Chapter 55:
Trouble in the Windy City
The 2012 season began with a lot of promise and expectation. Various sources had the Comanches winning the division, even the United League. We were up against some stiff competition, though. Cleveland was still a powerhouse and Detroit was resurgent. As the strength of UL Central talent became apparent, teams began to respond. Chicago’s plans to capture the UL crown were weakened when Jukebox Viveros was traded from Seattle to the New York Admirals in March and promptly began chewing a huge hole in East Coast pitching. New York also signed free agent center fielder Joe Cotter to add power and shore up a weak defensive outfield.
The press in Chicago was unimpressed at first. They knew how much talent we had and quickly threw down the gauntlet by declaring us the division favorites. This created a stir in Cleveland, as you can imagine, given the historic rivalry between the cities. It felt good to have the press on your side – much better than having them biting at your back – and we welcomed it as an excuse to swagger a little. Cobblestones was full of big talk, big claims, and big promises. Willie Aguila passed out Cohibas like a salesman passes out business cards. Our GM Cezar Fontillion preached caution, but we didn’t care.
The good times began to turn when the league announced an audit of the Comanches for compliance with the new league drug policies. It was not unusual for the league to audit teams unexpectedly, but the announcement came behind the Ayala Scandal and the release of a report by the OLS which appeared to support claims that PEDs were causing more damage to legitimate records than previously thought. The report showed in part that power numbers were rising at three times the normal rate for trending stats in past eras. Homers, slugging percentage, doubles, and strikeouts were rising. Twenty-two new records in these categories had been set in the last three years alone. The numbers might not have received much notice except that the Ayala Scandal was so fresh in everyone’s mind. It was certainly a motivating factor in the league’s decision to start auditing more frequently.
Players didn’t like it, of course, and not just because it felt like an invasion of privacy. Somehow, the union had not addressed the frequency of audits in the contract. Player tests were regulated, but not team audits. Players became convinced that the league was taking advantage of the loophole to test players more often than called for in the contract. They were right.
It wasn’t the league’s fault the union didn’t address this issue, but when the league announced audits of Chicago, Miami, and Phoenix – teams not known for transgressions of the drug policy – the players cried foul. The league was fishing, they said. Nevertheless, there I was in early May, standing next to my teammates, peeing in a cup. It felt like the Ayala investigation had solved nothing and only made things worse. It hadn’t alleviated blame, as the commission claimed. It had only provided fuel for the league to test players even more often. The league felt justified, given the serious nature of the claims against the Generals; a major sports team almost lost a championship over banned drug use. That can’t be taken lightly. But the audit sure caused an uproar in Chicago.
Let’s face it, we had underachieved that last two years. Anything less than a playoff spot was a failure in Chicago. The Marauders and Tomahawks both made the playoffs the past three seasons. The Tomahawks almost won the CHL title in 2011. When the audit was announced the press went to work dismantling all the positive feelings they had engendered over the winter. I understand that the press has a job to do. I understand that better than most, I think, because I’m married to a sportscaster. But this was particularly harsh. The press gave players nowhere to go to explain the shortcomings of 2010 and 2011. If it wasn’t poor play it was poor chemistry. If it wasn’t poor chemistry, it was banned chemistry.
Cobblestones became a very tense place in May. Every rumor that was ever started about a player surfaced again at Cobblestones, fed to the waiting press by agents defending their own clients, opportunists looking for an easy payday, and even by the players themselves.
Did Willie Aguila juice while he was in the minors? Did Bobby Sieber? How did Bootsy Morales hit .323 at age 36? Did Pat Laubach get hurt because he stopped juicing? What secrets did Driscoll really know about Ayala? And on and on.
Nobody could claim that our pitchers were on something. While the team was hitting a league-high .302, our pitchers had an ERA of over 5.00. It’s a tough task to score 6 runs to win a game, and we couldn’t do it often enough. Laubach’s injury was a huge factor, to be sure, but he was a starter. The Comanche bullpen had an April ERA of 5.69 with 6 blown saves. It wasn’t long before rumors of trades for better pitching started to circulate and Fontillion began spending part of each day quashing them.
In late May I began to slow down. My knee was hurting in the cold spring Chicago weather and I went a dismal 2 for 19 during a road trip through Oakland and Denver. On May 19th Chicago signed Palmer Brack and I was actually happy for it. He was a decent shortstop and I needed to rest my knee. During the three games I rested, I tested some new equipment. I had signed on with BrockAir in 2011 and they were great to me. I was no Giorgio Medina with the bat, but I could still run a little and was well known in the Chicago area where they didn’t have a strong presence. I went to them with an idea for a shoe and they had me test the prototype Newmatix cleats while I was off. The results were amazing. The AirTransit technology was better than I could have hoped and I began wearing them immediately. If only I had asked for a percentage of sales then…
As my average stabilized and my stolen bases increased, the team began to falter seriously. Although the results of the audit were gratifying (no one was implicated), the team still could not win. After a June sweep by the Admirals and a white-hot Flavio Viveros (Jukebox was hitting .360) the comments began again.
