"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do, I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby

:: Saturday, January 22, 2005 ::

Convention Report, Day Two

Funny thing.

I didn't really like last year's convention. As I wrote at the time, it was too crowded, so much so that

... there were lines to get the program, for heaven's sake. There were lines at the coat check, lines to buy a soda, it seemed like there were lines to get in line.

And in a way, that became a metaphor for the whole season. Confused, bothersome, and finally collapsing in a heap.

The atmosphere around the 2005 convention is so much different. Sure, there were lines, but lines where there should be lines -- for popular autographs (one Ron Santo line snaked all the way around the entire downstairs food court). The sessions with Jim Hendry, Dusty Baker, Andy MacPhail and the broadcast teams (more on this anon) were friendly, informative and fun.

Yes, I'd love for this to be a metaphor for 2005. In seventy-one days we shall find out.

I nearly didn't make it at all today -- due to my work at ABC-7, and the snowstorm, there was talk about remaining at work till 1:00. As it turned out, with the storm winding down (except near the lakefront, where it puked snow all day -- Mike always says that on convention weekend, it's either brutally cold or snowy, and this year was no exception), we did one update at 9 am and then I headed right to the Hilton, where I walked into the Hendry/Baker session at 9:20 (Jeff told me I hadn't missed a thing), right in time for them to say that Ryan Dempster wouldn't just be handed the closer's job in spring training, that he'd have to earn it.

This is as it should be, of course. But Dempster is the sort of pitcher, like John Wetteland, Eric Gagne, and as Hendry pointed out, Dennis Eckersley, who, as a failed starter, might wind up being just the closer the Cubs need.

OK, I speculated later in the day -- I bought a Dempster-signed ball from the Iowa Cubs booth for $30. Considering I found a Cole Liniak ball (and yes, I think I remember all 32 of his mediocre career at-bats) selling for $20, I thought that was a pretty good deal.

Much of the baseball talk, of course, surrounded Sammy Sosa. I suppose the assembled multitudes wanted Dusty to say that he would excoriate Sammy, but Dusty said his way of doing things involves sitting down with the individual, in his office, at a restaurant, but not over the phone, and in fact, such a meeting may happen soon, as suggested in today's Sun-Times.

Look. I heard the boos for Sammy last September when his bat disappeared. And I heard the even louder boos (and talked about this with Tim from LF, who I ran into this afternoon, as he was pointing out to me that Moises Alou had vanished from the highlight film -- I noted that so had Matt Clement, almost as if neither had ever existed) at the opening ceremony last night.

To find a similar situation in baseball, you need look only to a year ago, when the Red Sox had a disagreement with Manny Ramirez, tried really hard to trade him, in fact, put him on waivers with no takers -- and then welcomed him back, to have Ramirez put up perhaps the best all-around year of his career, and the World Championship that followed.

Sammy Sosa has been beloved by many fans, and I suppose we all feel betrayed by his behavior at the end of the season. But you know what would fix it? A simple public apology, and also a private apology, sitting in the middle of the clubhouse with his teammates (as was suggested by Bob Brenly at the broadcasters session I attended this afternoon).

It really is that simple. And I'd think that Sammy, like Ramirez, would want to prove on the field that he hasn't lost it. Say what you want about Sosa, he never loafs on the field, and I imagine his pride would take over.

But Sammy, turn the boombox off and put a sock in it, willya?

I was supposed to have lunch with Byron Clarke of The Cubdom, along with a few other members of the Cubs Blog Army.

But Byron was a casualty of the snowstorm -- driving here from Indiana, he was stuck, and couldn't make it, and as I didn't really know how to contact anyone else... well, Mike & I had lunch at Kitty O'Shea's at the Hilton, and talked at length about another question that was asked of Baker -- why he seems locked into one-inning relievers, when someone could be going good, and maybe you could throw someone in the 8th AND 9th.

Baker said he didn't invent this system, he inherited it. This sounds like a copout until you realize this: pitchers are now conditioned this way, both physically and psychologically. Twenty or thirty years ago, major league relievers were by and large, failed minor league starters. The guys relieving in the minors never even made the major leagues.

