The Mouth That Roared (32 page)

In 1987, Dave Martinez took over center field from Bobby Dernier, who went back to the Phillies after the season. Rafael Palmeiro got a lot of playing time in left field, both before and after I traded Gary Matthews to Seattle. And Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer, and Les Lancaster, all 25 years old or younger, joined our starting rotation.

Leon Durham, Jody Davis, and Keith Moreland also faced uncertain futures in Chicago.

With all the comings and goings, I knew we were in for a long season.

But 1987 turned out to be a great year—for Andre Dawson, who had the best season of his career. He hit 49 home runs, knocked in 137 runs, and won the National League MVP Award.

We still finished in last place.

By early September, Stick saw the writing on the wall and submitted his resignation. Frank Lucchesi, a part-time Cubs coach with whom I had a long history in the Phillies organization, finished out the season as interim manager.

I’m sure Stick felt I too often communicated my thoughts about him through the media. But he turned the tables on me by announcing his departure on a radio show. “It’s nice he told somebody,” I said when I heard the news. “I would think he would have wanted to talk to me about it first.” The press prodded Stick to criticize me on his way out the door. But to his credit, he held his tongue. After he left us, he went back to his real baseball home in the Bronx.

This time around, I planned to take my time before hiring a new skipper. The stakes were too high to rush the decision. I had burned through three managers in six seasons, and I think the Tribune Company was bothered by what it perceived as organizational instability.

I thought about interviewing Billy Williams, whose number we retired in 1987. I not only had the utmost respect for Billy’s knowledge of the game, but I also felt it would send the right message in the wake of Dodgers executive Al Campanis’ remarks earlier that season about African Americans not possessing the right tools to be managers.

When the time was right, I intended to talk with Billy.

But first, I had to deal with the fallout of our last-place finish.

As the season drew to a close, the finger pointing began. I apologized to Cubs fans for the team’s poor performance, telling the
Chicago Tribune
, “The reason I have to apologize is because we quit with a capital Q. Q-U-I-T. There is no other explanation for it.” Jody Davis didn’t appreciate my comments and fired back that I hadn’t done anything for the team. I’m not sure Jody did much for the team after 1984, but that’s beside the point. Ultimately the Tribune Company, not Jody, would decide whether I was worth keeping.

During my years in Philadelphia, those of us in the front office discussed any and all problems openly. There was usually a lot of yelling, screaming, and cussing, but in the end, we found a way to settle matters and move on. Phillies general manager Paul Owens created that kind of atmosphere, and we all thrived in it.

The Tribune Company didn’t operate that way. With the Phillies, everything was free and loose. With the Cubs, everything was inhibited and corporate.

I wasn’t looking forward to meeting with my superiors after the 1987 season. They had come to consider themselves real baseball guys. John Madigan, a Tribune executive rising through the company’s ranks, started attending the annual slate of baseball meetings. He had learned the lingo and had started questioning player personnel decisions. It irritated the hell out of me, but I took it in stride. As long as he didn’t get in my way, he was free to go where he wanted. The company also appointed Don Grenesko to serve as its liaison to the Cubs, a position it had deemed superfluous after the successful 1984 season.

I felt like I was being watched.

That doesn’t mean I considered myself beyond reproach. Looking back, I realize I made some mistakes with the Cubs. I was premature in firing Lee Elia during the 1983 season. Lee’s temper had caused us some public relations problems, but he wasn’t the first skipper to let his emotions get the better of him. Given time, I think he would have become a helluva manager. I also think I too quickly fired Jim Frey during the 1986 season. Relieving Don Zimmer of his coaching duties at the same time was definitely an error on my part.

By the time we lost yet another manager in 1987, I think the Tribune Company was starting to have its doubts about me. Rather than offering up a list of possible successors to Gene Michael, I decided on a bolder course of action.

“I don’t know if you’ll like this idea or not,” I told Madigan, “and I don’t know if I really want to do it, but since I don’t trust anybody but myself, suppose I go down on the field and manage?”

