Winning In Chicago

(Or, Why I Really Hope The Chicago Cubs Organization Is Paying Attention)



I happened to be in a dive bar in the northwest Chicago suburbs about three years ago. My roommate at the time and I both liked dive bars. We were there for cheap pitchers of Old Style, and to shoot some pool. Between games and between pitchers, we went to the bar for a refill. Two middle-aged men sat there, nursing beers, and arguing quite loudly about the 1985 Bears like it was 1985. The main point of contention was whether Willie Gault is overrated. (Not ‘was’ overrated; ‘is.’) My point? Chicago sports fans have long memories, and for better or worse, conversations like that one are not uncommon in dark corner taverns all across the area.

Except, it’s only the Bears and the Bulls Championships that anyone you’d find in a dive bar remembers first hand. In what I still believe is a baseball town, there are no middle-aged men arguing about World Series participants. Well, that’s changing, isn’t it, and I think that it’s worth considering how the White Sox have made it this far.

Chicago does not mind colorful coaches. Mike Ditka endeared himself forever during that press conference when he interrupted a reporter’s question, saying, “No, I wanna keep talking to that guy. I know I’m smarter than he is.” Ditka said it, and Chicago loved him for being a tough-as-nails coach that spoke his mind and did not pretend to be anything more than what he was. After all, this is football – Chicago football – not politics or primrose. Talk is cheap, winning is not. And they were winning.

Then came Phil Jackson, a Zen practitioner, a man who would have just as soon been contemplating the Montana wilderness. He was a coach who made his players read books on flights and tangled mysticism and meditation into his interviews. Still, he had a knack for putting in the right scrappy sharp-shooting short white guy with conspicuous elbows on defense who would break free and sink the jump shot when MJ had to pass. He had a knack for drawing out players’ particular strengths that best suited the needs of the team. And of course, he had Michael Jordan.

For all its blue-collar roots and mentality, Chicago is not intolerant…as long as you’re winning. In 1996, as the Bulls rolled to the impossible record of 72-10, Dennis Rodman would go out near Rush and Division wearing whatever he damn well pleased, including women’s dresses. In those years, though it was starting to change, Rush street was still reputed to be the Rush street of Leo Durocher’s era, not the over-crowded and over-priced bachelorette party scene it is today. You might think, then, that people would have given Dennis a hard time for being so…flamboyant, but they didn’t. He could wear whatever the hell he wanted if he was pulling down 15 boards a game and the team was unstoppable.

In the city where under-the-table deals are a given and cemetery residents have been known to vote for mayor – twice – you can get away with darn near anything if you’re winning.

Fast forward, now, to the baseball renaissance of the last 3 seasons. It started with “In Dusty We Trusty,” and on the south side despite 86 wins there was consensus that Jerry Manuel had to go. Now, it’s “The Wizard of Oz,” and many on the north side are calling for Dusty’s head on a stake. Whatever happens in the next dozen days, there are lessons in all of this. They are lessons that the Cubs organization would do well to consider at length.

I’m not going to dwell on Dusty, as my position has not changed: he managed the 2005 Cubs badly, but I am not convinced that removing him will help the team do any better any faster, and may achieve the opposite. As for Ozzie, though, there is a lot to be said, even by Cubs fans. He is in the mold of Ditka and Phil, and so if the White Sox win, he will fit right in at the table of Living Chicago Championship Coaches.

In September, as I rode into Chicago with my father for our 9th and final baseball game in 10 days and 2,000 miles, the Sox were collapsing. Some Cub fans seemed to be gloating, others commiserated. Even among Sox fans, hardly anyone still believed with any vigor that this White Sox team was good enough. The Sportstalk guys were saying that they just hoped the White Sox held on to the division, and won a single home playoff game. That was not too much to hope for. Then, that night Minnesota ruined a gem by rookie pitcher Brandon McCarthy, and the Sox lost a heartbreaker in the 11th inning. My father’s e-mail to me the next day when he drove home while I stayed in Chicagoland read: “the sportstalk leaving chicago was brutal ripping the sox.” The day after, it was the sportstalk, but that night, it was the people in the stadium as well.

It is fair to say that the White Sox limped into the playoffs, but they have not limped at all since. Many Cub fans are happy for them, while being envious at the same time. Others are resentful. I fall in the former camp, being that this White Sox team is built the way a good baseball team should be built. I’m not talking about ‘smallball’ or ‘smartball’ or whatever else people might call it, because after all, Konerko hit some awful important homeruns. I’m talking about the way that they are good at throwing the ball, hitting the ball, and catching the ball. Dare I say ‘fundamentals’? I respect this White Sox team, and this could be true even if the Cubs & White Sox were actually rivals.

