Dusty Baker era: worst time in history to be a Cubs fan?

[Guest Felonies!]

2003: Five outs away from the National League pennant, after parlaying a moderately successful 88-win season with a team of journeyman position players into a division title and NLDS win over Atlanta, the Cubs blow a 3 games to 1 lead in the NLCS to Florida in spectacular fashion when an interference non-call and an Alex Gonzalez error spark a humiliating 8-run rally. The Marlins, featuring future cubs Juan Pierre, Derrek Lee, and Todd Hollandsworth, go on to beat the Yanks in 6, giving a team that's only been around since '93 their second World Series. Oh and Sammy Sosa corked his bat in May and became a punchline.

 

2004: The Cubs contend for a wild card spot all year, and Nomar Garciaparra falls in our lap, but when the sinister Steve Stone orchestrates a Cubs collapse, as announcers have been known to do throughout baseball history, things go horribly wrong. In the final days of September, the Cubs are primed to take the wild card, but LaTroy Hawkins blows multiple games against the out-of-contention Mets and Reds, coming one strike away from a save but still losing the games. The Cubs falter as Houston takes the wild card, Sammy Sosa quits on the team in game No. 162, and though the Cubs improve from 88 wins to 89, as the Chicago Tribune fails to let anyone forget, the Cubs fall from first place to third, which is far more important. Meanwhile in October, North Siders watch the teams that finished ahead of the Cubs, St. Louis and Houston, duke it out in the NLCS, with the rival Cardinals winning the pennant that we were predicted to win. Meanwhile, Boston, The Other Cursed Team, pretty much puts on the most exciting LCS in history and beats New York in 7. It's a small consolation that the Red Sox beat the shit out of the Cardinals in the World Series, but at the same, it stings that they got there first.

 

Offseason: Carlos Beltran is on the market, but Jim Hendry's newspaper overlords won't let him sign Carlos until Sammy Sosa's contract is off the books, which was a foregone conclusion coming into this. By February, Sosa+$ is traded for another second baseman, the lead guitarist from Talking Heads (to hear it from Ron Santo), and a box of donuts. Moises Alou is replaced by Jason Dubois, Sosa by Jeromy Burnitz, and Chip & Stoney are replaced as well.

 

2005: In the best possible metaphor for stumbling right out of the gate, Nomar Garciaparra trips on the way to first base and tears his groin. Mark Prior takes a comebacker off the arm and is never the same again. Dusty Baker enables more whining and finger-pointing. Cubs finish in fifth this time. Meanwhile in October, those Red Sox that we all kinda regarded as kindred spirits get swept by the crosstown White Sox, who then go on to beat Los Angeles too. North Siders watch the teams that finished ahead of the Cubs, St. Louis and Houston, duke it out in the NLCS again. This time it's the Astros that go to the World Series, who are promptly swept by the White Sox in one lemon of a World Series. No consolations this time, as now The Other Chicago Team got there first as well, and their fans, who ostensibly lived underground in concrete bunkers while the White Sox finished with miserable, pitiful, unacceptable 85-win seasons, won't let you forget it.

 

Offseason: Jim Hendry decides that we need more "athletes" on the Cubs in a sport that doesn't really reward athleticism as much as you'd expect a sport to. Just like the White Sox did (but really didn't,) the 2006 Cubs will feature team speed. (Earl Weaver: "TEAM SPEED?") Three pitchers are traded for a year of Juan Pierre. Jacque Jones is paid $5 million/yr for three years. Rafael Furcal is not signed as expected because Hendry asked that he not rack up any more DUIs while he's in town.

 

2006: Furcal demonstrates that he's unsafe at high speeds even when he's sober, as he runs into Derrek Lee and breaks our best hitter's wrist. Mark Prior and Kerry Wood never really show up all year, leading us to a rotation that features such luminaries as Les Walrond. Juan Pierre underachieves for the first half of the year, proving that maybe Dusty was on to something with the weather/skin color/performance thing. (He was wearing this dopey head-sleeve thing when it was like 55 out. Come on.) Jacque Jones is pretty much a huge disaster, as he does nothing to justify his contract and gets in fights with fans. The season, and probably this whole era, reaches its nadir in a crosstown game in which A.J. Polishname hits a game-winning homer at Wrigley against Ryan Dempster, which leads the fans to throw trash on the field. In early July, Hendry announces that Dusty and his coaches will be "evaluated," leading everyone in the media and Dusty himself to believe that he's gone. Nobody goes. The Cubs finish with 66 wins, and Dusty Baker is finally out. Meanwhile in October, the Cardinals, with five fewer wins than 2003's Eric Karros/Damian Miller/Mark Grudzielanek lineup, wins a World Series against the Tigers, who had 119 losses in the aforementioned 2003 season.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Nah. The worst time was 1948-64 or so. The Cubs had their infamous "college of coaches" idea in '61, and in '62 lost more games than the expansion Houston Colt .45s.

