It’s a little more difficult every year to shift from the Bulls to the Cubs. This year, which ended in defeat for the Bulls, proved once and for all that the issue is not merely that the Bulls are winning championships and the Cubs are not. There is a completely different level of competition between the two sports. To move from the Bulls, who approach not only every game but every possession of the ball as a test of strategy, tactics, and intensity, to the Cubs, for whom the outcome of each game seems almost incidental, is to go from the highest level of sport to something that barely qualifies as sport.
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The Cubs knew they needed a pitching ace going into this season, yet they made no attempt to obtain one. The same goes for a leadoff man, someone with speed and a decent on-base percentage to bat at the top of the order. No one doubts that Larry Himes, the team’s vice president of baseball operations, is an astute and competitive baseball executive. So how could he leave such clear needs unfulfilled?
Unanswered questions like that leave the Cubs open to nasty rumors, such as the one that suggested that Himes wanted to trade first baseman Mark Grace during the off-season, but was prevented from doing so by the Tribune Company powers that be, who wanted to keep the photogenic first baseman on their WGN superstation for at least another year. That effectively tied Himes’s hands, as far as trades went, because aside from bullpen ace Randy Myers (an untouchable as long as the team at least pretends to contend), catcher Rick Wilkins, and outfielder Sammy Sosa (the sort of young slugger one builds around), he had no other marketable quantities. Ryne Sandberg may be a future member of the Hall of Fame, but his salary made him overpriced. Shawon Dunston and Derrick May were both recovering from injuries. The team couldn’t well deal pitching for more pitching; there wasn’t even enough pitching to deal for a leadoff man.
But that Wrigley makes all the difference.
Himes has brought in three promising young pitchers since last year: Willie Banks, acquired from the Minnesota Twins; Anthony Young, from the New York Mets; and Steve Trachsel, who looks to be the best pitching prospect the team has produced since Greg Maddux. At the start of the season, not only were their talents unproven, so was the talent of new pitching coach Moe Drabowsky (previously most famous for trying to call China from a bullpen phone). But with Banks leading the way, and Drabowsky presumably doing the teaching, all three have learned to change speeds with skill and tact, and one gets the impression they have already turned the corner toward respectability.
