Cuno Barragan, a ball, and the trickster gods of Wrigley

It had to have been in the summer of 1962 that Cuno Barragan tossed me that ball.

I know this because the Internet tells me Cuno joined the Chicago Cubs in September of ’61, and he played his last game in April of ’63. Because we kids only went to Wrigley Field during the summertime after school was out, it had to have been the summer of ’62 — the only summertime in Cuno’s life that he spent playing professional ball.

So that meant that I was just 14 years old, and I remember it still, more than a half-century later.

We kids had taken the bus to Wrigley early, as we always did, to watch batting practice in hopes of bringing home a ball that had been touched by an actual professional ballplayer. We haunted the left-field bleachers with our mitts at the ready.

But there were always other kids there with the same dream, and many of them were bigger and better at catching a ball launched from afar. Also, remember that these were the Cubs we are talking about, and they had few hitters who could park a ball in the bleachers. Well, there was Ernie Banks, but he usually parked the ball out on Waveland Avenue.

And so, our best hope of snagging a ball lay in begging an outfielder to flip one up to us.

But a big-league outfielder hears his name chanted millions of times in his career, and so it is easy enough to tune out voices from above and behind in the bleachers. Besides, batting practice isn’t just an opportunity to sharpen their fielder’s eye. It serves to work out their throwing muscles, too. And so most of the practice balls that fielders caught ended up back in the infield.

But there were other players out there on the cinder warning track in front of the ivy during batting practice, too. Some players liked to jog a lap or two around the park, especially if they expected to spend the rest of the game sitting on the bench.

Players like Cuno Barragan, who was a back-up catcher well down on the depth chart.

Still, Cuno was a new hero for a young Cubs fan because in his first major-league at-bat in September of ‘61, he had hammered a homer into the bleachers.

It was the only homer he would ever hit, but we didn’t know that at the time. All we knew was that he might be a rising star. And he had a really cool name.

The backup catchers had finished warming up the pitchers along the sideline, and now they were out for a jog.

And so, as he came trotting around the cinder warning track just as batting practice was ending, I called out his name and leaned out over the wall.
Maybe he looked up because backup catchers aren’t so used to hearing fans call out their name. Or maybe he was just a really nice guy.

In any case, he looked up and his eyes met mine.

And that’s when I noticed that a ball lay close to the wall right at his feet, tucked tight into the roots of the ivy that twined up the red Wrigley bricks.

Balls often got caught in the ivy at Wrigley Field. Cubs outfielders were adept at turning an opponent’s triple into a ground-rule double by kicking a ball into the ivy and throwing up their hands in an “I don’t know where it went” gesture. Sometimes a batting practice ball will stick in the summer-thick ivy and stay there unseen for weeks at a time until a hit rapped off the wall during a game sends two balls skittering onto the warning track. Hilarity ensues.

And so when I noticed a secret ball nestled at the ivy roots just as Cuno Barragan jogged past right beneath me, I considered it a gift from whatever gods are watching over kids at the ballpark.

“Hey, Cuno!” I called. “Can you toss me that ball?”

He looked at me, followed my finger to where it was pointing, and then bent down and picked up the ball. He flipped it up to me.

Now when you’re a kid, a ball nabbed off the bat of a professional ballplayer is a treasure. A ball purposely tossed to you by a professional ballplayer is the Grail.

But the baseball gods can sometimes be tricksters. The gods at Wrigley always are.

I would love to tell you that that baseball sits mounted on my desk next to me as I write these words, but that would be a lie.

Because it wasn’t a major league baseball that Cuno tossed to me that summer day in ’62. It was a cheap rubber ball that some kids had brought to Wrigley to play catch with in the bleachers. To make matters worse, a chunk of it was missing, like an apple with a gaping bite taken out of it.

The bleacher bums around me erupted with laughter as the triumphant smile slid from my face. If there is any ballpark joy greater than catching a treasured ball, it’s watching some other kid fail to catch one.

I took the partially gnawed ball home and gave it to Mickey, our springer spaniel, who finished the job with a triumphant smile on his face.

Cuno Barragan would be in his early 80’s now, and the Internet — which knows all things — tells me that he still lives. In his brief long-ago career, he batted a tepid .202, appearing in fewer than 70 games. In his last at-bat, he struck out.

It may be that today he looks back upon his less-than-ideal career and feels that the trickster gods of Wrigley are cruel. I felt that way for decades, thanks to that less-than-ideal rubber ball.

Or it may simply be that Cuno and I were nothing more than an elaborate delivery system for the kindly Wrigley gods to gift an ideal ball to a grateful springer spaniel named Mickey, who couldn’t have been happier with how it all turned out.

• Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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