Book excerpt: ‘Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever’

On its face, it was a benign American summer. Big budget movies filled the theaters. Sugary pop songs wafted from the radio. An elderly woman asking “Where’s the Beef,” was a national laugh line. Ronald Reagan Era was in full free-market, take-cutting bloom, a few months before his resounding re-election.

But in retrospect, the June-July-August of 1984 marked a pivotal season, 90 days that would change the country. Americans fell in love with the personal computer; and realized a universe of television channels beyond the three major networks. Bruce Springsteen and Prince would release the albums — “Born in the USA” and “Purple Rain” — that would vault them to a new plane of celebrity. This transformation was especially pronounced in sports.

Compressed in the Summer of 1984: Michael Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls, won an Olympic gold medal and lent his name to a signature shoe. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird faced off in the NBA Finals for the first time, cementing their rivalry — to the delight of the league’s new visionary commissioner, David Stern. Wayne Gretzky won his first Stanley Cup. John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova were both at the peaks of their powers. Donald Trump would — as owner of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals — use sports to become a national figure, while Vince McMahon would consolidate pro wrestling, bringing it in from the mainstream.

In the following excerpt of “Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever,” the author Jon Wertheim writes about the Chicago Cubs who, for a few magical months anyway, were no longer baseball’s lovable losers.

Excerpt from Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever by L. Jon Wertheim. Copyright © 2021 by L. Jon Wertheim. Available June 15, 2021, from HMH Books & Media.

Joy in Wrigleyville

In the case of the Cubs, the relationship between team and town had long been a temperamental one. Baseball fans in the Wrigleyville neighborhood of Chicago loved their gracious ballpark and its quaint trappings. The ivy-festooned outfield walls. The bleachers and their open seating, which created the feel of an outdoor sports bar — the game itself less important than the beer and the social interactions. The absence of lights that necessitated day games only and, especially on weekdays, created a shared sense that everyone was in on the same secret, playing hooky while life’s suckers were at work and at school.

The only problem was the baseball itself. It wasn’t just that the Chicago Cubs were bad. It was that they were reliably, consistently, almost devotionally, bad. Sometimes they lost in creative ways, blowing late-game leads, committing basic blunders, fielders losing pop-ups in the sun, pitchers treating home plate as if it were terra incognita. Other times the Cubs were routed, allowing opposing hitters to take advantage of the short porches and crush home runs, not simply over the fence but over the bleachers and onto Waveland Avenue beyond left field or Sheffield Avenue beyond right field. For those games, the Cubs lost by football scores. 14-3. 17-7. 13-6.

Still another charming Wrigley touch: a flagpole containing the pennants of National League teams, flying in order of the divisional standings. More often than not, the Cubs flag was positioned at the bottom. The Cubs had reached the World Series in 1945, and, through 1983, hadn’t returned to the playoffs.

Cubs fans were often portrayed as the collective personification of patience. “Wait till next year,” became the team’s unofficial slogan. This was the franchise of lovable losers, whose fans would endure defeats as fair exchange for a convivial and affordable day at their charming ballpark. This was as much by design as by accident. In the early 1930s, when Philip K. Wrigley inherited the team from his father, the chewing gum tycoon William Wrigley Jr., he decided that resources were better spent on the ballpark’s décor than on the product the team put on the field. As Wrigley once put it: “The fun, the game, the sunshine, the relaxation. Our idea is to get the public to see a ball game, win or lose.”

Not surprisingly given those priorities, there was more losing than winning. And even Cubs fans had their limits. On April 29, 1983, tensions surfaced in spectacular fashion. The Cubs slogged through another loss—this one a 4-3 defeat to the Dodgers on account of a wild pitch — putting Chicago’s record at 5-14. Though it was only the 19th of 162 games, the season’s outcome was, for all intents, already fated. And the 9,391 fans in attendance that day were more than mildly displeased. As the players left the field, they were mercilessly heckled by the crowd, requiring intervention by security guards.

Once he had retreated to his small office, the team’s manager, Lee Elia — frustrated by the defeat, the treatment of his players, and the likely reality of another lost season — erupted Vesuvius-style, unleashing a soliloquy die-hard Cubs fans would later come to recite verbatim. The money lines: “Eighty-five percent of the people in this country work. The other fifteen percent come here and boo my players. They ought to go out and get a fucking job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a fucking living. Eighty-five percent of the fucking world is working. The other fifteen (percent) come out here, a fucking playground for the cocksuckers.”

Unsurprisingly, Elia did not survive the season as manager. The Cubs closed out 1983 with a record of 71-91, the sixth straight losing season and fifth straight year finishing last or next-to-last in their division. Even with a majestic ballpark, the Cubs drew an average of only 18,268 fans, ranking them in the bottom half of baseball in attendance. For perspective, playing in a much smaller Canadian market and a far less charming stadium, the Montreal Expos outdrew the Cubs by more than 10,000 fans per game that season.

