Ten Innings at Wrigley Quotes

“When the former Negro Leagues star Buck O’Neil, now serving as a Cubs scout, said, “Mr. Holland, we’d have a better ball club if we played the blacks,” Holland didn’t disagree. But the fans were already accusing him of making the Cubs look like a Negro League team, he said. So Holland traded Jenkins to the Texas Rangers. A year later, Jenkins led the American League with 25 victories. He would win 110 more on his way to the Hall of Fame.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“As the losses mounted, underprivileged children treated to free seats in the Bull Ring, a section of left-field seats named for Greg “the Bull” Luzinski, booed Luzinski. Ozark took to sitting in his office with the door locked.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“Cubs leadoff man Ivan DeJesus had a slashy swing and a fan club that called itself Jews for DeJesus.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“Lerch and Bob Boone had just become the first pitcher-catcher duo in major-league history to homer before they took the field. (Forty years later, they are still the only ones.)”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“DeJesus batted next, an aggressive slasher from Santurce, Puerto Rico. Scouts liked to say that Puerto Rican (and Cuban and Dominican) players were free swingers because “nobody ever walked their way off the island.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“Larry Bowa shouted at the pitcher. “Seven runs,” he called to Lerch. “That enough for you?” Lerch and Bob Boone had just become the first pitcher-catcher duo in major-league history to homer before they took the field. (Forty years later, they are still the only ones.) A six-foot-five left-hander with a delivery that was mostly knees and elbows, Lerch uncorked a first-pitch”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“Franks took the ball from Lamp and gave him a pat on the butt. “Fuck of a day, kid,” he said, and Lamp trudged to the dugout. He’d entered the game with a 2.36 earned run average. After allowing six runs in ten minutes, he left with an ERA of 4.42. Janet Lamp”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“In the fifteen years before Marvin Miller came to the players union in 1966, the average big-league salary had crept from $12,000 to $19,000. Fifteen years later it was $325,000. The game’s economic transformation changed everything, just as the Phillies were finally figuring out how to win.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“It wasn’t as outside as they wanted. Sisler drove it over the left-field fence. The Whiz Kids were going to the 1950 World Series. They lost. The Yankees of Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Phil Rizzuto swept them in four games. The Yanks had their second consecutive World Series title and thirteenth overall; the Phillies were still looking for their first. They had scored all of four runs while getting swept in the last all-Caucasian World Series. (Mays, Monte Irvin, and Hank Thompson would play for the New York Giants in the 1951 Series.) Still, they rode the train home to a heroes’ welcome at Philadelphia’s Broad Street Station. The Whiz Kids were National League champions, the youngest club in the league, with better years in store, they thought.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“They wouldn’t have a black star until Rookie of the Year Dick Allen hit 29 homers in 1964, and Allen enjoyed his time in Philadelphia so much that he drew a message in the dirt with his spikes while playing first base: TRADE ME.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“Jenkins, Ken Holtzman, and Bill Hands, the team’s top three pitchers, made 123 starts that season and completed 53. (In 2018, all major-league starters—more than 250 of them—combined to throw 42 complete games.)”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“If we can’t go in,” Sianis announced, “the Cubs will never win.” Wrigley’s private security guards blocked the way, and the Curse of the Billy Goat was born. The Cubs lost Game Four and went on to lose the Series. They had been in seven World Series since 1908 and lost them all. They wouldn’t reach another World Series for more than seventy years. But as George Will would note, “Cub fans like to say that any team can have a bad century.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink

“Purists who praised the owner’s defense of day baseball would have been disappointed to know that Wrigley had bought tons of steel to build light towers in 1941. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he donated the steel to the war effort.”
― Kevin Cook, Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink