What Coulda Been on Catalina

More than three years ago, during the earliest days of Wrigley Roster Jenga, I purchased a heavily discounted box of Conlon Collection from one of my local card shops.  For somewhere around ten bucks, I was able to gleefully tear through 36 packs of the 1992 edition of the black and white set and add several new-to-me, short-term Chicago players to Cubs All-Time Roster Collection.  All in all, it was easily one of my favorite pack ripping experiences in my collecting life; in fact, it was only one of two occasions, that I can recall, where I did not immediately regret spending my hard earned money on a full box of cardboard.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Conlon might be my favorite baseball card set ever to come off of the presses.  As a wide-eyed student of our national pastime's history and accumulator of the obscure, it doesn't really get much better than the early-90's checklists based around the photography of Charles Conlon.

Anyway, a few nights ago, I spent a few minutes of downtime flipping through the remnants of that long-since rifled through box that still sits on the shelving unit underneath my computer desk.  It was during that idle reminiscing that I re-discovered a card which would prove to be a fine addition to one of my side-collections.  Hell, if history had played out a little differently, it would have been a fine addition to my MAIN collection.

Lefty O'Doul - one of the greatest stars in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame.

The live-armed southpaw came up to the Bigs in the early 20's and showed some promise on the mound with the Yankees and the Red Sox before blowing out his arm.  In those pre-TJ surgery days, Lefty did the only thing he could do to extend his career in the game - convert to the outfield.  After several years of proving himself to be a capable hitter in the bushes, O'Doul made his grand return to the Show in 1928, winning the National League batting title with an astounding .398 mark in his second year back.  For the next seven years, he starred for the Giants, Phillies, Dodgers, and the Giants again, posting the highest career batting average for someone without a plaque in Cooperstown .349).

Since he was already 31 by the time he re-emerged from the minors, the brevity of his second wind has kept him from enshrinement.  Even still, there's no doubt that this original Rick Ankiel was one of the greatest hitters of his generation.... and, had things shaken out a tad bit differently, he could have done it all with the Cubs.

via GIPHY

That's right, the pre-Lovable Loser Era Cubs had every chance in the world to re-launch the career of the great Lefty O'Doul.  I had been previously unaware of this massive oversight and if it wasn't for the page-turning book, The Cubs on Catalina, by Jim Vitti, I may have never learned about it.  Actually, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing...

The Cubs and Catalina Island have a long and storied history together.  For about 30 years, the Chicago National League ballclub would pack up their bags, hop a train, grab a trolley, and float on a boat all the way to the tiny, rocky island off of the southwest coast of California, which just so happened to be owned by the Wrigley family.  While it might be better remembered today for it's infamous wine mixer, it's legacy comes as the Spring Training home of the Chicago Cubs, from the 1920's through the early 50's.  It was here that hope first sprung eternal.

In 2003, Sporting News and SABR Award-winning author, Jim Vitti, published the book you see above which to preserve this unique portion of baseball history by interviewing the local islanders and the surviving players who trained at the tiny island habitat, as well as compiling photographs.  Fourteen years later, I was gifted this same tome of knowledge by my father-in-law for Christmas and I've hardly been able to put it down since.

The capers recorded in these pages are certainly worthy of preservation - i.e., the time Ronald Reagan got into a bar fight with a bunch of Chicago sportswriters, the story behind "Snipe" Hansen earning his mocking nickname, or how rookies would lose hours of their life trying to find the bowling alley on a steamship... there's certainly no lack of material.  It was while reading one of these tales that I was surprised to see the name of Lefty O'Doul come up.  What in the world did this near-HOF'er have to do with my Cubs?

Before politics, before acting, he was a Cubs broadcaster.

