The 2016 Cubs are a confident bunch, as we've seen over and over again since spring training opened.
Jake Arrieta had no qualms pitching naked in a photo shoot for a national magazine. Anthony Rizzo, Dexter Fowler, Travis Wood and John Lackey sang together on karaoke night at Stanley's. Even President Theo Epstein strutted his stuff onstage during his recent charity event, playing guitar alongside Eddie Vedder.
But it's doubtful these Cubs have the chutzpah to record a song pronouncing themselves World Series champions, as their predecessors did in 1969.
The Cubs sang about sweeping the World Series during the ill-fated summer of '69, and evidence can be found on eBay.
Amazingly, in a city where the '69 season has been dissected like so many frogs in a high school biology class, the '69 Cubs' braggadocio has been virtually lost in time. Everyone knows about the black cat at Shea Stadium and Don Young's misadventures in center against the Mets, but few remember the foolhardy decision to try to cash in on Cubs fever.
It happened when Billy Williams, Randy Hundley, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, Willie Smith, Gene Oliver and Nate Oliver got together to record a song called "Pennant Fever."
"They gave me a couple of beers," Williams recalled. "We did it over in Philadelphia. Great time."
And the rest is history.
Hundley said the song was the idea of Gene Oliver, the backup catcher who famously promised to jump off the top off the top of the John Hancock Building if the Cubs blew it. (They did. He didn't.)
The tune was borrowed from "Fever," a song originally performed by Little Willie John in 1956 and made popular a couple of years later in a slow-tempo rendition by Peggy Lee. The 1969 Cubs' version had rewritten lyrics that mentioned manager Leo Durocher and many of the players and included the chorus: "They gave us fever, PENNANT FEVER. And the fans are feelin' fine."
"It was something fun to do, so we did it," Hundley said. "Gene didn't have anything else to do but stir up stuff."
It was as cheesy as you'd expect, with lyrics like "lawdy how they love to win," and included lame sound effects of a bat hitting a ball and fan applause. One painful verse went: "First we win the East Division / Then we beat the Western stars / Next we sweep the ol' World Series / And the championship is ours." Not content with the '69 championship, the song ended with: "Oh, how great it's gonna be / Pennant fever! Pennant fever! / When we win in Sev-en-ty!"
Though Hundley said he couldn't sing a lick, the song was well done, mostly because Nate Oliver and Willie Smith, both good singers, carried the others.
The Cubs had a three-day, four-game series in Philadelphia on July 18-20, just before the All-Star break. Like the 1985 Bears recording "The Super Bowl Shuffle" the day after their Monday night loss in Miami, their only defeat of the season, the Cubs had to record their song after a brutal loss.
Hundley recalled playing a hot Saturday afternoon game at Connie Mack Stadium before heading to the recording studio, knocking out the song and going back to the hotel.
According to Baseball-Reference, that was the July 19 game, in which Phillies slugger Deron Johnson hit home runs off Bill Hands in the seventh and eighth innings in a 5-3 comeback win.
In the game account by Chicago Tribune sportswriter George Langford, Hands admitted he was cooked when he hung a slider to Johnson.
"Deep down inside you know you're tired, but you're too damn proud to admit it," Hands said.
Did the players think about the ramifications of predicting a championship in a song well before the pennant race was over?
"I didn't think about it one way or the other," Hundley said. "Just something to do."
Williams said it wasn't considered over the top.
"It was so exciting that year, we were doing everything," he said.
After the series, Hundley and the entire Cubs infield _ Santo, Kessinger, Glenn Beckert and Ernie Banks _ went to play for the National League in the All-Star Game. NL manager Red Schoendienst of the Cardinals shockingly had snubbed Williams and Fergie Jenkins.
The record was released soon after by Chess Records in Chicago, but didn't really take off, at least by "The Super Bowl Shuffle" standards. A column by the Tribune's Bob Wiedrich at the end of August said it had sold 25,000 copies.
Hundley and Williams both have copies packed away in boxes at home. They're just like everyone else, except with cooler stuff. Both searched their respective boxes of stuff this week but couldn't find the record.
Neither recalled making a cent from the proceeds.
"We didn't get any residuals from it, so I guess it didn't sell much," Williams said. "I don't think it went that far. If it did, it got until the middle of September (to sell), and then people probably did with it what they did with the White Sox that one year _ blow 'em all up like (like Disco Demolition Night)."
On Aug. 14, the Cubs were 8 games ahead of the Cardinals and 9 ahead of the Mets. But the Mets went 38-11 the rest of the way, while the Cubs went 17-29, finishing eight games back.
Pennant fever had been doused.
The 1984 Cubs took a page out of the '69 Cubs' book with the song "Men In Blue," an abysmal record featuring Rick Sutcliffe, Keith Moreland, Leon Durham, Jody Davis and Gary Woods. It was so awful that Durham had a line referring to Wrigley Field as "Wrigley Park." They assured us the Men in Blue "we're going to win it all."
Like the '69 Cubs, the '84 edition suffered a brutal, albeit quicker, ending.
Williams wouldn't advise the 2016 Cubs to follow their lead and record their own victory tune.
"The Cubs want to lay low on a lot of stuff now, because we're not at the All-Star break yet," he said. "After you get past the All-Star break, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel if we're still eight, nine games up. ... But we're playing good, and nobody is talking about (winning the World Series) now."
Still, both former Cubs believe this could be "the year." Hundley said "one of the biggest thrills of my career" was putting on a Cubs uniform last March when manager Joe Maddon asked him to dress up and talk to the current players in spring training.
"I told them to take advantage of the time they have," he said. "You never know what's going to happen."
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