Ernie Broglio still a Cubs fan despite being on bad list.
San Jose resident reflects on lopsided 1964 trade of which he was a part that has become synonymous with Cubs’ futility
SAN JOSE — In this quiet Cambrian Park neighborhood, a few short turns off Bascom Avenue, is a place Ernie Broglio wouldn’t trade for the world.
He’s lived in this house since 1959, with the wife he married in 1954, and it’s where he laughs with disarming ease at a baseball transaction that has haunted Chicago Cubs fans since 1964.
As the wrong end of the deal, Broglio (pronounced BRO-lee-oh) knows his name ranks high on the Cubs’ list of very bad things, right up there with Billy Goat curses, black cats and Bartman. When he was introduced at an oldtimers game at Wrigley Field in the 1990s, he was greeted with a standing boo. “Probably the funniest experience I ever had,’’ he says now.
But Broglio, 81, will be cheering for Chicago to finish off the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series this weekend at Wrigley Field. The Cubs haven’t been to a World Series since 1945 and haven’t won one since 1908.
“It’s been 100 years,’’ Broglio said. “I would like to see them get to the World Series. It would be great for baseball.”
Relaxing on a couch in his memorabilia room, Broglio glances toward a wall covered with autographed photos. They document a career far happier than tortured Cubs fans might reasonably allow. There are funny and (occasionally profane) inscriptions from friends like Stan Musial, Sandy Koufax, Pete Rose and Johnny Bench.
There’s also a signed photo from Lou Brock. It’s the one right over there, a few inches above the Lou Brock bobblehead statue.
Lou Brock is why we’re here Thursday, a few hours before the Cubs beat the Dodgers in Game 5 to move within one win of the World Series.
Brock was the blossoming speedster the St. Louis Cardinals got in exchange for Broglio, the sore-armed, burned-out right-hander, on June 15, 1964.
Brock helped St. Louis win the World Series that season, and again in ’67. The Cardinals also made the World Series in ’68. In those three series, Brock hit .391 with four home runs and 14 stolen bases.
Broglio, meanwhile, went 7-19 with a 5.40 ERA over three injury-ravaged seasons with the Cubs. That’s why Brock signed his photo with a bittersweet touch: “To Ernie ... History and time have tied us together. You are and were a hellava player.”
There were other players involved in that infamous deal — the Cubs also got pitcher Bobby Shantz and outfielder Doug Clemens; St. Louis also received pitchers Jack Spring and Paul Toth.
But the three key words “Brock for Broglio” remain such a part of baseball lore that it has its own entry on Wikipedia, with an explanation that the phrase is “sometimes used in the sport of baseball to signify a trade that in hindsight turns out to be an extremely lopsided transaction.”
It’s so common that Broglio sometimes gets blindsided while flipping channels. When right-hander Jake Arrieta faced the Giants in the NLDS earlier this month, he heard the announcer explain to viewers that the Cubs stealing Arrieta from the Baltimore Orioles for a couple of no-names “is probably the answer to the bad trade the Cubs made for Ernie Broglio.”
Broglio laughs hard he recounts the line.
“You live with it,’’ as he said. “You go along with it. I mean, here you are 50-some years later after the trade, and we’re talking. And I’m thinking, ‘What trade is going to be remembered for 50-something years?’’’
Broglio also knows that his struggles in Chicago had nothing to do with a drop-off in talent: His elbow was shot, and it was secretly shot before he ever packed his bags out of St. Louis. These days, he’d have Tommy John surgery followed by an extensive, well-monitored rehabilitation over the course of 18 months or so.
In those days? You kept your mouth shut, except for maybe when dealing with the team doctor. Though none of the Cardinals executives are alive to confirm, Broglio suspects they knew the extent of the damage when they shipped him off to Chicago.
And Broglio is certain that the Cubs had no idea, and without the physical exams that are a standard part of the trade process now, they were stuck.
“They (Cardinals) got rid of used merchandise,’’ he said. “The Cubs didn’t know. Nowadays, that trade never would have happened.”
