The Mouth That Roared (26 page)

Our lousy record dating back several seasons had the benefit of giving us a pick at or near the top in each year’s amateur draft. That was the reason behind the draft, after all—to help the have-nots compete with the haves. In 1982, we made a high school kid from Brooklyn named Shawon Dunston the first overall pick of the draft. Shawon became a productive member of the Cubs for many years. Only two of the top five picks that year made much of an impact in the major leagues. The other was Dwight Gooden, who went fifth overall to the Mets.

In June 1984, Gordie took pitchers Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer in the second and sixth rounds, respectively. He also drafted catcher Damon Berryhill and outfielder Dwight Smith that year. In 1985, he selected outfielder Rafael Palmeiro in the first round, and in what proved to be a real coup, he got Mark Grace in the 24
^th
round.

*

The drafts helped make our future appear brighter, but in the here and now, I had several crucial decisions to make.

The hiring of a new manager was at the top of the list. Charlie Fox returned to his role as a scout and adviser, and I set out to find someone who could help turn us into winners. I considered a lot of different guys before ultimately settling on my counterpart in the 1980 World Series, Jim Frey. Our pitching coach, Billy Connors, who had held the same position in Kansas City under Frey, gave us positive feedback about Jimmy. After getting several other upbeat reports about Jimmy’s ability to handle and teach players, I decided he was the right guy for the job. An added bonus of hiring him was that he brought Don Zimmer with him as a coach. I loved Don. He was a helluva baseball guy.

Early in my tenure in Chicago, the Cubs got the nickname “Phillies West.” My first manager came with me from Philadelphia, as did a couple of coaches, a bunch of executives, and a handful of players.

The distinct Philadelphia flavor in our clubhouse and front office was a matter of curiosity for most baseball fans, but it remained a sore point for Cubs supporters who wondered why the organization had become so reliant on a division rival for talent and ideas.

I wasn’t trying to trample on tradition by bringing in outsiders. I just happened to know the Phillies had a lot of gifted people.

On the heels of two losing seasons, I guess I could have decided to stop importing from Philadelphia.

But I didn’t.

After we lost 18 of our first 21 spring training games, I scrambled to make sure 1984 wouldn’t be a repeat of every season since 1972, the last time the Cubs finished above .500.

Bill Buckner was still our best trade chip. I badly wanted to move him, for the reasons previously stated, but also because he didn’t figure into our plans in 1984. We had decided to switch Leon Durham from the outfield to his natural position at first base. That meant Buckner would go to the bench. It also left us with a hole in left field.

That situation prompted a phone call to Philadelphia. I knew the Phillies didn’t care much for young outfielder Bobby Dernier, because I had put in a waiver claim for him before the Phillies pulled him back. Now I wanted to acquire him by trade.

I had helped bring Bobby up through the Phillies organization. At Triple-A Oklahoma City in 1981, he and Ryne Sandberg were a dynamic one-two punch at the top of the lineup, stealing more than a hundred bases between them and playing hit-and-run at all the right times. I was confident they could replicate that performance in Chicago.

We quickly worked out a deal that sent utility player Mike Diaz and pitcher Bill Campbell to the Phillies for Bobby, left fielder Gary Matthews, and pitcher Porfi Altamirano.

Getting Sarge was a bonus. I loved everything about the guy.

That deal for Bobby and Sarge went a long way toward assuring we would play better defense and score runs in 1984. I’m not sure how well we would have fared without them.

*

In Durham, Matthews, Sandberg, Ron Cey, Jody Davis, and Keith Moreland, we had a lineup full of guys capable of knocking in runs. The challenge was going to be keeping our opponents from outscoring us.

In 1983, we were the only National League club with a team ERA over 4.00. If we didn’t rectify that problem, we would continue to go nowhere. A starting rotation of Chuck Rainey, Steve Trout, Fergie Jenkins, Dick Ruthven, and Dickie Noles just wasn’t going to cut it. Of those guys, only Trout and Ruthven would have been a top-four starter for most teams. And Trout was a question mark. After coming over from the White Sox, Trout, a Chicago native, won 10 games for us in 1983. He had a decent arm and good stuff, but he had a loose-cannon personality. He’d arrive at the ballpark from his Indiana home with a dazed look and his hair all over the place.

