by Dallas Green
“The facts are there,” I said at the time. “After a guy signs a multi-year, guaranteed contract, the next year he breaks down. Well, that’s scary. Especially when you’re not talking about nickel-and-dime guys. You’re talking millions of dollars. You can’t come out of that decently.”
Before the 1986 season, major league teams shrunk rosters from 25 to 24 players, a move allowed by our contract with the union. That only increased tension with Marvin and his gang.
One thing was certain. The hostility between management and the union wasn’t going away.
* * *
I believed we could make waves again in the National League East. We still had the core of players who won a division title in 1984, and they all had another year of seasoning under their belts.
Much would be said later about how I let the team grow old, but that was another example of second-guessing. Age shouldn’t have been an issue in 1986. Our oldest starting pitcher, Eckersley, was only 31. And five of our everyday position players were in their twenties.
To help recapture the intangibles that had turned us into winners two seasons earlier, I hired former Cubs great Billy Williams as our hitting coach. I figured it had to be a positive influence for our guys to have a legend like Billy around the clubhouse. I also invited former Gold Glove outfielder Jimmy Piersall to work with our guys during spring training.
Jimmy and I had a history. Back in 1963, he showed me up by running the bases backward after taking me deep for his 100th major league home run. At the time, I was pissed off by his antics. I stalked him as he rounded the bases, swearing up a storm. But I came to like Jimmy. More importantly, he had been one helluva defensive outfielder. I knew he could teach our guys a thing or two.
The tough love carried over into spring training. I set weight limits for players, most notably Rick Sutcliffe. I asked Sut to shed 20 pounds. He complied and reported to camp complaining that his clothes didn’t fit him anymore.
As good as we had been in 1984, it wasn’t 1984 anymore. In press interviews, I took aim at Ron Cey, Bobby Dernier, Gary Matthews, and Jody Davis, hoping to light a spark under them.
I also spoke candidly about Jimmy Frey. “In 1984, Jimmy was a great manager,” I told reporters. “In 1985, he was a lousy manager. We won in ’84. We lost in ’85. That’s what managing is all about, I guess.”
I was mostly referring to the public perception that a manager is only as good as his team’s record. It’s always been that way, and it always will be. If our team hadn’t been so banged up in 1985, we might have made another playoff run. To lay the blame on Jimmy was unfair. I was simply stating he had a chance in 1986 to show he could help make us winners again.
The press jumped all over my comment and repeatedly asked Jimmy to respond. When we got off to a lousy start, losing eight of our first 10, the Chicago sports pages were suddenly filled with stories about impending managerial changes in the Windy City. Tony La Russa was about to lose his job with the White Sox, and according to the articles, Jimmy was next.
* * *
We learned in May that if we won the division in 1986, our home playoff games would be played in Busch Stadium, the National League East ballpark (with lights) located closest to Chicago, not to mention the home field of our fiercest rival.
When asked to comment on Major League Baseball’s decision, all I could really muster was a “told ya so.” Nobody in the Cubs front office got too worked up about the news. It had a definite silver lining, in fact. We knew it gave us leverage to renew discussions about getting lights at Wrigley Field. “Chicago doesn’t do anything until it’s a crisis,” I said.
By the time of the announcement on May 19, when we were already 10½ games out, it was evident these hypothetical playoff games wouldn’t take place, not in 1986 anyway. On June 12, we were 17 games behind the division-leading Mets.
Jimmy hadn’t recaptured the magic of 1984. It was time for him to go.
After the firing, third-base coach Don Zimmer came to me and said he could work with whomever succeeded Jimmy as manager. But I concluded that he and Jimmy, who had been high school classmates in Cincinnati, were tighter than he and I were. I felt it might be disruptive to keep Donnie around, so I let him go, too. I regretted that decision almost immediately. On his way out the door, Donnie told reporters, “I don’t think God could have come down and made this team win.”
First-base coach John Vukovich managed the next two games. I had the utmost faith that Vuke could do any job in baseball, but I felt we needed an experienced guy from outside the organization to manage the club.
The guy I wanted was former Yankees third-base coach Gene Michael, who had managed that team for parts of two seasons in the early ’80s. As a courtesy, I contacted Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to let him know about my interest in Stick. George gave me his blessings and told me Stick was my kind of guy.
Zim was right. We were 11 games under .500 when I fired Jimmy, and by the end of the season, we were 20 games under. 500. We finished 37 games behind the Mets, a team that went on to win the World Series.
Our team ERA in ’86 was worst in the league, which more than negated the fact that we led the league in home runs. After the season, I fired pitching coach Billy Connors and replaced him with Herm Starrette, who filled that position for me in Philadelphia in 1980.
At this point, I was willing to trade anyone on the team except Sandberg and Dunston. We needed a shake-up, but I didn’t view the future as bleak. Before long, we’d have the services of some talented players coming up through our farm system.
I maintained hope, but I would soon find out that losing seasons in 1985 and 1986 spelled major trouble for me and the Cubs.
19
I’ll admit I was growing impatient.
