Cubs Win ... and Win... and Win

 

During the first month’s games of my 1972 APBA baseball replay, it seemed like the teams were replicating the bell curve of statistics. There were a few teams on the winning end – Pittsburgh and the New York Yankees were winning far more frequently than the other teams. And there were the outliers on the other end – Milwaukee and Texas were on a race to see which team would lose 100 games first.

And the rest of the teams all hovered around each other. Most were within two to four games of playing .500.

I wasn’t all that enthused at first. I mean, 1972 was the first real baseball season I became totally aware. I was 11, living in northern Minnesota and watching and reading as much as I could about the Twins then. I learned how to compile ERA and batting averages and I could see that, despite a good start, the Twins were probably destined for a near .500 season themselves.

So, when I began rolling 1972, I was hoping for a stroll down nostalgia lane with teams like Oakland and Detroit and Cincinnati really taking off. Instead, I got mediocrity.

Until May 1972 rolled around.

And the Cubs.

Chicago has won 12 games in a row from May 18 to May 30 in the replay. They’ve moved from fifth place, only a tad ahead of Montreal, to second place. They’re still seven games behind Pittsburgh, but the streak is on-going. The Cubs play two more at home against St. Louis and then start a nine-game road swing against San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, before heading home  to face the same teams nine more times.

Then, on June 23, 1972, the Cubs host Pittsburgh in a three-game set and then play them again at the end of the month in the Pirates’ stadium.

The Cubs have been amazing during this streak. They’ve outscored their opponents 89-14 and pitchers tossed five shutouts during the run, including a 20-0 shellacking of Montreal. The pitchers have hurled an incredible 0.92 earned run average in the 12 games.

The team has batted .320, with Glenn Beckert leading them with a .381 average. Billy Williams has five home runs and 13 RBIs during the streak and is batting .320.

Even Ron Santos, the slowest of the slow, is hitting .341. Prior to this streak, it seemed Santos, who is given the “S” for slow (should have been “GS” for glacier slow) would get on base and then be constantly caught at second or third when the next batter got a hit. If he ever hit a triple in a game, the ivy on Wrigley’s wall would have grown six inches before he slid into the base. Once when Santos hit a double, the grounds crew had to run a folding chair out there for him to sit and catch his breath. Chicago officials are talking with the commissioner to see if they can get Santos a moped or Segway to putter to bases with.

Yeah, Santos is slow.

But in these 12 games, he’s not been caught on base at all.

Long streaks are not that common for me in APBA replays. I’ve had a few teams win 10 in a row and the Minnesota Twins lost more than 20 in a 1977 replay. But I’m pretty sure this 12-game winning stretch has to be the longest I can recall. And it’s not over. Yet.

Burt Hooton is scheduled to start the next games for the Cubs against Cardinal’s pitcher Johnny Cumberland. Cumberland is carded as a “D,” the worst rating given for pitchers based upon their performance. Hooton is a “B” with a “Y” rating for strikeouts, which gives him a chance to record more strikeouts than other pitchers based upon his real-life performance in the 1972 season.

It’ll be a while before I can get to that game. Because of work and life, my replay has slowed down a bit. Maybe this upcoming game-- and the Houston-Cincinnati clash ahead—can speed my rate of play a bit.

This is one of the neat things about the APBA game. It may seem plodding to some to do a complete replay, rolling all the games for every team, but there is always something that’s happening, something to marvel over and something to look ahead to.