by Lou Piniella
The Fukodome signing was our only major outside off-season addition. Internally, however, we made a decision that proved to be far more meaningful in 2008, and that was to move Ryan Dempster, who’d done a nice job as my closer in 2007, into the starting rotation. Dempster was the ultimate team player. He’d been a starter his whole career until 2004, when the Cubs moved him into the bullpen and then asked him to be their closer because they essentially had nobody else with his experience and know-how.
To replace Dempster as closer we embarked on a bold but calculated experiment with Kerry Wood. Signed by the Cubs out of Grand Prairie High School in Texas as the fourth overall selection in the 1995 draft, Kerry burst into the majors in spectacular fashion, tying the major-league record of his fellow Texan Roger Clemens with 20 strikeouts in his fifth career start, in May of ’98. He went on to win National League Rookie of the Year honors, but soon afterward he blew out his elbow and missed the whole ’99 season with Tommy John surgery. He was able to come back from the elbow surgery with three stellar seasons from 2001 to 2003, including leading the league in strikeouts in ’03, and was on his way to establishing himself as one of the all-time great Cubs pitchers when he started experiencing shoulder issues.
When I got there in 2007, Kerry was recovering from a torn rotator cuff. Hendry and I agreed that, with his durability a question, Kerry might be better suited for the bullpen. But then he encountered more elbow pain in spring training and we had to put him on the 60-day disabled list. When he finally did come back, in August, he pitched exceedingly well as Dempster’s setup man—enough so that Hendry and I felt, with his velocity and plus breaking ball, he could possibly be a dominant closer for us. Kerry was such a popular player in Chicago—just a super guy—that I took some heat from the media and the fans when we activated him from the DL on August 3, and I brought Bob Howry, our other setup reliever, into the game that day instead of him. Howry actually got a standing ovation from the Wrigley fans, who just assumed it was Kerry coming in from the bullpen. I later explained I wanted Kerry to “have a softer landing” from his long stint on the DL, delaying his return until two days later when we were down by four runs against the Mets.
Our other significant internal move for 2008 was to turn the catching over to the rookie Geovany Soto. Soto was an excellent “catch and throw” guy who knew how to call a game and had hit .380 down the stretch in ’07 as a September call-up.
Looking over the team in 2008 spring training, I felt we had a good nucleus of professionals, none more so than Derrek Lee, my first baseman, who finished his career with a lifetime .281 average and 331 homers. What a wonderful young man. Came to the park prepared to play every day and cared only about winning. I just had a good feeling about 2008. Managing at Wrigley Field is special—it’s like playing in the British Open. You never know what the weather is going to bring, with the wind blowing off nearby Lake Michigan. When the wind is blowing out, you can play long ball and at 1:00 p.m. have a nice, sunny, warm day, only to end up cool and rainy with the wind blowing in at the end of the day, forcing you to do more hit-and-running and stealing. You always had to be prepared to play two different games in one day. It’s such a wonderful carnival-like environment, with the fans right on top of you. I used to get tears in my eyes when they’d play the Cubs’ fight song, “Go, Cubs, Go.” I’m sure the whole environment is very similar to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
My message to the team in spring training was, “We have unfinished business. Let’s get after it.”
Initially, we were hoping Fukodome could take over in center field for the departed Jacque Jones, but after a couple of weeks of watching him out there in spring training, I could see he clearly wasn’t comfortable. With all the other adjustments he was trying to make, I moved him to his more natural position in right field and turned center over to Felix Pie, who’d shown defensive skill there in his rookie ’07 season, but who really struggled with the bat.
After losing three of our first four games, we started to take off, finishing April 17–10 and tied for first place with the Cardinals. We jockeyed back and forth with the Cardinals for a week and then on May 9 began a stretch of 9 wins in 11 games to go into first place for good. About the only concern I had was Pie’s inability to get on base often enough. So on May 14 Hendry resolved the problem by signing Jim Edmonds, who had been released by the Padres five days earlier. I had never really liked Edmonds. I thought he made a lot of catches in center field look more difficult than they were—which earned him a lot of play on the ESPN highlight tapes. Little did I know that, in my team’s uniform, I would have a whole different opinion of him. Edmonds, like Derrek Lee, was a consummate professional. At thirty-eight, he had his best days behind him, but he could still play the heck out of center field. He also provided us another left-handed bat, which we needed. Edmonds came over to us with a bit of a chip on his shoulder after being released by the last-place Padres, and finished the season with 19 homers and 49 RBI in 85 games.
