1982 Chicago Cubs Season - Sports Library

1982 Chicago Cubs Season

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1982 Chicago Cubs
Major league affiliations
1982 Uniform
Location
1982 Information
Owner(s) Tribune Company
Manager(s) Lee Elia
Local television WGN-TV and Superstation WGN
Local radio WGN (AM) 720
Stats ESPN.com

BB-reference

The Chicago Cubs 1982 season was the first full season in which the Tribune Company owned the team. The Tribune had purchased the club from the estate of Philip K. Wrigley in June of 1981, but the media company's presence was not truly felt until 1982, which definitely signaled the dawning of the Tribune era. During the offseason, the Tribune hired Philadelphia Phillies field manager Dallas Green to be the team's general manager. He immediately named his former third-base coach with the Phillies, Lee Elia as his field manager and brought another former Phillie, the recently retired John Vukovich to be Elia's bench coach. Green also acquired many former Phillies, like Keith Moreland, Dan Larson, Dickie Noles, and most famously, infielders Larry Bowa and Ryne Sandberg.

The Tribune Company also made a move that might still be paying dividends to the franchise more than 25 years later, hiring play-by-play announcer Harry Caray, who had spent most of his career as the voice for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals. Caray had been fired after 10 years with the Chicago White Sox by new owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

This move upset Milo Hamilton, who perceived that the job of No. 1 play-by-play announcer was his after Jack Brickhouse's retirement a year earlier. This set the stage for a longstanding feud between Hamilton and Caray, which Hamilton has continued nine years after Caray's 1998 death.

Contents

Spring Training

Regular season

Future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg made his debut with the Cubs on Opening Day 1982 as the team's starting third baseman. He opened the season with a 1-for-32 stretch. Ferguson Jenkins, the centerpiece of the Cubs' staff in the 1960s and 1970s, returned to the club as a free agent and again regained the title of "Staff Ace."

The Opening Day starter, Doug Byrd had been acquired the previous season for Rick Reuschel. Reuschel had supplanted Jenkins as the primary ace of the Cubs staff in the 1970's. Newly acquired Bump Wills, picked up by Green in a trade with Texas shortly before the season, led off for the Cubs in the Opener and homered on the second pitch from Cincinnati starter Mario Soto. As Cincinnati was customarily the first team to open the season back then, Wills' at-bat was also the first of the entire Major League Baseball season. The Cubs would win a rain-shortened game, 3-2, in eight innings.

Newly-acquired Keith Moreland had begun the season as the starting catcher, in spite of the fact that Jody Davis had emerged the previous season as a potential everyday big-league player at the position. By May, however, Moreland was moved to left field to replace the ineffective Steve Henderson, and Davis would become the Cubs' everyday catcher from then until he was traded late in the 1988 season to Atlanta.

The team lost 13 in a row in May and June.

The Cubs finished the season at 73-89, a marked improvement over their woeful 38-65 record they posted in the woeful strike-shortened 1981 season. Their 1981 ineptness afforded the Cubs the #1 pick in the 1982 Amateur Draft. With the selection, Green & Co. picked up Shawon Dunston, who would later become their everyday shortstop by 1985.

Season standings

Template:1982 NL East standings

Game log

1982 Chicago Cubs Game Log


References

  • Team Statistics[1]


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