40 Years Ago On This Day, Mike Cubbage Hit For The Cycle

Fasten your seatbelts. We’re stepping into Hootie’s Way Back Machine, and remember that we have to hit 88 mph on the keyboard before the flux capacitor will start. Also, try not to interact with yourself or others as it will upset the space-time continuum …

July 27, 1978

Charlottesville native and current resident, Mike Cubbage, known to friends and former baseball players and coaches as “Cubby,” accomplished one of the most rare feats in Major League Baseball.

As a member of the Minnesota Twins, Cubbage hit for the cycle exactly 40 years ago, against the Toronto Blue Jays. For those unfamiliar with “hitting for the cycle,” that means one batter hits for a single, a double, a triple, and a home run in the same game.

It’s a big deal. In fact, it has only happened 319 times in Major League Baseball history, starting in 1882. Hitting for the cycle is as uncommon as a no-hitter.

Cubbage, who was a two-time, all-state quarterback for Tommy Theodose at Lane High School, then became the University of Virginia’s first full scholarship baseball player, and was a quarterback for the Cavaliers, too. He has been a special assistant to Washington Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo since 2015. Cubby has a storied baseball career, but we’re going to focus for now on that special day in 1978.

Cubbage was having a good year, hitting .325 at the All-Star break, and third in the league in batting average at the time behind only teammate Rod Carew and Fred Lynn of Boston.

In that day game in ‘78, the Blue Jays started pitcher Jim Clancy, who gave up two hits to Cubbage, was followed by reliever Jerry Garvin, who surrendered two more. There were only three pitchers in the entire game (the Twins’ Stan Perzanowski went the distance), which lasted a mere 2 hours, 18 minutes.

Cubby remembered the game as if it were yesterday when we sat down at “Grit” coffee bar in Charlottesville a few days ago, just as we stepped into Hootie’s Way Back Machine.

“I doubled the first at-bat and got thrown out going to third base on a bang-bang play,” Cubbage said.

He had ripped the ball to the deep right-field corner, figured he could get to third and failed to use the third base coach. He was thrown out in a close play, but was sure that Twins manager Gene Mauch wasn’t happy with him for trying to stretch his hit to a double. Making the first out at third base to lead off an inning is considered a cardinal sin.

Cubbage made up for the miscue in his second time up, blasting a two-run home run off Clancy to give Minnesota the lead.

Because he was a platoon player at that time, Cubbage didn’t face a lot of left-handers, but had success against Garvin with a single that richotched off Garvin’s leg in the third at-bat.

“The ball went off his leg and bounced toward third base, so with my great speed, I beat it out to first,” Cubbage chuckled tongue-in-cheek.

“I wasn’t even thinking about the cycle,” he said. “I was thinking there were two guys on base in the seventh inning when I came up for the fourth time.”

Garvin intentionally walked Dan Ford, batting clean-up, and just ahead of Cubbage, batting fifth.

Cubbage took a fastball and tripled off the center-field wall, which turned into a stand-up triple because the Jays’ center-fielder had crashed into the wall and the ball bounced toward second base.

“I didn’t realize what I had done and I turned around and they already had it on the scoreboard that I had become the fifth or sixth Minnesota Twin in history to hit for the cycle,” Cubby said. “The third base coach came over and congratulated me and so did [Blue Jays] third baseman Roy Howell.”

What Cubbage will never forget from that game was that Mauch, a man who Cubbage greatly admired and respected, pulled him aside before he left the locker room that day and said, ‘Hey, great game … you made history today.’

“Gene didn’t say much, so whenever he spoke, you paid attention,” Cubbage said. “I never forgot what he told me.”

Cubbage played two sports at UVa from 1968 to 1971 and lettered at quarterback, and was first-team All-ACC shortstop and honorable mention Sporting News All-American (the team was selected by MLB farm directors back then) in 1971, when he became the first pick of the second round of the secondary phase of the MLB Draft by the Washington Senators (he had been the fifth-round pick of the Senators out of high school in ‘68).

Cubby made it to “the Show” in 1974, playing for Billy Martin’s Texas Rangers. He played for Texas until ‘76, then the Twins from ‘76 to ‘80, then the New York Mets in ‘81.

He went on to a successful career as a manager in the minor leagues on all levels and never had a losing record. He also worked as a coach on several MLB teams before becoming a scout and special assistant.

“I like working with the Nationals,” said Cubbage, wearing an American League championship ring from the ‘08 Tampa Bay Rays season (lost to Phillies in the Series). “The Nationals are a good club to work for.

“Mike Rizzo is a former scout and is kind of an old school baseball game in some respects,” Cubbage said. “He’s got a lot of old guys working for him, doing what I’m doing. I’m one of about 12. He calls us the ‘Medicare Gang.’ We all have some age and experience and he likes that.

“He likes guys that played and coached in the big leagues, who know what a big league player looks like,” Cubbage said. “The Nationals also has a good analytical department of guys that crunch the numbers. We’re probably 50-50, where some clubs like Houston are more like 90 percent analytical. A lot of clubs are going in that direction.”

Cubby said he owes his success as a hitter and his quick ascent from the minors to the majors all to Ted Williams. Williams’ book, “The Science of Hitting,” which had just come out when Cubbage hit the minors and he swore by the book.

“I carried that book around like a Bible,” Cubbage said. “It was about getting good pitches to hit and knowing the strike zone. That’s what I did.”

Certainly it worked that July day in 1978.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. Come join me again for another episode in “Hootie’s Way Back Machine.”