Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs' Glory Years, 1870-1945

25 SPEAKIN' OF HARTNETT

25. Speakin’ of Hartnett On Sept ember 28, 1938, the Cubs were amid an eight-game winning streak and sitting only a half-game behind the league-leading Pirates. However, that day’s game was moments away from getting called due to darkness, which could have ruined the club’s effort to steal the pennant just as the season was coming to a close. But then the greatest catcher in Cubs history, Charles Leo “Gabby” Hartnett, delivered a mighty blast that rocketed the Cubs to the World Series. The shot occurred with two strikes and no balls, and in its wake pandemonium erupted. Baseball writer Warren Brown, as seen in this 1939 selection, described the scene that “Hollywood’s wildest dream will never approach.” Cubs players “Gabby” Hartnett and Charlie “Jolly Cholly” Grimm at spring training on Catalina Island in 1926. Twelve years later, during the 1938 campaign, Gabby would replace Jolly as manager . Courtesy Chicago History Museum. Brown’s essay, which ran in the Saturday Evening Post, also explains how “Gabby” got his nickname, his wild popularity with Cubs fans, and his methodical journey to greatness, as well as how he lived. In addition, Brown tells how Hartnett became the Cubs manager—he was already the catcher—only weeks before his monstrous homer that catapulted his team to the World Series. However, after a disappointing season in 1940, Hartnett, who as a manager “angered easily” and became embroiled in spats with pitchers Dizzy Dean and Clay Bryant, was fired. Still, he remains a celebrated icon in Cubs lore.1 His career numbers reflect his prowess, and he manned the plate for three Cubs World Series appearances from 1932to 1938 (he also pinch-hit in the 1929 World Series but spent most of that season inactive with a sore arm). The stellar fielder landed six All-Star nods, won the NL MVP in 1935 and finished as runner-up in 1938. His career ended with an impressive .297batting average. But numbers alone do not explain how he became the “people’s choice.” This article helps shed light on that. At a 1931 c harity game, Gabby Hartnett obliged the request of Al Capone, and that of his twelveyear -old son Al “Sonny” Jr., for an autograph. Capone Sr.’s “minders” sat behind him, protecting his backside. This photo didn’t make National League brass too happy. 230 f r om depr ession-er a g r ea t ness t o t h a t da r n g oa t Gabby Likes ’Em Hot Warren Brown, Saturday Evening Post, February 11, 1 939 A Skinny, red-faced youngster, going three thousand miles away from his New England home and fireside to seek his baseball fortune in a majorleague training camp, sat huddled in a Pullman, observed everything, but spoke nary a word, from the city of Chicago to the island kingdom of the Wrigleys, Catalina. A newspaperman, as Irish as the lad he had been studying, stood the silence as long as he could, and then blared forth, that all might hear: “There’s the gabbiest guy that ever went on a spring-training trip.” Thus entered into the ranks of the Chicago Cubs, the National League, and eventually, unless a great many baseball folk are wrong, into Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Charles Leo (Gabby) Hartnett. That was in 1922. That same Hartnett, no longer reserved, but bubbling over with energy that at times seems explosive, having established a major league catching record for steady service that will likely endure, is now the manager of the Cubs, and, with the lone exception of the scout who found him, the sole survivor of seventeen frenzied baseball years. In the fall of ’37 he completed with the Cubs the thirteenth season in which he caught more than 100 games. Only Ray Schalk, of the old Chicago White Sox, had ever done anything like that in major-league baseball. And not even Schalk, or Johnny Kling, Jimmy Archer, or any of the other storied catchers of Chicago baseball history ever came close to Gabby Hartnett in a hold on the paying public. Perhaps this was best illustrated in the sudden appointment of Hartnett as manager of the Cubs last season, succeeding Charlie Grimm. It was a sudden move on the part of the owner, P. K. Wrigley, but it was not unexpected. For years, Hartnett seemed destined one day...