CHICAGO (AP) — In the aftermath of Milt Pappas' no-hitter for the Chicago Cubs, two fans left the stands and joined the growing huddle of rejoicing players on the mound at Wrigley Field.
It was Sept. 2, 1972. The man in the blue jacket was Jerry Goldstick, and the girl in the yellow raincoat was his daughter, Diane. Together on the diamond that day, they offered a reminder that, as much or more than any franchise in sports, the history of the Cubs
is intertwined with their fans.
“All of the sudden I feel him pull my arm and we’re like over the wall and we're the only two people on the mound jumping up and down with the team,” Diane said. “And I’m in a yellow slicker, my dad’s in a blue jacket and every rain delay they show it. Every single rain delay, there we are on the mound.”
The Cubs are celebrating their 150 years as a National League franchise this weekend. And much of that history runs alongside decades of Diane Meagher’s family, starting with Jerry and his wife, Myrna, and extending to their three daughters and three grandsons, including Michael Meagher, an executive with the team. Holding season tickets for roughly 80 years, the family has lived the Cubs' story.
“How would I describe my family’s connection to the Cubs? I would say meaningful,” Michael Meagher said.
Born in Chicago in 1924, Jerry Goldstick started going to Cubs games when he was a kid. His mother sold her wedding ring so he could enroll at Northwestern University in nearby Evanston, and Jerry served in the Army Air Corps during World War II before becoming a lawyer.
Goldstick played baseball growing up, and he bought two season tickets for the Cubs in the mid-1940s. He “just belonged in the ballpark,” said Diane, 64.
“He had a passion and it was baseball and the Cubs,” she said.
The Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers in the 1945 World Series. They had to wait until 1984 for their next postseason appearance.
Goldstick kept going to Wrigley, even in those lean years. Sometimes it was Jerry and Myrna. Sometimes it was Jerry and one of his daughters, Linda, Diane or Susan. Sometimes it was Jerry and his mother. When he had a health issue later in life, Jerry scheduled his treatment around Cubs games.
“My grandmother, who was from Poland, my dad would take her to a game and she would say, well, how are 40,000, why aren’t these people working? ... Like on a Wednesday afternoon,” Diane said.
Diane loved going on the weekends. Her family owned a couple of apartment buildings, and she would go with Jerry to show apartments in the morning before the game.
“I would go get the food at a young age,” she said. “My dad would give me the money. I’d get the Smokie Links. There was a Smokie Link stand right above our ramp. ... In those days, you knew everyone in the section. It was amazing. And so they became like family.”
Jerry and Diane went to St. Louis late in the 1984 season, hoping to see the Cubs clinch the NL East title. There was a rainout on Saturday, so they went to see a Clint Eastwood movie.
They ran into Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg at the theater. That 1984 season featured what Cubs fans call “The Sandberg Game,” when he homered twice and drove in seven runs in a 12-11 victory over St. Louis in 11 innings on June 23. And Jerry told Sandberg that was the greatest day of his life, before re-evaluating that declaration after Diane protested.
In 2016, when the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years, Diane, her husband, Tom, and Michael went to Cleveland for the final moments of the historic championship. Jerry decided to stay home and watch with Myrna.
He was 92 when they won it all. He had made it.
“He always used to say that he was a Cub person, not a Cub fan,” Diane said. “He wasn’t a Cub fan. He was a Cub person. ... For some reason, that was a distinction for him. It was part of who he was.”
As the ticket service director for the Cubs, Brian Garza often hears from kids who plan to work for the franchise when they grow up. Usually, they want to play for their favorite team.
Michael Meagher was different.
“Michael was the one kid who, every time we would meet up, not only would he mention his love of the Cubs and how he would eventually want to work here, but he would actually ask us a lot of questions about our jobs and he was very curious,” Garza said.
Michael, 24, played baseball growing up, and he updated the major league standings every day on a large corkboard in the family's apartment. He collected baseball cards and other memorabilia.
He met Ricketts at a dinner as a boy, and he asked him if it was OK to email him with his thoughts on the direction of the team. Ricketts agreed and Michael weighed in periodically, criticizing a 2011 trade that sent left-handed reliever Sean Marshall to the Cincinnati Reds.
Michael, 24, went to Northwestern, like his grandfather. He started working for the Cubs in 2022 as an intern in scouting. He was hired as an amateur scouting assistant in July 2024 and was promoted this year to coordinator of amateur scouts.
“It wasn’t something that was forced on me. It was something that I grew to love for myself,” he said.
Michael's relationship with Jerry also played a major role in his love for baseball. Despite their age difference, they often went to games together.
“The truth is that our values were so aligned,” Michael said. “Of course, our interests were aligned, but we had a respect for one another that was kind of beyond words. It was understood. You know, the games in the ballpark were the medium by which that happened and we spent a lot of time together at ballgames.”
Jerry died on Sept. 3, 2024, at age 99. He was buried with American and Chicago flags, and Michael spoke at the services.
Before his death, Jerry reminisced with Diane about Pappas' no-hitter on its 52nd anniversary. Shota Imanaga, Nate Pearson and Porter Hodge combined on a no-hitter for Chicago on Sept. 4, 2024, but Pappas remains the last Cubs pitcher to throw a solo no-hitter at Wrigley Field.
Jerry's connection to the Cubs “was his passion in a very different time in a different context than it became my passion,” Michael said. “And very different than my mother’s. It was her connection with her father, which followed her own love for it. It wasn’t just that she loved being with him. It was that she ended up really growing to love it.”
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