Month: August 2005 (Page 5 of 6)

Shame on you, Scoop Jackson.

In a recent ESPN article, Jackson stooped (hey, just stumbled on a pun; from this point forward, his name is Stoop Jackson) to playing the race card in the recent discussion about Dusty Baker and the rumor that has him headed to Hell-A at season’s end. Basically, he said that the white Chicago media wants Baker out because he’s black.

This is preposterous for a litany of reasons, which I discussed in full in my piece about why Baker should go. I find it the height of laziness, never mind ignorance, that any white person who critiques a minority is instantly a racist. It suggests that the predominantly white media should grade minority coaches on a sliding scale. There’s a word for that. It’s called pandering.

Let’s have some fun with some of the more interesting quotes in the piece.

“Trust me, the man has kept two raggedy-ass teams playing .500 ball for two seasons. Yet the columnists and radio hosts in the city want him out.”

Actually, the man has two supremely talented teams barely playing .500 ball. Am I a racist for expecting this team to play to the best of its ability?

The last line in the piece is my favorite, though.

“The only question left to ask will be this: If it were Bobby Cox and not Dusty Baker, would I have ever had to write this column?”

No, because if it were Bobby Cox, the Cubs would be in first place, no matter how many injuries they had suffered. You know, kinda like his Braves are, a team held together by duct tape and chewing gum? You want to talk about injuries and underperforming players? The Braves have cornered the market on it. Chipper Jones, Mike Hampton, John Thomson, Tim Hudson, Danny Kolb, Rafael Furcal, Brian Jordan, Raul Mondesi… need I go on?

Stoop, we don’t want Dusty to leave because he’s black. We want him to leave because he had history in his grasp, but let it slip away on account of his own managerial incompetence. We want him to leave because he’s acted like a sullen teen ever since that moment, pouting and protesting about how everybody’s out to get him. Lastly, we want him to leave because it doesn’t appear that he really wants to be here. Being a Chicago coach is hard work. Ask Tim Floyd, Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron and Jim Riggleman. We ran them out of town too, and guess what? They’re white. Race has nothing to do with this, Stoop. Stop seeing things that don’t exist, and then blaming other people for not seeing them, too.

The “New York Times” is reporting that the steroid Rafael Palmeiro was busted for using is stanozolol, dubbed by a NYU prof as “a mildly strong to strong steroid.” The prof even went so far as to say that “potent is the word I would use.” Lest you wonder how potent it is, it’s the same steroid linked to Ben Johnson in 1988.

Well, that certainly puts Raffy’s comment about “Why would I do this during a season where I was going to get to 3,000 hits?” into question. Suddenly Raffy, a well liked guy across the board, looks like Pete Rose, the guy who corked his bat (according to the guy who rotted in a cell protecting him) in order to break the all time hits record. This kind of news is never easy to take, whether you like the guy or not. But one could argue that Raffy was banking on people to sympathize with him for the same reason that Rose arguably was: because each was knocking on the door of history. Raffy just became the fourth guy to enter the 3,000/500 club, dammit. How could he accomplish such a thing without being as standup a guy as the three who preceded him?

Personally, I wanted to give Raffy the benefit of the doubt when I heard that he had tested positive, in spite of the fact that he was sucking wind when the season started (following a 2004 season where he also sucked wind) only to start beating the snot out of the ball seemingly out of nowhere. I mean, they all told us that steroids don’t help you hit the ball; they just help you hit it farther. Right?

Well, maybe not. Are we going to find out a week from now that Jason Giambi (who hit 14 home runs in July, after hitting five in the previous three months) is using again, too? God, I sure as hell hope not. I really want to think that Giambi has learned his lesson, that being the poster child for all things wrong with Major League Baseball was more than enough incentive to stay the hell away from the juice for good. But I have to admit, the numbers are stacked against him. They’re also stacked against Sammy Sosa, Bret Boone, and even guys like Mike Lowell and Jim Thome should be aware that their numbers will be viewed suspiciously from here on. Now, I actually like all of the guys I just listed, even the diva-tastic Sosa. But I still need someone to explain to me how you go from hitting singles and doubles to hitting a boatload of homers, even in pitcher’s parks, only to completely forget how to hit altogether. It doesn’t look good, guys. You should have known this day was coming. After all, the owners weren’t going to turn a blind eye forever.

A rumor rumbled from the west coast yesterday, saying that Dusty Baker may opt out of the last year of his contract as coach of the Chicago Cubs and head to Los Angeles, the land of Vin Scully and a park that empties in the seventh inning in order to beat the traffic. As a die hard Cubs fan, I would like to simply say:

May I hold the door open for you?

If the Cubs ever want to end their fans’ suffering once and for all by winning the World Series, the first thing they should do is get rid of Baker. Sure, his supporters will cite the number of times he’s won Manager of the Year, including his first year with the Cubs in 2003. They’ll talk about how many players want to come and play for him, thus making it easier to attract big name talent.

Rubbish, the lot of it.

What I’ve seen, since he took over the Cubs, is a guy who rode his star pitchers (Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano) on to glory while riding them into the ground, to the point where they were completely gassed when the team needed them the most. (Wood and Prior subsequently spent significant time on the disabled list the following season, and Wood still isn’t the same today.) I’ve seen a guy who refused to put a fresh Matt Clement in either Games 6 or 7 of the 2003 NLCS, because “starters are starters and relievers are relievers.” Marlins skipper Jack McKeon, meanwhile, used Dontrelle Willis, Brad Penny and Josh Beckett in relief, and subsequently went on to, and won, the World Series. That is not a coincidence, and I will never forgive Baker for forgetting that, in the playoffs, there is no tomorrow.

But most importantly, I’ve seen a guy who allowed the Cubs clubhouse to become a bunch of petulant crybabies the second that anyone dared to have any expectations of them. When the going got tough last year, and they folded like a cheap card table down the stretch, the players blamed everyone but themselves. Hell, they ran the broadcasters out of town on a rail, because they were (rightly) critical of their lousy performance on the field. Ironically, the Cubs are still mediocre, while Chip Caray and Steve Stone have never been happier.

It was one thing to bring Baker in when Sammy Sosa was still in the clubhouse. Sosa was difficult, and Baker’s “skills” certainly came in handy in dealing with his massive ego, diminishing skills, and salsa-blasting boom box. But in jettisoning Sosa in the offseason, the Cubs claimed they were trying to create a different atmosphere in the clubhouse, a less toxic environment. Well, they’ve certainly done that, bringing in good guys like Jeromy Burnitz and Todd Walker to complement Derrek Lee, the nicest kid in the neighborhood. The problem now is that there are no egos for Baker to manage anymore, and he’s still running his starters into the ground.

This team is too good to play this poorly, and the window of opportunity is closing. Baker clearly doesn’t want to be here, and there doesn’t seem to be a need for him to stay. My suggestion: have a chat with Yankees bench coach Joe Girardi. He knows the Cubs’ system, he’s highly regarded (his name came up when McKeon was on the hot seat), and as a big league catcher, knows a thing or two about managing a game and getting a sense of when his pitchers are out of gas. Make the move, Cubs. Your time is now.