Cubs by the Numbers by Al Yellon

Author:Al Yellon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2016-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

Of the thirty-eight players and two coaches who have worn #28, only ten have been pitchers. And three of those hurlers, Paul Maholm (2012), Michael Bowden (2012–13), and Kyle Hendricks (2014–15)—have donned the number in the past five years. But two #28s have combined for 164 saves wearing blue pinstripes. And all of those came over five years in the 1980s and 1990s.

Randy Myers’s 53 saves in 1993 established a National League record that stood until John Smoltz broke it with 55 in 2002, and Mitch Williams’s 36 saves in 1989 helped the Cubs win the NL East title. Those totals still rank first and sixth on the all-time Cubs single season list. (And the 38 saves by Myers in strike-shortened 1995 is tied with Carlos Marmol’s 2010 total for third on that list.)

Williams was known as “The Wild Thing” because his antics and his penchant for throwing pitches with an unknown destination were similar to Charlie Sheen’s character Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn in Major League, which came out the year Williams came to the Cubs. Williams came from the Rangers in the eight-player deal that sent Rafael Palmeiro to Texas. Palmeiro, a singles hitter at the time (he had hit only eight home runs in nearly 600 at-bats in 1988), put up ten 30-homer seasons after leaving the Cubs and before becoming discredited for testing positive for steroids. Without Williams’s flamboyance and baseball smarts (on September 11, 1989, he picked off Expos rookie Jeff Huson to end a Cubs victory, getting a save without throwing a pitch), they wouldn’t have won the division. In the NLCS, Williams gave up the series-winning, two-run single to Will Clark, an eerie precursor to his serving up the World Series-winning homer to Joe Carter four years later as a Phillie.

The Cubs dealt Williams to Philadelphia the day before Opening Day 1991, for mediocre relievers Bob Scanlan and Chuck McElroy. But Cubs fans will always remember the man who was described by his teammate Mark Grace as “pitching like his hair was on fire.”

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