First: “If you want to know the deeper reason why Sammy Sosa no longer will be with us, it’s because he loved himself to death.”
Sosa’s displays of selfishness, much more than his decline in performance, turned him into someone that was no longer fun to cheer for.
Second: “The success of the trade does not depend on how Sosa plays for the Orioles this season. . . . Moving Sosa is the right thing now and forever. He walked out on his teammates. End of story.”
I would only qualify that statement in this way: He walked out on his teammates, and never showed contrition. End of story.Here’s what I wrote back in October:
I want Sosa disciplined. And I have no idea what I want with regard to Sosa being in a Cubs uniform next year. I used to think I’d always want him back, overpaid or not (the Trib Co. can afford it). This latest episode, though, where he walked out on his team and then lied about it is quite despicable. Show some contrition, Sammy. I’ll cheer for you again. If not, thanks, and goodbye.
Third: “[T]hat it came to this is one of the strangest and saddest stories in Chicago sports history.”
Sosa—the guy who had all the fun next to the dreary Mark McGwire during The Great Home Run Race of ‘98—was the king of post-23 Chicago. And it’s come to this. Booed in his last season (and not because of performance issues), and then gifted to Baltimore with nary a cry from the Wrigley faithful.
Chicago has had a long string of mega-stars. Walter Payton. Michael Jordan. Sammy Sosa. It’s without one for the first time since 1975.
Cubs Chronicle responds to a article from Rick Morissey about the Cubs not pushing hard enough for Beltran. While Cubs Chronicle says he is glad the Cubs did not go as far as the Mets, the whole point Morissey tries to make is that the Cubs were delusional into thinking a top flight free agent would actually want to come to Chicago.
It seems to me that Morrissey didn’t have one point, but at least a couple: First, that the Cubs should have fought for Beltran like the Mets fought for him. It was this point that I discussed (and disagreed with) in my post.
Second, that the Cubs expect free agents to come to them, rather than the Cubs having to work to get them to want to come to Chicago’s north side.
Morrissey then fuses the two points into this: the Cubs didn’t fight for Beltran because they were arrogant and foolish enough to think he’d just come to them.
I didn’t address the second point or the fusion of the two points because they didn’t interest me. They read like column filler. Like a local columnist making a negative and provocative point for the sake of being negative and provocative, because he wants people to talk about what he says (which in turn helps him keep his job).
We spent all those weeks thinking about what Beltran would look like in a Cubs uniform, when being comatose would have been a much better use of our time. Beltran apparently is off to the Mets. Just like that. Without much of a fight from the Cubs.
If the Cubs didn’t believe Beltran was the franchise player other teams thought he was, that would be one thing. Then we’d be having a broader discussion on scouting. The Cubs’ decision would have been based solely on talent evaluation. You could respect that, even if you might not agree with it.
But the Cubs obviously think Beltran is a star. Otherwise they wouldn’t have made him a five-year, $75 million offer. The Mets and Beltran agreed in principle Sunday on a seven-year, $119 million deal.
The Cubs had to know their offer wasn’t going to be nearly enough, but they made it anyway. So this was all about money and wishful thinking, as it almost always is, and the Cubs came up short, as they historically have been known to do.
So, apparently, the Cubs were to just hand Beltran a contract and say, “Here, there’s a blank for ‘years’ and a blank for ‘dollars’. Kindly fill them in.”
The Chicago Sun-Times runs a column in today’s paper by White Sox fan Dale Bowman arguing that Ryne Sandberg is not a Hall-of-Famer because 1) his uniform didn’t get consistently dirty enough; and 2) he never won a World Series. Seriously, that’s the case Mr. Bowman makes against Sandberg. And Another Thing! and Cubs Pundit have already exposed this silliness.
But all you need to know in deciding whether to take Mr. Bowman’s analysis seriously is this: 1) he ignores Sandberg’s offense (by calling Sandberg’s having the second most homers by a second baseman ever a “worthless stat"); 2) he compares Sandberg’s defense to other great fielding second basemen by looking at total chances, an incomplete measure if there ever was one; and 3) in comparing Sandberg’s glove to other second basemen, he calls Jackie Robinson and Nellie Fox the two best of the modern era, completely neglecting Bill Mazeroski, who, according to advanced metrics, saved more runs with his glove than any player in history not named Ozzie Smith.
Ignore Mr. Bowman. As FOXSports.com’s Kevin Hench writes about Sandberg, “vote this guy into the Hall of Fame already.” The results are in on Tuesday.
