The Cubs wound up a distant second.
The beginning of the 1972 season was marred by a players’ strike, the first such labor stoppage in MLB history.
It lasted only a week or so, and it was decided that the games missed would not be made up. This resulted in a bit of controversy, as the Tigers won the AL East by half a game over the Red Sox, since they played a different number of games.
As for the Cubs, they opened the ‘72 season on a cold April weekend at Wrigley Field. After losing the season opener to the Phillies, they got a bit of excitement when Burt Hooton, making just his fourth MLB start, threw a no-hitter:
Truth be told, it was kind of a sloppy game. Hooton, less than a year out of the University of Texas, walked seven in the 4-0 win. “Effectively wild,” as the saying goes.
Of course, the Cubs would give up on Hooton only three years later and traded him away. He’d go on to pitch well in three World Series for the Dodgers, including two excellent starts in the 1981 WS, the last Dodgers/Yankees World Series until this year.
So the no-hitter was a great start to the season — but after that the Cubs went “clunk,” losing eight in a row, including walkoffs by the Mets (twice) and Astros. They eventually were 3-10 and six games out of first place before April even ended.
The ‘72 Cubs were also the beginning of the end of the famous core that never won anything. Ken Holtzman had been traded to the A’s for Rick Monday, and the Cubs also acquired outfielder Jose Cardenal. Both would become popular on the North Side, and Monday had an incredibly hot May, batting .366/.455/.610. That included a three-homer game against the Phillies May 16. Oddly, that did not get Monday a Player of the Month award; it went to Houston’s Bob Watson, who hit .360./405/.620. Looks like Monday might have gotten jobbed.
Anyway, even that great month didn’t move the needle much on the Cubs’ standing in the NL East. By month’s end they were over .500 at 20-18, but eight games behind the first-place Mets, who got off to a 29-11 start.
The Cubs got hot in June, beginning the month winning 14 of 18. The last of that run was a seven-game winning streak that got them to 34-22 and just two games out of first place. That was the culmination of going 31-12 from the 3-10 start.
What could possibly…
Well, this is the Cubs of the 1970s. Everything went wrong. Well, not absolutely everything. One fun thing did happen during that 12-22 run, a triple play against the Pirates on July 2 [VIDEO].
What you don’t hear on that clip is that apparently, Jack Brickhouse had wished for a triple play to happen… and it did. The Cubs lost the game anyway, 7-4, and from 34-22 they would hit the All-Star break at 46-44, a 12-22 run that got Leo Durocher fired.
Finally. Coach Whitey Lockman was named his successor, and it was hoped maybe the team would relax enough to get back in the race.
It didn’t happen, obviously. The Cubs went 16-12 in August, but never got closer than 7½ games out of first place and finished the month 11 games out.
The Cubs began September hosting the Padres at Wrigley Field. They defeated the visitors 14-3 Sept. 1 and entered the Saturday, Sept. 2 contest 68-58, 11 games out of first place.
That was the day Milt Pappas threw a no-hitter — and probably should have had a perfect game.
WGN-TV had pioneered the use of the center-field camera in the mid-1950s — why they chose to use the “high home” camera for that pitch instead of the CF shot is a mystery lost to the mists of time. At least with a CF shot, we’d have seen how close that pitch was. It’s impossible to tell from the angle that was shown.
Bruce Froemming, the plate umpire that afternoon, was in his second MLB season. I suspect if he’d been a veteran umpire, understanding the meaning of that pitch in an 8-0 game, he’d have given it to Pappas. For the rest of Pappas’ life he insisted that was a strike. He did get the no-hitter on a popup by the next batter. No no-hitter would be thrown by the Cubs at Wrigley Field for 52 years and two days, until the combined no-no against the Pirates this past September.
So the Cubs had two no-hitters in 1972, and the other highlight of the season was Billy Williams’ monster year. Billy batted 333/.398/.606 with 37 home runs, and for the second time in three years finished second in MVP voting to Johnny Bench. Billy was miffed about that, but truth be told, Bench had the better year.
Here’s Billy’s 37th home run, hit at Wrigley Field Oct. 1:
Not sure who that announcer is. The Cubs won that game 3-0.
The Cubs had a decent season in 1972, going 85-70. That’s an 89-win season in a full year. The Pirates were just too good, winning 96 games (100 win equivalent in a full season) and though Cubs pitching was improved (500 runs allowed, third-best in the NL), the offense wasn’t quite good enough to overcome the Pirates’ dominance. The pitching included the successful debut of a young righthander named Rick Reuschel, who posted a 2.93 ERA in 21 games (18 starts) and 2.9 bWAR, despite not making the big leagues until mid-June.
Cardenal had a good year in his first Cubs season, stealing 25 bases. It was just the second time (Adolfo Phillips, 32 in 1966) any Cub had stolen that many bases since 1930 (!). The Cubs as a team stole 69 nice bases, only the third time they’d had that many since 1945 (!). Could the team have finally joined the stolen-base revolution?
Not really, but at least they were somewhat fun to watch in 1972, despite finishing far out of first place.
One last oddity from the ‘72 season. On Sept. 16 at Wrigley Field, the Cubs defeated the Mets 18-5. The Cubs drew 15 walks that afternoon. That’s the franchise record for a nine-inning game, breaking the previous record that had been set in 1958. (The Cubs lost that ‘58 game, too, 8-7.) Future Hall of Famer Tom Seaver had started that game for the Mets, and Hooton homered off him. Sadly, no video survives of that homer.