This photo was sent to me by BCB reader Brian Peterson. Thanks, Brian — and a reminder, if you can find photos you’d like me to sleuth, send ‘em along!
Incidentally, I could have taken this one and made it black-and-white, but this is the way it was sent to me and I rather like the old-fashioned sepia tone.
So what do we know about this photo? The Cubs catcher is wearing No. 9. There’s a Padres runner who was just thrown out at the plate, as shown by the emphatic “out!” call by the plate umpire. A
Padres batter wearing No. 21 is clearly the on-deck hitter.
At first, this might seem difficult but in fact, it was pretty easy.
The catcher is Steve Swisher. I recognized him right away. That narrows this down to 1974-77.
There were several players who wore No. 21 for the Padres in those four seasons, but this man is also easy to recognize. It’s Cito Gaston, who later was a World Series-winning manager with the Blue Jays in the 1990s.
That narrows it down to one season, as Gaston left the Padres after 1974.
Gaston played in just three games at Wrigley Field in 1974: June 17, Aug. 18 and Aug. 19. So then it was a simple matter of seeing when there was a play at the plate where Gaston was the on-deck hitter.
There was, fortunately, only one such play. It happened in the first inning of the game Monday, June 17, 1974. Padres second baseman Horace Clarke, better known for his 10 years with the Yankees — he played only 42 games with San Diego and had been acquired by them only a couple of weeks earlier — walked with one out in the top of the first inning and advanced to second on a walk drawn by Dave Winfield.
Nate Colbert then singled and Clarke tried to score. Billy Williams, playing left field that day, threw Clarke out at the plate. That’s what we are seeing in this photo.
The Cubs took a 5-0 lead into the sixth inning of this game and blew it, with the Padres scoring the tying run in the top of the ninth. That led to long extra innings and the Padres broke through with a two-run 13th inning off Steve Stone, in his first of three years with the Cubs. The Cubs did get the tying runs on base in the bottom of the 13th on a pair of singles with two out, but Carmen Fanzone flied to center to end the game, which the Cubs lost 7-5.
Just a little slice of Cubs baseball from more than half a century ago.
