Three Generations of “Mr. Cub”

The phrase “face of the franchise” is relatively new in sports lingo, but baseball teams have always had hometown faves, faces recognizable above all others. Unquestionably, one such face belonged to Phil Cavarretta of the Chicago Cubs.

Cavarretta was born in Chicago on July 19, 1916. Growing up a few miles from Wrigley Field, he led Lane Technical High School to a city baseball championship. At age 18, after a brief stay in the minors, he was called up to the Cubs in September 1934. He remained with the Cubs through 1953. Upon the firing of manager Frankie Frisch in July 1951, he became player-manager.

After two decades with the Cubs, Cavarretta had played in more games than anyone else in franchise history. His resume included a batting title and MVP award (both in 1945), plus three All-Star appearances (1944, 1946, and 1947). While playing for the Cubs, he amassed 1,927 hits (.292/.371/.416). For good measure, he was the last major leaguer who had played against Babe Ruth. If anyone was Mr. Cub in those days, Cavarretta was surely the man. At least until spring training of 1954.

That year, the Cubs were one of four teams training in Arizona (the Cubs were in Mesa, the Indians in Tucson, the Giants in Phoenix, and the Orioles in Yuma). The Cubs and Orioles had arranged to play a series of 13 preseason exhibition games. The itinerary included Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Lubbock, Dallas, Shreveport, and New Orleans, among other ports of call.

Every city the Cubs and Orioles played in was a minor league town at a time when major league ball’s westernmost outpost was St. Louis (in fact, this was the last season that statement was applicable, as the Philadelphia A’s moved to Kansas City after the 1954 season). Major league exhibition games in these western cities should have been a big deal.

Unfortunately, given the talent levels of the Cubs and Orioles, the designation “major league” deserved an asterisk. The post-war Cubs floundered. After a pennant in 1945, they had finished in seventh place twice and in the cellar three times. Only in 1946 did they finish above .500 and in the first division (82-71, good for third place). And the 1954 Orioles, a rebranded version of the 1953 St. Louis Browns, were in a similar fix. After a 1944 pennant, the only one in their history, they finished at .536 (81-70) the following season. Since then they hadn’t won more than 66 games in a season, finishing seventh four times and eighth three times. So Bill Veeck sold the Browns to a Baltimore group led by Clarence Miles and James Keelty.

Baseball fans who witnessed the exhibition games had a chance to see the Baltimore Orioles in uniform before Baltimore fans did. Still, the sports page accounts of the games in The Baltimore News-Post and the Sun papers must have whetted the appetites of Charm City seamheads. A crowd estimated at a million lined the three-mile parade route on Opening Day (April 15) in Baltimore. All that plus then-Vice President Richard Nixon throwing out the first ball in front of 46,354 fans at Memorial Stadium. Also interesting: Ernie Harwell was on the initial broadcast team.

Understandably, the buzz at the preseason games was at a much lower volume. As for the Cubs, the national following they have today did not exist in 1954. They were not lovable losers. They were just losers. Wrigley Field was not a shrine. It was just another ballpark. Attendance in 1953 was 763,658. In the National League, only the Pirates and the Cubs drew fewer fans. True, the Cubs featured an outstanding one-two punch in Ralph Kiner and Hank Sauer, but that was about it so far as box office panache goes. Garrulous Joe Garagiola was on the team, but in his pre-broadcasting days, his professional profile was much lower.

As for the Orioles’ roster, some players were past their prime; others were works in progress. Vern Stephens was a seven-time All-Star (but not since 1951). Billy Hunter, who had somehow been named to the 1953 AL All-Star squad, finished the season with a slash line of .219/.253/.259. A few players (e.g., Ryne Duren, Don Larsen, Bob Turley) would later achieve some measure of fame with the Yankees. Then there was 29-year-old slugger Vic Wertz, who would be traded to Cleveland on June 1. Four months later, he would bat .500 (8-for-16) in the World Series against the Giants, yet his 420-foot fly ball run down by Willie Mays is what he is best remembered for.

