Big Mike: Acting Like A Business

AJ, the Cubs yesterday announced that Ryne Sandberg will be managing the Iowa Cubs next year. Being given the reins to the organization’s Triple A farm club has fans here thinking Ryno will replace Sweet Lou when the latter retires after the 2010 season.

Boy, I’m hot and cold about this one. Ryno was the most fundamentally sound player I’ve ever seen with the Cubs. His positioning, technique and approach were all perfect. He even knew how to pace himself throughout the season. For instance, White Sox fans, who have a compulsive need to denigrate anything having to do with the North Side, raised a hue and a cry when Ryno was elected to the Hall of Fame. They said it was a crime that a player who never dove for the ball should be enshrined. My response always was that he didn’t need to dive inasmuch as he was always in proper position considering the pitch, the count, runners on base, and the tendencies of the batter. Equally as important, though, was his knowledge that diving for grounders, while occasionally resulting in a spectacular play, wears infielders down, week after week, month after month. He wanted to be as physically sound as he could be in September.

Sandberg, though, was uncomfortably quiet and shy. He never was viewed as either a clubhouse leader or a teacher of the game. In fact, he was best known for delivering hot-foots to unsuspected clubhouse visitors. His unwillingness to talk made me think on a number of occasions that he just might be an idiot-savant — brilliant at playing baseball, not too bright at anything else.

Nevertheless, a few years ago Sandberg told the organization he wanted to become a manager. The Cubs kept him dangling for a while and then finally gave him the job with the Peoria Chiefs, their Single A club. They were saying, in other words, Fine, you can be a manager, but you’ll have to ride buses through the Midwest first. They may have even hoped such a prospect would make him change his mind. He didn’t. And he’d been so popular that fans were clamoring even back then that he be named manager of the parent club, even though he had zero experience at running a team.

The Chiefs did fairly well in his first year at the helm. Sandberg himself revealed a heretofore unseen side of himself, being tossed out of several games for getting in umpires’ faces. He also took strong positions with players who played fast and loose with the rules.

Sandberg hoped to be promoted but the Cubs kept him at Peoria the next season. He may have been bitterly disappointed but he hid it well and did his job. Then, last season, he was given the Tennessee Smokies, the Double A farm club. And now, he goes to Des Moines, one stop short of the bigs.

I like this progression. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, the Cubs are starting to be serious about organizational structure. It’s as if there’s logic in this process. Logic, I needn’t remind you, has been in short supply around Wrigley Field since at least the Great Depression.

Right now, though, the fan blogs are howling for Sandberg to be named manager-in-waiting to replace Lou Piniella. I’ve been sure that Alan Trammel is the heir-apparent. He’s had his trial managerial stint — with the almost unprecedentedly woeful Tigers — and therefore has gotten all the dopey ideas out of his system. The best example I can think of is Bill Belicheck, who was thought to be a crashing failure as an NFL head coach after leaving the Browns in 1995. Of course, now he’s mentioned alongside Einstein, Newton and god.

I’m not saying Trammel will be the next Belicheck, only that — as in a starter marriage — people have to be disabused of some silly notions before they can be successful.

Anyway, my hope is that Trammel takes the seat from Sweet Lou and Ryno is installed as bench coach for the 2011 season. Then we can see if he’s smart enough and a leader enough to run a major league clubhouse on his own.

Until then, I like what the Cubs are doing. And I can’t fucking believe I just typed those words.

Big Mike: Ricketts Needs A Strong Stomach

My day of days has arrived! The sale of the Cubs from the Tribune Company to the Ricketts clan is official now.

TribCo purchased the team in August 1981 for $11M. They sell today for $845M. I’m sure the company’s happy with it’s 27-year reign. Its return is nearly 78 times greater than its initial investment! The team set attendance records nine times. Tribune Tower suits, Cubs front office honchos, the players, coaches, ushers, security people, washroom attendants, vendors, and even Chicago cops out directing traffic after games all raked in piles from the money tree.

The results on the field? Eleven Cubs teams finished above .500. One made the playoffs as a wild card entry. Five were division champs. One team won a playoff series. No team reached the World Series.

Big deal.

