Visiting the Grave of a Long-Ago Cubs Pitcher By allyngibson on May 1, 2021, 6:36pm CDT +
At the end of 2019, the
York Sunday News here in York, Pennsylvania, ran a two-part essay that summarized the history of York County amateur baseball, drawing on an eight-part series originally published in the York newspapers in 1940. I was curious about the original articles I like obscure, local baseball history like that and last summer, when I was making use of a Newspapers.com trial, I found the original article series, used Google Drive to OCR the text, and assembled from that a private ebook. The last of the eight parts talks about local York County players who had success in the major leagues, like Lefty George and, relevant to Cubs fans, Cliff Heathcote (famous for being traded from the Cardinals to the Cubs between games of a doubleheader between the two teams). Last weekend, I noticed this line:
Cubs' milestone victories at home bleedcubbieblue.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bleedcubbieblue.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Billy Williams unique 4-hit game By JohnW53 on Feb 19, 2021, 4:40am CST +
While batting .290/.361/.492, Williams made
2,510 hits.
Thirty times, he had 4 in a game, including 8 in which he went 4 for 4.
Twice, both in 1969, all 4 of his hits were for extra bases.
On Wednesday, April 9, in the second game of the season, Williams smacked 2 doubles, walked, then smacked 2 more doubles, as the Cubs thumped the visiting Phillies, 11-3.
It was a different story when he did it again, on Friday, Sept. 5, in the opener of a weekend series against the Pirates at Wrigley Field.
....
STRANDED TWICE, CIRCLED TWICE
After Steve Blass retired the first 2 Cubs, Williams doubled to center field. Ernie Banks then popped up to end the inning.
14 Cubs form chain that spans 145 seasons By JohnW53 on Dec 20, 2020, 7:35am CST 1
Some years ago, an enterprising baseball historian figured out how to make a chain of just 9 players that spanned the history of Major League Baseball.
It began with Harry Wright of the 1869 Cincinnati Reds, the first professional team. In his final season, another player was a rookie, and it that player s final season, a third player was a rookie, and so on to the current season.
(I hunted for the story online but could not find it.)
I wondered how few players it would take to do something similar using only Cubs, and beginning in 1876, the first year of the National League.