Curiously, the Orioles had done fairly well (12-5) in Arizona. The Cubs were another story. As the two teams arrived in Dallas for a two-game series, the Cubs’ exhibition record was 5-14. Given that disappointing spring record and a 65-89 record in 1953, expectations for the Cubs were low. Manager Cavarretta had indicated as much to top management. That would prove to be a bad career move.

The first game in Dallas was scheduled for the afternoon of Monday, March 29, at Burnett Field, home of the Dallas Eagles of the Texas League. The park was available because the Eagles were playing a series of exhibition games against the Oklahoma City Indians (21 games in 20 days!) across New Mexico and West Texas.

The day before, the Cubs had won a slugfest (19-14) in Lubbock, but the March 29 contest in Dallas was a low-scoring contest. The Cubs blew a 3-1 lead in the ninth and lost 4-3 to the Orioles. The contest was witnessed by a “disappointing turnout” (according to the Dallas Times Herald) of 1,532 fans. By way of contrast, the March 27 game in Albuquerque had attracted 5,731 fans. To be fair, the first Dallas exhibition game was on a weekday afternoon, and savvy local fans knew that the Giants and Indians — who had visited Dallas in the spring of 1953 — were coming back to town for a weekend series.

Of course, they did not know that six months later the two teams would meet again in the World Series. The Cubs and Orioles could not compete with the Giants and Indians, who had a host of marquee players who would go on to Cooperstown (Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, and Hoyt Wilhelm, as well as manager Leo Durocher, for the Giants; Bob Feller, Larry Doby, Bob Lemon, and Hal Newhouser, as well as manager Al Lopez, for the Indians). Indeed, the Saturday, April 3 contest drew 9,069 fans; the next day’s crowd was SRO at 10,875. Of all the games played during the Giants-Indians exhibition series, only one game, played in Los Angeles, had a higher attendance – and only by 74 people.

Of note locally, the Indians roster included Dave Hoskins, a former Dallas Eagles pitcher who had broken the Texas League color line in 1952 while fashioning a 22-10 record with a 2.12 ERA in 280 innings. In 1953 he had a promising rookie year (9-3, 3.99 ERA) with the Indians. In his return engagement in Dallas, he pitched three shutout innings. Unfortunately, it was something of a last hurrah, as Hoskins got lost in the Indians’ pitching-rich roster and was rarely used in 1954. He spent the rest of his career in the minors.

The Orioles-Cubs match-up was no match for the Giants-Indians series, but the real downer was a cold front that dropped the Tuesday, March 30 game-time temperature to 45 degrees. Not unusual for Wrigley Field that time of year, but way too cold for Dallasites. Only 428 people showed up for the game.

For Phil Cavarretta, the real big chill took place the night before when he was the first manager ever to be fired during spring training. His honest assessment of the team’s fortunes had not gone down well with owner Philip K. Wrigley. Perhaps mercifully, Cavarretta was at home when he got the ax, as he resided in Dallas, where he owned a popular local amusement park, the Candy Mountain Kiddy Park, so named by one of his daughters.

Cavarretta’s replacement was Stan Hack (great name for a baseball player), who had been managing the Los Angeles Angels, then the Cubs’ Pacific Coast League affiliate. That vacated managerial position at the Triple-A level was then offered to Cavarretta, but he declined.

In effect, Wrigley was replacing one Mr. Cub with another, as Hack’s career was quite similar to Cavarretta’s. In fact, for most of his career with the Cubs (1932-1947), he had been Cavarretta’s teammate. He finished at .301/.394/.397 with 2,193 hits. Both were good players, though not quite good enough for Cooperstown. Perhaps Wrigley thought that “Smiling Stan,” as Hack was known, would bring a more upbeat attitude to the job than Cavarretta had.

By firing Cavarretta, Wrigley had acted rashly. In retrospect, he admitted as much. In the future, every time he crossed paths with Cavarretta, he apologized. “I should not have done that to you, Phil,” he once said, “but what you said upset me so much.”

Of course, if Hack had turned the Cubs around, then Wrigley would have been vindicated. But the Cubs finished seventh, sixth and last in 1954-’56, after which Hack was fired and coach Bob Scheffing was promoted. Hack moved on to a coaching position with the Cardinals.