The 1984 season didn’t appear to bring an infusion of hope either. Sports Illustrated picked the Cubs to finish last in the National League East division yet again. The Christian Science Monitor was, perhaps predictably, more charitable in its season preview, stating, “Improvement is the ticket here, but please don’t mention pennants.” Even improvement seemed ambitious, especially when the Cubs ended their 1984 Spring Training campaign with a record of 3-18.

It wasn’t so much that the 1984 team was bad, so much as it was strange. The roster featured a surfeit of hitting and a deficit of pitching. For the team’s dreadful defense, the outfield featured a converted catcher (Keith Moreland) hidden in right field, a natural right fielder (the eccentric Mel Hall) in centerfield, and a natural first baseman (the goateed, bespectacled Leon “Bull” Durham) in left field. ESPN would later call it “one of the worst defensive outfields of the last 25 years.”

The team, though, had a secret weapon. He was almost 50 years old and moved gingerly. But Dallas Green was among the Cubs’ saviors that season. A longtime baseball man, Green had played for the Phillies in the 1960s and managed their 1980 World Series champion team. Standing 6’5″, with a corona of graying hair and a booming voice, Green commanded a room. But he discovered that his other gifts included assessing talent, finding undiscovered players, and deal-making. Successful as he was as a manager, he was a born general manager.

When the Tribune Company purchased the Cubs from the Wrigley family in 1981, one of the first moves was to entice Green to become the team’s top executive. As he surveyed the 1984 Cubs, Green knew he had to upgrade the roster. Operating from what he called a position of “what the fuck do we have to lose?” he went to work.

Green was a baseball lifer who had supreme faith in his intuition. But he also believed in data, or, as it would come to be called years later, analytics or advanced metrics. He knew, for instance, that in 1983, the Cubs were a dreadful 13-35 in games played on Astroturf. He made a priority of finding speedy players who could use turf as an asset, and pitchers who performed well on artificial grass.

Green also wasn’t shy about using his knowledge of the Phillies organization to his advantage. Green had already plucked Ryne Sandberg, then a lightly-regarded 22-year-old infielder, as a throw-in in a 1982 trade/steal for shortstops Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus. (Sandberg would improve considerably in Chicago.) The week before Opening Day, Green traded a veteran relief pitcher and a young prospect to the Phillies for left fielder Gary Matthews and speedy center fielder Bob Dernier. With that, the Cubs’ outfield was reimagined. So was the team’s personality.

Already in his mid-30s, Matthews cut an outsized figure. He went by the nickname “Sarge,” a nod, he explained, to his “take-charge attitude.” He also dressed like a man not wanting for confidence. Teammates would debate whether he presented himself more like a mobster or a pimp. But when Matthews entered the clubhouse clad in an array of velvet suits and matching (and un-matching) hats, armed with a cup of coffee and a newspaper under his arm, he enlivened the room.

The trade with the Phillies enabled Durham to move back to first base. Which made the incumbent first baseman, Bill Buckner, expendable. Wearing shaggy hair and a push-broom moustache, Buckner had been a Cubs’ stalwart for the past seven seasons, among the few reliable performers, who could be counted on to hit over .300. In 1980, he won the National League batting title. But by 1984 Buckner was squarely in his mid-30s and feuding with the manager, Jim Frey, and the Cubs’ front office, which considered him a paranoid malcontent. Durham was seven years younger, less expensive, and thought to be the better defensive first baseman. In May, Green sent Buckner to the Red Sox for pitcher Dennis Eckersley and infielder Mike Brumley.

Green’s final sleight of hand came a few weeks later when he traded for pitcher Rick Sutcliffe. A 6’7″ bearded redhead from Missouri, Sutcliffe was among the more mystifying players in baseball. His talent was undeniable, one reason he was making a whopping $900,000 in salary for 1984. But he struggled with consistency. Just as he finished one season with a record 17-10 and went 3-9 the following, Sutcliffe would dazzle one game and disappoint the next.

Sutcliffe was widely known for his temper. Left off the Dodgers’ 1981 playoff roster, he barged into the office of Los Angeles’ manager Tommy Lasorda, screaming, “I’ll never fucking play for you again!” That, in itself, was a significant breach of baseball protocol. But then, by his own admission, Sutcliffe grabbed Lasorda by the throat and threatened him before picking up Lasorda’s desk and slamming it. Sutcliffe later revealed that it was not the roster omission that angered him; it was his belief that Lasorda had lied to him.

