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Meet Dale Sveum and the coaching staff
Today I met Dale Sveum the manager of the Chicago Cubs. Dale is a quiet man with a very dry sense of humor who tends to not show a lot of emotion. However, he is a very pleasant guy to talk to and he seems to have an abundance of confidence. I told him that I remember having his baseball card as a kid where he was sporting what I jokingly referred to as a "porn-stache" which causes him to respond by saying "Thanks for making me feel old there, Homer. And for bringing up the infamous porn-stache as you call it." I also ask Dale about his nickname as a player, "Nuts", and he tells me with a sly grin that it has absolutely nothing to do with the lower half of his body.
Sveum was a young prospect for the Milwaukee Brewers in the late 1980s and is best remembered for hitting a dramatic game-winning home run early in the 1987 season which kept the Brew Crew's early season winning streak of 12 games going (they would win 1 more to start the season 13-0) and breaking his leg during a game in September 1988 that practically ended his once-promising career as a starting shortstop, relegating him to be a utility player the rest of his career.
Dale and I have different musical tastes with his being heavy metal and mine being classic rock. He also likes to hunt and fish and loves to ride his Harley motorcycle whenever possible. And he has a funny quirk which is eating cereal at all times. But none of that matters as much as the fact that Sveum seems to have the respect of the clubhouse. Even with a losing record last year (61-101) I was impressed at how the team did not quit on him. We talked about how that didn't always seem to be the case with his predecessor, Mike Quade. I'll never forget the look in Dale's eye when he told me point-blank "I can assure you that guys not hustling on this team or not giving 100% at all times will NEVER be a problem." And he had that look in his eye that convinced me that he meant it.
The next coach I met was Jamie Quirk who is more outgoing and talkative than Sveum, but equally as respectful. We talked about his days with the Kansas City Royals where he told me that as a young player coming up he thought that he could play third base as good or better than George Brett. "Okay, so I was wrong about that" he said before laughing and pointing out that he let Brett know this as well (the two have always been close friends). I also asked Quirk about the game last September versus the Washington Nationals in which he got ejected for shouting obscenities at former Nationals coach and now Astros manager Bo Porter. All Quirk told me is that things were said in the heat of the moment, but as far as he's concerned, it's over and done with. And that was that. I told him that I admire his passion and fire as long as we don't completely lose our temper.
Then I met our pitching coach Chris Bosio and praised him for his charitable work in the off-season to help cancer patients in the Chicago area. Bosio lost his mother two years ago to Hodgkin's lymphoma and a brother to lung cancer. His father had kidney cancer and his wife's had cancer. It is a shared but unfortunate bond that we both share in that I've also lost loved ones and friends to cancer and, thankfully, my Dad is a cancer survivor. Bosio also had knee replacement surgery last November on both of his knees after having 12 arthroscopic procedures done during his playing career. He's a good man and he has an extensive knowledge of pitching. I'm looking forward to working with him.
Hitting coach James Rowson and I didn't talk very long because he was working with our hitters, but he's very excited about starting his first full season as Cubs hitting coach. We both talked about the philosophy of hitting and stressed the important of getting on base and drawing walks which is something Cubs hitters haven't done very much of since the 2008 season. I told Rowson that I watched several videos of Cubs games from last year where some guys looked like they were playing golf rather than baseball. He agreed and said that hopefully we won't be seeing that too much this year.
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