FOREWORD

Numbers are such an integral part of baseball and Wrigley Field, it’s hard to believe there was a time when the Cubs ran onto the field with blank shirts on their backs. Glad I wasn’t announcing or trying to keep score back then. I can only imagine what spring training games must have been like with all those substitutions and no numbers.

The Cubs had been playing in the National League for more than fifty years—they’d helped start the league in 1876—before they finally sewed numbers on their uniforms in the middle of the 1932 season. This is the story of everyone that’s hitched up the digits. The Stan Hacks, the Charlie Roots, the Phil Cavarrettas of the world, those you might have been able to tell without a number—Cubs fans have always been sharp—but the Dom Dallessandros and Harry Chitis of the world, they could now stand and be counted. And they’ve kept on counting; more than 1,500 Cubs since then have worn numbers. Only one player or manager or coach at a time can wear a number, though some have traded in numbers often enough you’d think they wanted to change that rule, too. Seems that as soon as one person gets traded or demoted or retires or just feels like a numeric change is needed, their number is right back in circulation waiting for the next in line. Unless, of course, you’re talking about numbers 10, 14, 23, 26, or 31, the only numbers the Cubs have retired.

Can you imagine Ron Santo wearing a number other than 10? Or Billy Williams wearing a number besides 26? Well, they both did. Yes, my broadcast partner for fifteen years came into the world as a Cub wearing #15 in 1960. Billy wore #41 that year. He’d worn #4 the previous season for his first sweet swings at Wrigley. It wasn’t until 1961 that both Ronnie and Billy settled into the numbers that now fly on the flagpoles on each side of fair territory at Wrigley Field. You didn’t know that? Well, there’s a lot about the Cubs you’ll learn from this fun book.

This isn’t just some dry account of numbers worn through the years—though it’s got everybody who’s donned Cubs blue since ’32—but there are fun to read stories and facts about both your favorites and guys you never heard of. Anyone who’s worn a Cubs uniform even for one inning is included here, people whose names you should get to know if you call yourself a Cubs fan. And millions do.

But the number that’s fascinated me since I first learned to count by reading the backs of baseball cards as a kid is #3. Three seems to come up constantly in baseball. Three outs, three strikes, three-game series, .300 hitters, and three men on the bases, which always makes your heart beat a little faster whether it’s your guy that put them there or your guy at the plate trying to bring them home.

Count yourself lucky that the Cubs now have a book that tells the history of this great franchise, one number at a time.

And away we go …

—Pat Hughes

September 2008