Brock’s inscription — “a hellava player” — was no exaggeration. In 1960, four seasons before the trade, Broglio went 21-9 with a 2.75 ERA and 188 strikeouts in 226.1 innings and deserved the Cy Young Award. (He finished third, behind Vern Law and Warren Spahn).
There was no WAR statistic in those days — Wins Above Replacement — but baseball-reference.com retroactively calculated the 1960 National League leader board to look like this: 1. Willie Mays (9.5) 2. Hank Aaron (8.0) 3. Ernie Banks (7.8) 4. Ernie Broglio (7.7) 5. Eddie Mathews (7.3) “What?” Broglio says, upon hearing the list. “I’m in there? Holy cow. With all those great hitters! The Hall of Famers!”
Broglio was the opening day starter in 1961 but was derailed that season by shoulder tendonitis. He said he got 18 cortisone shots that year. An aghast doctor later told him: “That’s five year’s worth!”
At his best, the 6-foot-2, 200-pounder thrived with a fastball he thinks was in the upper-80s and a wipeout curveball. The Berkeley native learned his breaking ball while playing American Legion ball in El Cerrito, where the family moved when he was about 7.
Early in his professional career, it looked as if he’d be staying close to home: The New York Giants bought his contract in 1956, and he was still in the team’s minor league system, playing alongside a young Willie McCovey, when the Giants moved west in ’58.
But on Oct. 8 that year, Broglio was part of a fiveplayer swap that sent him to St. Louis. Though shocked by the move, he fit in right away with Musial and a batch of young talent that included Bob Gibson, Curt Flood and Tim McCarver.
“The Cardinals were great. They greeted everybody,’’ Broglio said. “They wanted you to be happy. So that’s what made me really like the Cardinals.”
He was so well-liked there that on the night St. Louis won that ’64 World Series without him, Broglio got a call from Musial’s restaurant. Cardinal players passed the phone around to thank Broglio for his contribution (He’d made 11 starts with a 3.50 ERA before the Brock trade.)
“I said, ‘Wait a minute. I have to go get my glass of champagne to celebrate with you guys,’’ he said. “And that’s what I did. I talked to every one of them.”
Still robust, even as an octogenarian, it’s easy to see why players enjoyed his company. On these walls, the autographed photos fairly echo with bygone laughter.
Koufax, who sometimes squared off against his fellow No. 32 wrote, “What a horse(----) number. Best wishes.”
Rose, who hit his first career longball off Broglio, wrote: “Thanks for the home run.”
Bench, who was behind the plate for Broglio’s final professional season, wrote: “Catch you later.”
But the laughs faded in Chicago. Broglio started 0-4 with an 8.22 ERA with the Cubs. His elbow was killing him. He had surgery in the offseason, but this was years before Dr. Frank Jobe figured out how to replace an elbow ligament. Instead, doctors had his ulnar nerve reset. That was in November; he was back on the spring training mound that February.
“Now they call it a Tommy John operation, and you get a year and a half off,’’ Broglio said. “I was back throwing a baseball in two months. You want to play. You want to stay in the big leagues. So you had to do it.”
Broglio retired from professional baseball after spending the 1967 season with the Cincinnati Reds’ top minor-league affiliate.
At 32, Broglio returned home to take a full-time job with the San Jose-based Joseph George Liquor Distributor.
These days, he coaches young pitchers, mostly 10year-olds, with an emphasis on mechanics that will keep their arms healthy for the long haul. Broglio doesn’t bother trying to teach them his famous curveball. He insists that they stick with a fastball, change-up and cutter until their arms are old enough to handle more.
“And the cutter, they’d better not spin,’’ he said. “If they spin it, I stop teaching it because now you’re playing with your elbow.”
Broglio said most of his kids have no idea about his place in baseball history. But he’s glad some of the dads do. And with the Cubs one win away from their first World Series in 71 years, he’s just glad to be hearing his name again.
“I told Lou Brock, ‘I better go before you because you’re in the Hall of Fame and well-remembered,’’ he said. “I’m only remembered for the trade.”