[Tib]

The Big Fade

I hit the ground running in the second half with a seven-game hitting streak and was moved back to the top of the lineup, but the team stumbled. Actually, “stumbled” isn’t quite accurate. “Drove off a cliff” might be a better description.

When I think back on my career, it’s impossible to encompass in words what happened to us each year. I have tried to describe the dismay and confusion we all experienced as we fell down the standings each season. I have tried to analyze it from a statistical standpoint, from a social standpoint, and from a strategic standpoint. All fail to comprehensively describe our annual failure. Maybe it was a combination of all these factors each year. Or maybe it was any one of these factors in a given year. I don’t know. It hurts my head to think about it, but I’m going to give it one more shot.

Statistical: we didn’t perform when it counted. This is certainly true. We began the second half of 2014 by going 2-11, effectively erasing the first half of the season. Then, when we needed to bounce back, we did, going 19-8 into the Dog Days of August. Statistically, you would say we “weathered a downturn”, then “normalized”. Okay, fine. Then why, if we were out of our slump and everything was “normalized”, did we go 6-18 for the next 30 days? Were we hurt? No. Then why did we hit .238 as a team in August? Statistically, you might say we “suffered a setback” or “experienced an aberration”. So was it statistics that prompted all the moves Max Thune made in August and September? Or was it a team chemistry thing?

Social: there were personality conflicts. This is also certainly true. Almost all teams have them, so this is not unusual. So what was different about ours that crippled us so? I can only say, in my experience, players who put the team above themselves resolve conflicts with more permanence than players who put themselves above the team. Players are more tolerant of teammates’ styles, behavior, attitudes, and selfishness if they know everyone is committed to the team’s success. It’s about acceptance. The energy that accepts a teammates’ negative quirks and makes them a positive part of the clubhouse is the same energy that, when reversed, calls out that teammate on the clubhouse floor. The energy that accepts that their quirks drive their teammates insane is the same energy, when reversed, that resents those who bring them up. And even when conflicts happen, positive clubhouses handle them immediately because they aren’t going to allow bad blood to poison the team. Players convey to one another that the team is the priority and anyone who can’t do that needs to get with the program or get gone, plain and simple. The Comanches of the 2010s had many well-documented conflicts. Not many were resolved. I know. I was there. Did I try to mediate these conflicts? Sure, I tried, but I was not blameless. I had my problems with teammates, too. I never put those conflicts above the team, but they did.

Strategic: players weren’t used to their maximum effect. Were we misused? I hate to say it, but probably. But what was Max Thune supposed to do? He had guys bickering in the clubhouse, on the plane, in the locker room, and even on the bench during games. He had guys who wouldn’t talk to one another. How do you make each other better when you refuse to try to make each other better? I know our lineups were influenced by ongoing conflicts. Some of our pitchers had partnered up with teammates and would push Thune to start the guys they wanted. Thune would do it, too. He couldn’t stand all the second-guessing that happened after losses. When you go 6-18 instead of 18-6, there’s a lot of second-guessing. I’m convinced that’s why he started playing the young guys after the trade deadline. When a manager bends like that it’s all but over. I liked Max Thune. He was a good manager in an all-but-unmanageable situation.

We traded Latronne Volk for Bob Gordan. Volk was one of the guys who was having trouble with Thune’s lineups. Was that a factor? Probably. He was 9-6 at the Break, so it wasn’t his on-field performance. We also picked up John Martin at the deadline. Martin was a good middle infielder and three years younger than me. And he started playing short on Sundays. As far as I knew, I was not on any pitcher’s **** list, but I was fighting a strained hip muscle and needed the rest.

So was it statistic, social, or strategic? Was it all three? The answer is yes, it was probably all three. When you consider how many variables go into a championship and how many of those variables have to come out on the positive side to win it, you realize the Comanches of the 2010s were just not ready to set aside personal conflicts and win games for each other. When we won, it was all business. When we lost, it was somebody’s fault. It reminds me of what Doc Caswell said about the Comanches to us Squires in that diner all those years ago. “They won’t win because they don’t like each other.”

And the cliff was coming. None of us on the bus could see it yet. Benji Gillingham signed a 4-year extension and that helped calm him down. He was an excitable guy, in a good way (most of the time), and he was concerned about arbitration. He thought if it got to that point he’d suffer. When Chicago offered him another $14 million at the deadline, he jumped at it. He immediately started raking, hitting five homers in the first ten games of August. Dan Miller was 13-7. He had just thrown a 7-0 shutout against Latronne Volk in our first matchup since Volk was traded. Bartolo Gomez was 14-5. Bobby Favors had 18 saves. I hit .340 in June and .282 for July. My OBP was .387 on July 31.

