So he doffed his cap and he cried and, after one last Loserville moment, Lou Piniella put both the game and Chicago behind him, leaving the Cubs to their usual fate.
Sunday, that was a 16-5 loss to the Braves, as the northsiders played out yet another string. After 102 straight summers of them, they’ve got enough for either a quilt or a shroud, depending on how many “Wait till next years” you’ve got left in the tank.
And speaking of next year …
Well, Lou is gone, having lasted four profoundly Cub-like years (i.e., raise expectations, then push them off the roof). And Dusty Baker, who couldn’t bring the magic, either, is bringing it in Cincinnati instead. And Joe Girardi, ex-Cub and current manager of the Yankees, will depart for Wrigleyville only if someone drops him on his head.
That leaves Ryne Sandberg.
Who is, everyone figures, the obvious Next Guy.
Who is, it says here, so utterly not the Next Guy, I hear “Nearer My God to Thee” every time his name comes up.
I see Ryno, I see the Titanic hitting the iceberg. I just do.
I see looming catastrophe if Ryno gets the nod, and not – let’s be clear about this – because I think he’s unqualified to manage in the bigs. Far from it. He’s proved his chops at the minor-league level; as of Sunday, his Iowa Cubs lead the Triple-A Pacific Coast League American North by 3 1/2 games and have the best record in the league at 74-54.
So the guy can manage. And he’s sent some good young players to the parent club. And everything about him suggests he’d be a terrific major-league skipper.
On the other hand, it’s one thing to bring that résumé to the table in, say, Cincy or Cleveland or San Diego. The Cubs are an entirely different animal.
Here’s the thing: As great a player as he was, as fine a human being, as able a baseball man, Sandberg is still, unavoidably, a Cub. He carries its culture with him like a virus; the taint of 1984, when he played for the Cubs team that choked away a 2-0 lead against the Padres in the NLCS, and 1989, when they lost to San Francisco, clings to him whether it ought to or not.
It shouldn’t, of course. Far from being the cause of either of those calamities, the Cubs would never have been in that position without him. In the ’84 NLCS, he batted .368 and scored three runs. In ’89, he was even better, batting .400 and scoring six runs.
And yet, the Cubs lost. And he lost with them. And, no, that’s not fair, like so much else on the north side is unfair.
And so it doesn’t matter much if he brings an eye for talent and a gift for working with young players, qualities that will serve well this franchise moving forward. What matters is he’s a company man in a company whose dominant meme is failure and more failure. And because of that, I can close my eyes and see what happens the first time the Cubs hit the sort of bad patch that’s inevitable in baseball, even for clubs free of snakebite.
The fans will begin to fret. The clinically depressed Chicago media will despair as only it can despair. And the favorite son will bear the brunt of it as only a favorite son can.
Fact: Nobody turns on family as viciously as family. And when the family is as decent and gifted and evidently qualified as Ryne Sandberg, the disappointment if he falters will only be that much more crushing.
Ryno as your next manager of the Cubs?
Strike up the band, boys. I smell ice ahead.