He left the Dodgers but continued his mercurial ways. Like the Girl With the Curl, when Sutcliffe was good, he was very, very good indeed. But when he was bad, he was horrid. Pitching for the Cleveland Indians, he started 1984 with a record of 4-5 and a bloated 5.15 ERA. On account of a tooth infection, he had lost 17 pounds and, briefly, the hearing in his right ear.

Dallas Green didn’t mind this at all. Again, mixing intuition and data, Green didn’t read much into Sutcliffe’s slow start or his perplexing rhythms. He preferred a confrontational style to passive aggression. And, like Sutcliffe, Green himself had been a tall pitcher who struggled with consistency. Green saw a potential Cy Young pitcher. Sutcliffe didn’t come cheap. The Cubs parted with Hall; a relief pitcher; a back-up catcher; and the team’s top prospect, Joe Carter.

Green had overhauled the Cubs outfield and its pitching staff in the middle of a season. He had also made an unambiguous statement: We are not the lovable Cubbies playing in the daylight in the cute ballpark. We are here to win, dammit. By June, Green was thrilled with his team.

The Cubs’ status as lovable winners was sealed on June 23, 1984. Four days after the Chicago Bulls had drafted Michael Jordan, the Cubs hosted the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley and the game was broadcast nationally on NBC. Up to that point in the season, the Cubs had been a pleasantly overachieving team. Given the franchise history, there was justifiable skepticism. Surely, soon enough, the Cubs would regress to their mean.

The network’s “Game of the Week” telecast was just that—in many parts of the country, an institution that marked the only opportunity to watch live baseball on television. Though only 32, Bob Costas was already a top play-by-play broadcaster. Costas and his partner Tony Kubek called the action from the small Wrigley Field broadcast booth above home plate. Costas recalls that, for those three hours on Saturday afternoons, millions of viewers put off yardwork to watch the games. The games would routinely draw millions of viewers and post ratings on par with the network’s prime time shows.

That Saturday, after two innings, the Cardinals led 7-1, and later 9-3. St. Louis’ centerfielder, Willie McGee, batted for the cycle, hitting a single, a double, a triple and a home run. But the wind was blowing out of Wrigley and the Cubs rallied. In the bottom of the ninth inning and the Cubs trailing 9-8, Ryne Sandberg came to bat. The Cardinals brought in their formidable closer Bruce Sutter, considered the top relief pitcher in baseball.

Sandberg had grown up less than a mile from John Stockton in Spokane, Washington. The son of a mortician, Sandberg was a sports omnivore. He nearly attended Washington State on a football scholarship, but chose baseball. A Gold Glove winner in 1983, he had been known chiefly for his defense. But in 1984, at age 25 and wearing uniform number 23, Sandberg was in full blossom. In a clash of two future Hall of Fame players, Sandberg took two pitches and then smote a Sutter fastball over the left field fence, over the drunk and topless bleacher bums, and onto the street. “This is a tie ballgame,” yelled Costas over deafening crowd noise.

Yet, the Cardinals scored two runs in the 10th inning to lead 11-9. Left unsaid, this was the blessed-yet-cursed Cubs experience writ small. Mount a spirited and dramatic comeback in the bottom of the ninth inning … only to lose moments later. Oh well, at least it was a fun day in the sun at the charming ballpark.

As the Cardinals’ runners crossed the plate in the top of the 10th inning, it brought much relief to NBC executives in New York. Immediately after the game, the network was televising a featherweight boxing match at the Centro de Convenciones Atlapa in Panama City. According to the television contract, the fight would not start until the baseball game ended.

With two outs in the bottom of the 10th, Dernier reached first base on a walk. Sutter again faced Sandberg. In the booth, Costas received word that immediately after the game ended, he was to throw the broadcast to his colleagues in Panama, so the fight could finally begin. To save time, during the bottom of the inning, Costas began concluding. He declared Willie McGee the Player of the Game. He quickly noted the director, producer, and coordinating producer of baseball, Harry Coyle. Any reproduction, rebroadcast or retransmission of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited. “Literally, once the last out was recorded,” recalls Costas, “It would be ‘ding-ding-ding’ Round 1 from Panama.”

But on Sutter’s third pitch, with the Cubs down to their final at-bat, Sandberg again jacked a home run to left field, this one landing in the middle of the delirious bleacher bums. Twice Sandberg had come to bat representing the final out; twice he had hit a home run to tie the game. Costas enthused, “Do you believe it? It’s gone!”

The film The Natural had been released a few weeks earlier, on May 11, 1984. Based on the Bernard Malamud book, it told the story of Roy Hobbs, a baseball player endowed with great natural talent. Though the movie was filmed in Buffalo, the climactic scene was staged to take place at Wrigley Field, with Hobbs hitting a game-winning home run. After Sandberg’s blast, Costas said: “That’s the real Roy Hobbs because this can’t be happening! We’re sitting here, and it doesn’t make any difference if it’s 1984 or ’54 — just freeze this and don’t change a thing!” (Later, Costas kicked himself for not deploying the pun “reel life” versus “real life.”)

