Big Mike: That Phallus In A Sweater-Vest

No matter which site I’ve posted on about the Cubs, one thing is always perfectly clear — I wish Jim Hendry would be kidnapped by aliens. I blame him for just about anything I can think of, up to and including Global Warming.

But, really, Hungry Jim is not my ultimate Cub bete noir, only the latest. No, the honor for the biggest dope to run the Cubs in the Tribune Company era can be fought tooth and nail over by Jim Frey, Larry Himes or the loathsome Andy MacPhail, a man whom many Cubs watchers nicknamed MacFail and whom I’ve always referred to as that phallus in a sweater vest.

Frey was just plain dumb. Himes was a jerk. Their sins could fill a book. Their respective signature missteps were Frey’s 1991-92 off-season splurge on George Bell, Danny Jackson and Dave Smith, and Himes’s role in the departure of one Gregory Alan Maddux. But Andy MacPhail’s transgressions are the most infuriating.

I can understand the bone-headed actions of bone-headed men. Frey’s and Himes’s idiocies were there for the world to see. MacPhail’s incompetence was subtler. In fact, many credited him with doing a fine job during his term as president of the Cubs. He packed the ballpark and brought the team to the brink of respectability a time or two. Yuck.

I’ve never given a shit how well the Cubs are doing financially any more than I have a rooting interest in the bottom line of Wal-Mart or the Disney company. I don’t care to watch accountants balance their books but I love to see outfielders run down long flies and hitters lash line drives into the alleys. All I know is that Cubs’ cumulative record during the MacPhail presidency was 916-1011. The twelve teams he ran finished under .500 seven times. They lost 90-plus games in a season four times and finished in last place four times. Sure, there were the 1998 Wild Card team (or, more accurately, Sammy Sosa and a bunch of guys wearing the same uniform) and the 2003 division champs (the phrase “five outs away” is acid-etched into my brain.) Big deal. The Yankees or the Red Sox would consider those off years.

Even though the Cubs in the MacPhail era were godawful with the exception of those two startling playoff appearances, I’d always felt that MacPhail went to bed each night saying to himself, Man, I’m good. The ballpark is full and I’m making money for the company. I trust he didn’t linger over the team’s record — if he had, he’d have never fallen asleep.

Now, though, I read in George Castle’s fine blog, Bench Jockey, that MacPhail’s bosses in the Tribune Tower could hardly believe how penurious their own bean counter was after they looked at MacPhail’s books one year.

Castle gives an historical rundown of what a bunch of cheapskates the Cubs were even before the Trib bought the team in 1981. The Wrigleys, Phil and son Bill, made the notoriously miserly George Halas look like a drunken conventioneer. The Trib continued the tradition of penny-pinching until Sam Zell took over the company and ordered Hendry to turn the Cubs into a decent ball team so he could sell it. MacPhail, thankfully, was long gone by that time.

Here’s what Castle revealed about MacPhail’s heartfelt concern for the Mother Corp.’s piggybank. The Cubs front office under MacPhail, Castle writes, “…was discovered to be grossly understaffed, ranking 29th of 30 teams[.] They did not have enough scouts and player development people for a big-market team. [MacPhail] …in July 2005 told me he preferred to be understaffed; he’d rather be ‘one man too short than one man too heavy’ so that all his employees could be suitably ‘engaged.’ MacPhail’s Tribune Co. overseers were shocked to find he was not spending the money on player payroll and baseball operations they expected.”

That rumbling you hear emanating some 1000 miles WSW of Boston is me, about to erupt. That bastard Andy MacPhail — that phallus in a sweater vest — dicked around with my emotions merely to add few few extra bucks to his yearly bottom line, a few extra bucks that his own bosses didn’t even care about.

Benny Jay and I went to a Cubs game one sunny afternoon in late September, 1992. The Pirates were in town. Greg Maddux was on the hill. Batting third for Pittsburgh was Barry Bonds. It was years before Bonds bulked up. Still, he was already acknowledged as the finest ballplayer in the game. Maddux had the Bucs in the palm of his hand that day, shutting them out on seven hits. It was Maddux’s 20th win of the year. He’d win the National League Cy Young Award after the season. Bonds would win his third Most Valuable Player plaque.

