#22: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN… AND WHAT MIGHT BE
| ALL-TIME #22 ROSTER: | |
| Player | Years |
| Marv Gudat | 1932 |
| Bud Tinning | 1933–34 |
| Roy Henshaw | 1934–36 |
| Curt Davis | 1937 |
| Dizzy Dean | 1938–40 |
| (player-coach) | 1941 |
| Emil Kush | 1942 |
| Charlie Gilbert | 1943, 1946 |
| Stu Martin | 1943 |
| Bill Schuster | 1944–45 |
| Rabbit Garriott | 1946 |
| Doyle Lade | 1947 |
| Lonny Frey | 1947 |
| Ralph Hamner | 1947 |
| Clarence Maddern | 1948–49 |
| Herm Reich | 1949 |
| Bob Borkowski | 1950–51 |
| Gene Hermanski | 1952–53 |
| Catfish Metkovich | 1953 |
| Jim Davis | 1954–56 |
| Ray Mueller (coach) | 1957 |
| Freddy Rodriguez | 1958 |
| Gordon Massa | 1958 |
| Lou Jackson | 1958–59 |
| Ed Donnelly | 1959 |
| Moe Thacker | 1960 |
| Al Heist | 1961 |
| Jim McAnany | 1962 |
| John Boccabella | 1963–65 |
| Paul Popovich | 1966–67, 1969–73 |
| Vic Larose | 1968 |
| Pete LaCock | 1974 |
| Ron Dunn | 1975 |
| Wayne Tyrone | 1976 |
| Bill Buckner | 1977–84 |
| Billy Hatcher | 1984–85 |
| Jerry Mumphrey | 1986–88 |
| Mike Harkey | 1990–93 |
| Eddie Zambrano | 1994 |
| Dave Clark | 1997 |
| Tarrik Brock | 2000 |
| Rondell White | 2000–01 |
| Mark Prior | 2002–06 |
| Kevin Hart | 2008–09 |
| Tom Gorzelanny | 2009 |
| Xavier Nady | 2010 |
| Carlos Pena | 2011 |
| Matt Garza | 2012–13 |
| Logan Watkins | 2013 |
| Felix Doubront | 2014 |
| Addison Russell | 2015 |
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
The above words are from the great American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92), not to be confused with the fleet Chicago outfielder Rondell Bernard White (2000–01). White is the baseball embodiment of Whittier’s poem, especially as they relate to #22 and Wrigley Field. White’s knee problems prevented him from playing more than two full seasons out of fifteen big league years. Acquired at the 2000 trading deadline from Montreal, White appeared to be hitting his stride with the ’01 Cubs, smacking 13 homers and posting a .302 average in 73 games in the first half. Then he got hurt again and didn’t return until September.
The tale of #22 has been one with so many “might haves” for the Cubs, dating all the way back to one of its earliest wearers, Dizzy Dean. The Cardinals great, facing Earl Averill in the 1937 All-Star Game, had his toe broken by a line drive. Dean changed his pitching motion while trying to come back too soon, and he hurt his arm. The Cubs paid a then-record $185,000—plus three nondescript players—to get him from the Cardinals before the 1938 season. Though he could only pitch in 13 games, he went 7–1 with a 1.81 ERA and helped lead the Cubs to the pennant. But the arm damage sustained was too great, and he pitched in only 31 games over the next three seasons before retiring to become a coach, and later a broadcaster for several clubs whose malaprops (“He slud into third”) became legendary. Sadly, his pitching for the Cubs wasn’t.
Fast forward to 1977, and Cubs fans were again scratching their heads over the acquisition of an injured player: Bill Buckner, who’d been acquired from the Dodgers for the popular Rick Monday. (Ivan DeJesus was thrown into the deal and became the starting Cubs shortstop after having played in only 87 games, hitting .183, for LA over the previous three years.) At first, Buckner’s ankles and knees were so bad that he spent large swaths of time early in the ’77 season either reduced to pinch-hitting or being pulled from games late. Finally healthy by the second half of ’77, it seemed that the worse the Cubs were, the more Billy Buck shone. In 1980, a season in which the Cubs supplanted the Mets in the NL East basement, Buckner won the batting title with a .324 average. He was even better during the miserable ’81 strike year. He made his lone All-Star team and led the NL in both doubles and games played. He finished in the top ten of the NL MVP voting in both ’81 and ’82.
Bill Buckner endured hard times as a Cub, only to be traded just as the club turned the corner.