Just a few months after hiring Gene Michael as manager, I announced he needed to start winning games if he hoped to keep his job. It was a common-sense remark that I figured Gene would let roll off his back. I knew he wanted to win as badly as any of us. I just wondered how committed he was to managing the team.
You’d think a guy who served as manager and general manager of the George Steinbrenner–run New York Yankees would have thick skin. But my remark apparently bothered Gene a lot, leading him to request a meeting with me.
On the day of the meeting, I had an interview scheduled with Ray Sons of the Chicago Sun-Times. As Gene and his hurt feelings waited in the reception area of my office, I finished up my conversation with the reporter. In reply to a question about Stick, I said, “When somebody asks me a question, I answer as honestly as I can. Do I have to sit here and tell you I’m happy with everything? That’s bullshit. If Gene Michael can’t understand that, Gene Michael should get fired.”
With gasoline thrown on the flames, my secretary let Gene know I was ready to see him.
He told me he was caught off guard by my initial comments, which he regarded as a threat.
I looked Stick in the eye and laid my cards on the table.
“Gene, I get a sense you don’t want to manage,” I said. “It’s like you’re not even watching the game in the dugout. You stand there and make little notes in notebooks, but I don’t see you running the game like an aggressive baseball guy should. I see you acting more like a general manager. If you don’t want to manage, I’ll buy out the rest of your contract. I don’t want you to be unhappy, but I do want to see you applying yourself to managing this team.”
Gene assured me he still wanted to manage. The notes, he said, were to remind him of certain players’ tendencies. Having taken over the team in the middle of the previous season, he said he had spent a lot of time evaluating and observing. Now he was ready to manage.
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of making another managerial change, so I gave Stick an opportunity to stay on.
* * *
I had to look in the mirror, too. As president and general
manager, I was as responsible for the team’s struggles as anyone. And I needed help.
I hired longtime Phillies scout Hugh Alexander as my special adviser. Hughie was smart, hard-working, and above all, loyal. I looked forward to hearing his thoughts on the direction of the team. It also wouldn’t hurt to have him around in case I ever had to fend off a revolution. The Tribune Company gave me public assurances that my job was safe, but you can never be sure where you stand when your fate is in the hands of men in starched suits, especially ones who don’t know a helluva lot about baseball.
Speaking of starched suits, Jim Dowdle, the Tribune’s media guy, asked me during the off-season whether I had a problem with the company adding Jim Frey to the Cubs’ radio broadcast team. When I fired him as manager, Jimmy still had 18 months left on his contract. I figured the company was just trying to get its money’s worth from Jimmy.
I told Dowdle to go ahead and make the hire. I added that I thought Jimmy spouted just the right amount of bullshit to be a good broadcaster. It seemed harmless enough to let him call the games on WGN Radio.
Only later did I view his hiring in a different light.
I didn’t worry about Jimmy trying to exact any revenge on me over the airwaves. The only opinion of me that mattered was that of the Tribune Company. And if you went by what was said in the newspaper, they still thought highly of me. Tribune chairman Stan Cook and executive vice president John Madigan both said they had faith in my ability to get us back on a winning track.
I had a pretty good idea of what was wrong. I just needed time to fix it.
* * *
In my first five years with the Cubs, I tried to build the team through the draft, strategic trades, and the re-signing of players I believed would be long-term contributors to the team.
The latter strategy backfired on me in a big way.
After the 1984 season, I gave multiyear deals to Rick Sutcliffe, Steve Trout, and Dennis Eckersley, the starting pitchers who most contributed to our division title. In 1984, Sutcliffe went 16–1 for us after coming over from the Indians. In 1986, Sutcliffe, Eckersley, and Trout won 16 games combined while posting some of the worst ERAs in the league. That, more than anything, explained our struggles.
I could have tried to bolster the rotation through a trade, but that likely would have cost us a top prospect like Mark Grace or Rafael Palmeiro. We weren’t close enough to being competitive to mortgage our future like that. And our minor league kids were still a year or two away from making an impact in the majors.
In the current climate of limited free agent movement, signing a big name didn’t seem to be in the cards, either.
But that’s what ended up happening when the best player on the market came to us and begged to be signed.
* * *
Andre Dawson had established himself as one of the best outfielders in the game during his 11 seasons in Montreal. But his knees and relationship with the Expos had both deteriorated. He didn’t want to play anymore for general manager Murray Cook or on the hard turf at Olympic Stadium. He publicly chose Wrigley Field as his preferred destination because he had always hit well there and liked the idea of playing on a grass field.
Every GM knew Andre’s agent, Dick Moss, had been an attorney for the players union before becoming an agent. I knew him even better, because he represented some current Cubs. Dick was smart and knew how to exploit a situation to benefit his clients. Dick and his union pals strongly believed teams were colluding to prevent free agents from signing high-dollar contracts. By making it known the Expos weren’t willing to give Andre much of a raise, Dick was trying to entice us into bidding.
I defused speculation that we would make an offer to Andre by citing the financial burden of already having several players with multi-year deals on our payroll. I also pointed to the large number of young outfielders on our 40-man roster. When pressed again on the possibility of signing Andre, I laid it out in even simpler terms: “Can one guy, even with the skills of an Andre Dawson, turn us around and mean 90 or 95 wins instead of 70? I don’t think so.”
