Kindle Edition
Amazon
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The History Press/Arcadia Publishing
Category:
Sports/Recreation
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN-10: 146714908X
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 160
Copyright: May 17, 2021
ISBN-13: 9781467149082
Price: $12.99 (eBook)
The story of a great, but forgotten, Chicago Cubs team.
Chicago Cubs fans always will remember the beloved 1969 team, yet the 1970 Cubs are, in many ways, more fascinating. Author William S. Bike tells their story in his latest book, The Forgotten 1970 Chicago Cubs: Go and Glow, which will be available from The History Press on May 17, 2021.
“In 1970, the Cubs added interesting characters like Joe Pepitone and Milt Pappas to the legendary nucleus of Billy Williams, Ron Santo, and Ernie Banks,” Bike said. “The team came closer to finishing first than in any year between 1945 and 1984—ending the season only five games out in one of baseball’s hottest three-team pennant races ever.”
Offering a fast-paced look at the season month by month, Bike moves beyond wins, losses, and statistics to relive Ernie Banks’s 500th home run, the addition of “the basket” to the outfield walls, good trades and bad trades, how manager Leo Durocher’s radio show caused clubhouse chaos, death threats against third baseman Ron Santo, outfielders Billy Williams’s and Jim Hickman’s best season, the great Cubs pitching rotation, and statistical and computer analyses of how the Eastern Division Cubs would have done playing in the Western Division— and in the playoffs and World Series.
The book shows how the baseball, pennant races, and Wrigley Field of 1970 differed from the modern era. It analyzes “what might have been” if different scenarios had played out, and reveals what happened to each of the players. For Chicago Cubs fans of that era or any era, the book is a must-read.
“My book is both fun and analytical,” Bike said. “You’ll feel the heat of the pennant race and figuratively smell the popcorn and hot dogs and hear the crack of the bat in Wrigley Field in 1970.”
Bike also wrote the books Streets of the Near West Side, Winning Political Campaigns, and Celebrating a Proud Past. He also edited the book Essays on Earl Renfroe: A Man of Firsts. Associate editor of the newspaper Gazette Chicago, he also works as a freelance writer. Formerly, he directed communications for Loyola University Chicago, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry. Bike has earned more than 50 awards in journalism, publications, media relations, and alumni relations, including three Peter Lisagor Awards, the top honor in Chicago journalism.
The Forgotten 1970 Chicago Cubs: Go and Glow, published by The History Press of Charleston, SC, is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other book purchase websites, in bookstores, and at https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467149082. ISBN: 97814671-4908-2, paperback, 160 pp., $21.99.
Bike is available for broadcast, internet, and print interviews. Email Bike at anbcommunications.yahoo.com, call him at (773) 229-0024, or contact Haley Johnson at (843) 853-2070 ext. 204 or hjohnson.arcadiapublishing.com.
Excerpt
The Cubs made the biggest, best and most surprising deal of the year when, on that day, they purchased Joe Pepitone from the Astros. The Cubs also later sent infielder Roger Metzger to the Astros as part of the deal.
For a team that in the past had always been willing to pass on partiers and trade for solid citizens, the Pepitone acquisition was truly amazing. If Ernie Banks were Mr. Cub, Pepitone was the Anti-Cub.
Trouble had surrounded Pepitone since his teenage years, when a high-school classmate shot him with a gun. With the New York Yankees, he was at the center of brawls against the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians. In his 1975 book Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, Pepitone admitted that during his career he was a drinker, a marijuana smoker, got in bar fights and was a playboy.
Despite being a native New Yorker popular with the city’s Italian American community, an All-Star and a three-time Gold Glove winner who had twice received votes for American League Most Valuable Player, Pepitone, after eight years, was shipped by conservative Yankee management to Houston.
Pepitone at first welcomed the move from the American League to the National. At the time, NL pitchers tended to throw fastballs and sliders, while in the AL, pitchers tended to throw breaking balls and changeups. Pepitone was a fastball hitter.
However, it took Pepitone only a half season to wear out his welcome in even more conservative Houston. Astros manager Harry Walker and Pepitone did not get along, but Pepitone and Durocher, who had been a roistering player himself, got along just fine. In fact, Pepitone said of Durocher, “He was an older version of me.”67
Acquiring Pepitone was just about the last move anyone expected from conservative Cub management. Like the Barber, Pappas and Pizarro acquisitions, it showed their seriousness about winning in 1970—even if that meant acquiring “bad boys” who did not fit the Cubs’ persona.
With a magnanimity they rarely exhibited, Cub management was willing to overlook Pepitone’s personal foibles and hoped that his postseason experience, skill at the plate and tested hand at both first base and center field would give the Cubs a shot in the arm.
And they were right.
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