enjoy them. And, if you're collecting Cubs cards, most of them don't appreciate much in value anyway (unfortunately)!

This has been a fascinating discussion, and I hesitate to enter it at this late date, but I'm curious why there has been no mention (unless I've missed it) of Phil Cavarretta, a two-decade Cub, the pride of Lane Tech and a schoolmate of my late dad. His stats: http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cavarph01.shtml Also, I am a bigger Ron Santo fan now than I've ever been in my life -- I absolutely love him on the radio -- but, having watched the Cubs of that era religiously, and having attended many games during the Durocher era, Santo was considered the third or fourth best Cub on those teams, after Banks, Williams and maybe Jenkins. They were outstanding teams, and, yes, maybe Ronnie should be in the Hall of Fame with the others, but I, too, was surprised to see him on the list of the top five.

Just listened to the Vince Lloyd and Jack Brickhouse replays linked above, and my memory failed me slightly ... Willie hit a two-run homer, not a three-run homer to win the game. Thanks for the links! The radio broadcast of the entire game is available on CD from one of the dealers on the Web who sell sports broadcasts; I bought it a couple of years ago.

April 8, 1969, was one of the three or four most memorable Cub games I ever attended. I was a senior at Fenton High School in Bensenville, and 15 of us from the World Lit class skipped school that day to attend Opening Day. It's hard to believe today, but this was the first Opening Day of the Modern Era, the first Opening Day to draw a capacity crowd in a generation. Leo was turning things around, and this was going to be our year! Again, hard to believe today, but in 1969, 22,000 seats went on sale the day of the game, including Opening Day. Mr. Wrigley believed that if you got up in the morning and wanted to see a game that day, you could do it. Our group sat in the upper-centerfield bleachers, first and second rows, just above the concession stand. We watched Ernie Banks hit two home runs, one of the last games where Ernie had a major impact. We watched the Phillies' Don Money hit two home runs, one, I think, to send the game into extra innings, the second to put the Phillies up 6-4 in the top of the 11th. Then, in the bottom of the 11th, Willie Smith, whom we had never heard of before, slammed the three-run shot to win it! It was bedlam! The bleacher basket hadn't been built yet, and fans started jumping onto the field. My friends and I filmed a home movie of the day, including Ernie's two homers and Willie's game-winning shot. Our sound included Brickhouse's call, which we recorded off the replay that night on WGN's 10 p.m. news. It was the start of a great, great summer ... at least until September. I've had the privilege through the years of meeting several members of that team: Ernie, Fergie, Bill Hands, Randy Hundley, Gene Oliver, Jimmy Hickman, even Leo, the year before he died. When I met Jimmy Hickman a few years ago, I told him I still cried over 1969. "So do we," he replied. This is my first post to this site. Willie Smith -- and all the boys of 1969 who made for such a memorable summer -- will always be with me.