Shortly after being dispatched to San Francisco in that shocking transaction the other day, Wilson Alvarez accused his former employers of treating players like “garbage.”
How fitting for the crafty left-hander to choose a word that so aptly describes baseball, Chicago style. If the plastic container fits, wear it.
Management of the White Sox and Cubs put up almost $100 million this summer for two of the sorriest teams in this city’s lean history. The product on either side of town absolutely reeks.
Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the White Towels, committed an unpardonable public relations blunder by declaring his squad incapable of upward mobility. He will have to live with that infamous burst of candor until he wins a pennant at Comiskey Park or sells his franchise, probably the latter.
Yet, he has much in common with the very fans who are so enraged at him. They’ve all had it, right up to here, with underachievement and mopery. Their recourse is to stay away, his is to start over.
The only difference with the Cubs is that they don’t announce surrender. When their season ends in July, no press conference is required. It is just assumed.
You want garbage? There’s that $20 million hefty bag, Jaime Navarro, serving up rockets from his wide-body stretch position, then blaming his fielders for lack of support. And they want to bring in the fences? There’s always that space behind home plate, where the Albert “Ding Dong” Belle interview room was erected, for reasons unclear.
While the White Towels’ staff yields numerous hits on 0-2 counts–eight home runs so far, but it’s still early–the Cubs express their fundamentally impaired selves by repeatedly swinging 2-0, as if to make things happen.
Opposing hitters, of course, have no cause to be patient. They dig in for daily rations of T-ball at Wrigley Field, and when a kid like Ramon Tatis dares to deck a hungry foe, the warning comes from the home dugout, would you believe.
How sad. The meek might inherit the earth, but not the National League Central. Not this year, anyway, although being the Cubs does mean selling blunderball against such a bucolic backdrop. Oh, if only the ivy could talk.
The White Towels aren’t as blessed, so Reinsdorf lashed out at his slackers. He also conveyed disgust at the system, a battle he is destined to lose. He raised the bar by signing Belle, as did Wayne Huizenga by trying to buy love in Miami.
Few sports entrepreneurs could stand a financial hit better than Huizenga, a waste-management expert, but he still wants out. Reinsdorf pledges to fight onward, or so he indicates.
In a year when Reinsdorf has paid $56 million for nothing, he clings to a pay-for-performance ideal that makes him envy the Pittsburgh Pirates. But if they could cope, they wouldn’t have lost so many quality players. And all the Pirates do now is run a farm club, polishing names to be paid later by Rupert Murdoch’s Dodgers or the Arizona Diamondbacks. Mark McGwire? He’ll chase Hank Aaron and The Babe in St. Louis. Baseball fever must be an epidemic in Oakland, too.
This is the system Reinsdorf will not beat, but he seems determined that the system not beat him. Whether he would hold a fire sale at 3 1/2 games out with Jim Leyland as manager is debatable. What we do know is Reinsdorf took drastic action in response to raging ennui.
The Cubs started 0-14. The White Towels went four months without a pulse rate. So, who really gave up first? Welcome to Chicago, epicenter of baseball’s odor.