Every word that came out of White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen’s mouth late Wednesday night stabbed Jim Frey in a heart that still has not mended 21 years later.
Frey sat at home in Baltimore watching the Sox beat the Boston Red Sox 5-4 to take a 2-0 lead in the American League Division Series when he heard Guillen speak about his comfort level.
“[Guillen] said if worse comes to worst and his team lost the next two games, they could always come back to Chicago on Sunday for Game 5,” Frey said Thursday. “That’s when I turned to my wife and said, ‘He’s right. We [didn’t get] our home-field advantage.’ “
The former Cubs manager was referring to his 1984 team, the last one in Chicago to hold a 2-0 lead in a five-game postseason series.
Those Cubs squandered the pennant to the San Diego Padres.
Frey blamed the lack of lights at Wrigley Field for the final three games being played at Jack Murphy Stadium where they could be televised in prime time. But, in reality, an old rule established in 1969 dictated that in even years the Western Division team would enjoy home-field advantage.
Whatever the cause, the ’84 collapse contributed to a Chicago baseball culture in which expecting the worst in October has become as much a rite of autumn as raking leaves.
The White Sox, who scoffed at comparisons to the ’69 Cubs during a September slide, have no intention of joining the ’84 Cubs in the Chicago baseball encyclopedia under the heading of Blown Opportunities.
But Friday’s 21st anniversary of the Cubs’ Game 5 loss in San Diego, if nothing else, provides the Sox and their fans a civics lesson on the perils of peeking too far ahead in the playoffs.
“You can’t take anything for granted until the 27th out,” Frey said.
He found out the hard way.
Like the Sox, the Cubs cruised to easy victories in the first two games of their ’84 playoffs. The Cubs had outscored the Padres 17-2. “It was almost too easy,” Ryne Sandberg said Thursday. Sandberg recalled players boarding the team plane confident they would bring home the franchise’s first pennant since 1945.
Shortstop Larry Bowa speculated which teammate would win the series MVP award.
In a move critics said indicated premature planning for the World Series pitching rotation, Frey also decided to start Scott Sanderson, who had won just two of his previous 10 outings, in Game 4.
Even during the fateful fifth game, when the Cubs led 3-0, pitcher Steve Trout began asking teammates in the bullpen if they planned to use all their World Series tickets in Detroit.
The Cubs’ signature play of the series came when Tim Flannery’s grounder squirted between first baseman Leon Durham’s legs to score the tying run in the seventh inning of Game 5, but the unraveling involved more than just one man and one game. “I seem to recall the Cubs stopped hitting,” said Steve Stone, the team’s color commentator for WGN-TV that season who now is the baseball analyst for WSCR-AM 670.
But he dismissed any historical link between the Sox and the ’84 Cubs.
“I just don’t view this team as an ’84 Cub team,” Stone said, citing pitching and power as differences. “The team does just about everything right.”
Upcoming Sox schedule
WHITE SOX vs. Boston Red Sox:
White Sox lead series, 2-0
Friday: WHITE SOX (Garcia 14-8) at Boston (Wakefield 16-12), 3:09 p.m., ESPN2
Saturday: WHITE SOX (Garland 18-10) at Boston (Schilling 8-8), 12:09 p.m., ESPN (if necessary)
Sunday: Boston at WHITE SOX, 3:09 p.m., ESPN (if necessary)