After Cavarretta was fired, he went back to Chicago and played part-time for the 1954 White Sox. So Cavarretta’s entire playing career was in Chicago, but he never worked for the Cubs again. He was the majors’ first Italian-American manager, and hence the first to be fired. No surprise that he was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame (located, conveniently enough, in Chicago) in 1979.

While this transfer of power from one Mr. Cub to another was going on, nobody could have guessed that the ultimate Mr. Cub was already in uniform. He was born and raised in Dallas but his homecoming during the 1954 exhibition season had attracted scant attention. As the years rolled on, Ernie Banks would be inextricably intertwined with Chicago, not Dallas.

If Dallas was underwhelmed by Banks (still a rookie after a cup of coffee at the end of the 1953 season), it was understandable. His alma mater, Booker T. Washington High School, did not have a baseball team. During his years there, he played only football and basketball. While playing softball, he was discovered by the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. The Cubs, who had never had a black player, liked what they saw while he played for KC, signed him to a contract in September 1953, and immediately inserted him into the lineup. Dallas sportswriters duly noticed his phenom status, but aside from family and friends, he had few fans in the stands.

In truth, Banks’ hometown debut in the March 29 game was no big deal. It was just another day at the ballpark (0-for-3 with a sacrifice fly). The next day’s game was overshadowed by the Cavarretta/Hack changing of the guard). That was national news. The Cubs-Orioles exhibition game was not.

Nevertheless, the 432 fans who braved the chill got to see Ernie Banks hit a home run in his hometown. Of course, it didn’t count, but it was his sixth of the spring. Not to read too much into his exhibition game stats, but they certainly proved prophetic. Banks finished his rookie year at .275/.326/.427 with 19 homers and 79 RBIs while playing in all 154 games. Even after that fine showing, who would have predicted that the slender (6-foot-1, 180-pound) shortstop, described as “gangly” and “wiry” by sportswriters, would go on to hit more than 512 home runs? Now, 48 years after he retired as a player, four years after his death, he still holds the title of Mr. Cub.

Despite Banks’ low profile in Dallas, the city recently honored him with a statute. Typically, statutes of baseball players are close to the local ballpark. Banks, however, retired before major league ball came to Dallas-Fort Worth. He never had the opportunity to play a regular season game in his hometown. His rare appearances there in a Cubs uniform were for to preseason exhibition games. So where to put the statute?

Well, as mentioned above, he never played high school ball in Dallas. His alma mater is now a prestigious magnet school known as Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Still no baseball team, however, but the statute had to go somewhere, so there it stands. The City of Dallas asserts that the surrounding area is the largest arts district in the nation. So there is a fair amount of foot traffic there.

It may sound rather improbable, yet it is somehow fitting for Ernie Banks. Improbable is the word to describe a first-ballot (1977) Hall of Fame player who played 2,528 games over 19 seasons but never played a postseason game.

In that respect only, Cavarretta and Hack had the edge on him.

References and Resources:

Baltimore Orioles; Memories and Memorabilia of the Lords of Baltimore, by Bruce Chadwick and David M. Spindel, Abbeville Press (New York, 1995)

Baseball Memories 1950-1959; an Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball’s Fabulous 50’s, by Marc Okkonen, Sterling Publishing Co. (New York, 1993)

Let’s Play Two: the Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks, by Ron Rapoport, Hachette Books (New York, 2019)

We Played the Game, by Danny Peary, Tess Press (New York, 1994)

SABR biography, Ernie Banks by Joseph Wancho

SABR biography, Phil Cavarretta by Lawrence Baldassaro

SABR biography, Stan Hack by Eric Hannauer

SABR biography, David Hoskins by John J. Watkins

baseballalmanac.com

baseballreference.com

niashf.org

“1954 Orioles Found Their Oasis During Spring Training,” by Mike Klingaman, Baltimore Sun, February 9, 2017

“Phil Cavarretta Now Managing Kiddies’ Park,” AP Newsfeature, Mason City Globe-Gazette, July 12, 1955

Dallas Morning News, various articles, March 29, 1954 – April 5, 1954

Dallas Times Herald, various articles, March 27, 1954 – March 31, 1954