Chicago Cubs: Reflections on Two No-hitters

I was lucky enough to be at Wrigley Field and be a fan for two no-hitters. One I saw but didn’t see the end. The other I saw and celebrated.

I was at the park on a warm day — May 15, 1960,  and saw Don Cardwell of the Chicago Cubs throw 6 or 7 no-hit innings. It was the second game of a twin-bill, and I was a young boy, only nine years old, and I had my fill of baseball for the day. It was warm for May and I had enough hot dogs, and I asked my pal, a friend of my Dad’s, to take me home. Little did I realize that Cardwell was close to throwing a no-hitter.

It was exciting enough to see Ernie Banks and Stan Musial play. I had never heard of this pitcher. It turns out, he was just traded from the Philadelphia Phillies two days earlier. He became the first pitcher in the majors to throw a no-no in his first start after being traded. The Chicago Cubs won the game 4-0 and finished 60-96 that year. Cardwell would go 9-16 that season. Later that day or the next morning I found out about the no-hitter and went “What?!”

As fate would have it, I saw Ken Holtzman of the Cubs throw a no-hitter in the bittersweet summer of ’69. The Cubs beat the Atlanta Braves and Hank Aaron 3-0. Ron Santo, the Cubs third baseman hit a 3 run shot that drove in Don Kessinger and Glenn Beckert in the first inning. It was all the runs Holtzman would need.

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It was August 19^th and two of my high school friends and I went to the game and got left center field bleacher seats near the first row. Those were good seats in a crowd of 37,514 on a sunny summer day. We had a great view of the pitcher on the mound.

Holtzman pitched a gem of a game, and although he was known as a strikeout pitcher with a good fastball, he had no K’s in the game. I remember we noticed that he was pitching great after the 6^th inning and I thought, “Whoa, c’mon Kenny, do it.”

He retired the side in the top of the 9^th inning, and the fans went crazy. The Cubs were 77-45 and 8 ½ games in front of the New York Mets.

It looked so good for the Cubs. They had a good team, with future Hall of Famers in OF Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, P Fergie Jenkins and, Ron Santo. Oh, that crash out of first place was so hard to see. As we know, the Cubs faded fast in September of ’69 and the Miracle Mets took it away from them.

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Those were the days that Santo would run down the left field line toward the clubhouse and take a hop and click his heels. He probably did after the Holtzman game. My friends and I did something that only recently graduated high school kids would do, we jumped off the wall in left center down to the field and nobody got hurt! We raced toward center field where we were escorted off the premises by the Andy Frain ushers.

It’s not every day you see a no-hitter, but for me, it was a nice finish to the first one I missed.