Hell, it had worked before in Philadelphia, and I saw no reason why it couldn’t be effective in Chicago, too. I proposed that Gordon Goldsberry and John Cox, two of my most trusted advisers, take over my current duties if I became manager.

Madigan seemed generally enthused with the idea. He was a newspaper guy, after all, and he recognized the steady stream of headlines my return to managing would generate. I thought we had a deal. But then Madigan put a fly in the ointment by suggesting Grenesko succeed me as general manager.

That was completely unacceptable to me. If I was down on the field, I didn’t want to have to worry about a non-baseball guy upstairs pulling off deals and making other major decisions.

“No, no, no,” I protested. “We’ve worked too long and hard to get where we are. We can turn this thing around. Gordie and Coxey know me and know what this organization is all about. I can’t trust anybody else to do the job.”

It was like talking to a brick wall. For them, it was Grenesko or nobody. I scrambled to come up with an alternate plan.

I had two years left on my contract and wanted to continue working to improve the team. I was confident the Tribune Company would give me breathing room to do my job again once we started winning games. And that was going to happen soon. In the meantime, if they wanted Grenesko to get hands-on experience in a major league front office, I was willing to play along.

“Okay, here’s what we can do,” I told Madigan. “I’ll make John Vukovich manager, and I’ll train anybody you want to be the next general manager. That way, if you ever get tired of me, that person can take over.”

I’ve never been worried about getting fired. Whenever I took a job, I worked like the devil to accomplish my goals, but not out of fear of getting a pink slip. I just got more personal satisfaction out of doing my work well. I wouldn’t have worried about Grenesko taking my job as general manager. I knew I could outwork him or any other company guy. I was a baseball lifer—they weren’t. If the Tribune Company ultimately felt Grenesko or someone else could do the job better than me, then so be it.

I met with Tribune CEO Stan Cook to make a case for how much we’d accomplished in a relatively short time. I told him the team was about to get a positive jolt from all the young talent in our system. Not only that, but we’d also continue making money for the company. Attendance remained high despite a couple of losing seasons. The Cubs were a thriving business.

Cook seemed receptive to my proposal. But I guess you can leave a room thinking everything’s rosy only to find out there are meetings taking place behind your back.

*

The Tribune Company decided it was already tired of me.

I didn’t get a definitive answer to my proposal, so I told Madigan I’d interpret that as a “yes.” The next step was to announce Vuke’s hiring as manager. If need be, we could call another press conference if the Tribune officials decided they wanted me to have a general manager trainee.

In late October, Vuke flew in from his New Jersey home. The next morning, PR guy Ned Colletti, Vuke, and I got together at Wrigley Field to go over the details of the announcement. I would praise Vuke’s leadership skills and joke that, like me, he hadn’t been much of a ballplayer, but that his exceptional knowledge of the game would make him a successful manager. Ned helped us figure out where to stand and how many questions Vuke would take.

As we were going over these details, a flustered John Madigan rushed in the room.

“Dallas, we gotta talk!” he said.

I assumed he was going to tell me the Tribune Company had decided that Grenesko would work with me in the front office. That meant Grenesko probably wanted to say a few words at the press conference.

But Madigan’s news was a lot bigger than that.

He told me our working relationship was over. If I didn’t resign as general manager, I would be fired.

I could have taken that as my cue to use the press conference as an opportunity to blast the Tribune Company for its backhandedness. But what would have been the point? I had tried to work out a plan that would benefit the Cubs, but they thought they had a better plan.

A little while later, I stood at a podium in front of dozens of reporters who were expecting to hear confirmation of Vuke’s hiring. Instead, I told them the real purpose of the press conference was to announce my resignation. Rather than trying to explain the reasons the Cubs and I were parting ways, I chose instead to repeat what Madigan had just told me about “philosophical differences” between us.