Both Maddux and Bonds were free agents that off-season. Benny Jay and I discussed the Cubs future as we sat along the right field foul line. We figured they’d re-sign Maddux — after all, only a pack of idiots would let him walk. Then we drooled over the prospect of Bonds in a Cubs uniform. He’d solve so many problems for the team that his value was virtually incalculable. Wisely, though, we put the brakes on such dreamy talk. The Cubs would never sign a free agent of Bonds’s caliber — when pressed about this or that big-time free agent, Cubs honchos normally would imply that such a signing would be, well, wrong — almost evil.

Of course, the Tribune and Larry Himes let Maddux walk and neglected even to make a courtesy call to Bonds’ agent. A year and half later, MacPhail came aboard. The Cubs wasted no opportunity to remind Chicagoans that his Twins had won two — count ‘em, two! — World Series in five years under his watch. I knew — just knew — things were changing for the better. (Naturally, I chose to ignore the fact that the core of those Twins champs was in place well before he took over in Minnesota.)

Over the next 12 years that MacPhail controlled the Cubs’ purse strings, the following free agents became available: Albert Belle, Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Jason Giambi, Jim Thome and Miguel Tejada. I’m sure there were more, equally eye-popping names available for the taking. These are only the ones I remember. Not a one came within a lightyear of signing with the Chicago National League Ball Club.

Perhaps Andy MacPhail thought none of them would be “suitably engaged” in Wrigley Field.

Big Mike: Big Name? Big Deal.

Okay, the Cubs are gonna announce today that Rudy Jaramillo is coming aboard as the highest-paid hitting coach in the game. North Siders are now forming lines in front of the Wrigley box office for their 2010 World Series tix.

As I’ve indicated before, Hungry Jim Hendry loves — loves — big names. In the tight little world of hitting coaches there is no bigger name than Jaramillo’s. Will his hiring mean a goddamn thing in the standings?

Jaramillo has been the batting pedagogue at Texas since the early 90s. His charges have won 17 Silver Slugger awards and four MVPs. Bruce Levine credits Jaramillo with jump-starting the careers of Sammy Sosa, Mark DeRosa, Gary Mathews Jr., and Milton Bradley although, if memory serves me correctly, Sosa had a fair season or two with the Cubs before he closed out his career with the Rangers.

And therein lies my point. When you traffic in Big Names, the hyperbole has to match — even if it’s utter bullshit. The truth is, no one has any idea what effect Jaramillo has on hitters other than to make sure they don’t lose their way from the dugout to home plate.

What I do know is that the Ballpark in Arlington (could they possibly have come up with a more generic name?) is one of the top hitters’ havens in the bigs. According to ESPN’s 2009 MLB Ballpark Factors study, the BinA ranked in the upper quarter of parks in terms of increasing run scoring. And it ranked third only to Angels Stadium and that new telephone booth in the Bronx in home runs.

In addition, three of those four aforementioned MVP plaques were copped by Alex Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez, neither of whom, I’d wager, was in dire need of a hitting coach.

So methinks the beckoning fences of the Arlington playlot and the innate abilities of his pupils had as much or more to do with the Rangers’ bat-swinging success than the soothing encomiums of one Rudy Jaramillo.

I also suspect that if the Cubs score one run more in 2010 than they did in 2009, Jaramillo will be hailed as the second coming of James Clerk Maxwell. Such are the rewards of possessing a Big Name.

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds Only For Me

I agree 10,000 percent with your last point. And I wonder if I hadn’t made myself clear in my Nomar post. Hendry was jobbed on that trade. Not necessarily because of anything he gave up (primarily Francis Beltran — ugh! — and Brendan Harris — meh) but because he thought he was getting Nomar Fucking Garciaparra, the great shortstop.

