Playing Tom Ricketts

The Cubs have chosen Mike Quade over Ryne Sandberg as their new manager. Let me be clear that I have nothing in particular against Mike Quade other than that, as I have noted in an earlier piece, he is Jim Hendry's guy. In fact, the team did well for the six weeks he managed them, and I do wish him well. We need to be clear, however, about what just happened and what it probably bodes for the future.

Actually, you have to hand it to Hendry. He may not be much of a GM. In fact, you can argue that he is a pretty bad one, and I will make that argument in a subsequent post. But the guy is one hell of a bureaucrat, quite the consummate inside player, and his playing of Ricketts, and Cubs fans in general, since the ownership change has been Machiavellian in its subtlety and success. In the process, I think Ricketts has lost a real chance to exert control over the franchise.

That's a pity, because Ricketts really had a chance to change things from the relative laughing-stock of baseball organizations the Cubs have become. To do so, he had to take charge immediately, minimally finding himself a trusted baseball adviser, but ideally cleaning house right from the start. Retaining Hendry and Piniella was the big mistake.

So instead of asserting himself from the beginning, Ricketts chose to evaluate matters for a year, concentrating on raising ticket prices, repairing the washrooms, commissioning statues of macaroni, and selling bison that he just happens to produce on one of his ranches, and, aw, shucks, just trying to be the best fan he can be and hoping for the best.

I'm afraid this guy is small-time running a major market team. In this respect he has found his ideal consigliere in the overstuffed person of Jim Hendry. Hendry has never been comfortable running a big time operation and even his forays into the free agent market have been in the main half-hearted efforts to prove he is doing something big when everyone knows it is just pretend, that he is overpaying for leftovers. Hendry has always been most attuned to bottom-feeding and bargain hunting. Sometimes you strike gold there, most often not.

For Hendry though, it is all about control and who he feels comfortable being around. I'm not sure he ever felt comfortable with Baker or Piniella, but they kind of got him off the hook and shifted attention from his own feeble efforts to build a winning team. You want a manager, OK, take these mopes. Sandberg, or for that matter Girardi or Brenly, would have meant a change of course and a shifting of attention to people on the upsides of their careers, rising stars whose success or failure would shift the attention from the GM and who might just create a power base independent of his own.

Think about it, how many GMs can most serious baseball fans name straight off? I know I can't think of half-a-dozen, but, like most fans, I can rattle off twenty or so managers. That's as it should be. But it is not the world where Hendry thrives.

So, in this case, what Ricketts provided was time for Hendry to consolidate his position. Ricketts clearly doesn't know much about baseball other than that he likes it and it is always nice to be king. Giving Hendry a year to work things out was kind of like giving Dracula a second chance to straighten up.

In retrospect, everyone should have seen this coming even though it was a shrewd play by Hendry and really a no-lose situation. I mean, who names a new manager to fill out the term of a prematurely retired manager who didn't get fired, but just decided to quit twice in one month for family reasons and calls him a replacement for the remainder of the season not an interim or an acting choice? And what team doesn't fill out the term with the bench coach, though maybe the first audition was Trammell and he just flubbed it so bad they had to move on?

Chump that he is, Ricketts bought the idea. Hendry had nothing to lose here and made a pretty shrewd bet that, first off, Piniella had a lot to do with the team's execrable performance, and, secondly, teams usually experience a bounce when a skipper is bounced, particularly one so obviously at wit's end as Sweet Lou. Now if you do well, hey, the team you assembled was never that bad after all and this unknown character is some kind of low-key genius who has earned the right to labor through the two seasons you have left on your own contract. If not, if Quade is a flop, well, what do you expect from this guy anyway, he's only a stopgap, some genial mope who has been bouncing around from Pawtucket to Toledo to Pocatello for nearly twenty years? We move on to Plan B, which might have been Eric Wedge, I guess, although some people think Wedge might have been Plan A all along until Quade surprised everyone by winning games.

What's most disappointing is that we are apparently headed for more of the same, no big changes, no accountability, small market moves from a big market team. Carry on, Brownie, you're doing a hell of a job. Anyway, we are stuck with the situation, and, as I say, you could do worse. But we ought to recognize what went on here and who came out the big winner. Not the fans. Not the owner. Not the new manager either.

As for Sandberg, well I almost never agree with Phil Rogers, but he got played here as well, big time.