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Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs |  | Author: Doug Feldmann
Creator: Don Kessinger
Publisher: Bison Books
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 689061
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0803226373
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780803226371
ASIN: 0803226373
Publication Date: October 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Civil unrest at home, war abroad, and political uncertainty gripped the nation as the 1970s approached. In the summer of 1969, as a tumultuous decade of American history neared its end, Major League Baseball presented sports fans with a thrilling distraction: a pennant race that pitted the Chicago Cubs, those much-loved perennial also-rans, against the defending National League champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the upstart New York Mets. Miracle Collapse is the story of how one of the most talented Cubs teams ever to take the field—with Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, and ace pitcher Ferguson Jenkins among their ranks and led by the irascible manager Leo Durocher—raced to an early division lead and a seemingly certain pennant, only to unravel spectacularly at the season’s end. A time capsule in which baseball lore jockeys with history, Doug Feldmann’s book draws readers into the lives of these legendary Cubs players and their fierce bond with the city of Chicago. During this magical summer of baseball peaks and valleys, life goes on: Durocher “disappears” for a few days before his wedding; players leave the team midseason for National Guard duty; play is interrupted to announce man’s landing on the moon. It is against this backdrop that Miracle Collapse captures a baseball season for all time.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 A Cubs Fans Companion February 8, 2010
Mr. Justin L. Decker (London)
If you're a Cubs fan like myself you would be used to heartbreak and unfulfilled hopes, this book stories the season of 1969 when the curse struck again after a long and promising season. I am not old enough to remember this era of Cubs baseball but the book seems to bring the era and that particular season alive through detailed paragraphs of games and players mentalities as October grew closer.
If you're a Cubs fan, you got to pick this book up. It's great reading and shows the personality of one of the most historic and storied franchises in American sports history. Great book makes for great reading. Enjoy.
 1969 Cubs December 5, 2009
Michael Walsh (Arizona)
This account of the 1969 Cubs is notable for the fact that it recounts nearly every game played that year, but offers little else in the way of new insight, insider accounts, or interesting anecdotes.
As a 15 year old kid in the suburbs of Chicago, I ate, slept and drank Cub baseball 24x7. The discussion that frequently pops up among Cub fans today is "which was worst?: 1969, 1984 or 2003?" Easy one for me: Although I'll never forget the 1984 San Diego implosion, and will never forgive Mark Prior and Kerry Wood (one of the most overrated Cubs of all time) for choking in games 6 & 7 in 2003 (leave Bartman alone; it was no more his fault than it was mine), there will NEVER be anything like 1969. It played out over 6 months, took us to enormous new heights, had us singing "Hey Hey Holy Mackerel" at the breakfast table, then just as we should have been toasting the 1st NL championship since 1945, as the leaves started falling from the trees and school started, the rug was yanked out from underneath in the. And the unkindest cut of all, it was provided by the Mets.
I've detested them ever since. To this day, I start every baseball season hoping for two things:
1) A Cub World Series (just friggin' GET there; you don't even have to win it); and
2) The Mets will go 0-162
If you told me I could just make one of those happen, I'd have a hard time choosing. But the truth is, neither ever will. So as you can see, the '69 Cubs have beautifully cultivated my mean, vindictive side which I've artfully used to my disadvantage a time or two in my life.
Enough of that. The book. Yes, a good but not great stroll through memory lane. I was in the right field bleachers on opening day and on the replay that is occasionally shown of Willie Smith's HR, I'm in the picture with my Wieboldts orange windbreaker, jumping up and down; I was at the game when Jim Hickman homered to beat the Pirates in extra innings (on the radio replay I heard later that day
Vince Lloyd said "that ball is headed toward Evanston"); and I was at several other games that the author recounts as well. There were a few interesting stories, particularly the clubhouse confrontation that occurred a year or two later between Durocher, Pepitone and a rightfully enraged Santo. But I'd have liked a lot more of these type of behind the scene accounts.
A while back I read a book (can't remember the title) by Rick Talley, former Chicago sportswriter that totally delivered in the way this book doesn't. He went around the country and interviewed damn near all of the '69 Cubs. It was incredibly interesting to hear their personal recollections as well as find out what had become of their lives.
So in the final analysis, this is a well written, well researched book that is definitely worth reading. As I said: Good/not great. If you're a 1969 Cub-ologist like I am, you ought to find Rick Talley's book and read that too.
Collapse Review November 19, 2009
Ronald Giranio (Chicago)
This is one highly interesting story not only of the Cubs failure to maintain first place in 1969, but also an historical background of the events surrounding baseball and insightful descriptions of each player involved. I highly recommend it to any baseball fan, particularly any Cub fan, and especially those who were part of the living history.
 The Miracle Collapse? October 12, 2009
Wayne B. Tietz (Oswego, Illinois)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I find it a miracle that anybody would write this book,or that anybody would buy this book. Baseball pennants are not won after only a few months. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint. Finishing 8 games out of first place is hardly what I would call a close pennant race. I've always found it interesting that the Cubs players from the 1969 team are still crying over the fact that the Mets won the championship. Yet this group of core Cubs players from 1969 were together for years before and after 1969 and never once got into the playoffs. Perhaps this book should of been called Winners Never Lose and Losers Never Win.
You have had to have lived here! March 3, 2008
Mickey Mantle (Chicago,Ill USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This Cubs Choke is followed on a game by game basis.
I don't know how interesting this story is to folks who were/are not Cub fans or who were/are not White Sox fans.
A fan of the Mets has no need to read this...THEY WON.
This book is fantastic for those of us in Chicago who lived this season.
It jogs the memories. It was an incredible ride. What is fascinating is that this ballclub lives on in mythical proportion and shows what a provincial town Chicago is.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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