(KJM reported that in Wrigleyville, he overheard some Cubs fans saying that when Pierzynski ran to first on the strike 3 that Josh Paul probably caught, it showed that the White Sox were cheaters, just like they were in 1918. To any Cub fan that said words to this effect: this was not your brightest moment. Pierzynski did not break any rules, and did not even do anything shady, regardless of the rightness or fairness of the result. If he had slipped the umpire a C-note on his way past, then maybe you’d have a case.)

It’s not just fundamentals, though; it’s also chemistry. That’s what the White Sox have in 2005 (and what the Cubs had in 2003 to a significantly lesser degree, that gap being reflected in the end). Here is what I mean by ‘chemistry’: the players want to make plays and win for each other.

Ozzie is taking some heat for not getting his bullpen any work, which seems like nonsense to me for two reasons. One, since FOX does not seem capable of handling a World Series schedule that begins flexibly two days after the final LCS game, there was going to be a week off anyway, and the difference between a week off and two weeks off for relievers is not going to ruin their pitching. The second reason, though, is that by letting 4 consecutive starters complete their wins, the White Sox achieved – and earned – a winning swagger.

Tone and attitude and confidence starts with starting pitching. At least, it does for good teams. Therefore, so does chemistry. Think about when a pitcher is taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning. Don’t players step up and start making the big plays behind them, laying everything out there? To a lesser extent, Ozzie achieved the same thing by letting those 4 starters go all 9. Of course, it was only the right move because the pitchers had the stuff to finish those wins, but then again maybe its cyclical: maybe the pitchers had the stuff because their manager and defense had confidence in them. In any case, I have the distinct impression that the White Sox players want to win for each other, that it is not about individual glory, that they believe they are a part of a special team. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to win for the fans, but it does mean that they don’t want to win just for themselves.

Of course, chemistry is easier for the underdogs. We see this every year a Wild Card team squeezes into the playoffs and then goes on to win the Series. I’m sure I won’t be the first to point out that their September woes helped this White Sox team achieve underdog status despite winning 99 games, and it is true that most people wrote them off against all 3 of the other AL playoff teams.

Except that they don’t look like underdogs. They don't play like underdogs. They don’t seem to have that nothing-to-lose-ness about them. It’s a different sort of looseness. It’s a looseness that starts with starting pitching, continues with defense, and translates into wins. It’s confidence of a different sort, and it's impressive. They expect to win.

Let’s hope that the Chicago Cubs learn some of these lessons. For the Cubs, the question is not, “What if?” but “What next?” Ozzie made fewer moves in an entire series than Dusty Baker makes in an average 8th inning, and yet his entire team seems to still be loose and confident. That’s one small lesson. But the bigger lesson is that managing a series the way Ozzie just did with so few moves would not be possible if his team wasn’t already confident, and if they were not playing precise baseball as a cohesive unit. It would not be possible if the guys did not truly enjoy playing baseball with each other.

I get the impression that any one of the White Sox would feel awful if another of them happened to make a critical error. The Cubs in 2003 and since have not had this quality about them. It’s not that they went so far as to blame each other, or point fingers. Instead, in their own LCS, when things took that awful turn, they froze. They mailed it in down in Florida and flew back to Chicago. Prior made a mistake. Alou yelled into the stands. Gonzalez booted a ball. When the time came to pick each other up, mistakes did not spark them to play better in order to pick up one of their own, so there were more slips, and slip-ups became losses, and a World Series wisped away, as did the 2004 and 2005 seasons for a confluence of reasons.

I have no idea how one goes about creating that chemistry. Certainly winning is part of it, but this White Sox team shows that winning isn’t all of it. And we could argue: which came first, the winning or the chemistry? Really, it doesn’t matter: they were not winning in September, and yet their chemistry came through intact, and I think it’s because the players still wanted to see their teammates win, not just themselves. Looking back at the Bears and the Bulls, these were also teams with lively personalities, a mix that might not seem likely to succeed except that in the end, everyone got on board with that warrior mindset of doing whatever is necessary for the tribe. The Cubs have shown glimpses of this, but that’s it.

Now I’m hoping that the Cubs pick up on some of that mindset, and work to achieve the maturity of that feeling on the other end of the Red Line. No one predicted so many wins for this White Sox team, but the guys said that the team had that feeling about it all the way back in Spring Training. For the Cubs, that’s only about 4 months away…