When Richard Daley was the fabled mayor of Chicago, he was simply that – Mayor Daley. Well, maybe he was also Boss Daley. But for all of his power and his influence and his rigid rule, he had nothing on what Lou Piniella would be if the Chicago Cubs win the World Series later this month.
Piniella, the manager of the Cubs, would be the Monarch of Michigan Avenue, the Rajah of Rush Street, the Sultan of State Street. He would be King Louis I. And even that title wouldn’t do justice to the way Cubs fans would embrace him. They would deify Piniella as a baseball god, a baseball god who was sent to the north side of Chicago to liberate the Cubs and their fans from a century of purgatory.
“He’s pretty much adored there right now anyway for what he’s accomplished in two years,” Jimmy Bank, the Cubs traveling secretary, said. “I think he or anybody who won a World Series… I won’t say they’ll put up a statue, but it would be close. He would be the man, believe me.”
The Cubs lost their playoff opener to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but as champions of the National League’s Central Division with the league’s best won-lost record, the Cubs remain the favorite to win the N.L. pennant and go to the World Series.
Of the major leagues’ 16 pre-expansion franchises, 15 have played in a World Series since the Cubs last played in one in 1945. Even more historically challenged, the Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908. Yes, this is the 100th year since the Cubs won it all.
None of those other 15 franchises have gone so long without winning the World Series. In fact, five of the 14 expansion franchises, none of whom existed before 1961, have won World Series. Five others have played in World Series.
The Cubs? They are better known as Lovable Losers than champions or even challengers. An assortment of reasons is always raised to explain the Cubs’ perennial failures – one curse or another, a fan’s interference with a foul pop that, if caught, would have put the Cubs in the World Series. In reality, though, the Cubs have earned their absence from the World Series on merit.
The 2006 season was supposed to be their year. If the baseball gods had done their job properly and fairly, the Cubs would have gone to and won the World Series that year. Consider the historic developments in the prior two years:
- In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. They had last won it in 1918.
- In 2005, the Chicago White Sox won the World Series. They had last won it in 1917.
The Cubs, losers since 1908, clearly were next in line to be blessed with a World Series championship. But in 2006, instead of winning the division championship and breezing through the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Cubs finished dead last in the Central Division. Not only that. They finished with the worst won-lost record in the National League. They won barely 40 percent of their games.
The baseball gods had treated the Cubs cruelly once again.
And then the Cubs turned to Piniella. The 50th manager in the franchise’s history, Piniella had been a winner as a player (New York Yankees 1977-78) and a successful manager in a 19-year career with four teams, winning the 1990 World Series with the Cincinnati Reds in his first year with them and directing the Seattle Mariners to their first post-season in 1995 and a remarkable 116 wins in 2001.
Piniella’s reputation as a fix-it manager immediately worked for the Cubs. In his first year, last year, they won the division championship by winning 19 more games than they had in the previous, disastrous season.
The Piniella magic, though, didn’t extend to October. The World Series again eluded the Cubs as they quickly and quietly lost three games to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first round of the playoffs.
But this is a new October. With a strong pitching staff and the league’s most potent scoring machine, the Cubs are poised to eradicate 99 years of failure.
Terry Francona was in a similar position in 2004. He was the manager under whom the Red Sox erased one of Yankee Stadium’s favorite taunting chants – “1918.”
“There was a lot of attention given to the Red Sox because it had been so long since we won,” Francona said the other day. “It was a busy winter.”
Red Sox fans, however, stopped short of erecting a statue to Francona to rival the Red Auerbach statue near the old Boston Garden or Samuel Eliot Morrison presiding over Commonwealth Avenue or Mary Dyer, the Quaker woman who was killed for her religious beliefs, across from the State House.
Whether or not a statue would rise on West Addison Street outside Wrigley Field, the Cubs home since 1914, is a development to be determined. But one thing is certain. Piniella would become a mythical figure in Chicago lore.
“I think he would be close to legendary in Chicago,” said Bank, the traveling secretary. “Those fans are starved.”