Our off-season acquisition of Scott Sanderson, a serviceable starting pitcher with the Expos, was a step in the right direction. But it hardly solved our problem.

If I was pulling a little harder for Dickie Noles and Fergie to stay in the rotation, it was because I had a special connection to both.

To me, Dickie was “Pie,’ a nickname he got from Pete Rose for the pie-eating grin on his face when Philadelphia fans gave him an ovation during a 1979 game that turned out to be his first major league victory. Pete was good at giving nicknames. He also came up with “Sarge” in honor of Matthews’ take-charge attitude on the field.

I brought Dickie up through the Phillies organization, always hoping his talent would help him conquer his inner demons. We knew from the get-go that Dickie was a wild kid. Wes Livengood, a Phillies scout, went to a North Carolina jail where Dickie had spent the night for fighting to present him with his first professional contract. He later admitted he consumed alcohol every day of his life between the ages of 16 and 26.

His drinking got him into a lot of jams, some more significant than others. After a heavy night of boozing while playing winter ball in Venezuela, Dickie started tossing furniture out the window of his sixth-floor apartment. As with many of his alcohol binges, Dickie didn’t remember a thing about the incident. Only when Venezuelan authorities came to kick him out of the country the next day did he learn what happened.

Whenever I suspected another player of having a drinking problem, I’d check and see if he was hanging around Dickie. Birds of a feather flock together, and Dickie was a thirsty bird.

Dickie drank to excess, but he also loved to play baseball and worked his ass off at the ballpark. You don’t give up on a guy like that.

That’s why I traded for him when I got to Chicago.

The change of scenery didn’t help Dickie.

In April 1983, Lee Elia and I took some local sportswriters to dinner during a road trip in Cincinnati. During the meal, I got a call at the restaurant from our traveling secretary.

“Dickie’s in jail,” he told me.

“Jail?” I repeated. “What for?”

I didn’t wait for the answer, because I already knew the answer.

At the police station, Connors and John Vukovich were waiting on us. The sergeant on duty told us Dickie got drunk and beat the shit out of a Cincinnati cop.

Enough was enough. After we bailed Dickie out of jail, I told him not to bother showing up for the game the next day.

“You’re going directly from here to rehab,” I told him.

“No, no, Dallas, I’ll be all right,” he protested.

“Dickie, you just decked a cop and don’t even remember doing it! Either you get some goddamn help, or I’ll make sure you never play an inning of baseball again. You have a chance to be a good man. But you need to go get yourself straightened out.”

Faced with banishment from the Cubs, Dickie could have appealed to the players union for guidance. But he chose to follow my orders and get himself dried out. He checked into a 30-day rehab program and took the first steps toward beating his addiction. Later that year, he was sentenced to 16 days in jail for his assault on the police officer.

He had a disappointing 1983 season, but more importantly, he took steps toward becoming a productive human being.

Dickie remained with us for the first half of the ’84 season, albeit relegated to the bullpen. Then he became crosswise with Frey and demanded a trade. He felt Jimmy never fully forgave him for the high-and-tight pitch he threw to George Brett in the 1980 World Series. Maybe that was it, or maybe Jimmy just didn’t trust him. Dickie wanted to go to a team that would put him in its starting rotation. He thought he needed a fresh start someplace else, so I honored his wish by trading him to the Rangers.

*

Fergie Jenkins was another guy who didn’t end up fitting into our plans in 1984. That disappointed me, because I really liked Fergie, who represented a link to my past as a player.

During my third year pitching for Philadelphia, Fergie signed with the Phillies organization. We crossed paths at Triple-A Arkansas in 1965, the year he made his major league debut as a September call-up.

