In 1969 the Cubs were in first place for 155 days, from Opening Day until September 9th.
Then came the black cat.
After that, the entire team slumped (Kessinger .148, Banks .156, Hundley .188, Beckert .203), worn down by day baseball, a short bench, and a manager who didn't like to rest his regulars. And despite the "Cubbie love" for this team in Chicago which remains strong to this day, the Cubs were not popular with their opponents.
They considered the Cubs "brash" and "cocky." It was unheard of for a team to release a record as the Cubs did in the summer of 1969, before they won the title. (Remember, this was 16 years before the Super Bowl Shuffle.) That record was the talk of opposing teams, including the Mets and the Cardinals. Former Cub Lou Brock was said to have taken particular pleasure in hitting a walk-off home run to beat them that September.
The Captain of the Cubs, third baseman Ron Santo, became the symbol of Cubs cockiness. Opponents privately seethed every time he clicked his heels after a victory. (Santo says that Leo Durocher encouraged him to do this--which is totally consistent with Leo's personality). If there was any doubt how other teams felt about the heel clicking, however, it was erased when the notoriously calm Tom Seaver mimicked Santo by clicking his heels after a late season Mets win over the Cubs. Gene Oliver probably didn't help matters much when he replied "If we lose to this club, we should jump off the Hancock Building."
Despite the black cat, the day baseball, and the bad karma, however, there's a more obvious reason that the Cubs didn't win it all in 1969: The New York Mets.
It wasn't so much that Cubs went into a freefall, it's that the Mets were on fire. The Cubs went 7-13 after September 9th, which granted--is not very good, but the Mets went 18-5, including 9-1 in their last ten games. There's no way the Cubs could have kept up with that kind of pace. Even early in the season when the Cubs were the hottest team in baseball, they didn't have a stretch like that.
The Mets ended the season with 100 wins. The Cubs finished 8 games out.
In the end, it wasn't even that close.