Hendry made one other meaningful midseason acquisition, trading for right-hander Rich Harden from the A’s for a reserve outfielder, Matt Murton, and three prospects. Harden had once been a young phenom for the A’s but missed significant time from 2005 to 2007 with arm issues. He was enjoying an excellent comeback season with the A’s when we made the deal for him, and down the stretch for us he was about my most effective starter (5–1, 1.77 ERA, 89 strikeouts in 71 innings). I suppose I should mention here that one of the prospects we gave up in the Harden deal was a third baseman named Josh Donaldson who, at the time, was hitting .217 for our Class A Peoria team. There was no way to foresee that, seven years later, after the A’s also traded him, Donaldson would become the American League Most Valuable Player for the Blue Jays.
On Saturday July 12, two days before ’08 All-Star Break, I was feeling really good about the way the season was going—we’d been in first place since April 20 and had stretched our lead to 5½ games over the Cardinals—when Peter Chase, the Cubs’ media relations director, informed me that my closest buddy in baseball, Bobby Murcer, had passed away from a brain tumor he’d been battling for nineteen months. He was only sixty-two. Poor Bobby had put up a tremendous fight and had even made what we thought was a miraculous recovery when, after extensive treatment at the M. D. Anderson Center in Houston, he’d returned to the Yankees’ YES Network broadcast booth in May. A month later, however, the cancer had come back and we talked on the phone about life, fate, and God. Bobby said he’d made his peace with the Lord and was prepared for whatever He intended for him. He said that if the Lord kept him around, great; otherwise, he’d be going up to see Him. It was sad, but it was also comforting for me, knowing Bobby was at peace. Still, even though I knew the gravity of Bobby’s situation, I wasn’t prepared for it to happen so fast.
So many thoughts and memories began rushing through my head: That last night Bobby and I had shared with Thurman in Chicago; the home run Bobby hit at Yankee Stadium the night after we got back from Thurman’s funeral; our running “where’s my bunter?” joke; the image of him sitting in his rocking chair in front of his locker—the one Sparky Lyle cut the legs off—just gazing around the clubhouse with that impish smile on his face. I thought back nine years earlier, to that September morning in 1999 when we all had gathered in Hertford, North Carolina, to bury Catfish, who’d fought a similar courageous battle with an equally dreaded affliction—ALS. Little did we know that two years later Anita’s dad would die of the same devastating disease. My three best friends with the Yankees, Thurman, Catfish, and now Bobby, all gone, way before their time. I knew I would no longer have that feeling of being forever young.
We finished the 2008 season 97–64, the most wins in the National League, 7½ games in front of the Brewers. We led the league in runs, OPS, and walks, while Rothschild’s pitchers were third in ERA and WHIP and led the league in strikeouts. Soto hit .285 with 23 homers and 86 RBI and was named NL Rookie of the Year. Five of my regulars—Lee, Ramirez, DeRosa
, Soriano, and Sosa—hit 20 or more homers. Dempster, in his return to the rotation, emerged as the ace of the staff (17–6, 2.96 ERA). Ted Lilly was 17–9, Zambrano, 14–6, and Wood saved 34 games with 84 strikeouts in 66⅓ innings in his first season as a closer. About the only disappointment was Fukodome, who was hitting .280 going into the All-Star Break and went into a major fade the second half, ending up at .257 with 10 homers, with only three after July 13. Overall, however, it was one of the best teams I ever managed, which is why a second straight losing sweep in the NL Division Series—this one to Joe Torre’s Dodgers—remains one of the biggest disappointments of my entire career.