“I’m outta here,” Vuke had said as soon as I told him what was happening. He listened to the press conference on the way to O’Hare, where he boarded a flight back to Philadelphia. He was hired by the Phillies as a coach later that fall. He remained with the Phillies until he died of brain cancer in 2007.

My phone started ringing the moment I went back to my soon-to-be former office. Every writer wanted to know more about the philosophical differences. Over the next week, I showed uncharacteristic restraint by declining to elaborate. What was done was done. And with two years left on my Cubs contract, I didn’t feel it would be in my family’s best interests for me to attack the Tribune Company.

Madigan, on the other hand, chose to talk about it. But instead of explaining the series of events that led to my departure, he simply said I resigned rather than accept a reduced role in the organization. He also announced he would personally fill the newly created job of director of baseball operations. The general manager position would be eliminated, he said.

Someone must have told Madigan a baseball team needed a general manager, because about a month after my “resignation,” everything came full circle. Madigan hired Jimmy Frey, who I had fired, as general manager. Jimmy then hired Don Zimmer as manager.

I was happy for Donnie. If the Cubs continued to struggle, I doubted it would be his fault. He and I are still tight. Jimmy and I haven’t spoken since I fired him as manager. That’s just the way baseball is sometimes.

*

When Keith Moreland heard the news of my resignation, he and his wife put their house in Chicago up for sale. It was a wise move. A couple of months later, the Cubs traded him to San Diego.

It was fitting, I guess, that my last trade as GM of the Cubs involved Dickie Noles. The two of us had a long and eventful history. In the span of a decade, I drafted him, managed him, traded for him, traded him, signed him as free agent, and traded him again.

In the last move, I sent Dickie to the Tigers in September 1987 for a player to be named later. Dickie registered two saves that helped Detroit win the American League East. Then the situation got weird. We couldn’t reach an agreement with the Tigers on what player we’d get in return for Dickie, so he came back to the Cubs after the season. In essence, we had loaned Dickie to the Tigers for the last couple weeks of the season.

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s office opened an investigation into whether there was “premeditated intent” for Dickie to be the player to be named later. A week after my resignation, the commissioner’s office ruled we had acted appropriately.

As another “Dallas Green guy,” Dickie wasn’t long for Chicago anyway. He signed as a free agent with the Baltimore Orioles before the 1988 season.

While Dickie’s career didn’t turn out the way he or I thought it would, at least he cleaned up his act. He’s been sober ever since the night in 1983 when I bailed him out of a Cincinnati jail for scuffling with a police officer. Dickie now works for the Phillies as an employee assistance professional who counsels young players on the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

Dickie got traded for himself. He also traded in his old self for a new one.

*

Four words sum up my time in Chicago: we won too quickly.

Between 1982 and 1984, we went from an also-ran to a contender. But it took a lot longer than two years to fix the problems in our farm system. That gave us little choice but to re-sign the veterans who brought us a division title in 1984.

If the Cubs had won the division, say, in 1986, the situation would have been different. By that time, Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer, Dave Martinez, and Rafael Palmeiro were on the team. And Mark Grace, Jerome Walton, and Dwight Smith were about to join them. That good, young core of players would have given us leverage to pick and choose which veterans to keep. The end result would have been a much lower payroll and a team built for success over the long term.

That’s not the way it happened, obviously. After 1984, we became expensive losers. But with all the young talent ready to make a splash, I left the team in pretty good condition.

The season after I stepped down, the Cubs played their first night game at Wrigley Field. Despite the history of the moment and my role in helping make it possible, I never considered attending the game. When I left Chicago, I left Chicago for good. There was no reason to go back, other than to visit our son Doug, who graduated high school there and went on to attend the University of Illinois. I spent 1988 with Sylvia on our Pennsylvania farm. I tended to our animals, read a lot, and generally recharged my batteries. I knew I’d eventually get back into baseball in some capacity, but I was willing to wait for the right opportunity to come along.