Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

In the last two months of this dismal, astonishing season I’ve made a deliberate attempt to watch just two Cubs games in their entirety: one in person against the Cardinals in August, and then the last game of the season. Fortunately, they won both, and I was especially happy with the latter since, for some odd reason, I can feel somewhat satisfied in my Cubdom by finishing an otherwise disastrous season with a victory (especially at sun-splashed Wrigley with the ivy showing hints of color); perhaps it’s just knowing that the last innings for several months turned out well.

Anyway, as the Dusty Death March finally stood a day away from resolution there was yet another flurry of activity with Andy MacPhail’s announcement of his resignation, resulting in an hour of press questions for MacPhail, iterim prez John McDonnough, and Tribune Co. chariman Dennis Fitzsimmons. As I listened to the talk it dawned on me that the great Corporate Cubs Canard–the suits see fans in the seats win or lose, so they don’t care about winning since it might cost more money–was about to dominate the local sports news for a few days, especially since the management reins were being handed, at least temporarily, to the team’s (successful) VP of marketing.

A quick look at the papers this morning of course proved me right. Yet it just exasperates me, the argument is just so fricking ridiculous, especially when spewed from the mouths and keyboards of people who claim to understand both the business and on-field aspects of the sport.

Okay, I will concede that Tribune Co. isn’t going to feel a particular urgency to single out one of its assets for special attention, especially when it seems to be generating steady revenue year-in and year-out. Perhaps the general corporate short-term attitude has also crept into the Cubs’ front-office mentality and is preventing them from properly constructing longer-term plans to rebuild the whole organization. But in the 25 seasons of Tribune ownership the team has won three divisions, one wild-card berth, and twice been within a couple innings of the World Series. That’s a vast improvement over the previous 35 seasons under the stewardship of the Wrigley family, which makes it hard to argue that the ‘corprate mentality’ has hurt the team on the field.

Yet what I find utterly ridiculous about the notion that Tribune management is deliberately constructing mediocre-to-bad teams, and emphasizing Wrigley’s party atmosphere, over on-field success is the notion that a successful team is inherently less profitable than a bad one. Certainly, success leads to higher player salaries…but it also generates more interest, resulting in more prime-time playoff appearances (read: higher advertizing revenues) and the ability to bump up next season’s ticket prices. Yes, Connie Mack said that a team that gets off to a fast start, generates lots of interest, and then ultimately finishes fourth is nicely profitable because the money is taken in but management can hold the line on player salaries–but the key element is still some measure of success.

Moreover, did anyone pay attention to the buzz around Wrigleyville in the fall of 2003? The ringing of cash registers at souvenir stands well into November? The throngs of ticket-seekers on a cold February morning in 2004? Do people really think that cold, corporate calculation in Tribune Tower feels that the revenue potential of putting the Cubs–the long-standing doormats of the National League–into a sustained run of prime-time battles deep into the World Series would be lower than that of just running the world’s largest beer garden?

If those corporate suits were so smart and calculating as the armchair owners seem to think they are, here’s a more likely scenario for maximizing the profit potential. They would build up the team to the point where it would consistently take all three playoff series to the limit, thus maximizing the profit of each by playing all possible games whose net reciepts don’t need to be shared with the players. They would make the team just good enough to reach the 7th game but perhaps not good enough to win it, thus keeping everyone (players and fans alike) hungry while justifying both ticket-price increases and some dampening of players’ raises. They’d keep this up for several seasons, culminating in a World Series victory–after which the team would quickly be sold: the team’s valuation would be at a lofty premium, and Bill Veeck knew long ago that you don’t make money by operating a baseball team but rather by selling it.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there is a TribCo beancounter with a cost-benefit spreadsheet showing that the risks involved with such a scenario are too high compared with the current steady revenue stream. But, as in most human endeavors, it is probably incorrect to attribute the lack of success to calculated malice when it can just as easily be explained by incompetence and bad luck. The self-fulfilling prophecy of a goat’s curse probably has a lot more power, and longer life, than any corporate business model.

