I have been so busy covering the strike that there hasn’t been much opportunity to spread the welcome mat for Andy MacPhail, the Cubs’ new front-office boss. I know you know your stuff, Andy, and I’m certain you are also aware that, to succeed, Dame Fortune must be riding on your shoulder.
I have discovered there are no baseball geniuses, not since the late Branch Rickey and Al Lopez, the former White Sox manager, retired. Many smart guys, including Larry Lucchino, who got the ax in Baltimore last year as club president, will be surfacing when the San Diego Padres are sold, which could be soon.
But we digress. MacPhail’s appointment is much more crucial to Cubs fans, who have been waiting for a pennant for a half-century. MacPhail met at Wrigley Field Tuesday with Larry Himes, who, according to most baseball Boswells, is about to get the boot. If so, Himes will have my condolences. He certainly put in enough hours but didn’t have much good fortune.
Operating a big-league club at both the general manager and field manager level is a difficult assignment. However skillful the men are who fill these jobs, they must rely on their players. If enough of their players have good years, the bosses have a good year. It’s as simple as that.
MacPhail’s baseball pedigree may be without precedent. His grandfather, Larry, operated three big-league clubs, the Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees. Larry’s son, Lee, is a former American League president and before that was general manager of the Orioles and Yankees.
Like his antecedents, young Andy never played big-league baseball. Because of this, he cannot be expected to be an expert on judging raw and/or established talent for the purpose of making trades and signing free agents.
He will need at his right hand an expert in this area, someone perhaps like Jimmy Stewart, the former Cub and White Sox infielder. Stewart has been a special-assignment scout with the Phillies for the last four years and before that had similar assignments for 12 seasons with the Reds.
“Jimmy Stewart is a baseball genius,” Ray “Snacks” Shore, the veteran and much respected scout, told me Wednesday.
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I reminded Snacks there are no baseball geniuses.
“Well,” Shore replied, “let’s just say he’s a near-genius.”
Is Stewart ready to step into a general manager’s job?
“He’s ready,” Shore insisted. “If you want to help the Cubs, I’d mention him to Andy MacPhail.”
I told Short my job isn’t to help the Cubs. My assignment is to write baseball, nothing more. I am not in the employ of the Cubs.
Shore backed off.
“Have a nice day,” he said.
I wished him the same and hung up.
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Jack Kuenster, the venerable editor of Baseball Digest, insists he knows how to settle the baseball strike.
How’s that, Jack?
“Get new negotiators. Don Fehr and Dick Ravitch hate each other.”
I disagreed and told him why.
About 10 years ago, I was in Rochester, N.Y., covering a baseball labor hearing. My first day there, Barry Rona, then negotiating for the owners, was upset with my report and told me I was misinformed. The next day, Fehr, then as now the players’ man, had an identical complaint, that my account was not accurate.
Naturally, I was upset. I am a keen believer in telling the facts and nothing but the facts. The third night, after dinner, I returned to the hotel. And lo and behold, Rona and Fehr were seated side by side having drinks in the lobby bar, laughing it up and having a great old time.
I put on my game face, walked over, threw out my chest and told them they were both of full beans. “You guys are big buddies,” I said, “and I’m the enemy.”
Just as lawyers respect each other, on and off the field, so do labor negotiators. The press is always the common foe.
– – –
If I were a player, I wouldn’t put too much stock in Wednesday’s decision in Washington, in which a House subcommittee approved a bill to eliminate baseball’s antitrust exemption in labor matters. The bill is expected to die in the House. And if it should get through the House, it probably will be killed in the Senate.
The players also have this to consider: Neither the National Football League nor the National Basketball Association have antitrust immunity. But both leagues have a salary cap.
– – –
Tony La Russa, currently in Europe on holiday and much in demand as a field manager, is expected to re-sign, for one year, with Oakland. According to informed sources, La Russa will not desert A’s owner Walter Haas Jr., who is ailing.
– – –
And goodbye, Ken Burns.
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It was Philip K. Wrigley who started the girls professional baseball league, not his father William. And Curt Flood, after he sued baseball for a violation of his civil rights, did play again, contrary to the last installment of the TV series. I can list a dozen other inaccuracies but have run out of space.