REST WAS HISTORY AFTER ’69 GAME
It was 50 years ago in the summer of 1969, and the White Sox and Cubs were sitting in vastly different corners of the baseball world. The Sox were in the middle of an awful three-year stretch that saw them lose 95, 94 and 106 games. The Cubs were the toast of the town — and all of baseball, really — seemingly cruising toward their first postseason since 1945.
We all know how that story ended for the Cubs.
But this story is about the Sox against the Cubs in those pre-interleague days, which amounted to the annual Boys Benefit Game played under the lights at Comiskey Park. On Aug. 18, 1969, 33,333 fans — easily the largest paid crowd at Comiskey in a year in which the struggling franchise played 11 of its home games at Milwaukee’s County Stadium — saw the Sox lose 2-0. Hall of Famers Billy Williams and Ernie Banks each homered against Sox 19-year-old rookie right-hander Bart Johnson. Bill Heath’s single accounted for the only other hit against Sox pitching.
The Sox were friendly hosts, setting off the exploding scoreboard for Cubs home runs and giving them a “best of luck in the pennant drive” message on the Sox-O-Gram scoreboard.
The storyline leading up to the game was Cubs manager Leo Durocher relenting to pressure and changing his plan to rest Williams, Banks, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert and Randy Hundley. They would all get two at-bats and play about half the game, as most regulars on both sides did — although left fielder Walt “No Neck” Williams played the entire game in left field and recorded two of the Sox’ seven hits.
Sox manager Don Gutteridge used left-hander Tommy John, who had been away on military leave, for a one-inning relief
tuneup for his next start against the Washington Senators.
The next day, Cubs left-hander Ken Holtzman no-hit the Atlanta Braves in a 3-0 victory, hiking the Cubs record to 77-45 with an eight-game lead in the National League East.
Maybe Durocher should have rested his stars the night before. His team would go 15-25 the rest of the way and finish 92-70, eight games behind the New York Mets.
In the next three years, with the Cubs’ contention window about to close, the 1972 Sox rose up and became Chicago’s most intriguing baseball story, going 87-67 with American League MVP Dick Allen (acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in a trade for John), Carlos May and Wilbur Wood leading the way to a second-place finish in the AL West behind the World Series champion Oakland Athletics.