Before the series, I told my team, “Just play like we did all season and good things will happen,” and I fully expected they would. But in the first game, Dempster uncharacteristically struggled with his command and I had to get him out of there in the fifth inning after he’d walked seven. By that time, we were down 4–2 and were never able to overcome that. Game 2 was just a blowout, 10–3, starting with the Dodgers scoring five runs in the second on Zambrano. Because he had pitched so well for us the last three months, I gave Harden the game 3 start, passing up Lilly, and while this one went much better, the two-run double by James Loney off Harden in the first inning proved to be all the runs the Dodgers needed to complete the sweep. Just like the year before against Arizona, our hitters almost completely shut down, scoring only six runs in the three games. I don’t have an explanation for it except maybe we played tight, but I didn’t sense that. It was truly baffling to me. We didn’t see a single left-handed pitcher in the entire series. I was experienced in the postseason, used to competing and winning, and that damn Torre beat me again. He probably sold that same “underdogs” theme to the Dodgers before the series.
There’s not a whole lot you can do when your best pitchers have back-to-back bad days and your hitters don’t hit. My one other big disappointment is that I didn’t get Lilly a start. Lilly was such a competitor—remember, we’d paid $40 million to sign him in 2007—and when Soriano struck out for the final out of the game, Lilly let his anger and frustration be known, taking a bat to the plumbing on the runway up to the clubhouse. After a few swings, he broke one of the pipes and water came cascading down the runway as we were trying to make our way back to the clubhouse. Far be it for me to say anything to him!
“Lilly was one of our favorite guys on the team,” said DeRosa. “Everybody loved him for his competitiveness and his dry humor. One of the funniest incidents in my two years with the Cubs was early in the ’08 season. We were playing the Pirates in Pittsburgh, leading seven to nothing in the fourth inning, when Lilly suddenly started losing it. He was really getting knocked around, so much so that Lou finally had to come get him. But as Lou walked to the mound, he didn’t realize his fly was open. I’m watching from second base and I’m cracking up. When he got to the mound, Lilly pointed to Lou’s fly and said, ‘What are you doing out here? Selling hot dogs?’ Lou looked down and tried to stop from smiling. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m here to take you out because you’re getting your ass kicked!’”
After the season, it was pointed out to me I was only the second manager in history, along with the Hall of Famer Dick Williams, to win 90 or more games with four different teams, and I’d also been the first Cubs manager to have back-to-back first-place finishes since Frank Chance (of “Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance” Cubs lore) way back in 1907–08. It gave me some measure of satisfaction having achieved something that hadn’t happened in one hundred years—as did the Baseball Writers Association voting me my third Manager of the Year award. But I never went into professional baseball for awards or records. All that ever mattered to me was winning. As I took my seat on the plane next to Hendry for the long flight back to Chicago, I could hear Mr. Steinbrenner’s admonishment ringing in my ears: “Ninety-seven wins. Not good enough.”
CHAPTER 15
Alex Heartbreak, Bradley Madness, and a Windy City Farewell
I was still feeling the sting over the rude and abrupt ending of the 97-win 2008 season when Jim Hendry called me in early December with more bad news: the Tribune Co. under Sam Zell was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which meant we were probably going to have to start trimming payroll.
I turned sixty-five in August 2008 and I was thinking how, when Sam Zell sold the Cubs, I would be working for the fifth different owner in seven years. The lure of the Cubs job had been to do what no manager had done in one hundred years—win a World Series—and the Cubs’ ownership at the time, the Tribune Co., had made a commitment to spend whatever it took to try and accomplish that. I could see now we were already starting to take a step backward in that direction. When I took the Cubs job, I made it clear I wasn’t going to be a “lifer,” that there was just as much urgency on my part. I always felt—foolishly, I guess—that I could win under any circumstances. But given all this new uncertainty, I began to seriously wonder if that was going to be possible, and I could see my career soon coming to a close.