Phillies manager Gene Mauch, who had a problem handling pitchers, couldn’t stand Fergie for some reason. Thanks to Gene’s lobbying, the Phillies traded him to the Cubs in 1966. That turned out to be a huge mistake. Fergie’s career took off in Chicago, where he became a Cy Young–caliber pitcher year in and year out. He went on to win a ton of games for Chicago, Texas, and Boston.

I brought Fergie back to the Cubs in 1982, partly because he was closing in on 300 career wins. It would have been sweet for him to reach that milestone with the Cubs.

He pitched fairly well his first season back in Chicago. At the age of 38, he won 14 games and posted a 3.15 ERA. But his win total slipped to six in 1983. By the end of the season, he had 284 career wins.

In spring training in 1984, I could see he didn’t want to go through the grind anymore. The running, the workouts, and the side throwing sessions had started to feel like work for him. We needed to make changes to our pitching staff, so I decided to release Fergie.

He and I have remained close, and as far as I know, he feels no animosity about how his career ended. Enshrinement in the Hall of Fame tends to heal most wounds.

*

Despite the addition of Sanderson, we went into the ’84 season with a starting pitching rotation nowhere near strong enough to keep us competitive. For that reason, many baseball writers picked us to finish last in the National League East. Based on our past performance, nobody was going to quibble with that prediction.

But thanks in part to three wins apiece by Trout and Sanderson, we finished April tied for first place in the National League East.

Our unexpected level of play continued into May, and at the end of that month, much to the pleasure of both parties, we finally unloaded Bill Buckner, whose bad legs concerned me as much as his troubling personality. The timing of the trade was perfect. The Red Sox coveted Buckner and had enough depth in their pitching rotation to be able to offer us former 20-game winner Dennis Eckersley in return. Eck was coming off a terrible 1983 season in Boston, but I felt he still had several good years left in his arm.

Our scouts, especially Charlie Fox, did a quality job putting together reports on Eck. He had pinpoint control and was adept at keeping the ball in the ballpark. On the flip side, we knew he had been drinking a little too heavily and that the Red Sox were disenchanted with his work ethic. Before making the deal, I grilled Eck and his agent on whether he could give us the effort we needed.

To Eck’s credit, he was a pro from the day I first met him.

For what it’s worth, Buckner harbored a grudge against me and the Cubs.

During the 1986 World Series, a few days before he became infamous for letting a ball squirt through his legs with the Red Sox on the verge of a championship, Buckner reflected on his trade to Boston. He said I did him a favor by shipping him off to Boston, which had been his preferred destination. “But I didn’t ask for Boston,” he told Jerome Holtzman of the
Chicago Tribune
. “Maybe it was a good thing. If I had said I wanted to go to Boston, Dallas might have sent me the other way.”

Nah, Billy Buck, I just wanted you out of Chicago.

I don’t wish failure upon anyone. That’s not my style. But there was something fitting about a guy who exemplified selfishness committing an error that royally screwed up his team and his own legacy.

*

Through the first three months of the ’84 season, the National League East race was a tight one between the Cubs, the Mets, and the Phillies. We played consistent baseball, not going on long winning streaks but avoiding drawn-out slumps. By winning more series than we lost, we stayed in the mix.

Sanderson and Ruthven, who held down the fifth spot in our rotation, went down in late May with injuries. Suddenly we were even thinner in the pitching department.

My eyes lit up when Cleveland general manager Phil Seghi approached me in mid-June to gauge my interest in Rick Sutcliffe. After leading the American League in ERA in 1982 and winning 17 games in 1983, Sut was just 4–5 with a 5.15 ERA. But I had a hunch he was just going through a rough spell. I felt his talent level and competitive nature would make him a valuable addition to our club.

He wasn’t going to come cheap, however. In return, Cleveland wanted outfielders Mel Hall and Joe Carter. Hall had placed third in the Rookie of the Year voting the previous season. He was a reckless guy off the field, but I liked him as a ballplayer. Carter, the second overall pick in the 1981 draft, was tearing up the minor leagues.