On May 3rd, 1986, Cubs third baseman Ron Cey hit his 300th and 301st home runs and Chicago scores four times in the top of the ninth to beat San Francisco 6-5.

Ron Cey played for three teams that are close to my heart:

• Spokane Indians
• Chicago Cubs
• OAKLAND A’s

He also played for one team that I have always been ambivalent about: the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, in his 17 year Major League career, he was a Dodger for all but 5 of those years.

I have never fully understood my ambivalence about the Dodgers. I suspect it is something I inherited from my parents who were San Francisco Giants and San Francisco 49ers fans. While my Bay Area allegiance ended up being to the OAKLAND A’s and the OAKLAND Raiders, I did apparently inherit their suspicion of Southern California.

What is more is that it certainly would have been natural for me to have become a Dodger fan once my family moved North from Santa Cruz, California, to Spokane County, Washington. For Spokane was the home of the Dodgers’ AAA Pacific Coast League affiliate, the Spokane Indians. And I ended up going to a lot of Spokane Indians games with my father, uncles, and family friends.

Ron Cey was a member of those Spokane Indians teams of the early 1970s. And when I got Chicago in the early 1980s and started to regularly visit Wrigley Field, Cey was there playing 3B for the Cubs.

Nick-named The Penguin, “due to his squat build and waddle-esque gait’,” Cey made 6 All-Star Games and played more games at 3B than any other Dodger player in history. He was surprisingly good defensively and was a fan favorite at both Dodger Stadium and Wrigley.

Here is a link to Ron Cey’s Baseball Reference page.