The Mouth That Roared (29 page)

Flannery’s grounder went right through Durham’s legs for an error that allowed Martinez to score the tying run.

The momentum in the series shifted back to the Padres.

With Trout warming in the bullpen, Jimmy decided to stick with Sut, who hadn’t even reached the 80-pitch mark yet.

After the error, Sut couldn’t get anyone out. Alan Wiggins singled, Gwynn doubled, and Garvey singled to score three more runs. Trout came in to get the last two outs of the inning.

Trailing 6–3, we couldn’t get back in the game against San Diego closer Goose Gossage.

Heartbreak.

I had a hard time finding the words to express my disappointment.

“We had them by the throat, but we let them get away,” I said after the game. “I think the emotion swung their way when we left Chicago. I think they became electrified and played more confidently and more aggressively.”

To this day, a lot of Cubs fans blame Durham for the Game 5 loss. Many forget that his two-run home run in the first inning accounted for two of our three runs in the game. Sut’s loss of effectiveness in the seventh is also overlooked, except by those who feel Trout should have come in the game earlier. That’s classic second-guessing. Sut had been so effective for us all year, and I would have been reluctant to take him out, too. Some critics argued we might have won the series if we had skipped Sanderson’s start and pitched Sutcliffe in Game 4, leaving Trout to pitch a possible Game 5.

Would that have changed the outcome of the series? We’ll never know.

*

I cried like a baby on the flight from San Diego to Chicago.

Only two other experiences in my baseball life came close to matching the disappointment of the ’84 NLCS: the Phillies squandering the pennant in 1964, and the Phillies losing in the NLCS to the Dodgers in 1977.

But what happened to the Cubs still holds a special and painful place in my heart and mind.

We fought like hell to build that team and make it competitive, and it hurt like a son of a bitch to fall just short of the World Series. There was no question in my mind that we had the best team in the National League that year.

It took me a long time to get over that hurt. I didn’t watch on television as the Padres lost to the Tigers. I sat at my suburban Chicago home and stayed away from baseball for a while.

It hit the players hard, too.

Steve Trout had a very personal reason for wanting to pitch against Detroit for all the marbles. Back in 1945, when the Tigers beat the Cubs in the World Series, his father, Dizzy, threw a complete game that helped Detroit win the title in seven games.

Keith Moreland, who now broadcasts Cubs games on WGN radio, says he still hasn’t gotten over the loss: “It was like someone ripped your heart out. You get your heart back at some point but with a piece of it missing.”

Gary Matthews echoes that sentiment. Sarge quickly became a fan favorite in his first season with the Cubs. The fans recognized his zest for the game, and he fully embraced the idea that we were ushering in a new era for the Cubs. He brought his drill sergeant attitude and offensive prowess to the park every day.

After a two-homer game in the series opener, he went 1-for-11 the rest of the way. He says he began pressing too hard for a hit and ended up swinging at bad pitches. “You win or lose as a team,” he said. I couldn’t agree more. And it’s that way of thinking that made me want to have Sarge on the team in the first place. Sarge still dwells on that Game 5 loss: “It’s hard to explain the haunting feeling you have when you know you should have accomplished something you didn’t.”

We racked up a lot of individual accolades that year: Ryno was National League MVP, Sut won the Cy Young, Jimmy got Manager of the Year, and I was selected as
The Sporting News
Executive of the Year.

And the Cubs were division champions—but nothing more.

I did a lot of moping that off-season. I had been in baseball long enough to know losing was part of the game, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. It took a while for me to kick my self-pity in the ass and get back to work again.

And there was a lot of work to do before the 1985 season started. The creation of a postseason-caliber team had come at a cost. The acquisitions of Sutcliffe, Eckersley, Matthews, and Cey added a lot of money to the books. And our top three starting pitchers were all free agents.

My goal was to keep us moving forward.

The Phillies never contacted me about becoming their new general manager. I was loyal to the Cubs, but I didn’t make a secret of the fact that I had deep affection for the Phillies. Early in my tenure, I probably sounded like a man pining for his lost love whenever I talked about “the Phillies way” of running an organization. I was a Phillies player, farm director, and manager. And it had always been my ambition to add general manager to the list.

I guess if I had been more diplomatic, I might have gotten a call from Giles. When asked my opinion about the Phillies’ struggles in 1984, I suggested poor trades were the culprit. Instead of Gary Matthews and Bobby Dernier, who helped the Cubs immensely in ’84, the Phillies had two underachievers in the outfield, Von Hayes and Glenn Wilson. I also felt Philadelphia’s minor league system, once my pride and joy, had started to deteriorate.

I was content to remain in Chicago, where the Cubs’ future was still very much in my hands.

During my first three off-seasons in Chicago, I pursued trades and signings that could help turn around a struggling team. Times had changed. After the 1984 season, I set out to retain our current players. I felt we had a good chance to continue winning with the team that got us to the National League Championship Series.

My top priority was holding onto the entire top end of our pitching rotation. Rick Sutcliffe, Dennis Eckersley, and Steve Trout all were eligible for free agency. In the span of three weeks in November and December 1984, we resigned all of them: Eckersley for three years and Trout and Sutcliffe for five. Sut’s deal cost us $9.5 million over the life of the contract. That’s peanuts today, but very few players were making that kind of money back then.

I knew Sut’s services would be coveted by a number of other teams. The Padres, the Royals, and the Braves all put in comparable bids for him, but his sense of loyalty to the Cubs prevailed in the end. He felt he had more to accomplish in a Cubs uniform. If we hadn’t resigned him, that would have meant we gave up Joe Carter and Mel Hall, two promising young outfielders, just to rent Sut for half a season.

