Thursday , March 28 2024
Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek re-election. The tumultuous spring was just beginning.

Social Upheaval, the Chicago Cubs, and the Spring of 1968

In the spring of 1968, I was 13 years old. A milestone year by anyone’s account, it marks the transition from child to teenager, from elementary school to high school. 1968 was a year of cultural and political turmoil, and as a young girl, I experienced it in my own way. My older brother was in the Army (luckily for him, not in Vietnam), drafted two months after his wedding and on the brink of a promising musical career. I was an anti-war activist even then, and my cohorts and I gave new meaning to Gene McCarthy’s kiddie corps – and I became a Cubs fan.

Forty years ago, on March 31, I was ironing something (I think it was my dad’s work shirt) in the downstairs recreation room when I heard raucous laughter from upstairs in the kitchen – and dancing, and whooping, and it was coming from my mother. Lyndon Johnson had just announced his decision not to run for president in 1968. For someone who had been elected by a landslide three and half years earlier, it was quite a moment, and one met by much glee by so many who had voted for him, including my parents.

The week was far from over, and joy turned to grief as, several days later when I was dressing for a dance recital (obligatory for any self-respecting teenage girl), I learned that Martin Luther King had been assassinated. All hell broke loose.

From my upper middle-class home in an affluent suburb of Chicago, I only knew something terrible and sad had happened to a great man, someone my Rabbi had walked with, and someone my older brother and parents held in great esteem. I knew it was a horrible and tragic thing. How could dance recitals go on in a world torn apart by such tragedy? I wondered.

I recall that night of the recital, merely going through the motions, presenting a dance I had choreographed myself in a preoccupied haze, responding to my less-informed classmates’ quizzical and haughty expressions of “Why’s she so upset?” Try to explain to these girls, whose most pressing concern was what to wear to next Saturday’s bar mitzvah party, that an entire people’s greatest advocate and hope had just been extinguished by a sniper’s bullet.

King’s assassination was followed two months later by Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. It was the day of my eighth grade field trip to Cantingny War Museum, followed by an afternoon fashion show put on by the Home Economics class. We teen radicals protested, claiming that to visit a war museum and participate in the frivolousness of a fashion parade was inappropriate. Needless to say, we didn’t win our argument with the principal. It was a terrible spring, the spring of 1968.

Not really as much of a curmudgeon as my words have so far suggested, and certainly not at the age of 13, 1968 is also noteworthy for me because it was the year I became a baseball fan; and not just a baseball fan – a Cubs fan. In a weird convergence of anniversaries today is both the opening day for the Cubbies, over there in the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field, and the 40th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s momentous “I will not run” speech.

Being a Cub fan in 1968 was to be as hopeful as being a young political activist was to be cynical. Maybe that’s why we found each other, the Cubbies and I. There was a fine and delicate balance between reality and fantasy, idealism and cynicism. Being a Cubs fan has immensely helped me deal with the almost eternal political gloom and doom of being (almost) ever on the losing side.

In the immortal words of Stevie Goodman, the Cubs are the perpetual “doormat of the National League,” a bad team. They were the bad team of bad teams, but something happened at the end of 1967. The Cubs actually got “good,” so good that even teenage girls had to take notice.

For $1.75 you could sit and bake in the left-field bleachers, have beer spilled on you, and generally have a great time (and build a great tan). The Cubs were the symbol of everything that was right about our country. As often as we could in 1968, and all through the next several years, we kept on hoping. We’d get on the “el,” get off at Addison, walk past bars and cigars, and get into the ballpark in time for batting practice. We’d harass the players for autographs. (I still have a scorecard covered with Cubbie signatures and one of some Cincinnati catcher named Johnny Bench – or something.) Yes, I was a left-field bleacher bum.

The Cubbies are what the Cubbies are, and for all of the hope and idealism that was projected by Kessinger, Becker, Williams, Santo, Banks, Hundley, Jenkins, Twiggy (the relief pitcher, not the model), Holtzman and the rest, hope became jaded cynicism that mirrored the rising prices and the endlessly World Series-less years in the 40 years that followed.

I celebrated opening day at Wrigley and Ernie Banks’ famous “let’s play two” philosophy, and commemorated that spring and summer 40 years ago that helped make me who and what I am today. 

About Barbara Barnett

A Jewish mother and (young 🙃) grandmother, Barbara Barnett is an author and professional Hazzan (Cantor). A member of the Conservative Movement's Cantors Assembly and the Jewish Renewal movement's clergy association OHALAH, the clergy association of the Jewish Renewal movement. In her other life, she is a critically acclaimed fantasy/science fiction author as well as the author of a non-fiction exploration of the TV series House, M.D. and contributor to the book Spiritual Pregnancy. She Publisher/Executive Editor of Blogcritics, (blogcritics.org).

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