What do Dizzy Dean, Catfish Metkovich, John Boccabella, Bill Buckner, Mark Prior, and Kevin Hart all have in common? They all wore number 22 for the Chicago Cubs, even though seven decades have passed between the last time Dizzy Dean buttoned up a Cubs uniform with that number and the first time reliever Kevin Hart performed the same routine.
Since the Chicago Cubs first adopted uniform numbers in 1932, the team has handed out only 71 numbers to more than 1,100 players. That’s a lot of overlap. It also makes for a lot of good stories. Cubs by the Numbers tells those stories for every Cub since ’32, from 1930s outfielder Ethan Allen to current ace Carlos Zambrano. This book lists the players alphabetically and by number, but the biographies help trace the history of baseball’s most beloved team in a new way.
For Cubs fans, anyone who ever wore the uniform is like family. Cubs by the Numbers reintroduces readers to some of their long-lost ancestors, even ones they think they already know.
Authors
Al Yellon directs newscasts at ABC-7 in Chicago. He is also the founder and editor in chief of the popular site bleedcubbieblue.com and the editor of the annual magazine, Wrigley Field Season Ticket, published by Maple Street Press. He lives in Chicago, within walking distance of Wrigley Field.
Kasey Ignarski is founder and proprietor of the website Kasey’s Cubs Pages, which has a listing of every Cub who has ever worn a number. He lives in Chicago.
Matthew Silverman if you’ve gotten this far, you can read my other credits elsewhere on this page. I will say that since the first game I went to Wrigley in 1982—and I’d been to Shea, Yankee, Fenway, and Dodger Stadium—I thought it the best ballpark in the game. I still feel that way, though when I went to several games at Tiger Stadium in the 1990s I was deeply in love with that place.