Home Run Derby

So Sunday night, during the final game of the Cubs’ sweep of the White Sox at Wrigley Field, ESPN focused a little bit on Ernie Banks – also known as “Mr. Cub.”

They showed the new statue of Ernie outside Wrigley Field, showed Banks’ 500th Home Run at Wrigley Field, and Jon Miller ran down his stats and career accomplishments.

But later in the ballgame, when Eric Patterson hit a Home Run for the Cubs into the right field basket … Joe Morgan said something that wasn’t true.  Morgan said that the basket was installed to keep fans from interfering with Home Run balls and that the fence became known as “Banks Boulevard because he hit a lot of balls into that basket”  – implying (to me anyway) that Banks’ Home Run totals were cheapened by the basket that shortens the field at Wrigley.

Roll tape.

Let’s see – the basket at Wrigley was installed sometime in May 1970 … because some drunken Bleacher Bums had started walking on the top of the outfield wall.  So the Cubs poured some concrete to slope the top of the wall and then added the basket to keep fans’ garbage (or perhaps the fans themsleves) from falling onto the field.  Not to keep them from interfering with Homers. 

And Ernie Banks only hit eight more Home Runs at Wrigley Field from May 1970 to September 1971, when he retired.  He hit his 499th and 500th Home Runs in May 1970 at Wrigley, both of which landed in the bleachers, not the basket.  So that leaves – at most - only six Home Runs which could have landed in the outfield basket.  That’s a mere six of his 512 career Home Runs and a piddly six of his 236 Home Runs at Wrigley Field (2.5% ). 

Hardly a “lot of balls into that basket.” 

And not one of those six Wrigley Home Runs that Banks hit was against one of Morgan’s teams (in fact – Banks never even played the Astros at Wrigley with the basket in place) - so it’s not as if Morgan had any experience of an Ernie Banks Home Run falling into that basket to skew his crappy memory. 

If Morgan ever made up something like that about Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium, ESPN would can his ass on the spot.  But I guess Morgan’s malaprops keep bloggers watching and listening to his every word on Sunday nights … so why would ESPN kill the golden goose?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Announcers, Ballparks, Cubs, Joe Morgan, Jon Miller, White Sox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.