Brett Favre has been the Bears’ nemesis for 17 seasons, but other Chicago pro franchises have had their troubles with stars as well.
Cubs
Two active players rate as future members of the Cubs-killers Hall of Fame. Carlos Lee has a .309 lifetime average against the Cubs with 22 home runs and 62 RBIs in only 304 at-bats, while Randy Johnson is 12-0 against them with a 1.98 earned-run average. But Mike Schmidt must be considered the all-time Cub-killer, with 78 of 578 career HRs off Cubs pitchers, including four in one game in 1976.
While Schmidt rates high in Ron Santo’s mind, the Cubs legend chose Willie Stargell, who hit .314 with 27 home runs and 100 RBIs in 138 games. Santo credited Stargell with wrecking the ’69 season in a September loss at Wrigley Field with a game-tying, ninth-inning home run onto Sheffield Avenue off Phil Regan with the wind blowing in at 30 m.p.h. “After that game, no one said a word in the clubhouse, and it was never the same,” Santo said.
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— Paul Sullivan
White Sox
When the Sox beat Twins ace Johan Santana in September, manager Ozzie Guillen figured something had to be wrong.
“Santana’s career is over now, I guarantee you,” Guillen said. “I think he’s hurt. It took us five years to get a game like this against him because he’s one of the guys who always dominates our ballclub.”
It only seemed like five years. Actually that victory was the first in almost two full seasons, during which Santana was 6-0 in seven starts against the Sox. No wonder Guillen was overjoyed when Santana bolted the Twins this winter for the Mets. Not only is he out of the AL Central, but the Sox don’t play the Mets this season. Santana was close as you could get to one pitcher dominating one team. At one point Santana was 13-4 with a 3.30 ERA against them and had Guillen kidding: “I’m going to call my mom in Venezuela to come here and cook for him. It will poison him. If Santana ate my mom’s cooking, he will be in trouble pitching the next day.”
— Dave van Dyck
Bulls
The post-Boston Celtics dynasty in the NBA could have, perhaps should have been the Bulls, if not for geography. And a couple of big basketball monuments, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The Bulls then were in the Western Conference of the NBA and despite winning between 51 and 57 games for four consecutive seasons with a ferocious and feared team, the Bulls never could get by Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar in the playoffs.
From 1971-74, the Lakers with Chamberlain or the Bucks with Abdul-Jabbar went to the Finals out of the Western Conference every season and split two championships. In three of the four seasons, the Bulls lost in the playoffs to the team that went to the Finals. In 1973, the Bulls lost a seven-game series to the championship runner-up Lakers, the seventh game by three points and the opener in overtime.
Denied and frustrated for four straight seasons, in 1975 the Bulls held a 3-2 lead in the conference finals before collapsing to the Golden State Warriors, who went on to win the title in a sweep. So, if not for Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar, the 1970s perhaps would have been a Bulls run.
— Sam Smith
Blackhawks
Fans used to chant Dino Ciccarelli’s name at the Chicago Stadium. Well, the Dino part of it, anyway. The second part can’t be repeated. Ciccarelli was Public Enemy No. 1 on the West Side throughout the 1980s as the Hawks staged some epic Norris Division battles against the Minnesota North Stars. Ciccarelli always seemed to be in the middle of some scrum, often with Hawks tough man Al Secord. He wasn’t just an agitator as he twice had 50-plus goal seasons, but he’s known best around these parts as the player Hawks fans loved to hate.
— Chris Kuc