Upon entering enemy territory Friday for the first time in a year–the visitors’ dugout at U.S. Cellular Field–Cubs manager Dusty Baker was made to feel right at home by a smart-aleck fan.
“Fire Dusty!” the man in a Paul Konerko replica jersey yelled from the box seats.
On that point, dumping Baker, many White Sox and Cubs fans found common ground this weekend.
All over Chicago, the topic of Baker’s fate has been as unavoidable this month as rain. The Cubs’ long losing streak and continued lack of fire and fundamentals have helped fill hours of sport-radio programming and run up bar tabs across the city.
Baker himself brought up his job status before the Sox series when he acknowledged gossip he would be fired if the defending World Series champions swept his club.
“That’s bull,” Baker said.
He meant the criticism, but many longtime baseball observers have used the same term to describe the assumption that teams changing managers at midseason guarantee themselves instant success.
Before Saturday’s Cubs-Sox game, Sox manager Ozzie Guillen recalled warning his buddy Baker “this is not San Francisco,” when he took over as Cubs manager.
Guillen, the third-base coach of the World Series champion Marlins in 2003, then dismissed the notion that changing managers from Jeff Torborg to Jack McKeon after 38 games made the biggest difference that season for Florida.
“Four [starting] pitchers were hurt when they fired Jeff,” Guillen said. “But when the team struggles, you have to blame something.”
According to Guillen, a manager’s biggest impact comes from the environment he creates.
Before a game at Seattle, a handful of Sox players hurried half-dressed out of the visiting clubhouse to line up for the national anthem to adhere to one of Guillen’s few rules. Then last week, while losing 10-1 to Tampa Bay, Guillen recalled stars Konerko and Jim Thome attentively sitting beside him in the dugout rather than begging out of a blowout to relax in the clubhouse.
“That shows respect for teammates, each other and the manager,” Guillen said. “It’s attitude. All we can do is make the lineup, hope for the best and talk to your players.”
Not a panacea
Indeed, only 15 teams that switched managers during the season have made the playoffs. Most baseball executives view changing managers in the middle of a season the same way parents look at dipping into a college fund to pay bills–as a last resort.
The Cubs dumped Don Baylor with a 34-49 record in 2002, and we all know how well that turned out. Bruce Kimm finished 33-45, and Baker arrived in 2003.
“It depends who you are replacing and who are you replacing him with,” said Tim McCarver, the Fox Sports analyst and a major-league catcher for 21 seasons. “Changing managers in the middle of the season is [no sure cure].”
Since Major League Baseball instituted divisional play in 1969, only eight times has a manager taken over a team with a record of .500 or below during a season and played at a .600 clip the rest of the way, according to baseball-reference.com.
Since 2000, only two of the 22 teams that changed managers during the season earned playoff berths–Florida in ’03 and Houston in ’04. The Marlins winning it all (at the expense of Baker’s Cubs) was akin to George Mason making the NCAA Final Four in basketball.
“It’s stupid to even consider the possibility of firing Dusty Baker,” McCarver said. “When you lose a Derrek Lee and don’t have Mark Prior and Kerry Wood [until last Thursday], it isn’t fair to judge.”
Change for the sake of change has worked often enough to remain tempting.
Six teams with winning records have switched managers and wound up winning division titles: the 1978 and ’81 Yankees, the ’81 Expos, the ’83 Phillies, the ’88 Red Sox and the ’89 Blue Jays.
Cubs announcer Bob Brenly was a backup catcher on that Toronto team when Cito Gaston replaced Jimy Williams and went 77-49 on the way to capturing the AL East. When Brenly was manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, he once fondly recalled that “everybody just relaxed a little bit more” after Gaston took over.
Regardless, McCarver doesn’t like it.
“If a change is made, it will be because Andy MacPhail and Jim Hendry gave in to the masses,” McCarver said.
What is gained?
It reminds an objective observer, like Roland Hemond, of 1964. The longtime Sox executive recalled the Cardinals struggling so badly early that season that owner Gussie Busch courted Leo Durocher to replace Johnny Keane after St. Louis started 28-31. The Cardinals regrouped well enough to win the World Series before Keane bitterly left the Cardinals for the Yankees, where he replaced Yogi Berra.
Hemond is not suggesting the Cubs have a team worthy of World Series contention, but fans’ rush to judgment troubles him. “The best way to pick up the Cubs is if Lee and Wood and Prior come back; not by firing the manager,” Hemond said.
Sox bench coach Tim Raines was a rookie outfielder with the Expos in 1981 when Dick Williams was fired after 81 games and replaced by Jim Fanning in a strike-shortened season. Fanning led Montreal to a second-half division title that the Expos turned into a playoff series victory over the Phillies.
“More than changing managers we had the players who started playing well,” Raines said.
There are 25 players. There is only one manager. When GMs do the math, managers of struggling teams can end up on the wrong side of the equation.
“How many times do you see a manager fired and then fans’ feelings are temporarily soothed and then the whole thing starts all over again?” McCarver asked. “Rarely are the issues valid for a firing.”
He paused, and the reality of his point made McCarver sigh.
“That said,” he added, “fairness doesn’t always factor into the decision.”
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dhaugh@tribune.com
