In a baseball century in which two prodigiously successful decades have been followed by eight more of heartbreaking ineffectualness, Chicago fans have shown themselves willing to clutch any sign of hope that appears on the horizon.
And hope has been in ample supply recently. The White Sox surprised many by winning the American League Central Division last season. Injuries to Frank Thomas and much of the pitching staff undermined defense of that title, but the Sox have evolved into a .500 team–give or take a game or two–with the potential for better with reasonable health.
The Cubs had become the talk of the National League even before the Fred McGriff trade, with the starters performing capably and the bullpen playing its role to rave reviews.
And if one reasonably credible source is to be believed, the success should continue.
This season Baseball America magazine ranks the Sox’s farm system as No. 1 among major league teams and the Cubs’ as No. 2, which is quite a turnaround for an organization that listed Mark Grace as its only home-grown position player for much of the ’90s.
Just what is Baseball America? With an ever-growing number of publications–real and virtual–covering baseball, rankings and ratings, pontifications and predictions abound. But Baseball America’s voice stands out.
It started, as so many of the best success stories do, in a garage, just over the Washington state line in southern British Columbia. At its inception, Baseball America was not even American.
Allan Simpson was a Canadian baseball aficionado looking for news on the minor leagues.
“The Sporting News was de-emphasizing its baseball coverage and going to an all-sports publication,” Simpson said.
This was well before the Internet made it easy for a fan in Duluth, Minn., to find news on the Durham Bulls. So in February, 1981, armed with a fan’s passion, a wife’s support and armloads of faith he decided to give up his job as an accountant and create his own baseball coverage.
“I had very limited publishing or editorial experience,” Simpson said. “I’d worked for a couple of summers in Fairbanks, Alaska, working for the baseball team there and on the side I was the sports editor of the newspaper. That was my extent of baseball writing experience.”
Simpson feared that a baseball magazine published out of Canada would face a deficit in credibility, so “I would skip across the border every day to pick up mail, mail stuff, just to give the impression that it was a U.S.-based publication,” he said. “I didn’t want to give the impression to the public at large that this was an operation out of Canada.
“At the time it was like operating a hockey publication outside of Canada.”
Simpson knew enough to understand the publication’s most important asset would be its credibility. One of the first people he contacted was Tracy Ringolsby, who then was covering baseball at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“He was more of an advisor initially and then he was a columnist at the same time,” Simpson said.
Ringolsby, now the national baseball writer at Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, helped Simpson line up contributing baseball writers from around the country. He even offered to pay the writers out of his own pocket if Simpson was unable to come up with the money, executive editor Jim Callis said.
Ringolsby downplays his contribution.
“If Allan’s not willing to put everything he had on the line, it’s not there,” he said. “He needed some people and I just basically told them that if their checks bounced, someone they knew would cover it.
“It was a pretty easy investment on my part because it never cost me a penny.”
Among the high-profile writers within the magazine’s stable of roughly 60 national correspondents are Peter Gammons and Jayson Stark of ESPN, and Phil Rogers, the Tribune’s national baseball writer.
The magazine never has paid much for their efforts–one writer said it was “unintentionally a non-profit organization”–but reporters contribute because they like being affiliated with it.
“I didn’t know if it would work,” Ringolsby said. “You need to offer something people can’t get. Allan and I both liked scouting and player development. Allan has worked hard for credibility.”
Callis agreed.
“His focus from Day One has been on player development, which nobody was doing at the time,” he said. “Allan was also a tireless worker who will never make three phone calls if he can make five.”
In July, 1982, Simpson sold the magazine to Miles Wolff, then the owner of the Durham Bulls. The entire Baseball America operation was moved to Durham, N.C. Last year the magazine was sold again. The circulation has grown to about 75,000 paid subscriptions.
“We still pretty much appeal to hardcore baseball people,” Simpson said.
The magazine’s steadiest readers are players.
“The first thing we did was try to get [it] in the minor league clubhouses and then we got [it] into the major league clubhouses,” Simpson said.
Its record for being on target has helped Baseball America’s credibility among players, front-office workers and fans. This season the magazine correctly called the first five picks in the June amateur draft.
“We probably talk to more scouts and instructors than anybody,” Callis said.
Danny Knobler, the Detroit Tigers beat writer for the Booth Newspaper chain in Michigan, worked at Baseball America from 1983-88.
“Allan’s idea was to talk to those people, in a lot of cases people who others just didn’t talk to,” he said. “People in baseball love to give their opinions. Baseball America did a good job of compiling those opinions.”
Said senior writer Alan Schwarz: “I would say our rankings have that extra legitimacy because we canvass the true experts–that being scouts–in compiling them.”
The magazine’s November, 1986 issue proves the point. In a survey of Double-A leagues, Baseball America identified Bo Jackson and Tom Glavine as the top two prospects in the Southern League and Rafael Palmeiro and Ellis Burks as No. 1 and No. 2 in the Eastern League, with Jay Bell No. 4.
At the Class-A level, Todd Stottlemyre was the No. 1 prospect in the California League, Gregg Jefferies was the top prospect in the Carolina League and Brady Anderson and Randy Johnson were Nos. 2 and 3 in the Florida State League.
Of course, Baseball America is not perfect. The top prospect in the Florida State League, ahead of Anderson and Johnson? Ron Jones, who had a brief, nondescript career with Philadelphia.
And while Sammy Sosa got his due as the fourth-best prospect in the Gulf Coast League–behind Kevin Dean of the Expos, Reggie Jefferson of the Reds and Bernie Williams of the Yankees–Sosa teammate Juan Gonzalez didn’t rate a mention.
