It all came to a head on August 1, 1979. The Cubs were playing against the Expos in Montreal. The game went very long that night, they played 12 innings and the game didn’t end until well after midnight, and the Cubs lost the game 6-4. To help the players get over the tough loss, the team treated them to dinner at a really fancy Montreal restaurant.
Management also, however, put a two bottles of wine limit at each table (although they were $40 bottles of wine.) That didn’t sit well with a few of the players, most notably second basemen Ted Sizemore and relief pitcher Dick Tidrow. They were so upset they stormed out of the restaurant.
Sizemore, in particular, remained incensed at this shoddy treatment. He continued to complain on the bus ride to the airport, and the flight back to Chicago. His complaining earned him a trade. Just two weeks later he was no longer a Cub.
By the end of the season, Herman Franks resigned too. The fifty year baseball man and former World War II soldier couldn’t take this combustible mix of crybabies. In his farewell address to the media he called the players selfish, coddled and uninspired. He said: “I’ve had it up to here,” pointing at his throat. “Some of these players are actually crazy. They don’t want to talk to the newspaper people, and they want separate buses for themselves and the reporters. It’s silly things like that get you fed up.”
He didn’t specifically mention the wine incident of August, but he did single out Ted Sizemore as one of the “biggest whiners.” (He also mentioned another guy the Cubs got in that same trade; catcher Barry Foote).