Now, you have pitchers groomed from day one to relieve, and in fact, to close, though, as discussed above, sometimes you still get the failed starter who becomes a good closer. So Baker says that pitchers are simply not accustomed to higher workloads. And, Mike notes, for a starter, every starter today throws his best stuff all the time, till he tires and must be replaced.

This didn't happen years ago. Pitchers worked hitters carefully, holding back their best pitch for an out pitch, or for the later innings. This simply doesn't happen any more.

Neither Mike nor I are arguing that this is good or bad -- it's simply the way it is. Baseball is in some ways the same game it was 100 years ago -- and in others, quite different.

After lunch we sat in on the Andy MacPhail session, I asked a couple of questions including how baseball may view upcoming labor talks, given what is happening in hockey today. MacPhail said that the hockey situation is different, because many players can go to Europe and not miss a paycheck, but that they are indeed watching it closely. There were many other questions, from how to give fans more access to players, to Wrigley Field itself, to the steroid issue (MacPhail admits that there is a way to go, but he also says, and I agree, that the current agreement is better than the one they had before, and because it extends beyond the existing Basic Agreement, it cannot be used as a bargaining chip), to why the White Sox have 20 spring training games on Comcast SportsNet while the Cubs have none (MacPhail says it's a time-filler for missing hockey games, still raising the question why the Cubs can't have any, though he also pointed out that CSN probably isn't making a lot of money on these), and also, talking about the fact that over $1 billion (!) has been spent on free-agent contracts this offseason, more than 10% of which went to Carlos Beltran, and maybe half of all the money going to various players going to the New York teams... and you know, good as Beltran is, maybe it was for the best that he went elsewhere.

MacPhail was friendly and forthcoming and it was too bad that the session wasn't nearly as well-attended as the Baker/Hendry session.

Finally, we headed over to hear the broadcast teams. Len Kasper and Bob Brenly, introduced to warm applause (but nowhere near the ovations for Pat Hughes and Ron Santo), said all the right things -- Kasper saying how lucky he was to have this job, and how his idol Ernie Harwell had called him after he got the job, telling him he had the best job in broadcasting, and I'd agree, and also told a story of how, when he was a Marlins broadcaster during game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, saying on the air in the 8th inning, that if the Marlins were done (and he, like all of us, thought they were), that he'd be honored to see the Cubs get into the World Series, and now being a part of the Cubs team, wanted that even more. He'll do fine, I believe. Brenly said he had the utmost respect for Steve Stone, and also said that nothing a player would say or do would change the way he broadcast, and that he could forgive a lot of players' sins because he was a lifetime .248 hitter and knows how hard this game is -- but the one thing he said he wouldn't abide was players not hustling.

That got a good round of applause.

The rest of the session was pretty much the four of them trying to one-up each other, with pithy anecdotes like Pat Hughes' tale of the day in 1998, in Milwaukee, when Brant Brown made his famous game-losing drop, and him going to the clubhouse after the post-game show to the sight of then-Cub manager Jim Riggleman trying to console Ron Santo... he said he's never heard of a manager trying to comfort a broadcaster before.

I've said many times that I don't care for Ron Santo as a color analyst. But you know what, I love the man as a Cub fan -- he bleeds the Cubbie blue as much as any of us, and that's why he's there -- to represent all of us, how we feel about each and every game, and knowing, having seen "This Old Cub" (and if you haven't, you should), how much Santo has gone through in his life, and done so with unfailingly good cheer, I have a tremendous respect for him as a human being. What a fine, fine man, and all he wants for the rest of his life, is to see the Cubs win... and maybe make the Hall of Fame this year. The feeling I get from this convention is that the organization is absolutely determined to rectify the errors of 2004, and do that for Ron, and for all of us. The HoF, of course, is out of the club's control... but we'll know that on March 2.

Man, I see I've gone on way too long. The rest of the day, I ran into Jeff & Krista again, and we went shopping -- I bought, in addition to the Dempster ball, a Carlos Zambrano-signed ball for what Mike told me was the very good price of $44; a blue Cubs dugout jacket (I was going to buy the reversible, but they didn't have my size), and a couple more little things for the kids. Also saw Bill, our favorite security guard from our section, and glad to know he'll be back again.

