Did Durocher’s Wandering Eye Cause The 1969 Cubs Collapse?
In 1969, the Chicago Cubs put one of its best teams ever on the field to start the season. Most experts had picked them to win the World Series. After jumping out to a late lead in the National League pennant race, leading by as many as 8.5 games in mid-august and a 7 game lead over the Mets on September 2. The 1969 Cubs, arguably one of the most talented teams of all time, decided to melt down and eventually lost the pennant to the “Miracle” Mets by 8 games. That is a remarkable 17.5 game swing in only 6 weeks. That team had 3 hall of famers (Banks, Williams, Jenkins), and a fourth guy who should be a hall of famer, Ron Santo. For an amazing first-hand tale of that summer, read this post of a letter sent to me by a friend of my father’s last October.
Anyways, there has been much speculation about why the Cubbies collapsed, mostly centering around billy goats and black cats. But perhaps there was another reason. The Cubs manager Leo Durocher may have been a bit distracted from his work, according to one sportswriter:
So there I was, late in the summer of 1969, sitting next to the Chicago Cubs’ manager, Leo Durocher. I am intensely engaged because the Mets are chipping away at the Cubs’ league lead. As a young reporter in 1962, I had covered the Mets’ first year of existence, and now, seven years later as a young columnist, I was covering their first serious pennant run.
"I said go down on HER, not me you idiot!"
So I press Durocher, once a Yankee shortstop, later manager of the Giants and Willie Mays, for words of wisdom about winning and losing. He offers me perspective.
I follow the tilt of his head toward an attractive woman in the stands as he says, “Kid, show me a man who doesn’t go down on his wife and I’ll show you a man whose wife I can sleep with, tonight.”
The Mets went on to sweep the Cubs series. They beat the Atlanta Braves for the National League title. They beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. I didn’t share the best advice I’ve ever gotten in baseball.
Okay here’s the thing. Durocher was known for being flashy and egotistical, but I still love that “advice”. In that crucial series against the Mets, however, perhaps his focus should have been on the field. On the other hand, its not like we haven’t been working on a huge project at work/school, gone out to lunch, and checked out some girls walking by the window. I wonder if Lou is giving the same kind of advice to Bradley and Soriano.
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Time July 20, 2009 at 6:47 am
[...] Speculation that the epic collapse of the 1969 Cubs was because manager Leo Durocher’s was too busy digging out the wives of guys who wouldn’t give the pink happy-hole some face time. It’s a leap, but any story that combines failure, baseball, infidelity and oral sex I’m absolutely going to repeat. <notqualifiedtocomment> [...]