As I said at the time, “We made a commitment to the city of Chicago and our ballclub to get our people back.”

To ensure further continuity on the field, I also extended manager Jim Frey’s contract through the 1987 season.

I handed out rewards for meritorious performance, and I also received one myself from the Tribune Company. After Jim Finks resigned as Cubs president in December 1984, I took on his responsibilities. A few months later, Andy McKenna stepped down as the liaison between me and the company. My bosses were taking off the training wheels. In announcing the changes, John Madigan, the company’s executive vice president, said my growth as a businessman and success at putting the organization on the right track had earned me more autonomy.

I didn’t make any major personnel moves that off-season, but I did take a gamble on a marginally talented kid whose passion for the game and will to succeed ranked up there with any player I had ever seen. I figured I’d give him a shot, if for no other reason than to help him get baseball out of his system. That he happened to be my son John was secondary, believe it or not.

If I hadn’t signed John, he would have convinced someone else to. He had taken part in a College World Series at the University of Arizona and won a junior college national championship. The kid could definitely play. I just didn’t know if he had major league potential, and I hated the thought of him being a career minor leaguer.

As long as he was in my organization, I knew he would be trained right and that I could keep an eye on him.

John reported to our rookie team in Wytheville, Virginia. From that point on, he wasn’t Dallas Green’s son. He was just another pitcher chasing a dream.

*

A couple of things happen when your team puts together a successful season. First, other organizations start taking you seriously. That was a big deal, considering how negatively the Cubs had been viewed for so many years. The second result of winning is increased buzz surrounding your team. I saw that before the 1985 season even opened when, for the first time, the Cubs started selling out spring training games in Mesa, Arizona.

A lot of people had scoffed at the marketing strategy we adopted when I first got to Chicago. But the slogan “Building a New Tradition” didn’t seem so dumb anymore.

We had the talent to repeat as division champs, but recent history frowned on our chances. No National League East team had won consecutive titles since the Phillies in 1976, 1977, and 1978. Since then, every team except the Mets had taken a turn as king of the hill.

As far as I could tell, we had no glaring weaknesses. The only real question mark was whether Larry Bowa would remain our starting shortstop. He had provided valuable leadership in 1984, but at age 39, he had ceded playing time to Tom Veryzer and Dave Owen. Neither of them was our shortstop of the future. That distinction belonged to Shawon Dunston, the first overall pick of the 1982 draft. Shawon’s steady progress in the minors convinced us he was about ready for the big leagues. But “about ready” and “ready” were two different things. I didn’t want to rush him.

*

Unlike other general managers, I had more to deal with than just baseball operations. The lights issue at Wrigley Field started feeling like a part-time job.

Before the season, an Illinois judge upheld city and state laws that banned night games from ever being played at Wrigley Field. This was a disappointment, because I knew Major League Baseball would seek retribution by taking home playoff games away from us.

The judge ruled that 37,000 visitors roaming their streets at night would subject the neighborhood around Wrigley to a public nuisance. He asserted the ban on lights didn’t impact our bottom line or ability to win games.

I don’t recall ever showing the judge our books, so I’m not sure how he came to those conclusions. The sole basis for his argument was our division title, which in his opinion proved we could accomplish our goal by playing exclusively day baseball. I thought our goal was winning a World Series. Then again, I was just president and general manager of the team.

I guess the judge was out of town when new commissioner Peter Ueberroth told us future postseason games might be played “elsewhere than at Wrigley Field, perhaps not even in Chicago.” The only downside to starting the 1985 season 35–19 and selling out almost every home game was that that the damn judge probably felt further vindicated.

At that point, a third of the way into the season, we led the National League East by four games. Our record put us on pace for 105 wins.

Then the June swoon we had avoided the season before hit us doubly hard.

What a difference a year can make. On the one-year anniversary of the Sandberg Game, we got shut out in St. Louis on just two hits. Another defeat a couple of days later against the Mets gave us a 13-game losing streak, which tied a franchise record. The skid included a pair of three-game sweeps on successive weekends by the Cardinals, who were establishing themselves as the class of our division.

After such a hot start, we soon found ourselves in fourth place.

Injuries were at least partly to blame for our downfall. Matthews and Dernier had played vitally important roles in 1984. Matthews’ knee surgery and Dernier’s foot problems caused both to miss games during the streak. Even more damaging, all of our starting pitchers lost time due to injuries in the first half of the ’85 season.

We never recovered from that awful stretch in June. The Cardinals held onto first place for most of the season and ended up with 101 wins. We finished 77–84 and in fourth place.

*

During a difficult summer, I opened my mouth and turned a lights controversy into a full-blown stadium controversy.

I felt Cubs fans needed to confront reality. If the residents of Wrigleyville didn’t budge on their opposition to night games, the Tribune Company would consider replacing Wrigley Field with a new stadium in the northwest suburbs.

“I don’t get a sense of any cooperation with the neighborhood,” I told a local radio station. “We’re dead here.”

The possibility of leaving Wrigley wasn’t a secret. We had already shared the plan with the Illinois state legislature. Now I was taking the news directly to the fans. Suddenly, all of the good will I accumulated in 1984 went out the window. I was a bad guy with a big mouth again.

Some neighborhood denizens banded together to form a group called Citizens United for Baseball in Sunshine. That was an acronym, or so I was told. They were never going to be confused with the Dallas Green Fan Club.

Given the choice of putting up lights in Wrigley or abandoning the stadium altogether, I felt Cubs fans, even those in Wrigleyville, might start to see things my way. Apparently the Tribune Company didn’t want me publicly announcing its thought process. A couple of days after letting the cat out of the bag, I was sent out before the media to try and put it back in.