Sunday, June 21, 2009

Happy Fathers Day, Cubs Style

Happy Fathers Day to all you dads out there! Have a great day!

Digging through my Cubs sets, I found a couple of Father's Day items.

First, these two Shawon Dunston cards show Shawon with one of his children. Doesn't Dunston make a great father? After all, he seemed like a kid himself. I bet his kids had a blast going to work with their dad.



Score 1996 on the left, Fleer 1997 on the right.

The Cubs have also had several father and son pairs play for them. Some are pretty well known, others are pretty obscure.

First the ones you probably have heard of:



Gary Matthews and Gary Matthews, Jr. The Sarge put up some great numbers with the Cubs and helped lead the team to the Eastern Division title in 1984. Junior was with the team in 2000 and part of 2001 before he was released in August.



Randy Hundley and Todd Hundley. Randy was the catcher of the memorable teams of the late '60's and early 70's. He was hit by the injury bug in 1970 and never played a full season after that. Son Todd came to the Cubs in 2001 with great expectations. He grew up in suburban Palatine and this was his homecoming. Maybe the pressure of playing for the hometown Cubs and being Randy's son was too much, or maybe he just sucked. But he was terrible with the Cubs hitting .187 and .211 while striking out a ton. He was dumped on the Dodgers after the 2002 season.



Three lesser know Cubs father and son combinations include:



Bobby Adams and Mike Adams Bobby spent the last three seasons of his career with the Cubs in the late 1950's. Son Mike played briefly for the Cubs in 1976 and 1977.



Chris Speier and Justin Speier Shortstop Chris had a short stop in Chicago in 1985 and 1986. Son Justin took the hill for the Cubs just in one game in 1998 before being traded to the Marlins.



Marty Keough and Matt Keough. Marty played the last 33 games of his career in Chicago, while Matt spent part of his last major league season with the Cubs.

4 comments:

  1. Nice post. Topps could probably do a whole boxed set of cards featuring fathers and sons that played over the years.

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  2. Todd Hundley made the mistake of blowing off the fans at the Cub's Convention for the hotel bar. He never really recovered from that one. That was always the joke when he struck out, he couldn't figure out which ball to swing at because he was drunk. It's funny how his dad is a fan favorite and Todd is a turd.

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  3. What a cool post for a great day.

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  4. nice post on a day we honor all Dads !

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