North Pole delivered gift of Grace to Cubs

This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

In the wake of the 1985 Draft, members of the Cubs’ scouting ranks and front office were going over their list of selections. They were looking through the college class and seeing which players were heading off to summer leagues, offering another look before putting pen to paper.

The discussion reached Chicago’s 24th-round selection, a first baseman out of San Diego State named Mark Grace.

“We get to Grace and our people say, ‘Well, he’s going to Alaska this summer,’” recalled former scout Gary Nickels in a recent phone conversation. “So, I kind of pop off and say, ‘Who’s going to Alaska?’”

Gordon Goldsberry, the Cubs’ director of player development and scouting at the time, fired back: “You are.”

Before he knew it, Nickels was en route to North Pole.

No, not that North Pole. This was the small town of North Pole, Alaska, where Grace was suiting up for the Nicks (yes, named for Jolly Old Saint Nicholas) in the Alaska Baseball League. Santa Claus was the team’s mascot and the uniforms were appropriately red and green.

“They were terrible, _terrible_,” said Grace, who was inducted into the Cubs’ Hall of Fame this past weekend alongside former shortstop Shawon Dunston. “Just imagine Christmas on everything.”

The Cubs had taken three first basemen -- including Rafael Palmeiro in the first round -- ahead of Grace in the Draft. When the 24th round came around, Spider Jorgensen, an area scout for the Cubs on the West Coast, made his case for Grace. Now, Nickels was making a 3,500-mile trek to see if this project was worth taking on.

Grace was not so sure what he was getting himself into, either.

“Alaska in the summertime, it's all right,” Grace said with a chuckle. “But in 1985 when I was there, I didn't know nothing about Alaska. I'm a city boy. Instead of a dog or a cat crossing the street in front of you, it was like a moose or a fox.”

When Nickels landed in Anchorage, he picked up a local newspaper, scanned the sports section and saw that the North Pole Nicks were playing six straight games in town. The scout never had to finish the trip to North Pole. He spent the better part of a week watching Grace play in Anchorage.

“And it didn't take too long,” Nickels said. “It was about three days before I was calling the office in Chicago to say, 'Hey, this guy's got the magic wand. Everything he hits goes through the infield. He stings the ball. It's not going to be a home run swing, but there's enough sock there that he's got to be somewhat of a factor.’”

Grace was trained to hit with an opposite-field approach at San Diego State, but Nickels saw the first baseman pick spots to pull the ball that summer in Alaska under manager Mike Gillespie. Once signed and in the Cubs’ system, Grace continued to hone that approach under the tutelage of Minor League hitting instructor Richie Zisk.

“He told me, ‘I like the fact that you slap that ball to left field right there,’” Grace said. “But he said, ‘It was a 1-0 count. Why don’t you take that same fastball and yank it over there [to right]?’ I'm like, 'Well, I've never really been told to do that.' And he goes, 'I'm telling you to do that right now.' And so I learned and worked on it and worked on it.

“I had this all day,” continued Grace, pointing to left-center field at Wrigley Field. “I could do that with my eyes closed. But I didn't have that over there [right]. And he told me, ‘If you're going to advance your career, you're gonna have to learn to go over there and go over there with some authority.’”

Grace got the message and developed into one of the game’s best pure hitters in his era.

Across parts of 13 seasons with the Cubs, Grace hit .308/.386/.445 with 148 homers, 456 doubles and 2,201 hits in 1,910 games. The first baseman had a keen eye and elite contact skills, resulting in 946 walks compared to 561 strikeouts in his time in a Chicago uniform.

During the 1990s, Grace finished with 1,754 hits, finishing seven ahead of Palmeiro for the most hits by any Major Leaguer in the decade. That battle was a point of pride for the scouts involved in tracking and signing both players with the Cubs after the ‘85 Draft.

“We took Palmeiro in the first round. We took Grace in the 24th round,” Nickels said. “And in 1999, the two of them were going head to head for the most hits in the '90s. That's quite an accomplishment for the scouting staff.”

But only one member of that staff was told to go to Alaska.

“The North Pole Nicks is where he really started to grow into the hitter he became,” Nickels said.