When the Cubs and White Sox get together, you can throw out the record books. While you’re at it, you can throw out the history books, too, because they make for grim reading.
That, in part, explains this weekend’s local phenomenon. It’s not the World Series, of course, because it’s here. But it’s our series, and it will have to do, because we love our teams even when they don’t love us back.
We also love our star players, although it can be a tough love on occasion, and what could be more vintage Chicago than the Cubs and Sox playing ball while we’re trying to decide where to send Sammy Sosa and in exchange for what?
Last June, when the Sox were down and the Cubs were up, we wanted to drive Frank Thomas out of town. Now the Sox are up and the Cubs are down and Sosa is wearing the cement boots. Now it’s his fault the Cubs haven’t been to a World Series in 55 years.
We do that a lot around here, and not just in baseball. Space does not permit a complete list of high-profile athletes who were either traded away or given away by low-octane Chicago teams. Only after a Bobby Hull or a Greg Maddux leaves do we realize that it wasn’t them. It was what they left behind that was a mess.
When Sosa hit 66 home runs and led the Cubs to a surprise wild-card berth in 1998, he was wonderful. He was everything you wanted in a ballplayer and more, because Sammy liked what he was doing as much as we did. He ran around the bases, then smiled, waved and signed autographs.
But now Sosa is trouble. He’s sparring with his manager, and his agent is saying it might be time to go elsewhere, and the Cubs acknowledge that they’ll listen to offers. The Cubs aren’t shopping him, but that doesn’t mean they won’t go to market if it will help the squad.
The trouble with Sosa, or so we’re led to believe, is that he has become one-dimensional. Or maybe he’s always been one-dimensional. Whatever. My question is, what is Mark McGwire? And did St. Louis reach first place by building around him or without him?
One would think, inasmuch as the Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908, that they know a whole lot about one-dimensional players. But what the Cubs really specialize in is spotting players with no dimensions whatsoever and putting them in uniform.
The Cubs have more than a few of those, but Sosa is expendable, because he’s doing his job better than they. In some other organizations, Sosa would be untouchable because he produces runs and sells tickets. On the Cubs, however, the untouchables are players no other team will touch.
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Does this make sense? Or is it about dollars? Could be, except that the allegedly cheap Cubs not long ago signed Ryne Sandberg to a landmark contract. When other superstars were in the $5 million range, the Cubs paid Sandberg in the $7 million range. That prompted other puzzled owners to wonder what had happened to 6. Not long after, the Sox signed Albert Belle for $10 million. That was before the Sox started over–where the Cubs apparently are headed.
Sox fans say they can’t forget how the 1994 strike robbed them of a World Series, like we should take that to the bank. The Sox led their division by one game when the lights went out. They averaged 32,026 that season, a number they haven’t approached since because Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf called the strike all by himself, another myth, and because of the 1997 White Flag trade when he dared suggest the truth, that the Sox couldn’t catch Cleveland with a radar gun.
Now it’s the Cubs who might part with Sosa at the July deadline because they can’t catch anybody, so it’s up to Reinsdorf to build around what he’s got or take his chances that the Yankees don’t grab Sosa for another trip to the World Series, unless the Mets beat them to it.
That’s a big difference between New York and Chicago. The Yankees and Mets are also playing this weekend, but they’re playing for October, not June.