It all gets you in the mood for baseball, that's for sure. The snow's finally ended tonight, and pitchers and catchers report in twenty-four days.

Can't wait. Can you?

:: posted by Al at 6:33 PM [+] ::
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Convention Report, Day One

Neither Nomar Garciaparra nor Sammy Sosa were in attendance today, nor are they going to be there at any time during convention weekend.

But their presences loomed large over the gathered crowd of 15,000 squeezed into the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton for the opening ceremony this afternoon.

Before I start on convention logistics, the biggest news announced today was no big surprise -- Ryne Sandberg's #23 is going to be officially retired sometime this season, date to be announced. This brought a huge roar, naturally.

There were a lot of people squeezed into the basement of the Hilton in midafternoon waiting for the convention to open, but this time, the registration lines (at least for people like me, who are not staying at the hotel) weren't ridiculously long. You take your convention pass, they punch a hole in it, and you receive a calendar, a convention program, and a scratch-off card for autographs.

This is a different procedure from previous years, where they had cards for the prime autographs in the program, you filled out a card, and they had drawings at various times during the convention. At least that way, you could pretend that you had a chance to get a Ryne Sandberg, or Kerry Wood, or Greg Maddux signature.

This way, and I didn't get a winning card, you're done after that. Kind of a letdown, in a way.

I bought a "grab bag" of stuff -- this is usually some of the leftover giveaway items from the previous season. The price went up from $10 to $20; despite that I saw people walking away from the table with TEN of them. The representative sample of stuff, which was in my bag, was: one Hubert Cubs lion doll; one Cubs Office Depot notebook, a Sports Illustrated with a picture of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior on the cover, a yellow Cubs poncho sponsored by Swedish Covenant Hospital, a Cubs pen, and a Cubs squeeze bottle.

Oh, well. At least the proceeds go to Cubs Care, as did the $6 I spent on the new blue "Cubs Believe" wristbands (one for me, one for each of my kids).

I haven't had a chance to look at a lot of the memorabilia booths yet, but will tomorrow -- if I don't get stuck at work due to the winter storm that is even now hitting our area, with a possible 6 to 10 inches of snow overnight and into tomorrow morning. You can find good deals if you look around. Example: the Cubs official store had the "dugout jacket" on sale for $99 (down from $129). But walk 20 feet south and another booth has the same jacket for $80.

At the opening ceremony, the largest applause was held for Sandberg, naturally -- he was introduced last, even after the current Cub players, and also for Ron Santo, who has in recent years, I think, become more beloved among Cub fans even than Ernie Banks, who also got a rousing ovation.

But it was what happened after the introductions that was so telling. WGN-TV producer Pete Toma puts together, every year, a highlight montage of the previous year set to music, to show to the assembled multitude (and they made us squeeze really tight into the Grand Ballroom) at the convention.

Every time Sammy Sosa appeared on the tape, there were loud boos from the crowd. Every time Nomar Garciaparra appeared, there were loud cheers.

Sure, there were cheers for others, particularly Carlos Zambrano and Greg Maddux (who, I learned, was making about a three-hour appearance before flying back to his Las Vegas home tonight), but the Cub fans assembled today spoke loudly:

It's not your team any more, Sammy. It's Nomar's.

If Sosa is still a Cub on Opening Day, running out to right field on April 8 could get ugly.

:: posted by Al at 7:40 PM [+] ::
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A Few Pre-Convention Notes

The Cubs have signed a number of players this week, including Corey Patterson, Michael Barrett (to a three-year contract), and Dr. Tightpants.

None of this is really news; it gets publicity now because the deadline for arbitration hearings is coming, and the Cubs pride themselves in signing all their players before it ever gets before an arbitrator.

Frankly, my eyes glaze over at the contract details and you can find most of those at other Cubs Blog Army sites.

The signing that intrigued me this week was Scott Williamson, former Reds and Red Sox reliever, who had elbow surgery last October and won't pitch till after the All-Star break this year.

This is a Ryan Dempster-like, low-risk signing. Williamson is 28 and should bounce back easily from the surgery, and if he does, could even contribute this year. He's been a closer before, also started some games, and costs almost nothing (just a little over the minimum, with more money if he pitches in the majors this year).

