Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.
The date was Aug. 15, 1969. It was 40 years ago today that Jimi Hendrix taught all those bands to play. There were 32 in all (if you count the solo acts and Swami Satchidananda, who gave the invocation) and roughly half a million people who came to hear what they had to say at the Woodstock Festival Aug. 15-18 during the Summer of Love. There also was a lot of mud and mind altering that weekend, and a lot of peace was guiding the planets.
But if you were 12 and living in or near Chicago in August of 1969, you were much more concerned about Tommie Agee and the Mets than Country Joe and the Fish.
I have this theory that there is no better time for one to be a baseball fan than when a boy (or girl) is 12 years old, which is how much time I had spent on this great Earth when man first set foot on the moon and Max Yasgur opened his dairy farm to a celebration of peace, love and understanding. And Creedence Clearwater Revival.
I don’t remember where I was when Neil Alden Armstrong took one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Or when Hendrix literally played the strings right off his Fender Stratocaster after the rain finally went away.
But I do remember where I was when George Thomas Seaver came within two outs of pitching a perfect game against my beloved Cubs: I was at my pal Dave Prucy’s house. He was a Giants fan but was cheering for the Mets when Jimmy Qualls singled with one out in the ninth off the man the sportscasters called Tom Terrific.
That he was.
Seaver’s one-hitter against the Cubs and their All-Star infield of Santo, Kessinger, Beckert and Banks (which is how everybody referred to them, as a group; a law firm of baseball, no first names necessary) exposed the first chink in the armor of what for this Cub fan was the greatest Chicago team of the modern era.
Yeah, I know. There haven’t been that many from which to choose.
But the Cubs managed to recover from that July hiccup. By the time Richie Havens took the stage to open Woodstock, they were a season-high nine games ahead of the second-place Mets.
On Aug. 16, Fergie Jenkins threw a three-hit shutout against the Giants (take that, Dave Prucy) at Candlestick Park. The Cubs were 74-44. They were 30 games above .500 when Sly Stone sang “I Want to Take Your Higher.”
Not a problem. Not with Jenkins and Kenny Holtzman and Bill Hands throwing Canned Heat.
Like the 45 rpm record of that summer reminded us every time Ron Santo clicked his heels to celebrate another Cubs win: Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel, No Doubt About It. The Cubs were on their way.
They didn’t make it.
After leading New York by nine games on Aug. 16, they wound up finishing eight games behind the Miracle Mets in the standings.
To make matters worse, the Mets swept the Braves in the playoffs. Then they beat the Orioles in five to win the World Series.
The Cubs were dead, but I wasn’t grateful. I think that summer was the first time I ever used the word that Country Joe McDonald spelled out for the masses at Woodstock.
And then I cried.
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