With the exception of overcast rather than clear blue skies, everything else about our afternoon at Wrigley seemed to come together nicely. Public transit moved fairly smoothly all the way to the ballpark. Carlos Zambrano, the only truly consistent star the Cubs have had in 2006, was the starter. The team picked yesterday to finally surrender a game to the Cardinals–I figured there was no way the division-leading Cards were gonna go 0-for-Chicago this season–so that burden of expectation was relieved. Our upper-deck seats had a good view, we were near the premium-beer stand, the temperature was pleasant, and there were some sightings of the Blue Angels to add a little spice.

We certainly got our money’s worth. Cubs-Cards is always a festive experience, and this one had not only plenty of action–nine runs on 18 hits means a goodly amount of activity yet not quite a boring slugfest of sloppy pitching–but an extra inning to boot. Big Z was a bit shaky for the first two innings, but got out of major jams to turn in a very impressive seven innings. Too bad the bullpen couldn’t hang on to a one-run lead…twice. Yet, that did set up perhaps the most spectacular combination of play and situation that I’ve ever personally witnessed: Juan Pierre going back on a Pujols drive, checking the wall, checking the ball and backtracking further, checking the wall again, and finally leaping into the ivy with exquisite precision to snag the ball just under the basket–turning a game-breaking, bases-loaded double into a long, loud third out. The stunned buzz of ‘did I really just see that?’ was palpable; too bad the play came for a Cubs team that has been reduced to merely the role of spoiler. At least that play plus Nevin’s game-winning single an inning later kept Z’s outing from being in vain.

Cubs land Izturis, send Maddux to LA

Always sad to see a great player traded, especially one who genuinely seemed to like the team and fans, but such is pro sports.  It’s not like the Cubs are going anywhere this year, and unlike the fiasco during his first exit in 1992 this time his leaving would appear to be helping the team for the future.

I noted while watching the game on Saturday that the fans gave him two ovations, one for a perfectly executed sacrifice bunt in the sixth and then a larger one (prompting the cap tip) as he walked off the mound as Baker relieved him one batter into the seventh.  They paid homage to not only his skills and execution in that game, but also that they were seeing a Hall-of-Famer leave the field in Cubbie pinstripes for what was quite possibly the final time.

Hence, the Wrigley crowd exhibited an understanding of 1) how the game is supposed to be played, 2) its history and a particular player’s place therein, and 3) the business realities of the sport.  Not bad for a bunch of yuppies who know nothing of baseball and just go to that ballpark for the beer and sunshine, no?

• Holiday-week vacation, I Love the 80s: 3D on VH1…can’t…stop…watching…ahh! It’s like frickin’ crack for the Gen-X set!! Whoever came up with the I Love… series is a genius. Quoth Liz at 1:11am: “Finally, a commercial! Quick, get the remote so we can finally turn it off!”
• Oh, no! First Field’s, now the Berghoff is closing. I thought Chicago was rising, what’s with the long-time institutions going by the wayside? Where shall we go now for schnitzel and haughty service??
• Figuring that a pre-qualification letter would be a good thing to have at this point in the house-hunting process, I filled out the forms at LendingTree this morning. Wowzers, within 30 minutes I had eight emails and a phone call! I suppose it’s better than trudging around from bank to bank, awaiting to see what rates they deign to give out, but the response it a bit overwhelming. Didn’t they see where I marked that we don’t have an actual property under consideration yet?
• Can’t there be some better standards for writing up descriptions of houses on the market? Hitting place after place only to find that the meaning of ‘yard’, ‘3 bedrooms’, or ‘needs some TLC’ can vary by orders of magnitude is making the process a bit more like a chore than it needs to be. We’ll have enough of that once we have to maintain a place, thank you very much.
• I figured the Prior-for-Tejada rumors that surfaced last week were just so much hot-stove-league rumor mongering to spice up the holiday lull, yet they’re still showing up on the Trib and ESPN. Seriously, I hope there’s nothing to them; the trade simply doesn’t make sense, and not just because he’s a popular Cub–or even the starting-pitching-wins-championships mantra. It’s simply that a 25-year-old pitcher has his best years ahead of him, while a 30-year-old hitter is either at or past his peak. Maybe Prior is injury-prone or exhibits flaws in his mechanics, but there’s plenty of time to mold that; Tejada’s bat (or glove) isn’t the difference between last year and the World Series, and both skills will almost certainly start declining soon.