What he really got, as I implied, was nomar garciaparra the fairly decent hitter and liability in the field.

My feelings on Hungry Jim have changed through the years. That’s probably because he’s the most Jeckyll and Hyde GM I’ve ever seen. Within his first two years on the job, he flushed Todd Hundley off the roster and swindled the Pirates and Marlins out of corner infielders who each can be reasonably argued as among the greatest ever in Cubs history at his position. Hendry exiled the drunken, bitter, impotent Son-of-the-Sainted-Randy to LA for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, who played key roles on the 2003 division champs. That summer, he shipped a minor league catcher, a grossly overhyped Triple A second baseman and an eminently forgettable major league infielder to Pitt for Aramis Ramirez, whom the Bucs had soured on for reasons known only to a team that has spent the last 17 years under .500. A few months later, he sent Hee Seop Choi to the Fish for Derrek Lee.

So for a brief shining moment, I hailed Hungry Jim as a cross between Branch Rickey and Isaac Newton.

But then…, but then, but then. Hungry Jim, the big boss man of the Cubs allowed Johnnie B. Baker to cripple Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Hendry signed everybody and his brother on the team to big, fat, long-term, no-trade-clause contracts and now he’s stuck with them. He showered Alfonso Soriano with gold through 2014 (when he’ll be 38 years old, unable to run around the mound — much less the bases, and still incapable of laying off the outside curve.) He allowed Baker to miscast LaTroy Hawkins as a closer. When the time came to dump Sammy Sosa, Hendry did everything he could — up to and including releasing security video of Sammy ditching the last game of the season — to destroy whatever trade value he had left. After losing out on free agent Rafael Furcal, Hendry panicked and traded a trio of decent minor league arms for the indecent Juan Pierre. Then he upended the roster of a team that had just won 97 games to sign the Lee Harvey Oswald of Major League Baseball, Milton Bradley (I didn’t do what they say I did…, I’m a patsy!)

Every night before I go to bed, I pray to the god I don’t believe in to make Jim Hendry suddenly want to up and join the Peace Corps.

Yeah, you’re right. To say, as you did, that the Cubs have not shown savvy in acquiring players (even allowing for the aforementioned glaring exceptions) is to utter the understatement of the century. And, yeah, I’m jealous as hell of a guy for whom 95 wins isn’t enough.

That said, let’s get down to cases. Is it possible for the 2010 Cubs to win anything near 95 games? Phe-e-e-e-w!

I’ll go so far as to say I’d bet the new home deed that they won’t. They can, though, win 85 to 92 games — anything within that range might well be enough to cop the NL Central. And, as I’ve said many times before, once you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

They need, as even a teething baby knows, to get rid of Gameboard. When Bradley was suspended for the remainder of the season in September, players literally lined up to tell reporters how much they approved of his banishment. That’s unheard of. It’s also prima facie evidence they see his mental illness (trust me on this diagnosis) as an unneeded distraction.

If they can palm him off on a sucker, they need to find a second baseman, a shortstop and a centerfielder. Yuck. Conventional wisdom holds that the core of a good team is up the middle. And if Geo Soto doesn’t lay off the post-toke munchies, they’ll need a catcher, too. Yikes!

Did I say 85-92 wins?

Well, yeah, I did. They have a terrific starting staff, even if it is nominally led by the puerile, bullying, prickish knucklehead, Carlos Zambrano. Ted Lilly really is the ace of the staff (his signing is another example of Hendry as Dr Jeckyll.) Ryan Dempster is a decent number three and Randy Wells appears to be a nice end-of-the rotation guy. Sweet Lou will choose between Tom Gorzelanny, Sean Marshall and Milo Samardzija’s bastard son for the fifth starter spot — not a bad choice to be faced with.

The bullpen looks fine as long as Hendry can re-sign lefty John Grabow. Carlos Marmol now seems to be taking to the closer’s role better than the set-up man’s. Angel Guzman and a slew of live-armed kids (Berg, Caridad and Stevens) will fill out the pen.