“Maybe they should be on drugs…”
On June 14th we vented our frustrations on a tough Dallas team, taking the rubber game at home 15-5. We were 32-33, but only 6 games back of Cleveland, who were led by Von Jones and his league leading 25 homers.
At Cobblestones that night the mood was relaxed; we had just played about as well as we could play. I went 2 for 5 in that game and was hitting .302. I was sitting with Benji Gillingham, Bootsy, and Reuben Tinch in Willie Aguila’s booth when word came that there had been a blowup after the game between members of the bullpen, starter Alfred Bella, and our pitching coach Eric McKern. Apparently, after we had all left the stadium an argument ensued when McKern tried to talk to the bullpen about their recent performances. Bella was nearby and got into the conversation. Blame was placed. Punches were thrown. Bartolo Gomez dislocated his elbow.
I called one of our relief pitchers, Angel Olmos, with whom I had become friends, and asked him what happened. Angel told me McKern was going over some things with the bullpen about lowering their ERAs when Shawn Byerly made a comment about the starters’ inability to prevent runners from “turning the infield into a merry-go-round.” Alfred Bella, who had been struggling horribly all season (he was 0-6 at the time), took exception and words were exchanged. Angel said Bella came into the meeting and McKern tried to turn him around and Bella pushed him. Byerly jumped up and pushed Bella back and Bella swung on him and the fight was on. Angel said Gomez tried to break it up but the pile fell on him and he hurt his arm.
There is a phenomenon I like to call The Worst Possible Thing. It goes like this: Something happens that causes conflict. The conflict goes unresolved. Ideas are formulated in vacuums. In the absence of fact, theories become proof. Conflicting proofs are put forth as competing explanations for said conflict. People argue, then lose all ability to think rationally, then The Worst Possible Thing happens: chaos. The chaos becomes a germinating environment, causing all half-truths, speculations and rumors to bloom. Suddenly, everyone has something to say about everything – when two minutes earlier no one was going to say a word. Now everyone has to be heard and all personal conflicts of any size are brought forth.
The bullpen fight was a perfect example of The Worst Possible Thing because soon everyone was voicing their opinions, fueled by Cobblestones’ fine liquor, into the microphones of every sportswriter within earshot. Me? I got the hell out of there and went home.
The next day it was all over the papers and on
The SportsReport. Fontillion had a silver tongue, but even he couldn’t stop the carnage. All wounds were reopened. Guys wouldn’t even talk to one another. McKern was conspicuously absent. Stump Mitchell had a closed door meeting with Fontillion and the Bassones and came back to the clubhouse with only a tiny sliver of ass left. Then he let us have it. We weren’t being professionals. We let the press get to us. We let the league audit get to us. We were not taking care of each other. We were becoming a pit of vipers.
All of a sudden, Stump was the bad guy. Quotes appeared in the paper. Stump wasn’t leading the team. Stump let bad feelings go on for too long. Stump needs to be a leader. Stump needed to be a leader? Stump Mitchell was a retired captain in the Army Reserve, for God’s Sake. Leadership was not the issue.
I was not immune, either. Our backup infielder Jamar Nasser told Second City Sports magazine that I was “standoffish” and “did not socialize much with the team.” I’m not sure what he meant by those comments, except that I was known to go home to spend time with my pregnant wife on a nightly basis during homestands.
I didn’t take offense – much. I knew I could be a little too quiet, maybe even moody, especially if I was in a slump. And I usually do not take to people right away. So on that count I plead the fifth. But in my defense Jamar Nasser never said more than two words to me.
And so it went. Guys had to resolve each conflict one thorn at a time. McKern apologized to Bella. Bella apologized to McKern. Everyone apologized to Gomez. They apologized, but I know the things they said to each other were not forgotten. Fontillion and press secretary Donna Weist worked overtime smoothing out the rough edges.
For his part, Old Man Bassone stayed out of it. He didn’t say much to the press anyway, given his family history, but we all knew how disappointed he was. He was spending a lot of money on us, and it wasn’t so he could read about how pissed we all were at each other. We all felt Donna’s nervousness at what she may have to explain next. We all felt the new pressure on Stump Mitchell and Eric McKern. We all felt the continuous pressure of Cleveland winning two out of every three. And we sure as hell felt the pressure of the media, who stood patiently to the side, cameras rolling, waiting for us to blow up at each other again. Compared to what was to happen, getting through the drug audit was the easy part.
I would love to say we rebounded and started winning. I would love to say it, but it didn’t happen. For the rest of June we waited to hit bottom, ready to bounce back up. Then we began to wonder if the pit we were in
had a bottom.