Fast rise, fast to exit for former Cub pitcher
Leo Durocher's '69 Cubs were counting on young lefty Darcy Fast for a lift, but season, career ended too soon
It would be a better story if he had tossed his glove into the Wrigley Field crowd and walked across the street and up the marble steps of a seminary, his cleats clickety-clacking on the polished floors, dooming the Cubs to the torturous fate that awaited them during their epic collapse in 1969.
But the story of Darcy Rae Fast, the self-described ''Missing Cub,'' and the role he played in a season that best defines the Cubs' centurylong World Series drought is more complicated than that.
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The late 1960s and early '70s were complicated times, after all.
''If the circumstances in 1969 could've been different, if I could've played with the Cubs like they were counting on me doing, and like I was counting on doing, it could've been much different,'' Fast said. ''If I could've pitched 30 innings and saved a few guys a few innings, it could've changed everything.''
His name alone captures the imagination. Darcy Rae Fast. It's an ideal name for a fictional phenom who comes out of nowhere to make his mark in major-league baseball, which is exactly what Fast did, rising from tiny Warner Pacific College to the Cubs in less than one professional season.
He broke Juan Marichal's single-game strikeout record at Class AAA Tacoma (Wash.) before being called up and making eight appearances for the Cubs in 1968, including a start in the second game of a doubleheader against the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was 21 and had realized his lifelong dream of becoming a big-league pitcher. The Cubs projected him as a key member of their bullpen heading into the fateful 1969 season.
Little did he -- or the Cubs -- know that his first big-league start would be his last major-league appearance. No one could've predicted the future as he walked off the mound at Dodger Stadium after pitching three innings of what would be a no-decision, but the fates of Darcy Rae Fast and the 1969 Cubs would soon take a drastic turn. Thirty-nine years later, the one-time phenom wonders if his and his former team's fates were intertwined, if his absence contributed to one of the worst collapses in baseball history. He's not alone.
''Those are things you'll never know,'' former Cubs reliever Phil Regan said. ''Maybe Darcy Fast could've saved us. There's no doubt he would've helped us.''
A minister's son raised in Olympia, Wash., it didn't take Fast long to realize he didn't fit in when he was first called up in 1968. The reality of life in the major leagues was far from what he had envisioned.
''I dreamed my whole life of being a major-league baseball player, but it wasn't what I thought it would be,'' Fast said. ''I met a lot of successful players who weren't very successful in their personal lives. It wasn't that I was let down or disappointed. It was just different.''
It wasn't anything that occurred during the games that made him feel like an outsider. Used primarily out of the bullpen against left-handers, Fast had a bright future. He had a sinking fastball that tailed away from right-handed hitters and a good curve. Although he had spent less than one year playing professional baseball, he had 10 strikeouts in as many innings in the big leagues.
He loved playing the game. It was what happened after games that made him uncomfortable.
''It was a routine thing,'' former Cubs pitcher Rich Nye said. ''If you had a great game, you went out and celebrated. If you had a bad game, you drowned your sorrows. We were drinking heavily every day. He didn't drink. He didn't swear or hunt women. He would read a book or go to a movie.''
Fast was so excited about his opportunity in 1969, and the prospect of a young Cubs team jelling and perhaps winning the pennant, that he had trouble focusing on his college courses during the offseason. With Ferguson Jenkins, Bill Hands and Ken Holtzman anchoring the pitching staff and Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ron Santo in the lineup, Fast felt like the last piece of a puzzle that could lift the Cubs to their first World Series victory since Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance.
''Darcy, we're really counting on you this year,'' Fast remembers manager Leo Durocher telling him when he arrived at spring training in 1969.
Only one thing, it turned out, could get in Fast's way -- the Vietnam War.
''I don't remember much about him,'' Regan said. ''He was with us, and then all of a sudden he was gone.''
Spring training was three weeks old when Fast was notified by his local draft board that he would be reclassified 1A, which meant he would be immediately eligible for the draft if he wasn't making progress toward his degree. According to Fast, then-Cubs general manager John Holland and Durocher advised him to return to college until things were sorted out. Meanwhile, they would continue to try to find an opening in the Illinois National Guard.
Jo Jo White had fallen to the Boston Celtics in the 1969 NBA draft because his two-year military commitment scared off many teams. Somehow, coach Red Auerbach got White assigned to the Marine Reserve program, allowing him to join the Celtics right away. This prompted complaints about athletes getting preferential treatment, which became such a sensitive issue that Fast says it contributed to his being denied a 90-day deferment after securing a spot for himself in a National Guard unit in Oregon.