The entire staff ought to keep the team ERA hovering around 4.00, which should be good enough as long as the Cubs can find a way to score runs. If Soriano and Soto bounce back nicely, D-Lee doesn’t suddenly grow old before our eyes and Aramis simply does what he’s been doing for seven straight years, that division title is no pipe dream.

My fingers are crossed that — in lieu of some shocking blockbuster deal — Ryan Theriot and Jeff Baker can man the keystone without embarrassing themselves. As for centerfield, well, um, Hey AJ, you got a mitt?

Big Mike: The Nomar Trade

MLB Trade Rumors, one of my favorite sites, talks today about the Red Sox shortstop hole since the team traded Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs in 2004. According to mlbtr, the Cherry Hose have used 19 shortstops in the intervening years. Yikes.

The Nomar deal was Jim Hendry at both his best and his worst.

I heard about the deal on the radio on a Saturday afternoon, the day of the trading deadline, moments before a game against the Phillies. The Cubs, of course, were scuffling to return to the post-season after they, gulp, had come within five outs of the World Series the previous year. In fact, Sports Illustrated’s baseball preview issue that March had featured Kerry Wood on the cover along with the heart-breaking prediction, “Hell Freezes Over: The Cubs Will Win The World Series!” The dopes.

Nomar Fucking Garciaparra! I could not believe my ears. He was one of the holy trinity of shortstops of the late 90 and early aughts. He, A-Rod and Jeter. The three had revolutionized the position. Oh sure, there’d been slugging shortstops before — our very own Ernie, Milwaukee’s Yount, the Tigers’ Trammell, and the Orioles’ Ripken, but they were anomalies, outliers. No team had a right to expect its shortstop to slug 30 homers or hit in the .370s. But Nomar and his fellow Short-sketeers did that kind of thing and more.

Nomar Garciaparra. The Cubs were nine games over .500 that day. They stood in second place 10 games behind the surprising Cardinals. There was still plenty of time to catch the Birds or, failing that, to win the Wild Card. All the Cubs had to do was make the post-season. With that starting pitching — Wood, Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano, Greg Maddux and Matt Clement — the Cubs would scare the poo out of all comers in the playoffs. The shortstops prior to the deal had been Ramon Martinez and Alex S. Gonzalez. Nice fellows, I’m sure. Loved by their families. Upstanding citizens. Horseshit shortstops.

Jim Hendry smelled blood that Saturday and arranged the mother of all four-team trades. Working with Theo Epstein in Boston as well as the Twins and the A’s, Hendry snagged Nomar Garciaparra. The team was complete. Not a hole in the lineup.

When Hendry sets his sights on a target, he’ll move heaven and Earth to get him. When Johnnie B. Baker seemed to have fallen out of favor with the Giants at the end of the 2002 season, Hendry bided his time as all the other candidates he’d interviewed for his vacant manager’s position took jobs elsewhere. No one could say if the Giants would retain their World Series skipper. But Hendry still waited. Some ten days after the Series ended, Hendry and Baker held a press conference together.

After the Cubs had stunk up the joint in 2006, finishing last with a 66-96 record, Hendry identified Lou Piniella as the man who’d lead them out of the darkness. Lou, who was 62 at the time and happy doing occasional color commentary for Fox Sports, was persuaded to come aboard thanks to Hendry’s silver tongue and TribCo’s fat wallet.

Then Hendry spied Alfonso Soriano on the free agent market. Possessed of rabbit speed and Paul Bunyan power, Soriano was the jewel of the 2006-07 off-season. Hendry outbid the Angels and others for his services over dinner one November night. He told Fonzie they wouldn’t leave the table until the player had shaken on a deal.

Last off-season, Lou hinted to Hungry Jim that the Cubs might want to add a little left-handed thunder to the lineup. Whereupon Hendry inked Milton Bradley, who’d just turned in the season of his career.

It’s refreshing to have a Cub honcho who’s greedy, impatient, unafraid to take a gamble,  and doesn’t care how much he has to spend to bring a winner to Wrigley. And Hendry is nothing but greedy, whether it comes to Jack Daniel’s, crullers or big-name outfielders.