We had already decided we were not going to be able to afford the two years and $20 million our closer, Kerry Wood, would likely get in the free-agent market. Instead, Jim had traded a prospect to the Marlins for their closer, Kevin Gregg, who was not nearly as dominant as Kerry but who would be making only $4.2 million in 2009. In addition, Hendry told me, he was going to have to unload at least one other contract if he were to have any financial flexibility to get us a much-needed left-handed-hitting outfielder. I was skiing in Colorado Springs on New Year’s Eve when Jim called to tell me he had traded Mark DeRosa to the Indians for three low-level prospects who would not see the lights of the major leagues for at least three years. (As it turned out, seven years later, one of those prospects, the right-hander Chris Archer, became an All-Star starting pitcher, though not with the Cubs but Tampa Bay.) A week later, in another money dump, Jim traded Jason Marquis—who’d won 23 games for me as my number four starter over the previous two seasons—to Colorado. Marquis was owed $9.8 million in the final year of his contract.
Needless to say, I especially hated to see DeRosa go, but it would not be for another eight months that his essential replacement would prove to us what an absolute catastrophe the exchange had been in terms of clubhouse chemistry.
At the 2008 winter meetings in Las Vegas, Jim had talks with numerous clubs and even more player agents in an effort to find us a left-handed-hitting outfielder. In addition, he was working on a big deal with the Padres to get us Jake Peavy, the 2007 National League Cy Young winner, when Zell called and told him no more payroll. So we crapped out in Vegas. After the New Year, we had narrowed down our outfielder search to Adam Dunn, who was much better suited for first base or designated hitter, and Milton Bradley, the thirty-one-year-old switch-hitting right fielder who’d already been with six different organizations and had left most of them under less-than-amicable circumstances. We both agreed signing Dunn would create a very untenable defensive situation in our outfield, which was already reshuffled with the retirement of Jim Edmonds, and the necessity of moving Fukodome from right to center. So with the money saved from the DeRosa and Marquis trades, Hendry signed Bradley for three years and $30 million. Before he came to Texas in 2008, Bradley had developed a reputation for being a problem in the clubhouse after numerous verbal clashes with the media, fans, and teammates on his five previous teams. There was also a stamina issue, in that his 126 games with Texas in ’08 were the most he’d played in four years. At the same time, if he stayed healthy, Bradley was a talented guy who got on base a lot, and who I could hit almost anywhere in the lineup.
“I knew it was a gamble,” Hendry said. “Half of our scouts were against it. Bradley had had all sorts of problems in the past with his temper, but with Texas in 2008, he’d had his best season (.321, 22 HR, 77 RBI, a league-leading .436 OBP, and .999 OPS), and made the All-Star team. Putting his other problems aside—which hadn’t appeared to manifest themselves in his one year in Texas—he was the perfect fit for
us.”
After meeting Bradley for the first time at the Cubs Convention shortly after we signed him, I was inclined to agree. He was very friendly and seemed genuinely excited to be a Cub. I was especially impressed with his knowledge of Cubs history.
Despite the newly imposed payroll constraints that prevented us from making the Peavy deal, I felt that the team we gathered in Mesa in the spring of ’09 was, on paper, potentially as good or better than the ’08 team. The lineup, with the exception of Bradley, was the same, with everyone still in their prime. In Gregg and Carlos Marmol, the back end of the bullpen was covered with two guys who could each close, and I looked forward to having a full season of Rich Harden in the starting rotation.
The day before camp was to open, I was in my hotel room in Scottsdale watching an ESPN SportsCenter broadcast of a press conference Alex Rodriguez was holding at the Yankees’ spring training camp in Tampa. There had been reports about a book that was coming out about Alex and his alleged involvement with steroids, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it. Now, however, here he was in an interview with ESPN’s Peter Gammons, admitting that in his three years in Texas, 2001–2003, he had in fact been using performance-enhancing drugs. I sat there, watching at first in disbelief, then in utter consternation, and finally in anger, listening to Alex:
When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt I had the weight of all the world and I needed to perform and perform at a high level every day. Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was one of the greatest players of all time. I did take a banned substance, and for that I am very sorry and deeply regretful… . I couldn’t feel more sorry, because I have so much respect for this game and the people who follow us. And I have millions of fans out there who won’t ever look at me the same.