We were in a bar brawl for first with Detroit and Denver and for a while we were holding our own. There were six lead changes in July alone. The team was starting to get fired up. Then the front office dropped a bomb. They designated Willie Aguila for assignment to the minors.

Willie was the backbone of the team, even though he was 36 and was struggling this season. By comparison, at the Break he was .256/7/37 and I was .311/1/31. But those numbers don’t reflect his importance to the team. I said earlier the failings of the team in 2014 were statistical, social and strategic. Willie was a statistical concern, naturally, having fallen so far below his average career splits. He was a strategic concern because he wasn’t as mobile on the bases or covering first. But he was no social issue. He was a solid force in the clubhouse and at Cobblestones, a uniting voice when all the pettiness started undermining our team effort. He was as he had always been to the team: he was the Eagle, our leader. Nothing about his decline changed that. I knew Fontillion would probably deal him after the season. I even expected it, since Willie survived the Trade Deadline, but the truth was no one wanted Willie at Fontillion’s price. Finally, I guess, enough was enough and the team’s decline could not sustain Willie’s, so they sent him down.

I’ll never forget seeing him walk out of Thune’s office after a 4-3 home loss to a 42-68 Kansas City team. His face was blank. He just stood outside Thune’s door for a minute, looking lost. I was coming out of the showers and glanced at him standing there and knew something was wrong. My first thought was that he’d been benched, which would be understandable under the circumstances. I kept an eye on him until he left and caught up to him in the player’s parking lot. I asked him what was going on.

“They are sending me down, Hop,” he said. “Can you believe it? I don’t get it.”

“Sending you down? To Des Moines?”

“They say they tried to trade me but there was no one to take me. So, what do they do? After all these years with this team, what do they do? I know my numbers are not good, but this is not respect. Twelve years I have played for Chicago. I am not going, you know. I will not go.”

“If you refuse, they can release you.”

“Let them! I could be a back up or a pinch hitter, if they want. But no, they want to put Kenny at first and start to play the kids. That’s what they tell me. You better watch your back around here, Davey. Play the kids! Mama guevo!”

“It’s not over, Willie,” I said. “Look at Al Gills. Cleveland released him, too, and he signed with San Fran and got his three thousandth hit this year. He’s older than you.”

“No, it is not over,” agreed Willie. “I have hits in me, but they will not be for this team.”

Willie refused assignment. He was a pro with the press, who were not as shocked by the move as he was. He thanked the fans. He cleaned out his locker the next day and said goodbye to everyone. Everyone except Thune and Fontillion.

The team released him the following Monday. It left a big hole in the clubhouse. Willie had presence. His personality filled the room. His table at Cobblestones was empty now, a big round dead space where once there had been life and laughing and cigars and good times. On the clubhouse walls in Chicago they mount framed jerseys of players whose numbers have been retired by the team. In an act of defiance after Willie left, someone framed his jersey and put it on the wall. Thune never took it down. Willie’s release made the rest of us mad. We considered it an act of disrespect to cut him loose like that, a player that meant so much to the team and the city. It caused tension, tension we didn’t need. Less than a month later, Baltimore signed him and sent him to Rhode Island for a minor league tune up, and that was great for Willie, and I was happy for him, but it actually made things worse for us.

Here’s why: I was back to leading off and was hitting around .300. My OBP still hovered around .380. That was good, but the “kids” weren’t driving me in. The “kids” weren’t hitting home runs. The “kids” weren’t pitching well. Here I was, having the best offensive season of my career, and nothing was coming of it. I was pleased my hard work was paying off, but it felt hollow. It didn’t feel worth it if the team didn’t do well.

Fate seemed to be casting its vote as well. We were up 3-0 in a late August game when it began to rain. Rain. In August. It rained for fifty minutes and when we finished the game we managed to lose 4-3. The next day, I threw away a ball with the bases loaded, my 16th error, and instead of hitting the cement anchor of the railing behind first base and bouncing back to Ken Abbey, the ball struck the corner of the television camera well and caromed down the right field line. Three runs scored. We lost 17-7.