On the other hand, with the arguable exception of Lou, each of the aforementioned coups looks like the result of a man picking answers out of a hat. Yeah sure, Baker was known as a players’ managers who could handle moody superstars but he also had a rep as a destroyer of young arms. The core of the team Hendry entrusted Dusty with was that young pitching staff. Oops.

Soriano was hoped to challenge the 40-40 barrier every year for the foreseeable future when he became a Cub. But his are a young player’s skills and he was already approaching his mid-30s.

Bradley, of course, has long been known as the loose cannon of the big leagues. Yet Hendry still exposed him to the pressure cooker that is Wrigleyville. That big left-handed bat, impaired by several mini-nervous breakdowns this past summer, produced a single home run and a paltry nine RBI.

Even the Lou hiring can be second guessed. Piniella remade the team in his image, sure, refashioning the attitude in the clubhouse in the process. But when the Cubs backslid this year, the old goat seemed as interested in the proceedings as a freshman in algebra class.

So, yeah, the Bosox have burned through 19 shortstops since they exiled Nomar to the North Side. But they knew that despite his big name, Garciaparra was about finished being Garciaparra. He was rapidly and dramatically becoming just another ballplayer. They found a willing taker in a man who loves Big Names.

The Red Sox, though, have won the World Series twice since that deal. The Cubs? Well…, you know.

Big Mike: A Couple Of Suckers

Howdy. This blog is dedicated to the delusions of a couple of baseball fans: AJ, who follows the Red Sox, and me, Big Mike, who lives and dies — okay, just dies – with the Cubs.

I’ve always felt there was a kinship between Red Sox and Cubs fans — although residents of the Hub have enjoyed a couple of World Series wins within the last few years, the bastards.

Anyway, both sets of fans have always reveled (wallowed?) in the unrequited devotion they lavish upon their respective nines. Honestly, up until 2004, why on earth would anybody in his or her right mind choose to become a fan of either of the teams with the longest championship droughts in American professional sports? Being a fan of either the Cubs or Bosox is something bestowed upon one, not exactly akin to an inherited fortune or a hereditary trait like courage or brilliant intellect, but closer to the alcoholism gene.

Bostonians now are fat and happy with their ’04 and ’07 triumphs. Yet, they still retain vestigial memories of the too many years they spent gritting their teeth as the Yankees and the likes of the Blue Jays, the Angels and — for chrissakes — even the goddamned Marlins won championships, so AJ and my baseball hearts still beat, more or less, as one.

I’d predicted a Cubs-Yankees World Series before the start of the season and I just might be half right. The Cubs forgot to ask me my opinion, though, and so they sleep-walked through much of the campaign. The hitting went to holy hell and Jim Hendry’s big off-season gamble — signing the troubled Milton Bradley — turned out not to be such a huge gamble after all. He blew up, as any good bettor would have guessed. Gameboard turned out to be such an annoying, disruptive and destructive pain in the ass that the Cubs literally paid him to stay away from the team for the last three weeks of the season.

Much of the North Side wants to wring Bradley’s neck for his antics this year but not me. Milton Bradley is a troubled human being. He’s a mental case — and that’s my professional opinion. He deserves pity not rage. I reserve my ire for Hendry, who elected to believe that Bradley had turned over a new leaf. That hope was about as ridiculous as predicting the Cubs would go to the World Series.

There you have my first pompous oration on the state of the Chicago National League Ballclub. Stay tuned, there’ll be many, many more. AJ and I will alternate posts — that is, unless one of us turns out to be a smidgen more ambitious than the other — on our respective towns’ baseball crews.

As we begin this new, semi-cross continental exchange of missives, AJ’s thinking about how his beloveds are going to win next year; I’m gonna try to figure out how my boys can win sometime within the next century. We’re going to lay our harebrained opinions out here for each other and any idlers and lunatics who come across this site.

Welcome aboard.