If Andy MacPhail is permitted to leave the Minnesota Twins for the Cubs, he will represent the boldest and wisest move by this sleeping giant of a franchise since Dallas Green hit Wrigley Field in 1981, after the other strike season.
Green arrived like a 10-ton gorilla, with his campaign promise of “building a new tradition.” He was loud and intimidating, he wheeled and dealed, and he got it done. He put the Cubs back on the map and people back in the seats.
Now, with Green’s first-place Cubs of 1984 merely a rambling reminiscence, MacPhail is being asked to board the Titanic. He will be granted more power and more titles than was Green, but MacPhail will inherit no less organized confusion. The Cubs are broken and in dire need of being fixed, again.
Be not fooled by MacPhail’s unscarred face and all that hair. He already has a very nice job, and he’s already done a very nice job. Even at the relatively tender age of 41, he wouldn’t be tempted by the big city just because of corporate jets, superstations or gaudy titles. If he comes here, he’s not coming here to do lunch.
MacPhail, the third generation of a family steeped in the game, is a baseball guy. There aren’t enough of them around anymore. He would be president and chief executive officer of the Cubs, but you can’t suffocate knowledge and experience with a three-piece suit. MacPhail had to be guaranteed more than stock options and a stretch limo by ownership.
In Minnesota, he and manager Tom Kelly formed one of the quietest but deadliest partnerships in either league. Neither is a rhetorical wizard, nor does either crave publicity, but there were the Twins, obliging baseball’s cyclical ways every once in a while and riding that wave to a championship. They were always prepared, in the front office and on the field.
MacPhail, promoted to general manager in the winter of 1986, was looking at a last-place club with a 71-91 record and only 4,000 season tickets. MacPhail saw hope if he could rectify those 30 leads Minnesota blew after the seventh inning. He traded for Jeff Reardon, and 31 saves later there was a parade in downtown Minneapolis.
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In 1991, impressed by his core, MacPhail went out and hired Jack Morris and Chili Davis. The Twins won it all again. In the interim, they went down the toilet, but that’s when general managers can do some of their best work-by refraining from panic, either with pink slips or binge buying. The Cubs, who paid a lot of money to players who couldn’t play, can’t say the same. It’s not what they’ve spent lately, it’s where they’ve spent it.
“Why are you calling me?” MacPhail said Wednesday night. “We’re seven games under .500.”
Spoken like a stable man who has been humbled by baseball as well as invigorated. If memory serves, after the Twins won both World Series at home, MacPhail was content and secure enough to keep a low profile. Shades of another strong leader who came to Chicago by way of the Twin Cities-Jim Finks. There can be no higher praise for a sports executive.
During MacPhail’s initial tour of Wrigley Field, he had no desk. This was 1976, when he was college grad paid $500 a month to do whatever. His first assignment of note-business manager of the Bradenton (Fla.) Cubs in the Gulf Coast Rookie League. You can’t go much lower to cut your teeth and still have teeth.
Actually, MacPhail had accepted a better post with the Montreal Expos, who then couldn’t wait for the San Francisco Giants to move to Toronto for an intraleague rivalry. But when Andy’s father Lee, then American League president, took in Toronto, Andy’s job in Montreal dried up. The Expos feared for anyone named MacPhail in the province of Quebec.
Shortly after Green joined the Cubs, Andy departed for Houston. But it appears he’s headed back to Chicago, and this time, he probably gets a desk. If only he could pitch, too.