They have been there and had that done to them.
“They” are Lee Elia and Tom Trebelhorn.
“There” is the hot seat as Cubs manager.
“That” is the speculation and the days of wondering when they would be fired.
Of course, many others have wondered that since 1980, including Jim Frey, Gene Michael, Don Zimmer, Jim Essian, Jim Lefebvre, Jim Riggleman and Don Baylor.
All of them can empathize with what Dusty Baker is going through, fighting to keep a job no one has really succeeded at since Frank Chance in 1908–and watching hopelessly as it disintegrates daily.
“What do you do?” Trebelhorn asked. “Well, you do the best you can, just like Dusty and his staff are doing. And then on the other side, you are facing the fans and their expectations [to win].
“I always said when I was [with the Cubs], nobody wants to win more than we do, nobody wants to stay away from problems more than we do. But when your team has shortcomings and the manager has to become more involved, it’s usually not advantageous to the scoreboard and when it’s not advantageous to the scoreboard . . . “
Trebelhorn managed the 1994 Cubs. Their season–and his tenure–were shortened by a players’ strike. Elia managed the Cubs in 1982 and part of 1983. His time was shortened by terrible talent and a tirade against Wrigley Field’s fans, who weren’t quite as faithful in those days. And if you ever wondered what happens to old Cubs managers, well, Trebelhorn and Elia are now coaches with the Baltimore Orioles, who lost 4-2 to the White Sox Wednesday night at U.S. Cellular Field.
“Do I feel sorry for him?” Elia said of Baker. “I don’t know if that’s the right word. I know, to a very, very small point, how he must feel, because he has been extremely successful [in the past]. And I don’t think anybody can weigh some of the key injuries his team has had. Sometimes the ability to recover is what [decides your fate].”
Elia and Trebelhorn were serious about their jobs and so were their bosses, but back then no one really expected them to overcome decades of losing.
Elia went through his clubhouse tirade when things went bad, Trebelhorn his firehouse chat before things got worse.
They admit to watching Cubs games recently and recognizing one very familiar factor–bad luck.
“I was watching when they were playing the White Sox and there was a bang-bang play at the plate that would have made the score 4-3,” Elia said. “It was a very questionable call.
“It just seems that when [bad] things are going on, those kinds of calls don’t go your way. I personally think the world of Dusty Baker as a baseball man. I don’t think anybody can question what he did in San Francisco and how close he took this ballclub [in 2003] to what was the dream of many Cubs’ fans–me included.”
“Unfortunately, a lot of their problems have been at home,” Trebelhorn said. “In ’94, we had a winning record on the road with that interesting bunch I had and could not generate offense at home. It was the same thing with Riggleman.
“[But] you’ll find when the team underachieves, you’re underachieving as a manager. As a manager, when things are going good you hope to stay out of the way and when things are not going so good, you hope to step in at the appropriate time to make things a little better than they are. Guys who have been able to do that end up surviving a long time.”
Back when Wrigley Field was not bursting at the seams every day and the Cubs were trying to overcome their “lovable losers” tag, Elia and Trebelhorn were forced to endure something Baker never has had to–an up close and personal visit with the Curse of the Goat.
“Yeah, they paraded that goat around [Wrigley Field] to break the curse,” Trebelhorn remembered. “I think we might have won that day but it was a short-lived success. That was all fun.”
But you can imagine Baker having to tolerate a real goat walking on the Wrigley Field grass?
“In ’82, they were going to bring the goat in and the night before it must have snowed eight inches,” Elia said. “There must have been 500 guys down there shoveling off the field so we could play. It was almost like when they found out the goat was coming in they made it snow.”
The goat apparently was not allowed all the way in that day.
Just a year later, Elia was where Baker is now. The heat was on after his profanity-filled outburst and he was fired with a 54-69 record, 15 games below .500.
Trebelhorn was not brought back after the shortened 49-64 season, 15 games below .500.
Baker’s Cubs are 22 below .500, and it’s not even the All-Star break.
“I feel bad for anybody in that position,” Trebelhorn said. “You don’t want to see anybody have a tough time. I’ve had managers I didn’t care for on the other side of the field and I’d want to kill them, but I’d always feel bad if things weren’t going for them beyond their control.
“In this case, they had high expectations. . . . [Twenty-two below,] that’s hard to do. It takes a lot of unfriendly things for that to happen to any team, whether you’re the Kansas City Royals or the Chicago Cubs.”
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dvandyck@tribune.com