Warm summer night, slight breeze off the lake. An all-beef hot dog and a beer as we settled into our upper-deck box seats, looking down the right-field line over a beautifully kept field, smooth cutout and freshly chalked lines all just waiting to be trampled. That part of the Wrigley experience never, ever gets old.

But by the second inning, that was all gone as the listless Cubs continued their struggles. No spark, no pizazz, still no clue at the plate. Defense didn’t fail them tonight, but I guess Williams and Rusch decided it was better (certainly more dramatic) to simply serve up the runs via gopherballs before the fielders had the chance to imitate Little Leaguers. Did the Cubs just discover in the ninth that they were down nine runs and decide maybe they should wake up and score? But, of course, too little too late. At least there was the novelty of Kerry Wood as an 8th-inning reliever.

As several innings passed with little else to spark my interest, I mused that at this point in the season, with this roster, Dusty Baker is probably the worst manager the Cubs could have. The issue isn’t his general quality as a manager–he’s proven himself competent and was great for the Cubs in 2003 when they needed someone to loosen them up then keep ‘em calm through the wild ride that was August and September; I’m not even talking about his (perceived) strategic shortcomings, overuse of starters, or handling of the 8th inning of Game Six. No, the problem is that the Cubs need to decide in the next few days (if it isn’t too late) whether to pusue a catch-Houston-or-bust charge for second place (and the Wild Card) or pull back to assess what they can build upon in 2006. The former requires spectacle–bold lineup changes, mind games to scare veterans and rookies alike to revert to fundamentals, occasional histrionics on the field or in the press–while the latter requires sitting the Proven Veterans (what is his fascination with Jose Macias? In center field?!??) in favor of seeing what the rookies can do. Baker seems determined to maintain his ride-it-out approach no matter how much the standings and schedule indicate against it, and getting him to play rookies has always been worse than pulling teeth. So, it looks like the Cubs will spend the remainder of 2005 foundering towards fourth (fifth?) place yet may have to start their evaluation process all over again come February 2006.

So far in 2005 the Cubs bring to mind two words: exasperating inconsistency. Lose 7. Win 8. Win-and-lose. Take 2 of 3 on the South Side. Win-and-lose some more. Drop 8, mostly to the best of the East…then drop 26 runs on the league’s best pitching to finish out the first half with a road sweep. All the while, never seeming to have the starters, relievers, and batsmen all going at the same time.

• Good: Derrek Lee’s triple-crown chase and well-deserved All-Star start. Jeromy Burnitz’s solid, if mildly ungraceful, play–especially the ability to position himself properly, throw to the right base, and hit the cutoff man.
• Bad: The revolving door to the DL. Middle relief.
• Ugly: The pathetic approach to the plate for most batters, notably Corey Patterson. Can someone not named Derrek Lee take a frickin’ pitch or two once in a while? I’ve seen way too many weak grounders and lazy fly balls on the second pitch for my liking. C’mon, Dusty, enough with the I’m-OK-you’re-OK, let-him-play-through-it approach and give these guys some incentives to take a more fundamentals-driven approach to each at-bat.

• Cuba doubts it will play in World Baseball Classic

  Cuba’s top sports official said Wednesday he doubts the nation will participate in next year’s World Baseball Classic, calling the event commercialization of the sport.

  Hmm, because ‘commercialization’ would be such a shocking, radical departure from the last 130-some years of professional baseball, huh?

Thanks be to Mark Prior and Jason Dubois for carrying the Cubs to a 4-3 victory, forestalling a weekend sweep at home by the White Sox. Given that the Cubbies are struggling right now while the Sox are playing the best ball in the majors, that the South Siders took two of three shouldn’t really be surprising. Since these crosstown games are but six of 162 that count in the final standings, I should only be concerned with the wins and losses on their own merits.

