The Day That Baseball Died

When I came Over Here in the Great Wetback Episode of 1986, I knew nothing about baseball, other than its mechanics — we’d played rounders in grade school occasionally, but of course it was very much looked down upon when compared to the King of Ballgames (that would be cricket, to you colonial peasants).

So I never really showed any interest in going to the ballgames to watch the Texas Rangers play during my first few months living in Texas, right after I arrived.  It didn’t help that back then the Rangers’ stadium was a dank, miserable piece of steel and concrete, devoid of any character or atmosphere.

But all that changed when I moved to Chicago.  As the Great Big Research Company’s headquarters (GBRC) was located in the northwest suburb of Willowbrook, it was naturally a breeding ground for Chicago Cubs fans — the White Sox being of the southern suburbs (ergo, very infra dig) and whose home field of Comiskey Park was of the Texas Rangers type:  horrible.  Compared to the cozy and intimate confines of Wrigley Field, with its ivy-covered walls lining the infield, there was no comparison.

My then-boss was a keen baseball fan, and as our department was allocated a certain number of season tickets (for “client entertainment”, yanno), he encouraged me to use one of the tickets to go to Cubs games.  I turned the offer down at first, and then he decided to take me to a game.  There, he proceeded to school me in the game of baseball, with all its intricacies and subtleties.  Once I saw that, I became a rabid baseball fan (helped of course by the massive database of statistics available, which was like catnip to this one-time statistician), and I started to go to every one of their home games, and to a few of their away games, when coincidental to a client business trip to places like St. Louis.

The only thing that bothered me was that the Cubs were perennial losers.  I mean, you can only watch so many losing games before getting disenchanted.  However, there were times that the Cubs didn’t lose, and it didn’t take much for me to learn that most of the times they won was because of their star pitcher, Greg Maddux.  So I became a student of pitching, because I was deeply curious as to how this skinny guy could deliver so many strikes, no-hitters and wins when he didn’t have a rocket fastball like other pitchers.  Our season tickets weren’t behind home plate but over the Cubs dugout in right field, so I couldn’t see what Maddux was doing that made him so unplayable.  To learn more, therefore, I watched the Cubs games on WGN-TV, and with the aid of more seasoned baseball fans (like my boss), I saw how “Mad Dog” did it, and I became a rabid Greg Maddux fan.  I believe that in one season (I forget which) I saw every single game he played, either live at Wrigley Field or on TV when playing away.

What irritated me, though, was that the Cubs organization seemed to have little interest in building a team — specifically, spending money on bulking up the pitching staff — around him so that they could go to the playoffs, at least.  It’s not like they didn’t have any good players, anything but:  first baseman Mark Grace, shortstop Ryne Sandberg and outfielder Andre Dawson were outstanding.  But it doesn’t matter how good the other players are if your pitchers are giving up five or six runs a game, compared to Maddux’s one (or often zero).

What it looked like to me was that the Tribune Corporation (who back then owned the Cubs) were treating the team like a marketing exercise more than a sports franchise.  I mean, Wrigley Field was always sold out for home games, even during the work week, and merchandise sales were as high as any MLB team except the New York Yankees, and they had TV coverage locked up with WGN-TV — which had national coverage through cable for out-of-towners;  so (I asked myself) what was the incentive to spend money when they were pretty much maxxing out revenue already?  It was a pretty cynical attitude — and nobody has ever been able to convince me that it wasn’t the Tribune’s policy, by the way — but what the hell:  Chicago is a lovely place in summer, Wrigley Field lovelier still, and the Cubs got me out of the office at least several times a month.  (I should point out that should anyone wonder why the GBRC was so lenient in this regard was because I worked longer hours than anyone else in the department, I had built excellent relationships with my clients, and I had come up with a couple of data analysis programs which were not only efficient but revenue generators.  Funny how that works.)

Then it all went to shit.

Maddux’s contract with the Cubs came to an end, and their offer for a new contract was absolutely pitiful for a Cy Young award winner with one of the best pitching records in Major League Baseball.  It’s not like the Tribune Corporation had financial difficulties, so it seemed pretty obvious that they cared more about the bottom line than winning — not that this was a new thought, as seen above — and their absolute refusal to pay Maddux what he was worth ended up with him going to the Atlanta Braves, who knew what they were getting:  a World Series championship and an endless stream of divisional titles over the next decade or so of Maddux’s tenure.  They, at least, had a decent pitching staff, unlike the Cubs ever did.

When Maddux left the Cubs for Atlanta, therefore, was the day that baseball died for me.  I stopped watching the Cubs, and baseball altogether, and threw away my treasured Cubs T-shirt.  When he came back to the Cubs for his “farewell” tour, I watched occasionally, but he was in his late thirties by then, and while still capable of flashes of his earlier brilliance, he was nowhere close to the pitcher he’d been.  No fun at all, even though I still believe he was the greatest pitcher ever to play baseball.

For those Readers of short memories or to my Furrin Readers who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, here’s a decent summary of Greg Maddux.

Also, it should be remembered that the Cubs did eventually win the World Series (after a drought of 108 years);  but it was in 2016, eight years after the Tribune Corporation had sold them, and fifteen years after I’d left Chicago for Texas.