I’m always happy to hear about teams celebrating significant anniversaries of championships or noteworthy achievements. I think it’s a terrific way for teams to connect with the players from that particular era and old and new fans. Unless someone is lucky enough to have older relatives that share stories of players and teams of the past, they’ll miss out on some great history.

I’ve already pointed out how the Red Sox (somewhat) recently celebrated the 2004 WS Championship and now nice it was that Dave McCarty was able to take part before passing away.

Last year I wrote about how the 1983 White Sox were the first local team to make the playoffs in the era and that it led to a nice run of Chicago pro teams’ success.

As a Cubs fan in college, the 1984 season means a lot to me and Cub fans in general. While I don’t recall anyone writing about the circumstances leading up to that breakout season and what happened in 2016, it’s worth mentioning now.

Heading into the 1984 season, nobody was talking about a World Series draught or WS championship draught. Rather, people were still infatuated with the 1969 team that famously fell short of the first divisional playoffs. Sitting here in 2024, it’s hard to believe that that span was only 15 years. It’s during this era that the team was coined the lovable losers because attendance at Wrigley grew with the arrival of Harry Caray and better Cubs baseball.

As is the case when most professional sports teams change owners, significant change is on the horizon. While the Chicago Cubs a la the Chicago Tribune never achieved the ultimate success, 1981 definitely marked the start of a new era.

The Trib immediately hired Dallas Green from the Phillies. His goal was to remake the franchise and establish a winning tradition. Under his leadership, the Phillies won their first WS in 1980 and of equal importance they lost in the 1983 WS without Green. I know that rankled him to no end. He was a cantankerous competitor and had the personality of a water buffalo. During his tenure in Chicago, I met Dallas several times and for a brief moment, he was my overlord. One of his first acts as GM was to oust the Andy Frain ushers and replace with his merry band of elves. Luckily, we survived that purge.

As much as I love and remember the ’84 Cubs, I had to look up their records in ’83 and ’84 for this post. The 1983 Cubs were 71-91 finishing 19 games behind the NL East leading Phillies. And after some clever maneuvering and career years, the 1984 won the NL East with a 96-65 record. The Phillies finished 15.5 games out of first with an 81-81 record. If you don’t think he was enjoying this turnaround at his former team’s expense-you don’t know Dallas Green.

At the time, less was made of the numbers as it was more about the Cubs finally making the postseason. That it happened the season after the Sox finally got the monkey off their back was all the sweeter for Green. This was his first experience operating in a two-team city. He understood there was a rivalry albeit not as loud as was in the 2000’s.

As it turns out, neither team had any postseason success in ’83 or ’84, but it was a welcome start.

While I’ve been conscious about the 40th year anniversary, and I’ve wondered what the Cubs would do to celebrate this team and the individuals, it wasn’t until last week that I realized just how much I loved this team.

If you know people of a certain age, you’ve heard them say, I can remember something 30-50 years ago, but I don’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. It’s a common (exaggerated) lament. Without any prompting, I sat down and scribbled 30+ names from the 1984 Cubs. I hadn’t been consulting any websites, baseball cards or friends’ memories.

One of the things that stood out at the time was the specific makeup of the roster. Forget the success of the more recent, famous acquisitions and how they impacted the team. It was the characters and what they brought with them. I’m referring specifically to Richie Hebner, Davey Lopes, Ron Cey, Jay Johnstone, and Gary Matthews. These guys were all cool players that had success on winning teams. Up until then, the Wrigley family pursued guys like Barry Foote, Mike Vail, Doug Capilla and Jerry Martin.

Like any memorable team, they were in no short supply of role players. The rotation had its fill of quality arms, but also a bunch of busters that weren’t really assets. For better or worse, I can picture all of them and remember something unique about 98.6% of them. At the same time, I couldn’t tell you which classrooms I subbed in last week.

The 1984 Cubs boast five Hall of Famers, Ryne Sandberg, Dennis Eckersley, Lee Smith, Haray Caray, and Lou Boudreau.

I’ve been lucky enough in the last 20 years or so, to have reconnected with a handful of the guys from this team. As none of us is getting any younger, I’d love to speak with some of them as I’ve become a little better at “interviewing.”

For the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to find some of the pictures I took of the ’84 team-many at the Vet in Phil-a-delll-feeea. If and when I find some, I’ll be sure to share.

On an aside, the Tigers are celebrating the 40th of their WS title and I’d love to take part in that as they became a very likeable group of guys.