I lost more time healing my re-strained hip flexor. I was out for ten days and the team went 2-8. Bob Gordan lost seven decisions in a row after the Break. You might say it was a bad trade, him for Latronne Volk, but Gordan’s ERA during those starts was 3.25. Not really his fault. We lost in late innings, we lost in extra innings, we lost 14-6, 9-1, 13-6, and 23-4. We lost with the winning run on third. We lost big leads. We couldn’t hold one-run leads. We were the victims of eight walk-off hits after the All-Star Break.

We were in first place. Things were great. There was confidence, even cockiness. Then we were two games back. Not so much cockiness now, but, hey, things were still okay. Then we were four back and the cockiness was gone and the darkness started creeping in. Then we were six back and the light in the tunnel was gone. Then we were eight back and our big fade was complete. No more confidence. No more cockiness. We were eliminated from division title contention in a disaster of a 10-1 loss at home against the Colts. Joel Kral hit two homers in that game. Nice guy that he is, he knew how I felt. He literally apologized to me as he passed me on his second trot. And the stress was like a cloud of poison in the clubhouse. Guys weren’t even bothering to talk to one another. But the press was there to listen. Oh, sure they were, recorders running the whole time. And every snide comment and petty criticism made the papers. To top off the irony, I ended the season hitting in nine out of ten games (.444), but the team went 3-7.

We finished 79-83, 9 games back of Detroit, who finished a very catchable 88-74. Not a good record in the whole division. Opportunity missed, because Detroit didn’t give Baltimore any trouble in the first round of playoffs. Boston and Seattle rounded out the playoff field.

In the Mutual League, Houston’s chances were ended after Mike Wynn could no longer play with the bone chips in his shoulder and had to have season-ending surgery in August. The Chiefs slid right into first place and didn’t leave. A very deep Indianapolis team won 98 games and seven straight to close out Atlanta at the end of the season, even though they lost Anthony Ball in June and Jason Fox in September. And the San Diego Vipers, the team no one wanted to play for, won a weak West with a -2 run differential. Hey, they were in the playoffs, which was more than I could say.

Dave Guevara, the Mutual League stolen base leader (59, to edge out Jukebox by three), and Bobby Nitta both helped Atlanta get to the Wild Card, but they lost to Indianapolis anyway, as the Trackers’ bench stepped up.

Baltimore beat Boston again in the League Championship series, but couldn’t solve Chicago’s pitching, as the great Sutaro Teikase showed the world why he was a first ballot Hall of Famer. Teikase was untouchable and the Chiefs won the Championship in six games. The last out of the series? Expanded roster call up Willie Aguila struck out pinch hitting as the tying run. Certainly not what Willie wanted, but to go from unconditional release to the Championship in two months is quite an accomplishment to me.

Willie wasn’t the only veteran who refused assignment. A day after the season ended Bobby Frisina was designated and refused.

As the curtain dropped on the 2014 season, I tried to think positively. It was probably my best season as a professional. .301/1/40. 80 runs scored. 25 stolen bases. .385 OBP, 11th in the UL. 20 errors in 677 chances (.971). Also, two renewed endorsements, two beautiful healthy children, an amazing wife who won the Charlie Bartosz Award for Chicago sportscasting, and a (mostly) pain free knee.

So why was I upset? Maybe because I have to stew in my frustrations after the season’s over to boil them out of my system. Maybe because the Comanches turned the lights off on themselves and it felt like the guys were accepting failure, and there’s no excuse for that. Maybe because I had 1158 career hits and none in a Championship. Or maybe it was because it burned me that I was on the road for Damon’s birthday. And Molly’s first birthday. And my anniversary. I had missed a lot this year, and I don’t just mean the playoffs. Basically, I wasn’t getting what I wanted, what I had worked for. And my brain knew there were no guarantees in this game, but my heart, the heart of a baseball player, didn’t understand why the game had to be so tough sometimes. I mean, even a .200 hitter gets a bloop double once in a while. Where was my unexpected success? Ah, hell, I realized as I barbecued steaks in my chilly back yard in mid-October, I don’t want charity from Fate. I’ll make my own breaks. I always have.

As the season faded to black, 2015 loomed in my mind. Was it to be my last in Chicago? Was Chicago even ready to win a Championship? And if not, was I prepared to give up the life I built here and move my whole family to a new city on the strength of my own desire to win a Championship? Did that desire outweigh the stability of our lives here?

What was I willing to sacrifice to get what I wanted?