Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Baby update

This week`s Fan of the Week, Marty Gangler, tells the story of how he and his wife decided to name their son Mitchell. It has something to do with former closer Mitch Williams.

Anyway, Marty e-mailed me the other day with this update.

"Rick--we took my son over to watch the game on Saturday with his new cousin. This pic came out pretty good. Thought you might get a kick out of it."

Here`s the picture...






We gotta get that boy a toothless onesie for the St. Louis series.

Posted by Rick Kaempfer at 12:02 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Monday, June 30, 2008

E-mails, we get e-mails...

I received this inquiry tonight from Dan, Chris & Nat Moore

"I have 4yr old twins who are very into Cubs baseball, and we have a question. They heard that the rally cap was invented by the Detroit Tigers players during the 1945 WS in which the Cubs were outscored. So now they yell at the tv when they see Cubs fans wearing a rally cap. What`s your take on this?"

I had not heard this before so I did some research. It`s true, the rally cap did first appear in Detroit. Some Detroit fans did it as early as 1942, but the players didn`t adopt it until the 1945 World Series against the Cubs. During Game 5, with the Cubs leading the game, the Tiger players turned their caps inside out, and Cubs first baseman Phil Cavaretta (photo) promptly let a ball go through his legs, resulting in the Tigers scoring 4 runs. The Tigers went on to win the game 8-4.

My question is this: Were the Padres wearing rally caps when the ball went through Leon Durham`s legs in 1984? If so, I wholeheartedly agree with your boys. All Cubs fans should abandon the practice of wearing "rally caps" immediately. There are all sorts of forces at work here and we better not tempt any of them.

Posted by Rick Kaempfer at 11:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Sunday, June 29, 2008

JOBC Merchandise

Thanks again to Elliott Harris of the Sun-Times for publishing photos of our merchandise. I think he is really smitten with the JOBC Logo. It probably isn`t the lovely ladies wearing the merchandise, right?

Like this one...






















Or this one...





















Or this one...





Buy your own JOBC shirt here

Posted by Rick Kaempfer at 10:29 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Cup of Coffee: Dave Owen

Every Thursday the JOBC blog features stories about players who only got a "cup of coffee" with the Cubs. If you`d like anyone featured, by all means, drop me a line at rick (at) justonebadcentury (dot) com.


This week`s Fan of the Week video is all about the famous Ryne Sandberg game, which took place 24 years ago this week. In the video, an obscure Cub named Dave Owen is mentioned.

Dave Owen was a rarely used backup infielder on the Cubs in 1983, 1984, and 1985. In his Cubs career Owen had a grand total of 134 at bats, with one home run, 16 RBI, and a batting average of .194. One of those 16 RBIs however, will go down in history because of when it occurred.

Ryne Sandberg famously hit a home run off the best relief pitcher in baseball (Bruce Sutter) to tie the nationally televised game on June 23, 1984 in the bottom of the ninth. After the Cardinals scored again in the top of the tenth, Sandberg hit another home run off Sutter to tie it again in the bottom of the tenth. It`s the game that propelled him to the MVP award, and made his career. Whitey Herzog said after the game that Sandberg was the best player he had ever seen.

But Sandberg didn`t win the game for the Cubs that day, he merely tied it. In the bottom of the 11th inning, little used backup infielder Dave Owen came to the plate with the bases loaded and hit a single, which knocked in the winning run. Considering the importance of the game in a Hall of Famer`s career, Dave Owen cemented his place in Chicago Cubs history.

He may have only had a cup of coffee in the big leagues, but he made it count.

Posted by Rick Kaempfer at 12:03 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Labels: cup of coffee

Welcome to "Just One Bad Century dot com," a site for die-hard Chicago Cubs fans.

As you all know, in October, it will be 100 years since their last World Series championship.

Our mission here is to rally you, Chicago Cubs fans from all over the world, to make sure it remains Just One Bad Century.

We`re doing this in a couple of ways.

You know the old adage, `those who don`t know history are doomed to repeat it?`"

The sad truth about many Chicago Cubs fans is that we don`t know it as well as we should. We follow them closely, we remember the personal torment, but we aren`t really sure why we`ve gone a hundred years without a World Series championship.

The Just One Bad Century staff has spent the last year researching Chicago Cubs history, and we`ll share with you what we`ve discovered, so that we can all collectively avoid the doom.

The other thing we`re trying to do is to eliminate bad karma. The Red Sox knew their bad karma was caused by trading Babe Ruth, and the White Sox knew theirs was caused by cheating in the World Series. But what about the Cubs? Where does our bad karma come from?

Is it really a goat? We don`t think so. We`ll tell you what bad karma we`ve discovered in our research, but we`ll also try to offset that by atoning for previous sins, and doing whatever we can to create good karma. And we`ll need your help for that.

Come back and visit often. We`ll have new features, stories, audio or video every single weekday.

We`ll try to make this journey as fun as possible. After all, we love the Chicago Cubs. And we want to keep it Justonebadcentury.