- [Narrator] And there is pitcher Dick Selma cheerleading for his pals
in the bleacher section as they implore the Cubs to hit one out of here.
- [Mike] There was a phrase back in '69 called the 'counterculture.'
Symbolized everything, in the streets, around the country.
The Cubs Organization, it was straight-laced, crew cuts and ties.
Some might say, "Oh, those bums in the bleachers.
Bunch of hippies."
♪ [music] ♪
- [Karen] It was just an amazing time to be alive.
There was this revolution that was happening on every level.
The molecules in the air were just charged with possibility.
They were also charged with violence and craziness.
The bleachers in 1969 was not just to rest, but from the chaos that was
happening in the world.
It was fun.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Jack] I was, like, 19 years old at the time.
I was worried about getting drafted.
The left-field bleachers made me feel that was just the place to get away
from it all, just leave all that world behind.
That's how I looked at it.
- The town went crazy for '69 Cubs.
I mean, '67 and '68 were something, but '69 just exploded.
All of a sudden, there weren't 4,000 people coming to games, there were 40,000.
The bleacher bums, that was where the cool place seemed to be.
- [Narrator] And there's the cheerleader Selma, getting your bleacher fans going.
- We did as much as we could in the bleachers to entertain the fans
and ourselves, and Dick Selma, he was like the leader of the bull pen.
- [Billy] We'd be losing a baseball game.
They started chanting, "Selma, Selma, Selma, Selma."
- [Fergie] He's one of the starters, and generally the starters sit
on the bench, but he would always go down, sit in the bull pen.
- So, Selma will get the towel and start wheeling them like this.
And they will start cheering.
They will start cheering, and then all of a sudden,
we started to score some runs.
- The bleacher bums, we had two goals in life.
Help the Cubs win and make the other team miserable.
- For some reason, Mike Murphy would know what would drive an outfielder crazy.
He found out that Lou Brock was afraid of mice.
- Turns out one of the bleacher bums worked in a laboratory somewhere that
had laboratory mice.
So, Lou Brock runs out to left-field in the bottom of the first…
- And they threw the mice on the field, hoping that Brock would be afraid of mice
and he wouldn't catch the ball.
- The mice did, "Boing, boing."
They just bounded and they ran around.
They were fine.
Everybody was fine, but then the big shock.
Lou Brock was not afraid of mice.
Lou Brock looked at it, laughing, and now he's waving at us.
It backfired, but it was still fun.
- [Rich] They were the first guys that ever threw homerun balls back
on the field. I mean, that's what I remember.
- I happened to be standing right next to Ron Grousl the day it happened.
So, Ron Grousl catches the homerun ball from Hank Aaron.
He looks at it and he says, "I don't want no stinking enemy ball."
Boom, he fires it all the way back toward second base.
You can tell the whole ballpark is watching this ball roll.
Where'd that ball come from?
- I wasn't at that game so I wouldn't know, and then I was at the game
with Mike Haley.
He got hit right on the side of the head here with a baseball.
Next thing you know, he whips the thing back in the field,
and everybody just thought it was the funniest thing they've
ever seen, you know?
And that's how I remember the first ball going back on the field.
- The bleacher bums actually became friends, not just acquaintances,
friends with many of the players.
- The relationship with the bleacher bums, with the fans, were personal.
We were one-on-one with them.
You know, not just myself, I'm talking about everybody.
- That time, I was driving a Wildcat Buick, and they all knew it
because we had to walk across the street to get in our car, and I would turn
around and give them the peace sign.
They would all holler up then, give me the peace sign back,
and have another sip of beer, and they just enjoyed life.
I tell you, they enjoyed life.
- We had fans, sometimes in our dug out, in the seats, following us on the road,
and wanting us to win.
- If there was a high-water mark, it was the Atlanta trip.
- President of the Cubs, P.K. Wrigley,
in the middle of the game, sent one of his men out to the bleachers.
- And he said, "Mister Wrigley wants to pay for a trip for the bums to go
down to Atlanta. It was just a crazy experience."
- One of the bums dressed up in a bear outfit and tackled Noc-A-Homa.
- Boom!
Out of the Cubs dugout comes this big running crazy bear, Ron Grousl. Boom!
Give him a little shoulder, blindsides him about three minutes in.
Ron Grousl as a bear with his back out in the left-field bleachers.
It was great.
- I mean, the bleacher bums really helped the Cubs win that series down in Atlanta.
And that's all because of Wrigley.
It was a great thing that he did.
- They were magical on all fronts, on hitting, on pitching, on fielding.
They were amazing.
So, it just felt like the World Series was a given.
It was just a given.