Imagine that you aren’t just playing fantasy baseball; imagine
that you really are a big-league baseball manager. You need brass
balls to tell players who make roughly ten times your salary
that you’re moving them down to the six spot in the
lineup, or onto the bench. You need a silver shovel to
dig your way out from under the horsecrap piled on
you nightly by idiotic media members that seem to
multiply each year. You need ears of stone to
ignore the same media as they bait fans into calling
you a miserable failure for every game lost, every
pitching change that doesn’t work out, every year
that your team doesn’t win a World Series. And you
need the spine and adaptive ability of a jellyfish, to
deal with rampant roster change handed down from
the suits in the owners’ boxes.
Now imagine that you’ve played this game for years,
beaten it down. You can out-cuss a leathery cowboy on a five-day
binge of whiskey and whores, and your players believe you’re the
devil in cleats sent to them directly from Hell itself. You can
stonewall sportswriters, but you say just enough with a look or
with a moment in confidence to keep them on your side and let
them know you’re in charge.
You’re the captain of this ship, and the sportswriters, the fans,
and the haters alike are just rats, stowaways that you generously
feed with a morsel here, and a drop of rum there. Any crumb of
your baseball wisdom that you put on their plate is an act of unbelievable
kindness, more than they deserve, and the vermin love
you for it. And you have ownership convinced that you are the
Answer, the Truth and the Way. They’ll gladly excavate their
savings accounts to get you the biggest bat on the market, or the
livest arm, and if you don’t like the ones they got, they’ll damn
well get you more.
Let’s say that you and your World Series ring are suddenly
freed from your crappy, unworthy team. Now you could have your
pick of jobs across all of baseball, from the lowly Marlins to the
kingly Yankees. You’re nearing retirement, and this might be your last job in flannel jumpers – you’ll be damned if you’re going to
wind up like Zimmer, a fat senile sack of crap sitting on the end of
the Yankees bench to spout nonsense and have your bald head
rubbed for good luck by players who could buy and sell your
whole family with a month’s paycheck.
You need a real challenge, something that will make you more
than the best manager on the open market, something that
could make you immortal and send you into the golden
glow of an easy life of endorsements and book tours.
Because hell yes, you have a book or two in you.
Only one job is impossible enough to do that:
taking the Cubs to a World Series title.
And only one man is dumb enough to think he
can do it: Sweet Lou Piniella.
Cubs and managers… not a good mix
“Hate me but you’ll be a better ballplayer for it.” –
Gene Oliver’s description of Leo Durocher’s philosophy
of managing.
Why would Lou Piniella think he can succeed where Dusty
Baker before him could not; and for that matter, where Jim
Riggleman, Don Baylor, Jim Lefebvre, Don Zimmer, Lee Elia, and
every other manager, player-manager, and “college of coaches”
since Frank Chance in nineteen-aught-eight have failed?
For one, he has serious financial backers. For years, Tribune
Co. spent just enough to make the team respectable, and then
choked on every penny afterwards. Now though, with a sale in the
wings, ownership has opened the floodgates to the tune of more
than $300 million in player salary commitments this offseason,
spending money that would make internet millionaires blush.
And for the other, Piniella has that gleaming World Series ring,
big as Muhammed Ali’s fist and shiny as God’s teeth, the one
thing besides the words “contract renegotiation” that might
command a player’s attention. In fact, Sweet Lou is the first
manager to willfully come to the Cubs after winning that ring
since Leo Durocher was coaxed out of retirement in 1966.
There are other strong resemblances between the two men: Durocher played in the majors for
years, winning two World Series rings
with the Yankees and Cardinals;
Piniella got to the big stage four times
in eleven years with the Yankees, winning
two as well. As manager, Durocher
took the Giants to the mountaintop at age 48, and was hired by the Cubs at
age 60; Piniella brought the Reds to
glory at age 46, and is 63 now. Most
notably, both men are known for their
short fuses as managers: Leo “the Lip”
was a fierce sonuvabitch who wouldn’t
hesitate to bawl out umpires, opposing
players, and especially his own baseballers
for any grievance he could
name, and some that he couldn’t;
Piniella, meanwhile, is one of the mostejected
managers in baseball history,
and is notoriously intolerant of poorly
performing pitchers, once brawling
with Rob Dibble in the Reds’ clubhouse.
