Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Cubs fans, but I’m diagnosing manager Dusty Baker with a terminal affliction. Call it Bayloritis for its symptoms–abject resignation and the acceptance of one’s accursed fate. Former manager Don Baylor came to town a no-nonsense leader who’d guided the expansion Colorado Rockies to the playoffs and promised to do the same for the Cubs. A product of the vaunted Baltimore Orioles system, he was expected to instill the Cubs with discipline and an appreciation of fundamentals, but he left two and a half seasons later a beaten man.
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His friend Baker followed him, coming over from the San Francisco Giants, where he’d developed a reputation for managing overachievers and had just taken the Giants to the World Series. He, too, promised to end the old ways at Wrigley Field, and for one season his methods worked. Baker persuaded the Cubs and their fans to reject the legacy of lovable losers and expect nothing less than a championship. But with the Cubs five outs from the Series in 2003, Steve Bartman reimposed the curse and Alex Gonzalez cemented it on the field. The following year the Cubs put together an even better record but collapsed in the final week as only the Cubs could. For the past season and a half Baker has seemed as resigned to the Cubs’ fate, and his own, as his predecessor. The difference is that because the Cubs came so close–and because their hated crosstown rivals went all the way–Cubs fans can no longer innocently love a loser.
General manager Jim Hendry was given a contract extension in April, and Baker, in the last year of his contract, was in line to get one too. But Derrek Lee, the Cubs’ best hitter, went down with a broken wrist, and Baker’s new deal got put on hold. He argued time and again that there was little he could do with Lee and starting pitchers Kerry Wood and Mark Prior on the disabled list. (He harped on this even during a TV interview with Fox Sports in the middle of Saturday’s game at Wrigley.) Yet he could at least have tried to rally the Cubs, who went 19-40 after Lee’s injury, but there was little of the rhetoric that in 2003 drew the Cubs out of their culture of losing. And another thing: Baker wasn’t blameless in the loss of Wood and Prior. Baker rode “our two horses” hard and put them up wet in 2003. I wrote when that season was over that if they suffered from the riding he’d be responsible. They’ve never been the same.
I was wearing my 1917 Sox cap as I rode the Brown Line home after Saturday’s game–it’s the way this avowed fan of both teams shows his disgust with the Cubs. A guy sitting with his girlfriend asked who’d won. “Sox,” I said matter-of-factly. “What a surprise,” he responded. “Was it a bloodbath?”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images.