[Guest Felonies!]

College Of Coaches was bad, but I think the Baker/Hendry/McPhail era has done the most to damage the health of the organization and depress the fans. Coming out of it, it feels like there's no end in sight. The farm is bare. There's nothing to trade. We have no rotation, bullpen, or bench, and what talent we do have is seriously injured or about to jump through a loophole into free agency.

 

2007 is already a wash, I fear. Piniella will huff and puff and throw things to no avail as a bunch of disappointing big-ticket FAs and Jim Hendry's "timely hitters" underachieve because "it's hard to play day baseball" or "the fans are mean," while the fucking Cardinals find some wheelbarrows of horseshit to win 15 games and hit .290 and the Astros not-so-improbably win every game in September. It'll be years before there's anything to look forward to, as far as I can tell.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

As opposed to the successes that followed the college of coaches?

 

This era sucks but it hasn't done long term damage. Look at the attendance. The Cubs have topped three million the last three seasons. In 1962, they drew 609,802 fans the entire SEASON (7528 a game). The Cubs' AAA affiliate does better than that.

[Guest Felonies!]

Maybe I'm just overreacting because I wasn't alive at the time. Call it the Sportscenter Fallacy?

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Maybe I'm just overreacting because I wasn't alive at the time. Call it the Sportscenter Fallacy?

It's all about perspective.

[Guest Felonies!]

You do have to admit watching the Marlins, Red Sox, White Sox, and Cardinals all win the World Series does suck. Oh, and the Astros were in there too.

[Brett Favre 0]

Speaking of that, 7 champs in 7 years. Even the NFL is stunned.

[snuffbox 0]

Milwaukee will probably get back to the World Series before the Cubbies do.

[Guest Smues]

What was the college of coaches?

[Guest Felonies!]

What was the college of coaches?

A managing rotation.

[vivalaultra 0]

The college of coaches was, literally, a bunch of different guys working together to act as manager. I believe there were four or five guys playing the part, with the FO going by the phrase "Four heads are better than one." However, the equally cliched phrase "Too man cheifs and not enough Indians" was more accurate, as all the players were confused as to which coach was in charge during which given game and who was running what. In 1961, the Cubs finished 64-90 under the COC, which was an improvement over the previous season, but the next year, they finished 59-103. The next year, Bob Kennedy, one of the coaches in the college became the manager and lead the Cubbies to an 82-80 finish, their first winning season since 1946, I believe. However, they soon sank back to the bottom of the league and have been hovering thereabouts ever since.

 

That's what I know of the college of coaches. I leave it to Alan Q. or a more well-versed Cubs' fan to round out the details and include some funny anecdotes.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Essentially the Cubs wanted to streamline their organization. Instead os steady managers at each level, they would rotate coaches so that their players would receive consistant instruction coming up through the system. As a coaching system, it certainly had its merits. The problem came when it came time to choose a manager. They rotated several managers in the 1961/62 season. It continued for a few years until they hired Leo Durocher, who put a stop to the carosel.

 

There's an excellent article about it in the 2006 issue of The National Pasttime. It was the Cubs of this era who gave Buck O'Neil a job coaching in the Majors.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Worked so well, the Phillies decided to dust it off for the upcoming season, bringing in Art Howe, Jimy Williams and Davey Lopes to help out Charlie Manuel.

[cabbageboy 0]

I'm not sure attendance is the exact way to measure the Cubs. Let's face it, a lot of people go to Wrigley for the sake of going to Wrigley. Hell, if I went to Chicago from April-September I'd likely try to go to a Cubs game.

 

Their attendance may have sucked in those early 60s years, but I don't know if simply going to the Cubs game at Wrigley was quite the same historic experience.

 

The Cubs have done more in the past 3 years to kill their fanbase than any team I can think of. From the horrid collapse against the Marlins to Sosa's corked bat, to Sosa subsequently walking out on the team, to the last month collapse in 2004 and the flat out embarrassing last 2 seasons. Oh and I still hate them for firing Steve Stone and Chip Caray.

 

The Cubs made the huge mistake of tantalizing the fans with the prospect of winning big....and then blowing it in catastrophic, historic fashion. I can vouch they have pretty much lost me as a fan, though I'm from an area that has no MLB team so I mostly just watched the Cubs on WGN or the Braves on TBS. So I'm by definition more casual as a fan. How do die hard Cubs fans in Chicago feel?