Instead of finally being able to rejoin the Cubs, who were building what would become an 8½-game lead on Aug. 13, he had to report for basic training.
Ron Santo clicking his heels ... the Bleacher Bums ... the infamous black cat ... Fast read about the Cubs' long, sorry slide in newspaper accounts while stationed at California's Fort Ord. He was blameless, he knew, but he also felt in some small way responsible.
''I read the paper every day and wished I could be back there helping them play, and I was sick I couldn't do anything about it,'' he said. ''But when you're wearing an army uniform, it puts life in perspective. Some people were playing our national pastime, and others were fighting for their lives.''
Durocher ran his club into the ground. That's the popular explanation for the great collapse of '69. The Cubs lacked depth to begin with, a fact that was overlooked when their 11-1 start ignited a frenzy among long-suffering fans. Perhaps it was because Durocher had become the butt of jokes after calling in sick and missing two games -- when it later was discovered he was spending time with his new bride in Wisconsin -- that made him want to push his starters to lock up the pennant, but his team was running on fumes down the stretch. That helped the New York Mets do the unthinkable -- catch the Cubs and go on to win the World Series.
Randy Hundley caught a now-unheard-of 151 games despite injuries. Williams played in 163, Santo 160, Don Kessinger 158 and Banks -- in his 17th big-league season -- played in 155.
''We were looking for fresh players, and not only for the bullpen,'' Regan said. ''Most people don't realize that Williams, Banks, Santo, Hundley and Kessinger were tired, too. We didn't have a lot of reserves.''
Regan had been acquired from the Dodgers to be the Cubs' closer. The veteran made 71 appearances in 1969, pitching 112 innings. That's 47 more innings than Jose Valverde, the National League's relief pitcher of the year in 2007, threw in 65 appearances for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Nye said that when Durocher called the bullpen late in games to see which pitchers were available, bullpen coach Joe Becker would list everyone but Regan. More often than not, Durocher, in his gravelly voice, would summon the reliable veteran regardless.
''I remember he threw hard, but I don't know if Leo liked him much,'' Nye said of Fast. ''If Leo liked you, you were going to play a lot. If he didn't like you, you were going to sit there. We were young kids coming out of college, and Leo didn't connect with us.''
''Leo didn't like young guys,'' Regan affirmed.
While that seems indisputable, and calls into question how significant of a role the 22-year-old Fast would've played for the Cubs in 1969, Nye, Regan and others also were quick to point out that Durocher was a by-the-book manager. He had veteran lefty Hank Aguirre in the bullpen, but it's likely he would've used Fast as well.
''Durocher almost always played the percentages,'' Fast said. ''He would've been laughed out of the ballpark if he had brought Phil Regan in to pitch to a left-handed batter when he had a left-handed pitcher. Had I been there, I would've pitched.''
Fast rejoined the Cubs in spring training in 1970 and developed soreness in his shoulder, which necessitated a return trip to Tacoma. He was traded to the San Diego Padres, who called him up near the end of the 1970 season. Then fate, once again, intervened.
Soon after getting the call, he received notification from his National Guard unit that he was being placed under ''ready alert'' in anticipation of anti-war demonstrations at the Veteran of Foreign Wars convention in Portland, Ore., which meant that donning a Padres uniform was not in his immediate future.
By this time, Fast was beginning to question whether baseball was his true calling. He eventually received a letter from then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn informing him that at 24, he was one of the youngest players ever to voluntarily retire from major-league baseball. He never intended to follow his father's footsteps into the ministry, but that's what he did.
Fast has been the senior pastor of Centralia Community Church of God in Centralia, Wash., for nearly 30 years. Although he wonders what might have been different had he been able to pitch for the Cubs in 1969, if he might have made a difference in a pennant chase decided by the slimmest of margins, he has no regrets.
He still remembers facing an Atlanta Braves lineup that included Hank Aaron and Joe Torre in his big-league debut. He'll never forget his first appearance at Wrigley Field, in which he retired the St. Louis Cardinals' Tim McCarver with Lou Brock and Curt Flood on base to escape a jam. He remembers seeing Durocher duck out of the hotel lobby and into the back of a limousine for a night on the town with an old buddy -- Frank Sinatra.
''For years, every time spring training came around, it ate at my gut because I wanted to be there and be part of it, but I couldn't do both,'' he said. ''I wasn't making a decision between what was good and bad. I made a decision between what was good and what was best.''
Darcy Fast's book, The Missing Cub (Xulon Press, 2007), is available at online booksellers or themissingcub.com.