And yes, he was a good defensive first baseman. He never won any Gold Gloves in Chicago, but Keith Hernandez had that award wrapped up eleven years running. Billy Buck’s bad ankles eventually made him into a statue at first with the Red Sox, but he could still field most balls hit near him, as evidenced by his major league record 184 assists in ’85. Even before Mookie Wilson’s famed grounder eluded his glove, Buckner was dealt a cruel blow when, after seven seasons as the brightest spot in a dim Cubs lineup, he was replaced at first by Leon Durham and traded (for Dennis Eckersley and Mike Brumley) during the Wrigley renaissance of ’84. Buckner, who didn’t want to come to the Cubs in ’77, feeling he “bled Dodger blue,” wept at the press conference when he left the Cubs. It’s ironic that the man who took Billy Buck’s bag made the same glaring postseason error that would later become synonymous with Buckner’s name.
Half a decade later, another pitcher donned #22 and the Cubs had great hopes for Mike Harkey, their top pick in 1987. He finished fifth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting after posting a 12–6, 3.26 performance and Cubs fans had high hopes for him. But Harkey broke down the next spring and had shoulder surgery. Although he came back to the rotation by 1993, his 10–10 record was marred by an ugly 5.26 ERA. After the ’93 season he signed as a free agent with the Rockies, not the place to go for a rehabbing pitcher, and his ERA jumped again, to 5.74. After three more tries with the A’s, Angels, and Dodgers, respectively, he was done at age thirty.
But the “saddest of words” could also apply to Mark Prior (2002–06). Prior, drafted in 2001 out of USC after being termed by some “the best college pitcher ever,” received a five-year, major league contract and was in Chicago only a year after signing. He posted a respectable 6–6, 3.32 mark with 147 strikeouts in 116 innings at age twenty-one, finishing seventh in the 2002 NL Rookie of the Year balloting despite spending only three months in the majors. The next year Prior dazzled, going 18–6, 2.43, and finished second in the NL to teammate Kerry Wood in strikeouts with 245 as the Cubs won the NL Central. Even then, a crack began to appear in the façade. On July 11, 2003, after drawing a walk, Prior collided with Braves second baseman Marcus Giles while running. He missed a month, and though he came back strong, some observers worried that this might change his pitching motion. Those fears came to pass at the start of the next year—Prior spent two months on the DL and wasn’t strong until September. It was in his last 2004 outing, on September 30, that the Cubs, desperately trying to hold on to the Wild Card lead, received what was arguably Prior’s greatest start. He threw nine innings, allowed just three hits and one run, and struck out sixteen Reds. But the Cubs lost in extra innings and lost their playoff spot.
The next year, Prior suffered a horrifying freak injury on May 27 when a line drive off the bat of the Rockies’ Brad Hawpe hit him in the elbow, breaking a bone. At first it seemed season-ending, if not career-threatening, but Prior was back in the rotation four weeks later, throwing six one-hit innings against the White Sox. He went a mediocre 7–6, 4.07 the rest of the year and started 2006 on the DL.
In coming back too soon, he may have suffered Dizzy Dean’s fate. It’s possible that hurrying back from the broken elbow altered Prior’s motion. In his return on June 18, 2006, he gave up four homers to the Tigers and wound up finishing 1–6 with a 7.21 ERA; his last appearance on a major league mound was a three-inning, five-earned-run loss to the Brewers on August 10, 2006. Prior’s departure from the Cubs was as unpleasant as his arrival was ballyhooed—asked to go to the minors in 2007, Prior responded by saying, “I’m just an employee.” He never actually took the mound in 2007, and signed with the Padres in 2008, but he never threw a pitch that year, either. The “best college pitcher ever” has instead been one of the great “might haves.”
Twenty-six Cubs donned #22 before the NL expanded in 1962. And other than in the pages of this book, it’s not likely many will remember Marv Gudat (94 Cubs at-bats in 1932), Bud Tinning (1933–34), Roy Henshaw (1934–36), Curt Davis (1937, sent to St. Louis in the Dizzy Dean deal), Emil Kush (one game wearing #22 in 1942, three more years wearing #28 from 1946–49), Charlie Gilbert (1943, 1946), Stu Martin (.220 in 1943), Bill Schuster (1944–45, who got one at-bat in the ’45 World Series and scored the winning run in Game 6 as a pinch runner in the 12th inning), Cecil “Rabbit” Garriott (0-for-5 in 1946), Doyle Lade (1947), Ralph (not “Granny”) Hamner (1947), Clarence Maddern (1948–49), Herm Reich (1949), Bob Borkowski (1950–51), Jim Davis (1954–56), Freddy Rodriguez (7 games, 7.36 ERA in 1958), or Gordon Massa (1958). So we memorialize them here.
