“There were a lot of bad endings in Chicago,” former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillén once said. “I don’t know why.”
It still is true.
Players and managers come and go. The only constant is the turmoil surrounding their departures, as we’re seeing once again with Anthony Rizzo’s biting comments about the Cubs to WMVP-AM 1000 following his trade to the New York Yankees.
Bad breakups are common in sports, and even with media restrictions caused by the Zoom era, the participants often want to get in the last word. That could be why Cubs security swooped in on a handful of reporters who spoke to Rizzo on the field after his trade, yelling at them to “pack your stuff and leave” the ballpark.
The best way to control the narrative is to try to control media access.
Advantage, Rizzo.
Whether the Cubs were fair with their offers to the “Big 3? — Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javier Báez — is a question that may be answered when we see what they get this offseason. Players always believe they’re worth what they’ve asked for, and management can use analytics to rationalize any decision it makes not to spend that kind of money.
The difference here is that Cubs President Jed Hoyer traded three centerpieces in one 24-hour period, then went on to tell reporters he slept well knowing he made fair offers to all of his free-agents-to-be. Rizzo’s response — accusing Hoyer of “saying (he’s) fine when (he’s) not fine” — is the sports equivalent of Jennifer Lopez reuniting with Ben Affleck after her breakup with Alex Rodriguez.
No matter who is right or wrong, it will be interesting to see if Bryant and Báez respond in the same fashion as Rizzo, defending themselves against the perception their demands were too high or unreasonable.
When Rizzo said the Cubs want to have their “cake… and eat it too,” the implication was clear: The Ricketts family was OK with making money off star players but not with paying them what they deserve.
Hoyer pointed to Kyle Hendricks’ four-year, $55.5 million extension in 2019 as an indication the Cubs could work with players on a deal, but that’s apples and oranges compared with the “Big 3,” who played a much bigger role in the Cubs becoming a cash machine for the owners.
Bad endings are not ideal for the teams involved, but they’re great for fans who feel a need to vent after longtime favorites leave town or those who are on the side of ownership.
Guillén had his own stormy exit from Chicago in 2011, and it was a hailstorm by any standard. But even he didn’t burn all his bridges with his former employer the way Frank Thomas did upon his departure to the Oakland Athletics in 2006, when Thomas questioned the loyalty of Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
Thomas’ criticism of the Sox in an interview with the Daily Southtown preceded an attack on the franchise legend from then-general manager Ken Williams.
“It’s not easy to deal with an idiot,” Williams said at the time. “And this man, over the course of the years, has tried my patience and tried it and tried it. And if you go out there and ask any one of my players or staff members, we don’t miss him. We don’t miss the attitude; we don’t miss the whining. We don’t miss it. Good riddance. See you later. He’d better stay out of our business.”
Time flies when you’re having fun. Williams, who once said he would pack Thomas’ bags and drive him to O’Hare if the Big Hurt wanted to leave the Sox, has since been promoted to executive vice president and has reconciled with both Thomas and Guillén, who are now the raucous co-analysts on pre- and postgame shows on NBC Sports Chicago.
“Most people don’t love you until you’re gone,” Thomas later told me about his bad ending on the South Side. “The effects of what I did for a 16-year period … it seemed easy (to management) for a while. Ballparks were packed every day, (we were) giving them great play every day.
“They got to see a piece of history. Hopefully they’ve stepped back now and realized that it wasn’t as easy as we made it look in that period. The ballplayers sold out the place.”
Rizzo, Bryant and Báez can say the same about their effect on the Cubs during their careers. They gave fans a “piece of history” and what Rizzo called the “greatest era” ever on the North Side.
But the Cubs never were able to repeat that magic of 2015 and ’16, and now the breakup is front and center as the dog days arrive.
Here we go again — yet another bad ending in Chicago.
Somehow they never get old.
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