However, I certainly found myself dreading a sweep less for its impact in the standings than for the cultural ammunition it would give Sox fans. They’re already pumped up, for good reason, about the way the White Sox are playing and are also piqued (again for good reason, unfortunately) about the relative lack of attention they receive when compared with the scuffling Cubs, so adding a sweep at Wrigley into the mix would have made a number of Sox fans insufferable; for whatever reason, a signficant portion of the White Sox fan base uses the team’s fortunes as a proxy for their own self-esteem in a way that few North Side fans do. Of course, if the Cubs go down to U.S. Cosmiskular ParkField in June and turn the tables, whaddya bet those same Sox fans will go back to griping about how Cubdom is filled with yuppie weenies who aren’t true, knowledgable baseball fans? And so it goes in the annual Red Line rivalry…

Back to this weekend’s games, it didn’t help my mood that the Friday and Sunday telecasts were done by the Sox broadcasters. Now, Hawk Harrelson is a wealth of baseball knowledge, a good interview and commentator, and is passionate about the game…but I have always found his play-by-play style quite irritating. Obviously some of it is pure partisanship stemming from my Cubs loyalties, but there’s always been something more. For a long time I figured it was just his rah-rah, go-home-team mannerisms, yet Ron Santo is just as passionate on the Cubs radio broadcasts and it seems just fine to me. Today I realized an important difference: Santo is the color analyst, so when he opines or rants about how so-and-so should approach a pitch or should have handled a play it’s expected, but since Harrelson is the play-by-play man such exhortations get in the way.

Two Cubs games within 20 hours where the closer blows the lead in the ninth to lose…and for a change the Cubbies were the beneficiaries! However, I swear that these late-game high-wire theatrics are gonna give Ron Santo and a number of fans (me included?) heart attacks before too long. Is it too much to ask the players to focus, take a few pitches, and score a few more runs in support of some fine pitching efforts they’ve been receiving?

The taste of (relative) success that Cubdom has received over the last couple of seasons has ironically taken some of the joy out of watching the games. To see a team stocked with many impressive talents scuffle along with neverending injuries and streaks of losses that should have been easy wins is depressing. That a few players back from the DL and a good winning streak is all that stands between them and getting back in contention is simultaneously tantalizing and exasperating.

• Watching the election play out in the United Kingdom has illuminated for me an interesting element of our political system: the ability to vote a split ticket for legislative and executive positions. Since the prime minister in a British-style parliamentary system isn’t chosen directly, a Briton who likes his local MP has done yet wishes for leadership from another party faces a difficult decision an American never has to face. However, maybe it’s really not a big deal, as the British system may not allow an opposition MP to bring the goods back to his district in the same way that a veteran member of Congress can do regardless of party.
• That the judge in the case against PFC Lynndie England ruled a mistrial after another witness gave testimony that contradicted some items in England’s plea agreement was surprising, but in some ways it shouldn’t have been when viewed in light of law and fact. It seems that civilian courts routinely accept plea agreements of similar nature, winks and nods among lawyers that preserve some degree of culpability yet are mostly designed to make the case go away (hmm, am I too cynical or do I watch too much Law & Order?), so maybe it seems odd that a military court would be so upstanding with respect to truth. Too bad that restarting this case will still likely do nothing to bring more culpability to the uniformed and civilian heirarchy whose poor planning and cavalier oversight led to the problems at Abu Ghraib for which the grunts are taking the blame (and punishment).
• With Kerry Wood going on the shelf (again) and the Cubs’ former trainer making accusations in his suit for improper dismissal, the papers have been pushing the idea that the Cubs have been covering up their players’ injuries. Probably true, but methinks it’s less a con job than the nature of the business. Sports in general, and the Cubs in particular, get a lot of traction out of hope, so putting forth optimistic estimates helps keep up fan interest and ticket sails. Moreover, the ballplayers themselves are by temperment and training conditioned to push themselves in ways often unhelpful to the prevention of or recovery from injury. Combine the two, and why would anyone expect an accurate portrayal of a star player’s diagnosis and return date?
• How lightsabers work . Hilarious. I want one!
• Nice article the other day on the pseudoscience of intelligent design helping illuminate the two huge flaws in ID. One is that it tries to support itself by showing flaws in evolutionary theory without first proving that they are the only two choices. The other is that the fundamental concept to be proved is completely beyond what can be objectively confirmed; evolution is at least theoretically possible to observe given enough time.