Paul Popovich, who had two separate stints with the Cubs, came up through the Cubs farm system alongside Don Kessinger, and when Kess and Glenn Beckert became the Cubs’ double play combination in 1965, Paul was relegated to backup duty. Never a strong hitter, “Popo” was sent to the Dodgers in the Jim Hickman/Phil Regan deal in November 1967. His .232 average for the ’68 Dodgers, splitting time between shortstop and second base, may not sound like much today, but keep in mind that the Dodgers hit .230 as a team that year and the entire NL, in the “Year of the Pitcher,” batted only .243! Reacquired from LA on June 11, 1969, Popovich spent four years playing slick defense backing up both Beckert and Kessinger, hitting .254—again, a decent average for a middle infielder in that era—filling in as the starter for the rest of the season when Beckert went down with an injury in August 1973.
Those who followed Popo are almost as anonymous as the majority of those that came before him: Ron Dunn (1975), a power-hitting prospect whose power never surfaced in Chicago (3 long balls in 112 Cub at-bats); Wayne Tyrone (1976), who followed his brother Jim (1972, 1974–75) into a Cubs uniform, and hit only a little better (.228 to Jim’s .181 in blue pinstripes); Billy Hatcher (1984–85), who had stellar moments in the postseason—for other teams (a dramatic home run in the 1986 NLCS for the Astros, and a .750 average in the 1990 World Series for the Reds); Jerry Mumphrey (1986–88), who had two fine years (.304 in 1986 and .333 in 1987) as the (mostly) regular left fielder, but who sulked when relegated to pinch-hitting duty in ’88 and slumped to a 9-for-66 finish; and Eddie Zambrano (1994), the Cubs’ second-best Zambrano, who hit six homers in part-time duty as a spare outfielder/first baseman.
The mediocrity continued, and #22 seemed doomed to be a number worn by many more unmemorable Cubs, including Xavier Nady, to be remembered as the only Cubs player whose first name began with “X”; Logan Watkins, a man with two last names; and Felix Doubront, another in a long parade of former Red Sox players brought over by Theo Epstein. And then Addison Russell came to the 2015 Cubs. Twenty-one years old and wearing #22, he had a terrific season with the glove, both at second base and after moving to shortstop. Russell hit 13 home runs, too, and showed promise his bat should improve. He’ll wear another number, though, as Jason Heyward took his familiar #22 from his Braves and Cardinals days—a tribute to a high-school friend and teammate killed in a car accident. Russell switches to #27, but #22’s fortunes—and those of the North Side—hopefully are on the upside.
MOST OBSCURE CUB TO WEAR #22: Tarrik Brock (2000). The second-best Cub to be named “Brock,” Tarrik was a beneficiary of MLB’s policy allowing the Cubs and Mets to take some extra players on the active roster to Japan for their season-opening series in 2000. He got a hit in his first major league at-bat on March 29 in Tokyo, but only one more hit in 11 further AB through April 22, at which time he was returned to the minors. The Cubs released him at the end of the 2000 season and he never again reached the majors.
GUY YOU NEVER THOUGHT OF AS A CUB WHO WORE #22: Catfish Metkovich (1954). George Michael Metkovich, who supposedly got his nickname from stepping on a catfish and cutting his foot while on a fishing trip, played for the AL champion 1946 Red Sox, was sold to Cleveland, and wound up playing for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League in 1948, one of the minors’ greatest teams ever, earning PCL MVP honors in 1950. He moved on to the White Sox and Pirates, and then came to the Cubs in the ten-player deal that brought Ralph Kiner and Joe Garagiola to Chicago. He hit .234 in 61 games and was sold to the Milwaukee Braves in the offseason.
Streaking
Yes, they call it the streak, but it’s not what you think. This streak concerns what Cubs uniform number has been in use the most consecutive years. No Cubs uniform number has been in use consecutively since 1932, but one number did make it 57 consecutive years. That was #22, which was worn by Marv Gudat during his one and only season as a Cub for the ’32 pennant winners, and #22 was in use every year until Jerry Mumphrey wore it in his final major league game in 1988. Below is a list of all streaks of at least fifteen consecutive years.
For a list of the longest current streaks and how many consecutive years each number on the 2015 Cubs has seen active duty, see Chapter #24.
Jerry Mumphrey ended both his career and a fifty-seven year run of a Cub wearing #22 in his last game as a Cub in 1988.
All-Time Longest Streaks