Baseball America also can be wrong about entire farm systems. The Anaheim Angels, for instance, have been ranked consistently low in recent years; this spring they were No. 25 after being No. 29 last year. Yet the Angels in recent years have produced solid players Tim Salmon, Garret Anderson, Darin Erstad, Jim Edmonds and Troy Glaus.
The Giants don’t put much stock in Baseball America’s ratings either.
“We’re traditionally ranked among the lowest teams [No. 22 this year, No. 28 in 2000] and we’ve had no problem producing prospects, trading prospects, bringing prospects up to the major-league level,” Giants general manager Brian Sabean said. “On the inside [Baseball America] is used very little or really looked at a lot less than people think.”
Cubs President Andy MacPhail acknowledged Baseball America has attained a spot in the industry, but “in the end it’s wins and losses,” he said. “You have to stand on the record, good or bad. You can offer a lot of reasons why, but the record is what the record is.”
Outfielder Corey Patterson has been described as the Cubs’ top prospect according to Baseball America so often that’s it’s almost part of his name.
“I’m not a big fan of a lot of hoopla surrounding your prospects because I do think the expectations get higher, and maybe grow more unrealistic, and that can be a burden for a player,” MacPhail said. “When they get ballyhooed to the extent that Corey has been, it probably places some unrealistic expectations in terms not of what the player’s performance ultimately is going to be, but when that performance is going to kick in.”
Even for the best players, translating minor league promise into major league success takes work.
“People really don’t realize the transition from the minor leagues to the major leagues,” White Sox general manager Ken Williams said. “It’s a different game–a more fast-paced, difficult game. It only looks the same.
“Eventually the talent rises to the top,” Williams said. “No one wants it more than the player.”
Still, Williams acknowledges a certain gratification with the Sox’s No. 1 ranking.
“It’s nice to be acknowledged for doing what you think is right,” he said.
Tom Grieve, father of current Devil Rays outfielder Ben Grieve, had a unique perspective on the magazine’s effect on players. The elder Grieve was a first-round pick of the Washington Senators in 1966, the pre-Baseball America era, when minor-leaguers were afforded scant media coverage.
His son, a first-round pick of the Oakland Athletics in 1994, was a Baseball America high school All-American his senior season and had to acclimate himself to the spotlight at a much younger age.
Tom Grieve, though, doesn’t see that as an undue burden.
“I would have been disappointed in myself and my wife if he couldn’t answer those kinds of questions,” Grieve said.
The elder Grieve regards Baseball America as essential in his current role as a Texas Rangers broadcaster.
“If you’re in the industry, I don’t think you can feel you’re up to date on everything you need to know if you don’t read it,” he said. “No matter who you are–a general manager or a scout–you’re going to read something in that magazine you didn’t know.”
In the end, though, trying to predict which prospects are going to be the most valuable is an inexact science.
“So much of this is open to chance. There’s a limit to how good anyone can be,” Schwarz said. “None of us really knows. We’re just really good guessers.”
The Baseball America perspective
THEY’RE STILL SAYING IT
One of the primary criticisms over the years of former Cub Mark Grace was that he didn’t hit with enough power for a first baseman. Baseball America raised the issue as early as 1986. “The guy’s a natural hitter,” Baseball America quoted Pete Mackanin, then manager of the Cubs’ Peoria affiliate, as saying. The capsule went on to say, “Some managers question whether Grace would hit with enough power to play first base in the majors, with Junior Miner, the manager of the Expos’ affiliate in Burlington, saying, ‘He might not ever be more than a singles hitter, but he can hit in the dark.’ ” He was right. Grace went on to collect more hits than any other major-leaguer in the 1990s.
THEY GOT IT RIGHT
Alex Rodriguez was No. 1 in the magazine’s list of the top 100 prospects in the April 16, 1995 issue. The year before the No. 1 selection was Cliff Floyd, then in the Expos’ system. Only injuries prevented the former Thornwood All-Stater from reaching All-Star status before this season.
OOPS
In 1994, the No. 2-ranked prospect was Ruben Rivera, then a Yankees farmhand who since has played, with little success, at San Diego and Cincinnati.
RIGHT ON
After Rodriguez and Rivera, the next eight prospects in Baseball America’s top 100 rankings for 1995: Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter, Brian Hunter, Shawn Green, Charles Johnson, Toronto’s Alex Gonzalez, Johnny Damon and Ben Grieve.
OOPS AGAIN
In the March 7, 1994 issue, Baseball America ranked shortstop Benji Gil as the Texas Rangers’ No. 1 prospect. Down at No. 10 was another shortstop, Rich Aurilia, who’s now an All-Star with the Giants.
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TOP 10 CUBS PROSPECTS FOR 2001
According to Baseball America
PLAYER POSITION
Corey Patterson OF
Juan Cruz RHP
Hee Seop Choi 1B
Ben Christensen RHP
Carlos Zambrano RHP
Luis Montanez SS
David Kelton 3B
Bobby Hill Infield
John Webb RHP
Nate Frese SS
TOP 10 WHITE SOX PROSPECTS FOR 2001
According to Baseball America
PLAYER POSITION
Jon Rauch RHP
Joe Borchard OF
Joe Crede 3B
Matt Ginter RHP
Dan Wright RHP
Lorenzo Barcelo RHP
Brian West RHP
Aaron Rowand RHP
Jason Stumm RHP
Source: Baseball America
Chicago Tribune
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