Jerry Manuel visits Wrigley Field this weekend, not that you’re likely to pick him out of a crowd or hear him through the din. The quietly effective White Sox manager prefers it this way. Let the players play, and perhaps it’s no coincidence that his players are playing better than any team in either league.
If only Manuel could stick around for a while and try his golden silence on the Cubs, who are every bit as flawed fundamentally now as they were before Don Baylor arrived with the expressed purpose of cleaning up the mess he inherited.
In fact he has added little to the 92-year rebuilding plan except a doghouse for Sammy Sosa.
Strange, isn’t it? Once upon a time, Manuel had a “problem” in Frank Thomas, a future Hall of Famer who had somehow lost his way. Thomas wasn’t ready to perform in a game last September, then asked out of a conditioning drill during spring training.
In each case Manuel challenged Thomas. Both episodes were reported in the media, but to this day, even with his Sox lapping the field in the American League Central, Manuel seems almost embarrassed by references to shows of strength that quite possibly confirmed his authority.
Meanwhile, Thomas is all smiles and all power line drives again, a perfect complement to the mix because Manuel’s style not only works with veterans, but with young players too.
Jerry Manuel doesn’t want to be the next John Wayne, or even the next general manager after Ron Schueler. Jerry Manuel might want to be the next Felipe Alou, though. Good choice for a role model.
One can only theorize how Manuel would handle Baylor’s “problem” of Sosa, but one suspects that Manuel would opt to operate in back rooms instead of the front pages.
Manuel might also deduce that, since their most recent World Series conquest in 1908, the Cubs probably have employed a number of athletes whose limitations were limitless and who couldn’t hit 66 home runs in a summer if they used aluminum bats while swinging for the bleachers from second base.
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Baylor’s proclamation–that Sosa should become a more “complete” player–might have been well-intended, but the attempted implementation through intimidation obviously has failed, hardly an upset in this era when tough-guy coaches and managers routinely find themselves out of vogue, out of tough and, what’s worse, out of options.
Consider the obvious: Here we are at the All-Star break, the Cubs are certifiably awful, their estimable payroll is no match for their feeble record and the news of each day revolves around whether Sosa says hello to Baylor in the morning or vice versa. Never mind that when a Cub leads off an inning with a double, he dies there three outs later.
Baylor, obviously frustrated, now issues statements regarding roster changes, which is nice, except that’s GM Ed Lynch’s department, is it not? Trading Sosa to the Yankees, meanwhile, became President Andy MacPhail’s project and it stalled not because Sosa’s agents asked for too much but because the Cubs asked for too much. Understandable, because they need a lot.
Sorry, I cannot join the Sosa critics who have become fixated on his body, its fat content, its new and enlarged fanny. I can only say that I don’t recall anything like this since Mike Keenan humiliated Denis Savard from the Blackhawks to Montreal, where Savard won the Stanley Cup he wasn’t about to win here. Savard enters the Hall of Fame this winter, by the way, and Keenan is out of coaching.
Manuel and the Sox are a genuine surprise. And we aren’t blessed with many of them in baseball anymore since the caste system destroyed competitive balance. Where it ends nobody knows, but a World Series for Chicago after 41 dark Octobers might be fun.
By then we’ll know more about Baylor and Sosa and who won their little hissing match while the Cubs lost again. We have not heard the end of it. One of these days Sammy will announce that he’d like to play for a more complete manager.