Piniella hopes the comparison ends
there.
Durocher turned his team around in
two short years, infusing the bedraggled
team with young talent like Fergie
Jenkins, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams
around the aging “Mr. Cub,” Ernie
Banks. While the team suffered to a
finish in the gutter in ’66, ’67 and ’68
saw the transformed Northsiders rise
up into contention. Durocher was
hailed as a master motivator and
potential savior, but his team famously
fell short of the “Miracle Mets” in the
collapse of 1969; three years later, under open revolt from his players and
the team’s callow fans, he would be
ridden out of town on a rail.
Peter Golenback’s book
“Wrigleyville: A Magical History Tour
of the Chicago Cubs” tells a first-hand
account of a fateful team meeting in
August 1971, long after the shine was
gone from Durocher’s trophy case. The
manager had been riding his men
down, both young and old, for years
trying to get them past second place
and onto the championship field; Santo
was 31 and wasn’t hitting like he was,
but was still the team’s best player.
Perhaps contrite, Leo opened the meeting
by promising to lay off the shouting
and the constant pressure – by meeting’s
end the manager and his star were
grappling and cursing each other out at
full volume, and Santo had to be pulled
away before he choked the life out of
the old man. The Cubs didn’t win the
pennant that year, or any year since.
Durocher was fired a half season later.
Nevertheless, after four years of
Dus ty Bake r ’ s playe r - f r iendl y
demeanor, Cub fans are ready for
someone to bring out the whipping
stick, and Piniella has already shown
that he will not spare the verbal rod.
But it may be a slippery slope for the
angry old man, if he steps into Durocher’s
ghostly shoes.
A Herculean Task
“Give players an excuse to lose a
game, and they will.” – Jim Bouton
The Cubs are still fundamentally bad
in ways that a manager might hope to
have some influence – strikeouts, fielding,
and baserunning just to name a
few – but ultimately Piniella will find
that losing is the proud cultural
heritage of the Cubs. Just by putting on
the uniform and inheriting those 99
years of terrible play and worse luck,
they have a built-in excuse for failure.
Baker knew it when he came on
board, and he tried to build an “us
against the world” mentality in the
clubhouse. Baker brought his 25 guys
to war against anyone and defendedbthem to everyone who might cast a
negative eye, even going so far as to
bring the war against his own television
broadcast team. He pushed his players
until they thought they might break,
perhaps just to prove to them that they
wouldn’t. Unfortunately for him, two of
those men were Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, and they did.
Piniella inherited all of Baker’s mess,
including Prior’s latest season-ending
shoulder surgery, but hasn’t been
deterred yet. While the starting pitching
– including some guy named Jason Marquis who you may have heard of –
has been surprisingly good, the bullpen
has been disastrous, but Piniella is
making copious use of his talents for
on-field verbal motivation. The offense
has been struggling – Derrek Lee,
Jacques Jones and the filthy-rich
Alfonso Soriano have combined for a
single home run this season, and the
Cubs unofficially lead the major leagues
in scrambles down the first base line
after waving at strike three in the dirt.
Piniella hasn’t taught them how to hit
yet, but by God he has them hustling
their asses down that first base line and
back into the dugout.
Orpheus went to Hell and back for
love, but failed to bring back his wife;
out of pride, Lou Piniella is just now
starting the same journey. The Fates
will tell us in due time whether his
quest will succeed, but we Cardinal fans
have an idea how it will turn out.
St. Louis Game Time's "The First Pitch", is the official print publication of the Birdhouse at www.thestlcardinals.com, don't forget to pick up your "free" copy at Al Hrabosky's Ballpark Saloon just across the street from Busch Stadium.