Time to release some thoughts peskily bouncing around my head so I can do something else…

• On southbound I-94 south of Milwaukee there’s a billboard for The Fish radio station that reads ‘Safe for the Whole Family’. Umm, tell me, how can radio (or for that matter TV or any media outlet) be safe or unsafe? Inappropriate? Disturbing? Infuriating? Annoying? Sure. But barring volume excessive enough to cause hearing damage, radio simply conveys ideas and concepts which by their very nature can’t be safe or unsafe. (I won’t even bring up the issues of what defines ‘family’ and how one defines a single standard of family-safe anything.)
• Bulls hosting the opener of a playoff series…and winning. Been a while since those concepts were legitimately strung together! And to think for the better part of decade that was the norm, even during Jordan’s great Birmingham (mis)adventure.
• The weather tonight is certainly an improvement over the chilly weekend, but I still don’t understand why the Cubs scheduled–months in advance–night games for tonight and tomorrow. Sitting outside at night is generally unpleasant in these parts during April and most of May. If it were to help acclimate the team after a road trip, okay…but this is the middle of a homestand! Night games still constitute less than a third of the Cubs home schedule, save ‘em for July and August when they’re most useful for players and fans alike!
• Recently reported was a possible HIV-eating bacterium that works by attaching to certain sugars on the virus coating, discovered by a UIC dentist no less. Ain’t biochemistry grand?
• A Blue state with a Red governor managed to enact a reasonably non-contentious civil-unions law through the good old-fashioned legislative process. Hard-liners on both sides of the gay-marriage issue are probably disappointed in the end result, but maybe that means it struck a balanced compromise. Think whatever juju that led to such productive use of the political process can make it’s way down I-95 to enlighten those inside the Beltway? Nah, I didn’t think so either. Sigh.

As happened last year, we were foiled in our attempts to obtain single-game tickets for the 2005 season. Of coure the biggies (Red Sox, White Sox, a few Cardinals games, Ryno’s number-retirement ceremony) sold out by lunchtime on Monday…but even more frustrating were some of the issues in attempting to get tix against lower-profile teams. Methinks many could be addressed with some simple, easily-implemented fixes:

• The ticketing system needs to indicate, on the front page, not just that tickets are available in a seating section but also the biggest block of tickets available.
• While randomly choosing persons from the virtual waiting room, rather than just a first-come-first-serve method, does provide some degree of fairness to those who simply can’t afford to keep open a browser session all day, it would also be fair to incrementally increase the probability of a person’s being selected the longer he/she goes without getting in.
• Wrigleyville residents should get a chance a little early (a week? three days?) to buy tickets for one or two games before the rest of Cubdom; to ensure fairness, perhaps they must show up in person and show a photo id.

Today the Cubs announced that they will retire Ryne Sandberg’s number on August 28. It’s sorta been effectively retired since he did, but I’m suprised they hadn’t done it already. Perhaps they were just waiting to do it in his Hall of Fame year.

If nothing else, adding a fourth numbered flag will restore some symmetry to Wrigley Field’s foul poles.

As expected, the first couple days of Spring Training were dominated by discussions of the Sosa trade. Most seem to be taking a tack along the lines of ‘last year’s done, we’re ready to play together, we feel good for 2005.’ Nice to see Mark Prior talking bluntly about The Trade and how it was ’something that needed to be done’ to make things right for all–that he’s kept his down-to-earth bulldog mentality bodes well. He also has the best quote so far:

We have another stereo system that nobody knew about at the other end

However, while the expected run production (and prevention) as of right now will probably drop…well, baseball teams in October nearly always look a bit different than the ones in the Arizona and Florida sun. Oakland GM Billy Beane has said on several occasions that he uses April and May to assess his team, June and July to find new pieces, and then pushes towards the World Series in August and September; he’s been fairly successful, and most other winning teams have had similar patterns over the years. Perhaps the greatest advantage of moving Sosa (and Alou) is that with a happier clubhouse and fewer big egos to step around, Dusty Baker and Jim Hendry may have more freedom to adjust the lineup and rotation, call up minor leaguers, and trade for other pieces that can be mixed and matched throughout 2005 to produce more wins.

Besides, with all the recent steroids messes, run production might drop off across the board, leaving the pitching-strong Cubs in a good position…