Wrigley chews out Cubs

Chicago Cubs manager Leo Durocher

In a newspaper ad 53 years ago today, Chicago Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley lambastes his own players for their reported attempts to, well, gum up the works and have Wrigley fire manager Leo Durocher.

The ad reads, in part, “If we could only find more team players like Ernie Banks.”

Phillip Wrigley with Ernie Banks in 1962

Wrigley’s attack ad comes as the Cubs are 72-65 and nine games out of first place in the National League East.

Hardly inspired, the Cubs win only 11 of their final 25 games in 1971 to finish 14 games behind the division-winning Pittsburgh Pirates.

Banks – 40 at the time and in the last season of his Hall of Fame career – is one of the few Cubs to play well in that final stretch of games after Wrigley’s tirade, going 6-for-17 in his part-time role.

As for Durocher, Wrigley brings him back for the 1972 season, only to fire him after the Cubs’ pedestrian 46-44 start.

The players, clearly glad to be rid of their cantankerous manager, promptly go 39-26 for new manager Whitey Lockman in the season’s final 65 games.

Houston quickly signs the fired Durocher for the final month of the 1972 season with the Astros then going 16-15.

Durocher returns in ’73 and the Astros play just about the same, going 82-80 in Durocher’s 24th and final season as a manager in the majors.