As the 2019 season winds down, so does the 50th-anniversary season of the 1969 Cubs. They were the quintessential team that fell flat at the end of the season, but they forever will be a part of my life.
My father, Johnnie O’Neal Jr., was an avid baseball fan. He played baseball in high school and had hopes of playing professionally. The story I grew up hearing was that he tried out for the Cubs in the late 1950s but didn’t make the cut.
Maybe it was because, by age 21, he was married with three kids and was working double shifts in a steel mill to support his young family.