Mark WiedmerThe year was 1945. Riggs Stephenson piled his family into their Chrysler and left their Akron, Ala., home bound for Chicago.
"My dad was taking us to the World Series between the Cubs and the Tigers," Jack Stephenson recalled Sunday from his Signal Mountain home. "I got to go in the locker room and meet a lot of the players. My dad still knew many of them and the manager, Charlie Grimm."
Riggs Stephenson knew them because he once played with them. And if he had played in today's times, his batting stats alone would make him a near-certain Hall of Famer. Over 14 big-league seasons, the former football and baseball star at the University of Alabama batted .336. That's right. His lifetime batting average over five seasons with the Cleveland Indians and nine more with the Cubs was .336.
"Dad never hit less than .300 until his final year in 1934," said his 80-year-old son. "He had big hands and big shoulders, and though he never hit more than 19 home runs in a season, he could really hit a baseball."
So good was Stephenson at the plate that in the 1932 World Series against the New York Yankees and a couple of guys named Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Stephenson hit .444 for the Cubbies, including a three-hit, three-RBI outing during a 12-6 loss to the Yanks in Game 1 of a Fall Classic the Bronx Bombers swept.
Yet when both teams Stephenson played for reached this year's Fall Classic, his son said there was no doubt which franchise his father would be supporting.
"Dad was a Cubs person," he said.
As this year's World Series reached Game 5 on Sunday night with Cleveland leading Chicago three games to one, there were a lot of Cubs people in a world of anxiety.
This was to be their year. They put together the best regular-season record in baseball at 103-58. Their manager Joe Maddon is generally regarded as the craftiest motivator in the sport. Their president of baseball operations, Theo Epstein, had previously orchestrated World Series crowns in 2004 and 2007 as general manager of the Boston Red Sox. His genius also contributed to that franchise's 2013 championship, though he had left two years earlier to run the Cubs.
Point is, if ever the Cubs were going to break the Curse of the Goat - which began during that 1945 World Series loss to Detroit - it figured to be this year.
Jack Stephenson had his doubts before Sunday's game.
"It doesn't look good for the Cubs," he said. "Cleveland's really got great pitching."
His dad's one great shortcoming as a player was his right arm. Riggs Stephenson injured it playing football for the Crimson Tide. His arm was so weak as a result of that injury, Cubs shortstop Mark Koenig often had to venture into the outfield to retrieve throws from Stephenson in left.
If anything, it made his talent at the plate all the more remarkable, because both the Cubs and Indians were willing to put up with his defensive liabilities to have his bat in the lineup.
When his playing career ended, Stephenson - who was nicknamed both "Warhorse" and "Old Hoss" - briefly got into managing Birmingham's club in the Southern League before leaving the game for good.
"He had such a great heart, he left the pitchers in too long," Jack Stephenson said of his dad's managerial career.
Told that many have said the same about former Atlanta Braves skipper Bobby Cox, he quickly said, "Yes, but dad didn't get tossed nearly as often as Bobby."
To return to that 1932 World Series, it featured 13 future Hall of Famers, nine of them Yankees. It was the first World Series in which players wore numbers on the backs of their uniforms. It was also the Series in which Ruth is said to have famously signaled he was going to hit a home run before he doing so in Game 3.
"My dad was in left," Stephenson recalled. "He was never sure Ruth pointed as if he was going to hit a homer, but he definitely made a gesture."
These World Series aren't all created equal. The last time the Cubs got there in 1945, many major leaguers were still serving in the military near the close of World War II. One sports writer jokingly called that matchup "The fat men versus the tall men at the office picnic."
"I don't remember much," Jack Stephenson said. "But I do remember Hank Greenberg hitting a home run for the Tigers. I was just 10 years old, though, and I really didn't appreciate what I was seeing, visiting a locker room during a World Series and all."
Later, he remembers his dad, who died in 1985 at the age of 87, religiously reading the Sporting News and realizing "that every time he'd read it, another guy he'd played with had died. I think he went to bed an hour earlier each time that happened, hoping to live as long as possible."
Years and years later, the Cubs had Riggs Stephenson back to throw out the first pitch at a game.
"Whenever I'd talk to one of his old teammates, they'd say, 'Your dad should be in the Hall of Fame,'" said his son. "And we tried for a long time. But it just never happened."
Stephenson said he doesn't believe in baseball curses. Whatever ultimately happened to the Cubs on Sunday night or beyond, win or lose, "I'll have a couple of Scotches."
But if the Cubbies' last World Series crown remains the one earned in 1908, a lot of long-suffering fans on Chicago's North Side and beyond will pour Scotches to dull disappointment (again) rather than savoring success for the first time in 108 years, the end of another baseball season once more not looking good for the Cubs.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.