The Trib’s first act as proprietor was wise; it turned the keys over to Dallas Green. The irascible Texan cracked the whip, sending a letter to all players in the organization to get the hell in shape before spring training. He cleared the clubhouse of fat and happy paycheck-cashers and actively sought players who’d trip their own grandmothers as they rounded third. He modernized and professionalized all facilities and departments. He realized Wrigley Field needed lights for the team to compete financially so he threatened to move if the city didn’t give him permission to play night games. In his third year at the helm, he sensed the Cubs had a shot at the division title so he traded a couple of promising young studs and a beloved oldster for a couple of pitchers who made it happen. His farm system a few years later began producing the likes of Greg Maddux, Rafael Palmiero and Mark Grace. He was the man who’d lead the Lovable Losers to the Promised Land.

Of course, Dallas Green was forced out after six years on the job. Since Green’s ouster in October, 1987, very little TribCo has done in the name of the Cubs has made any goddamned sense.

Good riddance.

Now we have an owner who became an adult in Wrigley Field. Tom Ricketts fell in love with the Cubs as an 18-year-old in the bleachers in 1984. He met his wife there as well. His brother lived in an apartment across the street from the ballpark. It’s the next best thing to me owning the Cubs.

Of course, Tom Ricketts is now a few hundred mill in debt. But his family runs TD Ameritrade and he founded Incapital LLC. He’s been in high-end investment banking and stock trading all his life. He’ll find a way to dig up lunch money. It’s just that he won’t be dumping bushels-full of cash at every free agent who hits the market.

That’s okay, too. Nobody ever built a championship team solely by signing free agents  — not even the New York Yankees.

The advantage Ricketts will have over previous team owners is he’ll have an emotional stake in the fortunes of the team. I’m hoping (and praying to the god I don’t believe in) that he won’t be satisfied merely by a healthy quarterly report from the team’s accountants. Oh sure, he’s a businessman. He wants the firm to make dough. But here’s hoping he has the good sense to shed a tear or two while he’s counting receipts after a year in which the Cubs fail to make the playoffs.

That said, here’s my unsolicited advice for the new Cubs owner:

Call Alan Trammel in and tell him he’s the manager after Sweet Lou retires next fall. Forget good old Ryne Sandberg. Dreamy-eyed sentiment has no place in this decision. I never thought Ryno was an intellectual titan. Nice guy, I’m sure. Loves baseball. Loves the Cubs. Loyal as the day is long. So what? Those qualities describe me as well. I doubt Tom Ricketts would consider me for the job.

Rid the team of Milton Bradley. Not an easy task, sure, but it has to be done. Signing Gameboard was the dumbest-ass thing Jim Hendry ever did. If Hendry can’t find an equitable trading partner for him, he has to work out a financial settlement with Bradley that would grant him immediate free agency.

Speaking of Hungry Jim, I’d call him into the office and tell him I’m bringing in a Vice-President of Baseball Operations with whom he’ll have to work hand in hand. Hendry may not care to share his responsibilities. Fine, I’d say, let’s work out out nice severance package. Thanks for everything.

Hire a smart, creative, risk-taking, envelope-pushing GM. Someone like Kevin Towers, Billy Beane or Kim Ng. It’d be fascinating to see what any of them would do with a $125M+ player budget.

See what the trade market is for Carlos Zambrano. Perhaps the strongest personality in the clubhouse, Big Z is another in the Cubs’ long line of dumb ballplayers. He can’t control his emotions and he tries to do more than he’s capable of. He’s the anti-Greg Maddux. If the Mets, say, want to talk about sending Jose Reyes or Carlos Beltran here, I’d have to listen to them very carefully.

See what the trade market is for Derrek Lee. I love him. He’s a terrific hitter, a fine fielder and an upstanding citizen. He’s also just about ready to become a very old man. Among the teams that hope (rationally and otherwise) to compete for division crowns next year, the Red Sox, Rangers, Mariners, Braves and Mets all could find a comfortable spot for Lee. Might the Bosox, for instance, wish to move Kevin Youkilis back to third base and ship minor league monster Lars Anderson our way for him?

Find a second baseman, shortstop and centerfielder. You don’t win without superior talent up the middle. As I’ve yelled before, the Yanks became a powerhouse only when they started running the likes of Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada out there. You won’t win anything with Ryan Theriot, Mike Fontenot and a platoon of Reed Johnson and Sam Fuld, especially if Geo Soto continues to suffer from the terminal munchies.

See? That’s all you have to do to reverse a hundred years of bad luck, bad decision-making and bad baseball. Ha! I hope Tom Ricketts has half as much emotional strength as ready cash.