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Another Edition of

“From the Lighter Side!”

Photographer Catches Man Leaping to His Death From Wrigley Field Upper Deck!

…At least that’s the first thing that went through my mind when I saw this photo, send to me by my friend Jay Walsh. And there were people all around calmly witnessing this tragic event, including many fans in the bleacher seats and men in black who appeared to be umpires! Did this happen during a game?

Then I looked a little closer and realized that the man was wearing skis and had a number on his back. And there was this long white thing extending from home plate. So what exactly was going on here?

A little researched revealed that this is not a fake or photo-shopped image. It’s very real and was taken in January, 1944. Thank goodness, the person was not jumping to his death. It’s a guy really flying through the air at Wrigley Field. I was intrigued and had to learn more!

I soon uncovered information that the guy in the air and below with the shovel is Sgt. Torger Tokle, an American long distance ski jumping champ from Brooklyn. In the below photo, he’s helping pile the snow at the base on the temporarily-constructed 88-foot ski slope, while workmen are putting the finishing touches on it.

And why, you might ask, was a ski slope being built over home plate at Wrigley Field? Because the previous year, Cubs’ owner P.K. Wrigley had given permission for Wrigley Field to be used as the site of the annual ski-jumping competition sponsored by the Norse Ski Club of Fox River Grove, Illinois, an organization still in existence today. Here’s their website.

There were two events scheduled for that winter, preliminaries and finals, on two consecutive Sundays, January 23 and 30, 1944.  According to the Chicago Tribune, the preliminaries were attended by over 6,000 spectators on January 23; while 5,000 made it for the finals on January 30. Until the NHL Winter Classic on New Year’s Day 2009, those were the only two winter sports events ever held at Wrigley. Prior to this event at Wrigley Field, other ski competitions had been held at various locations. Below we see a temporary ski slope built for a long jump competition held at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 1936:

And guess who won this first-ever Wrigley Field competition? None other than Sgt. Tokle himself! That probably came as no surprise to those who were familiar with him and the sport back then. Torger was a world-class ski jumper who had won many competitions. The featured photo above was from the preliminary event on January 23. I learned this about the 5’6″ Torger Tokle:

Torger Tokle was a Norwegian-born American ski jumper and military officer. During his six-year jumping career he won 42 of 48 tournaments and set 24 hill records. He died in action during the battle of Iola di Montese in Italy in 1945 during Operation Encore, four days short of his 26^th birthday. In 1959 he was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame (1)

I’ve ben a Cub fan for “umpteen years” and I had never heard about this! I know back then the Cubs didn’t often play October post season baseball. They won a war-year pennant the next year, 1945, and then embarked on a 39-year hiatus from the post season – 1945 to 1984 – so maybe P.K. Wrigley was looking for a potential winter revenue stream back in 1944. If so, this one was a pretty unusual idea!

Gary Livacari 

Information: Excerpts edited from article, List of Events at Wrigley Field and Torger Tokle Wikipedia page

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