The Cubs defeated the Padres and were one win away from a league championship.
After the Cubs crushed the Padres 13-0 in Game 1 of the 1984 NLCS, they took the field the next afternoon at Wrigley Field for Game 2 against the visitors from San Diego.
It was another beautiful fall afternoon at the ol’ ballyard. Retired Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse threw a ceremonial first pitch. Check out the sign in the stands in the background.
Al Yellon
Steve Trout took the mound and retired the Padres in order in the first inning.
Then the Daily Double, Bob Dernier and Ryne Sandberg, did what they’d done so often during the regular season — start a first-inning rally. Dernier singled and took off for second, so he made it all the way to third on a ground out by Sandberg.
A ground out by Gary Matthews scored Dernier to put the Cubs up 1-0.
The score remained 1-0 until the bottom of the third, when Keith Moreland singled with one out. Ron Cey doubled and Moreland scored, with Cey taking third on the throw to the infield. Jody Davis followed with a sacrifice fly and the Cubs led 3-0.
The Padres scored once off Trout in the fourth, but the Cubs got that run right back in the bottom of the inning. Trout managed to beat out an infield hit with one out. Dernier forced Trout at second, but got the base back by stealing second. Sandberg doubled, with Dernier scoring to make it 4-1 Cubs.
The Padres cut that lead to 4-2 with a single run in the sixth, but Trout didn’t allow another run and completed eight innings. Jim Frey sent Trout out in the ninth to finish things, but when Trout issued a one-out walk to Kevin McReynolds, Lee Smith was summoned to wrap up the win.
Smith struck out former Cub Carmelo Martinez for the second out, and then got Terry Kennedy — son of the former Cubs GM Bob Kennedy — to fly to left to end the game.
Here are both those outs:
The Cubs were up two games to none and needed only one win in San Diego to go to the World Series.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, you know the answer to that, and thus this article ends my look at the great 1984 Cubs season. The Cubs dropped all three games in San Diego, a crushing loss, and it would take 32 more years before the Cubs would get to, and win, the World Series.
I’ll simply re-post a link to the article written here last year definitively debunking the long-stated claim that the Cubs “lost” a home date in the NLCS. It just didn’t happen that way. The following year, MLB expanded the LCS to best-of-seven. Would the Cubs have won a best-of-seven? Maybe, though they wouldn’t have had home field for that series, as detailed in the article. What I have always wondered is why the Cubs and Padres had to fly to San Diego and play the next day for Game 3, instead of having a travel day, as they did in the ALCS. Would the Cubs have won a Game 3 if they had been better rested? Obviously, we’ll never know.
Over the course of time and in this series, I have tried to focus on the great things that happened to the Cubs in 1984 rather than the NLCS failure. They won 96 games, their most since 1945, and drew more than two million fans for the first time. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the current Cubs fanbase and team culture that we know now began in that great year. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to replicate that success the following year, largely due to injuries to the starting rotation, but a standard for success had been set that Cubs fans embraced. The era of “lovable losers” had ended.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at the Cubs’ great 1984 season on its 40th anniversary. Their Game 2 win over the Padres happened 40 years ago today, Wednesday, October 3, 1984.