But a simple “no” never deterred Dick Moss. I flat-out told him on the phone that we didn’t have the money to sign Andre. Dick ran to the papers and accused Peter Ueberroth of using his clout as commissioner to prevent the signing. That statement bugged the hell out of me. I publicly stated that Andre would be better off hiring a new agent.
Dick still didn’t go away. He and Andre showed up unannounced at our spring training complex in Mesa to talk further. If they had called ahead, they would have learned I was at an owners meeting in Palm Springs, California. But as Andre himself said later, the point of the visit wasn’t necessarily to meet with me. It was to get the media to spread the word that Andre Dawson was adamant about playing for the Cubs.
Angels owner Gene Autry flew me back to Arizona on his private plane, and that’s when I encountered the circus Dick had created.
I again called Dick out in the press. “I find it rather strange that we come to spring training [where an agent] wants to put on a dog-and-pony show at my expense in my complex using my press,” I said.
Dick had accomplished his goal, however. At this point, I had no choice but to take the meeting. After two losing seasons, the Chicago media was warming up to the idea of having a player of Andre’s caliber in a Cubs uniform.
At the meeting, Dick and Andre presented me with a blank contract with their signatures already on it. All I had to do, they told me, was fill in the numbers and sign it myself.
Dick Moss had outdone himself.
With Andre willing to take any amount of money to play for us, I was backed into a corner. If I refused to put in a bid, the union would bitch and moan about collusion.
The Expos’ final offer to Andre was $2 million over two years. I took a day and played around with some numbers before presenting him with a one-year deal for $500,000 plus performance bonuses.
If he had turned it down, I would have torn up the contract and hoped Dick finally took a hike. But he accepted. Suddenly and unexpectedly, we had one of the best outfielders in the game on our roster.
It remained to be seen how many games we’d win with Andre on the team.
* * *
It pleased the Tribune Company that we had Dawson at a cut-rate price for the upcoming season. Our $15 million payroll the season before, the third-highest in the league, was less pleasing.
The high price of losing led to new marching orders. The Tribune Company wanted me to cut spending.
Before the start of the 1987 season, I started dumping salary. First, I traded third baseman Ron Cey to the Oakland A’s for infielder Luis Quinones. A couple of months later, Eckersley joined him in California, where he transitioned to the bullpen and became a dominant closer and Hall of Famer.
It didn’t surprise me that Eck did so well out of the bullpen. But it hurt me, because I had approached him about making the switch for us. Lee Smith was our closer, but I saw Eck as a guy who could pitch multiple innings late in a game. He had precise command and he had heart, two of the most important qualities of a good reliever.
Eck protested the idea, believing he still had productive years left as a starter. Tony La Russa obviously felt the same as I did. He talked Eck into closing games, and it worked out well for the A’s. Eck was almost unhittable for a while and helped Oakland win a World Series in 1989. In 1992, he won the AL Cy Young and MVP awards.
Steve Trout was another guy I knew I had to deal away. The five-year contract he got after winning 13 games in 1984 had turned into a bad investment. He didn’t reach double-digit wins in either ’85 or ’86.
With Trout on the disabled list at the start of the ’87 season, I questioned whether I could even find a team interested in him. Fortunately, my manager, without even knowing it, helped facilitate a deal.
It was common knowledge that George Steinbrenner liked to h
ave spies, or at least guys he liked and trusted, in as many major league clubhouses as possible. The Yankees were in desperate need of a fifth starting pitcher in 1987, and I believe Gene Michael kept him apprised of Trout’s availability and performance.
Stick provided the scouting report, and Trout took care of the rest. It had been two years since he threw a complete-game shutout, but in back-to-back starts against the Padres and the Dodgers before the All-Star break, he pitched two in a row. Suddenly he looked like a world-beater. Seeing an opportunity to sell him high, I immediately got on the phone with the Yankees.
I made the trade in the middle of a game without Stick’s knowledge. Afterward, Stick told reporters he was disappointed I hadn’t consulted him. “Gene doesn’t consult me when he wants to bunt,” I shot back. “Why should I consult him about a trade?”
I might have added that Steinbrenner just as easily could have told him about the trade.
It was a helluva deal for the Tribune Company, one that cut about $5 million from the payroll.
I knew Trout wouldn’t last a day in New York. He was a good kid but kind of an airhead. That’s not an auspicious combination when pitching in the pressure cooker of the Bronx. In return for Trout, we got Bob Tewskbury and two minor league pitchers. We thought Tewksbury had potential, but what we most liked about him was he came cheap.
I heard Trout’s first couple of pitches in New York went to the backstop. He didn’t win a game for the Yankees. And Tewksbury didn’t win a game for us. Trout got traded by the Yankees after the season. Tewksbury lasted a little longer with the Cubs before signing with the Cardinals as a free agent.
* * *
Some veterans got traded. Others got benched. Now that we were in full rebuilding mode, it was time to give the young players in our organization a chance to show what they had.
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.