On September 10th, 1974, Lou Brock tied Maury Wills’ single-season stolen base record with a steal in the first inning against the Philadelphia Phillies. He broke the record with steal No. 105 in the seventh inning.

In baseball there are good trades and there are bad trades. The Chicago Cubs trading a young Lou Brock to their division rival, the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964, was a terrible trade.

Hall-of-Famer Lou Brock finished his 19-year career with 938 Stolen Bases. Of those 938, only 119 were for the North Siders. The rest, unfortunately for the Wrigley Faithful, benefitted their biggest nemesis.

Regular readers of ClimbingSky know that stolen bases are esteemed mightily here. Stealing bases is by definition disruptive. It distracts the pitcher, the catcher and the infielders.

Instead of just focusing on the man in the batters box, everyone needs to additionally worry about the man on the base. Pitchers need to think about both their next pitch AND the guy dancing off the base. The catcher needs to be ready to take any pitch and hurl it as quickly as possible toward one of the bases. Defensive alignments become immediately unbalanced as infielders need to position themselves so they are ready for a throw from either the catcher or the pitcher attempting a pick-off..

Lou Brock was just such a disruptive force. If the Cubs would have kept Brock, they would have won a lot more games and visitors to Wrigley would no doubt be greeted by his statue like they are now by statues of Ernie Banks and Billy Williams, among others. But unfortunately for the Cubs faithful, to see his statue they need to go to St. Louis.

Lou Brock was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985.