With a day-dominated schedule that is so different from the competition’s, the Cubs are like a left-handed golfer using right-handed clubs.
Management sometimes has to take issues beyond talent into consideration when trying to assemble a team. (No jokes, please.) The Cubs not only look at whether a hitter or pitcher’s statistics are affected by day games, but whether he can handle the adjustments to playing day baseball.
“We understand the different dynamics,” General Manager Ed Lynch said. “We take into account his off-the-field habits as well, because it’s obviously very difficult to play day games physically if you’re not getting any rest. It’s a dynamic we have to acknowledge and research.”
Lynch, once a Cubs pitcher, acknowledged there are temptations for a Cub to stay out and partake of Chicago’s night life because the players are done with their jobs around 5 p.m. most days.
“Obviously you can have a problem here if you like the night life,” Lynch said. “The problem (of so many day games) is more often the heat, and coming off the road where you’ve played six or seven night games and then you play six or seven day games.”
Former Cubs GM Dallas Green had a few players who enjoyed the good life a little too much. He wound up trading away pitchers Dennis Eckersley, Dickie Noles and Bill Caudill during his regime, in part because of their nocturnal meanderings.
“No question about it, you have to have a pretty good sense of your players there,” Green said. “When we started dismantling and putting together a ballclub in Chicago, we felt day baseball was very, very difficult for a guy to survive unless he had the right kind of character and self-discipline. You stood a chance of having a very rough time if you didn’t have any. We didn’t get little Lord Fauntleroys, but we tried to get guys who had a sense of wanting to win and knowing what it took to win instead of being into enjoying Rush Street.”
Bob Kennedy said he didn’t take into account a player’s off-the-field habits when he was the Cubs’ manager and, later, general manager. “You’re always going to get someone who is going to stay out late, no matter what,” he said. “It’s the individual’s responsibility to be prepared for his job. I think most problems in sports happen after 2 in the morning, with guys in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
When Green was running the Cubs, he pulled no punches in explaining certain personnel decisions. After dealing the young but erratic Caudill, Green blurted out that Caudill was a kid who “couldn’t put himself to bed at night.” Caudill went on to record 98 saves the next three seasons with Seattle and Oakland before his career fizzled out.
“He went on and had a good run for a couple of years,” Green said. “But he wasn’t going to do that in Chicago.”
Noles and Eckersley both admitted to alcohol problems and eventually turned their lives around. Eckersley is still pitching and is probably headed to the Hall of Fame. Noles is a recovering alcoholic who speaks to groups about the dangers of alcohol abuse.
“Dickie was a different character, and it wouldn’t matter if it was Rush Street or wherever,” Green said. “He had his own particular problems, and we insisted that he get it straightened out and he’s now a model citizen. I’m very proud of him–he has done a tremendous job. But he is an example of a young person who (didn’t) have the discipline needed to continue at a big-league level.”
Theoretically, day games should work to the Cubs’ advantage because opposing players are famous for going to Division Street haunts on road trips to Chicago and they disrupt their “sleep by day, play by night” routine.
“My knee-jerk reaction is that it should be an advantage to the Cubs,” manager Jim Riggleman said. “Getting players out of a normal routine can be a strain on anyone. But if it’s more deeply thought out, you do have to say that over the long haul of a season, the number of day games does wear on our own players to some extent.”
Riggleman doesn’t worry much about his players’ staying out late. He is concerned about friends and relatives taking the players’ focus off of their jobs. “Everyone wants to come to Chicago, and when they come in, they want you to be their tour guide,” he said. “I have to tell them, `I’m here to do a job during the season.’ It’s hard to say no to your friends and families.”
Former Cub Randy Hundley said most of his teammates loved playing the day-games schedule in Chicago and considered it a perk other players envied.
“It was a 9-to-5 job,” Hundley said. “You go to the park, you play, you go home and have dinner and do it again the next day. I loved it. There was some semblance to a regular lifestyle.”