Paul Sullivan directly confirms what has been obvious from the Chicago media coverage of Sammy Sosa for a few years now, in a story in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune (“Sosa’s ‘04 collapse biggest of them all,” 10/9/2004):
Dealing with Sammy Sosa has been an unenviable task for managers, teammates, reporters, media relations personnel and even parking lot attendants at Wrigley Field, at least the ones who refused to go fill his car up with gas when directed.
Over the last several years, Sosa’s rise to larger-than-life status has turned him into one of the most difficult athletes anyone should have to deal with. This is the same guy who in that glorious 1998 season came across as one of the most accommodating, media-friendly superstars in sports.
What happened?
Only Sosa knows the answer. But there’s little doubt he has burned his bridges in Chicago—with the team’s front office, with Cubs fans and with the local media. Sosa’s churlish attitude this year made him persona non grata with the Cubs’ media-relations department, the same people who helped build his image in ‘98 and covered for him during the corked-bat episode last year.
I’m surprised it’s come to this. It shouldn’t have, and I wish it hadn’t.
I hate articles like this. The Chicago Tribune “reports” (Bob Foltman, “Cards’ Renteria ‘total package’,” 10/7/2004) that Tony LaRussa “might” be watching Edgar Renteria’s last game in a Cardinals uniform soon, as Renteria will be a free agent, and Cubs GM Jim Hendry “might” be interested in signing Renteria if he doesn’t re-sign Nomar Garciaparra.
The “support” for Hendry’s interest is this one statement in the article: “General manager Jim Hendry was in the Florida organization when it signed Renteria in 1992, and he long has admired the Colombian-born shortstop.”
This a news article with no news. Something like this is much better written as a column by an opinion columnist who can argue why or why not the Cubs should sign Renteria. (I don’t mean to blame Mr. Foltman, the staff reporter who wrote the article. His writing is certainly fine enough—though in lauding Renteria’s abilities, he misses that Renteria was only a league average offensive shortstop this year (.251 EqA v. .249 for all shortstops), certainly not the stuff of $10M/yr—and he was likely assigned to write the article.)
In any event, Renteria is better than Neifi Perez. The Chicago Sun-Times reported yesterday (Mike Kiley, “No waiting till next year,” 10/5/2004) that “Glendon Rusch and backup shortstop/second baseman Neifi Perez, both pickups from the junkpile, are the top unsigned players that Hendry will seek to retain.” Kiley has Perez taking over Ramon Martinez’s backup role, but still, Hendry appears to be confused. An out-of-the-blue 948 OPS in a month’s worth of play for the Cubs cannot mask a career of Neifierrific-ness (he couldn’t even get on base on Colorado). Perez had a lifetime OPS 18.5% below league average coming into this year, and he promptly put up an OPS this year with the Giants (571) more than 100 points worse than his career average, prior to his acquisition by the Cubs.
Russ Johnson hit .294/.394/.496 for Iowa this year, and has a career .349 OBA. in the majors in over 900 career plate appearances. Could he fill the utility infielder role better than either Martinez or Perez? It would depend in large part on his ability to play a good defensive shortstop, a position he’s only played minimally in his career. If he can’t play shortstop well, there has to be a number of other Russ Johnsons in Triple-A that would be better options than either Martinez or Perez.
Gary Thorne has a column on USAToday.com in which he discusses the recent kerfuffle over Chip Caray’s and Steve Stone’s sometimes criticism of the Cubs’ play, which resulted in them receiving some heat from some of the Cubs (most notably Moises Alou and Kent Mercker), including their attempt to kick the announcers off the team plane. Thorne thinks the episode is symptomatic of a move toward removing the objectivity of team announcers:
For those who think there ought to be some substance and objectivity in the mediawhen covering sports, it has only gotten worse.
. . . .
Team broadcasters, once hired by the media outlets to be fair and impartial in their coverage, find themselves working for teams owned by the media outlets. The issue of broadcasters cheerleading in the booth for “your” team simmers.
When the players don’t like what they — or more likely what their wives — hear they complain publicly or to team officials. The broadcasters are caught in the middle with little support from the people for whom they work.
Thorne misses something in his analysis: Chip & Steve were not criticizing the Cubs’ play as “objective” journalists, but were criticizing them as biased journalists. That is, as fan-journalists. We know this because Chip & Steve have never purported to be objective observers. Instead, they cheer when things go good. They root for things to go well. There’s a disappointment in their voice and commentary when things go poorly. (They’re not exactly Ron Santo in that regard. But then again, no one is.) And that has been the circumstance under which Chip & Steve (and before that Harry & Steve) have broadcasted for a long time, not just recently.
