It was a festive, glorious day at Wrigley Field.
The division clinched in Pittsburgh, the 1984 Cubs headed home. Before the season’s final series, the scoreboard guys had some fun to show everyone walking by Wrigley Field how proud they were of this N.L. East division title team, as I posted earlier this week:
Al Yellon
The Cubs then took two of three from the rival Cardinals (including a come-from-behind walkoff win the last day of the regular season, depriving Bruce Sutter of what would then have been a record-breaking save) in preparation for the NLCS against the Padres, which was to begin Tuesday, Oct. 2.
Something I should note here: No, the Cubs did not lose a home date in the 1984 NLCS. That’s a story I have definitively debunked on this site multiple times, most recently last year.
There were no bleacher season tickets then — in fact, few Cubs fans had season tickets at all in 1984, perhaps only 3,000 or so — so there was a mad scramble to get tickets for the home games. Some friends of mine had found me a left-field bleacher ticket (back then, I was a right-field regular) for Game 2, but on that final regular-season day, I still sought a ticket for Game 1. One of my friends told me, “Try the box office.”
In that pre-internet age, yes, playoff tickets were still sometimes sold at the box office windows. I went there and was able to buy one located not far from my regular right-field seat. (Even back then, all postseason bleacher seats were sold on a reserved basis.)
Tuesday, October 2, 1984 was a beautiful day in Chicago. It was gloriously sunny and about 70 degrees, perfect baseball weather. The game time was even Cub-friendly at 1:15 p.m. CT. One unusual thing happened: Umpires went on strike (for higher pay for postseason games) before the league championship series began, and so this game (and Game 2 at Wrigley) were umpired by amateur umpires from the Chicago area. I recognized one of the names introduced as umpires for this game — Joe Pomponi. He was my middle-school gym teacher. The strike was settled and MLB umpires called Game 5 of the NLCS.
Anyway, the Cubs played a nearly-flawless game and crushed the Padres 13-0. There were four Cubs homers, including one leading off the bottom of the first inning by Bob Dernier and one by pitcher Rick Sutcliffe. The Sutcliffe bomb flew directly over my head and out onto Sheffield:
Here are the other Cubs pitchers who homered in postseason games:
Kerry Wood, NLCS Game 7 vs. Marlins, Oct. 15, 2003
Travis Wood, NLDS Game 2 vs. Giants, Oct. 8, 2016
Jake Arrieta, NLDS Game 3 vs. Giants, Oct. 10, 2016
Sutcliffe threw seven shutout innings and struck out eight and Warren Brusstar finished up with two scoreless innings of his own.
Here are some photos I took that afternoon that, I think, capture some of the atmosphere of the day. Festive. Celebratory. Glorious, after 39 years of waiting for a postseason win.
At the time it was the most lopsided shutout in postseason history; that’s since been surpassed by the Braves, who did it in Game 5 and Game 7 of the 1996 NLCS over the Cardinals. But back then? 13-0 got everyone thinking the 1984 Cubs were the proverbial team of destiny.
The Cubs would win again the next afternoon. More on that tomorrow. The Cubs’ NLCS Game 1 win over the Padres happened 40 years ago today, Tuesday, October 2, 1984.