As I mentioned, after lefty's arm had flamed out in 1923, the ballplayer returned to the minor leagues to convert himself into a full-time position player.  After two seasons of thrilling Pacific Coast League fans in Salt Lake City with batting averages approaching the hallowed .400 mark, William Wrigley was sufficiently impressed with O'Doul's rejuvenation to buy his contract from the Bees, at the hefty cost of $50,000.  Going into the 1926 season, the reclamation project was brought to camp on Wrigley's island with Wrigley's ballclub and given every opportunity to work his way onto the Opening Day roster.  Sadly, it wasn't meant to be.

No records exist of his performance in camp that spring, although we know the end result.  The new skipper, Joe McCarthy, was looking to put his stamp on the organization and was uninterested in the has-been.  As first baseman, Charlie Grimm, recounted years later, "Marse Joe, sad to relate, made a monumental mistake that spring" in cutting O'Doul.  Well, "Jolly Cholly" wasn't wrong.

Four Hall of Famers?  That's a pretty decent middle of the order...

After two more years of paying his dues in the PCL, Lefty came back up in 1928 and hit the ground running.  In 1929, the Cubs made their way to the World Series against the Athletics with a lineup that included Gabby Hartnett, Hack Wilson, Rogers Hornsby, Kiki Cuyler, and more. Simultaneously, O'Doul was a Phillie with a .398/.465/.622 slash, winning a batting title and bashing 32 home runs along the way.  Can you imagine how much scarier that Cubs lineup would have looked with prime O'Doul in the outfield?  Forget "Murderer's Row!"  Maybe the North Siders wouldn't have choked away the World Series win that October had they hung onto the batting champion...

From there, all Lefty did was hit .300 for five straight years, win a second batting title in 1932 (.368), and  go to an All-Star game before age caught up to him.  Then, he returned to the PCL to win 2,000 games in the as a manager, and also served as an early ambassador for the game in Japan.  What a career!

According to Cubs historian, Warren Brown," Later on, when O'Doul broke back into the National League and either led it in hitting or caused damage to some Cubs pitching hopes, Wrigley would sigh:  'Oh, that O'Doul... my O'Doul!'"  The chewing gum magnate must have uttered that phrase a lot, as his "one that got away" smacked Cubs pitching around, to the tune of a .324 career batting average against.

Mr. Wrigley looks happier here than when Lefty would come to bat.

And so, that's the story of how one of the greatest hitters yet to be enshrined in Cooperstown almost became a Chicago Cub.  The sprawling history of the franchise once tagged as "Lovable Losers" is littered with such oversights and/or regrettable decisions - Lou Brock, Greg Maddux, Josh Donaldson, etc. come to mind.  Though, to be fair, any club as old as the Cubbies is going to make a lot of mistakes.  At least Brock and Maddux had the opportunity to showcase some of their talent in Chicago; meanwhile, the latter of which, like Lefty, never suited up in a Major League Cubs uniform.  It is around such situations that I've been building a small side-collection - my "Coulda Been a Cub" binder.

The "Coulda Been a Cub" collection is based around players who's rights were once owned by the Chicago Cubs and who eventually saw time in the Major Leagues.  The caveat is that none of their MLB service time was actually accrued with the club in question.  These men were simply a phone call away from the Wrigley roster - training camp cuts, minor league free-agents, trade flips, Rule 5 selections, etc. - but things just didn't work out.  It is in this three-ring holder that I'll be storing my re-discovered Lefty O'Doul Conlon card - he'll keep Donaldson, Scipio Spinks, Josh Hamilton, Ray Jablonski, Jon Garland, Jim Dwyer, and friends (like the ones below) company.

 Hideo Nomo started 3 games for the Iowa Cubs in '99 and Shingo Takatsu was invited to Spring Training in '08, long after the team left Catalina for Arizona.

Meanwhile, somewhere out there in the vast multiverse, is an alternate reality in which Joe McCarthy did not pre-judge the hero of this post and recognized the potential in the former moundsman.  In this dimension, Lefty broke camp with the Cubs in 1926 and led the squad to a World Series victory in 1929.  In this plane, this 1992 Conlon Collection baseball card doesn't look like this:

It looks like this:

And I bet that Lefty would have totally nailed the Catalina f*cking Wine Mixer too!