What puzzles me is the Cubs' seeming lack of interest in Magglio Ordonez. An article in today's Tribune quoted the Austrian doctor who operated on Maggs at length, and the gist of it is that he things Maggs is ready to go. So does USA Today Sports Weekly; in today's issue, there was a brief note that the Mets and Tigers are among the teams interested, and said further that Maggs has been "cleared to play".

Maybe Jim Hendry's talking to Scott Boras right now. Hendry doesn't like negotiating in the media. Maybe there's going to be a surprise announcement at the convention. The Cubs seem to have not made many moves this off-season, and it's not, of course, the quantity of the moves, but the quality of your ballclub, and if Jason Dubois appears to be the answer in LF, then so be it.

At one point or another, every superstar player in baseball was an unproven rookie. Maybe Dubois will succeed, maybe not. But that cannot be known unless he is given a chance.

Finally, the Cubs Caravan stopped at my son Mark's school today. He said it was "OK" -- he wasn't one of the kids chosen, one from each class, to ask a question of the assembled group. But even some of those kids didn't get to ask their question or get an autographed jersey, as the ballplayers ran out of time.

Well, you can't please everyone. But Nomar Garciaparra is sure trying to, saying all the right things, such as:

I understand there's a business part of baseball. I've never made my decision solely on money or based on money. There are other factors and intangibles involved, and I took those intangibles and discussed them with people I care about. We saw a place that I know I liked being in and I liked being a part of. This organization is so classy and this city is great, and these fans are unbelievable.

Nice to have you here, Nomar. He's talking like a team leader, and this team could use one.

:: posted by Al at 7:20 PM [+] ::
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A Bit Of Cub News

I haven't written much about the Cubs lately, for the simple reason that there hasn't been much to write about.

There have been rumors flying that the Cubs were going to return to the pre-1990s tradition of having no names on their home uniforms.

This was confirmed today in Fred Mitchell's Tribune column. This immediately puts out of date, thousands of replica jerseys that have been sold to fans, including my own white pinstripe Kerry Wood #34 jersey.

The Cubs will join the Yankees, Giants, Red Sox and Dodgers (who are also changing for the 2005 season) as the only teams without names on the back of home uniforms. Names will continue on the back of road jerseys.

Jim Hendry was also quoted as saying that the Cubs may indeed stand pat and open the season with the current outfield, which would be Sammy Sosa, Corey Patterson and a LF platoon of Jason Dubois and Todd Hollandsworth. Most telling is this Hendry quote:

Dubois is a guy that people are forgetting about because he is not a big-name free agent. But he is a guy that we are asked about weekly in any trade, and a year and a half ago no one heard of [Pittsburgh's] Jason Bay or [San Diego's] Khalil Greene, young guys that really made their mark last season. Rookies break in every year and people say, 'Where did they come from?' Dubois can be that kind of guy.

We won't know this, of course, until he plays. But Hendry has a point. At one point or another, guys like Carlos Beltran and Magglio Ordonez were unproven rookies. The only way they showed they are superstars, is by playing and producing.

Dubois has put up good numbers in the minors. If he's ever going to make it, now is the time. This also says another thing -- that Hendry is establishing that he is in authority over Dusty Baker. Baker's usual MO is not to play young players. By pretty much forcing him to play Dubois, Hendry is telling Baker, "We're doing it my way this year."

Only time will tell whether this will work or not. But it is certainly worth a try.

:: posted by Al at 9:06 AM [+] ::
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Sunday Notes

I've added several new Cubs blogs to the sidebar, listed under "cba newbies". That makes 65 different Cub links on the sidebar, most of which are blogs.

I don't know how "excited" this should make me, but on excite.com, someone named Patrick Holland writes a column called "The Buzz List", and in the latest column, the Cubs Blog Army is ranked #5!

Considering that we are ranked below Star Jones, Survivor, "Cool Site Of The Day", and Jessica Simpson's dress for the People's Choice Awards, I'm not sure whether I should be happy about that, or run away screaming.

But hey, we're out there, and according to the site, we are at least sixty strong.

Cub Fan Nation. We are everywhere.

:: posted by Al at 11:47 AM [+] ::
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