In other words, Thorne is lamenting the attempted stifling of something that doesn’t exist anyway.
But this is just an intro into Thorne’s main lament, with Barry Bonds as the antagonist: Players trying to control what is written and spoken about them by limiting the media’s access to them. Thorne thinks that is downright an affront to liberty:
While the players have a right to do whatever business they wish over the Internet, all professional sports should require players be available to the press to deal with real issues and everyday stories.Athletes are public figures and the free press has a right to question them, even if the response is “no comment.”
This overstates the right of the free press. The press’s freedom doesn’t come at the expense of personal freedom. While the media has a right to ask questions (and write and speak what they want within the bounds of truth), they don’t have the right of access to people who do not want to answer—or even listen—to those questions. (Thorne, as a former lawyer, should know this.) Of course, teams could require as a condition of employment that players make themselves available to the media while in the clubhouse, within the bounds of the player’s employment contract and the collective bargaining agreement, but that is a policy matter, not a constitutional one. Thorne can argue that Bonds should make himself available to the media, but it is an illegitimate argument that Bonds must make himself available.
The Chicago Tribune’s Cubs beat reporter Paul Sullivan writes (“Cubs ‘05 uni for Ordonez?”, 7/2/2004), based on zero information obtained through investigative journalism, that the Cubs could sign Magglio Ordonez this offseason. It’s all speculation. In other words, Mr. Sullivan has turned into Mike Kiley.
All apologies to Mark Prior for a radio interview taken to the next level. But if the unintentional Prior-steroid connection (made by yours truly) is any indication of the pervading feelings in the baseball world today, then it is obvious the MLB Players Association needs to nip this in the bud for the sake of all players.
Until the testing system is publicly accepted as valid and useful, this sort of speculation and potential blow-up can be expected at every turn. If I were Prior and were clean but I still fell under suspicion because of others, I also would be pretty upset.
Despite the “all apologies” sentence, that’s not an apology. It’s an excuse. The MLB Players Assocation’s stance on this means that he and others “can be expected” to spew forth this sort of speculation. Huh?
And what does he mean “unintentional Prior-steroid connection?” Is he saying he didn’t intend for the words that came out of his mouth to have actually come out of his mouth?
Right about now I should be saying to myself: “Just because I write a Cubs blog doesn’t mean I have to link to everything anywhere mentioning the Cubs. Resolved, The Clark & Addison Chronicle will only link to material worth reading.”
UPDATE (8:25pm):Here’s the feedback form at FOXSports.com. Here was my briefly stated complaint:
You currently have listed as one of your top MLB headlines a radio interview excerpt with Jack McDowell (http://www.foxsports.com/content/view?contentId=2281576). In the excerpt, McDowell insinuates Mark Prior has been on steriods. That you would publish such nonsense demonstrates a failure in editorial discretion, and suggests you are more concerned with creating controversy than being a respected sports news organization. I am sorry I wasted my time visiting your site.
Reader Sam C. alerted me to Jay Mariotti’s column in the Sun-Times today. I had already read Greg Couch’s. It’s rare that a paper will have two columns on the same subject on the same day. But it has to be even more rare when the two columns allude to the same song:
“The heel cord’s connected to the … lum-bar. The lum-bar’s connected to the …” – Couch (ellipses in original)
“Was his elbow bone connected to the … shoulder bone … the shoulder bone connected to the … Achilles tendon … the Achilles tendon connected to the … Billy Goat … the Billy Goat connected to the … Bartman seat?” – Mariotti (ellipses in original)
In yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, Paul Sullivan wrote, “In one 24-hour stretch, Juan Cruz went from potential fifth starter to potential middle reliever to potential minor-leaguer now that Greg Maddux is on board. Cruz bounced between the Cubs and Triple-A Iowa last year and could have a repeat this season.” One problem: Cruz, having been on the 40-man roster for three seasons, is out of options. (See Rob Neyer’s transactions primer.) Cruz is either getting traded, or he’s the long reliever.
Sullivan also has this curious quote from Dusty Baker: “I’ve talked to Juan. But I planned on talking to him. Juan wasn’t a lock for that fifth spot anyway. There are very few locks on this team. Juan is fighting for a position.”
UPDATE (2/23/2004 9:25am): As noted in the comments section, I was completely wrong about Cruz being out of options. Because he was never sent down in 2002, he has another option year remaining.
The Chicago Sun-Times‘ Mike Kiley offers an interesting reason why the Cubs and Greg Maddux should sign a contract soon: He’s bored of writing about it.