As for Costas’ counterpart a few doors down in Wrigley Field’s radio booth, this marked an instance when Harry Caray’s signature call of “Holy Cow,” managed to understate the occasion. Meanwhile, in Panama, two featherweights remained in their dressing rooms as the crowd of fight fans, indifferent to a manic baseball game on the northside of Chicago, had grown restless wondering what the hell was taking so long.

By now it was clear: the Fates had written the script for this game and, for a change, had the Cubs winning. In the bottom of the 11th inning with the bases loaded, Cubs back-up infielder Dave Owen knocked a pinch-hit single to right field and the Cubs won 12-11. Now the damn fight in Panama could finally start.

In what immediately became known as “The Ryne Sandberg Game,” the eponym would finish with five hits, two home runs, seven RBIs. It was only one game in late June. The Cubs were now 37-31, happily overachieving, but not exactly the 1927 Yankees.

Still, the game had a perpetuating effect. It cemented Sandberg as an MVP candidate. And the game certified the Cubs. In addition to the 38,079 fans at Wrigley — and countless more on the rooftops — the rest of the country bore witness. Not just to the team, but to the entire Cubs experience. To the neighborhood, old-timey Wrigley Field, with its manually-operated scoreboard and its ancient organ and its susceptibility to the winds coming off Lake Michigan. To the fans in the bleachers — and on the rooftops across the street — lacking in shirts and sobriety and having a good time. To a fan base and a team celebrating a win in the 68th game as if it were the seventh game of the World Series.

Baseball was very much the National Pastime in America that summer. The Natural — with its themes of redemption, romance, and the celebration of pastoral America through baseball, bolstered by a winning performance from Robert Redford, then age 47 — quickly became a classic film. Bruce Springsteen crooned of “Glory Days,” and while he inexplicably called a “fastball” a “speedball,” the song was a reminder that sending a baseball whistling past an opposing batter was a signifier of American manhood. As John Fogerty was recording a song about centerfield — forever popularizing the phrase, “put me in, coach” — another band, British ironically, called The Outfield (formerly The Baseball Boys) was recording an album titled “Play Deep.”

Though the Detroit Tigers were, by all measure, the best team in the Majors, the Chicago Cubs were the national darlings in this Summer of Baseball. Galvanized by this one game, the Cubs kept winning. By early August, they were in first place in the NL East. And, like most winning teams, the Cubs had fun along the way. Matthews had a director’s chair in front of his locker. To express his authority, he would sit in the chair and, conspicuously, read the business section of the Chicago Tribune. A prankster — later revealed to be Sandberg — adjusted the brackets before Matthews entered the room so the chair would collapse when he sat down.

The players became the darlings of Chicago, as well. When they went carousing on Rush Street — another advantage of playing day baseball — they never paid for a drink. When they flew to road games from O’Hare, the team’s traveling secretary built in extra time, accounting for the crush of autograph-seekers mobbing the players as they walked through O’Hare.

Capitalism being what it is, local businesses tried to profit from the appeal of the Cubs; and the players were happy to supplement their income. Jay Johnstone, a famously mischievous veteran outfielder, was the coordinator of many of the side deals.

One day Green caught Johnstone flipping through the Rolodex of the team’s marketing director in an attempt to drum up business. Johnstone had already cut a deal whereby a dozen Cubs players would sign autographs at Chicago shoe stores in exchange for two pairs of expensive boots. (That the shoe store advertised the event in the newspaper and used the Cubs’ logo without permission was considered a minor detail.)

Green chastised Johnstone for his dealmaking. The players were being paid to play baseball and shouldn’t be distracted by side ventures. And there could be hell to pay for using the Cubs’ trademark logo without permission.

“Dallas,” Johnstone asked, “What size shoe do you wear?”

“12D,” Green replied, winking. “How about two pairs?”

Meanwhile, other players, including Jody Davis, Durham, and Sutcliffe recorded a self-aggrandizing song titled “Men in Blue.” It was a precursor to the Chicago Bears’ equally regrettable “Super Bowl Shuffle” the following year. Given how many Cubs believed that the franchise was cursed, it seemed especially odd to tempt fate with lyrics like:

Here’s to you/Men in blue
You’re the cream of the crop
You’re a team, built on dreams/You’ll go right to the top
As sure as there’s ivy on the centerfield wall
The Men in Blue are gonna win it all.

(Photo of Sandberg in 1984: Charlie Bennett / Associated Press)