2-team battle turning 1-sided
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Sox's superiority applies pressure to Cubs-- on the field, at the turnstiles, in the public eye
By David Haugh
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
May 14, 2006
chicagosports.chicagotribune.com
Forgive Chris Singleton for not knowing the whereabouts of Kid K, Kerry Wood, the Cubs' supposed ace abducted from the pitching rotation by injury yet again this spring.
Singleton, the White Sox's color analyst for WSCR-AM, has been too busy doing homework on the defending world champions to keep up with the capers of the other hometown baseball team.
"Has he pitched yet?" Singleton asked Friday, unaware whether Wood had started a major-league game, a simulated game or a minor-league game, as he did at Iowa that night.
Blame Singleton's Cubs ignorance on bliss. Happily watching the best team in baseball leaves little time or reason to follow one that has looked like one of the worst recently.
The way the city's two teams have played in the weeks preceding the Crosstown Classic, which resumes Friday at U.S. Cellular Field, the competitive distance between them could wind up much more than the 8.1 miles that separate the ballparks.
Biggest disparity ever
The Sox, on pace to win 106 games, have an opportunity to finish further ahead of the Cubs, limping along at a 68-victory rate, than any Chicago baseball team ever has finished in front of the other.
The 1932 Cubs set the standard by winning 41 more games than the Sox. The Sox's high-water mark over their North Side rivals is 30 games better--reached in 1901, 1954 and 2000.
The recent surge has changed Chicago's baseball culture so dramatically that it is not folly, in mid-May with the two franchises seemingly headed in opposite directions, to paint a scenario that has the Sox beating the Cubs at the turnstiles too.
At this rate, the Sox need to average 38,406 fans at U.S. Cellular Field in the remaining 62 home games to go above 3 million in attendance for the first time. That's tough but not impossible for a team considered better than the one that won a World Series.
The Cubs' ability to draw fans to Wrigley Field recently typically depends little on the product on the field. But the natives of Wrigleyville have been growing increasingly restless waiting for the Wood and Mark Prior revival, and if the team averages fewer than 36,533 fans over the 65 games left, it could fall short of 3 million.
The baseball tide in town has turned faster than Jim Thome on a hanging curve, so much so that guys like Singleton, who bleed silver and black, offer more mercy than malice when discussing the city rivalry.
That might be, unintentionally, the biggest insult to Cubs fans ever hurled from White Sox Nation: pity.
"It'd be different if they were healthy, but it's not fair to judge and evaluate the Cubs because they're not running on all cylinders since they lost Derrek Lee--and the pitchers," said Singleton, the starting center fielder on the 2000 Sox team that was the last to enjoy such season-long superiority over the Cubs.
But Singleton cautioned that such a disparity might make the six games between the two teams more competitive, not less so.
"For Cubs players, the intensity level of the series might be as high as it's going to get all season down the stretch," Singleton said. "They sort of have an advantage that way. The Sox have had to get up for everybody's best all year long. This is going to be like the playoffs for the Cubs."
Devastating impact
If the Cubs lose the first best-of-three series, the burden of sharing a city with such a dominant team will get heavier. For the folks who work at Clark and Addison, it is as obvious as the Harry Caray statue.
"I think the pressure one team feels when the other team in town has success has a huge impact on the organization," said Larry Himes, a man who would know.
Himes, now retired and living in Arizona, was the Sox general manager from 1987-90 and headed the Cubs from 1992-94.
He worked on the South Side in 1989 when the Cubs won the National League East and on the North Side in 1993 when the Sox won the American League West. He also experienced the two-team dynamic in Los Angeles when he was the scouting director for the California Angels from 1981-86 trying to close the gap on the Dodgers.
"When there's such a difference in how the two teams are doing, morale isn't very good," Himes said. "It ends up having an impact on every person in the organization."
Gary Carter experienced the other end of the spectrum in New York and compared the way the Sox have overtaken the Cubs on the field and in conversation all over the city to what his Mets teams accomplished in the mid-1980s. Carter, a member of the World Series champion Mets in 1986, still basks in the memory of knocking the Yankees off the pedestal they had occupied for decades.
"The Sox have set themselves up for years to come, and if they win another one, the Cubs are in real trouble," said Carter, the manager of the Class A Port St. Lucie Mets. "We owned the back pages of the tabloids, and even the New York Times sports section. The Yankees had been dominant, but we started winning and gained some fans that I think really helped us turn around the franchise."
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner routinely got drawn into public debates over Yankees-Mets, for instance, once instigating Mets fans when he said he preferred an aging Don Mattingly to a young Darryl Strawberry.
In contrast, Himes found it more prudent to ignore any progress across town--not an easy task in '89. But it was a method Himes felt necessary as he built a blueprint for the Sox minor-league system he thought had enough to do with last season's title that he kidded club Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf owed him a World Series ring.
"We needed to stay away from asking, `What is the other organization in town doing?"' Himes said. "[With the Sox] my feeling was I didn't care what the Cubs did. But some people do care. That pressure can factor into how they make decisions."
Change in philosophy
Public pressure created by the Cubs' recent losing skid, for instance, might have crept into GM Jim Hendry's thoughts on whether to extend manager Dusty Baker's contract. Critics of Hendry also have referenced anxiety when addressing his reluctance to make a deal, any deal, since losing Lee to a broken wrist.
Similarly, the lack of such pressure frees up executives such as Sox GM Ken Williams to take a gunslinger mentality. He did so last off-season, pulling the trigger on defining deals for Thome and Javier Vazquez.
Instead of panicking that his next move might be scrutinized by an antsy public, Williams followed the Atlanta Braves model that GM John Schuer-holz constructed and has proven to be complacency-proof.
"The way Kenny has done this is the traditional grind-it-out way by relying on his baseball people and making decisions with great strength of conviction," said Schuerholz, the architect of 14 straight division champions.
Schuerholz once traded popular Brian Jordan, Atlanta's equivalent of Aaron Rowand at the time, for Gary Sheffield in 2002 but did not miss a beat.
He also has made tough decisions to let go of aging players such as Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Javy Lopez. And he didn't have a competing franchise in town.
"The biggest thing is managing past complacency and being comfortable and being wary of that, and it helps that Kenny can look down at that World Series ring and feel good about making those moves," Schuerholz said. "I expect the White Sox to keep on rolling."
It could be a historic roll, according to Billy Pierce.
Pierce hates comparing teams from different eras, but if pressed he would call the 2006 Sox potentially the best he ever has seen.
"They're better than any team I was on in the '50s," said Pierce, a key pitcher on the staff of the 1959 American League pennant winners. "We had a good ballclub, and great defense with [Nellie] Fox and [Luis] Aparicio, but we didn't have the power or batting averages this team does."
He paused as if leafing through the White Sox encyclopedia in his mind.
"The only time throughout history where the Sox were close to assembling the type of success over time they have now was before the scandal [of 1919]," Pierce said. "I think we could be heading into the golden age of White Sox baseball."
As for the Cubs?
"The pressure's on," Himes said. "But I think Jim Hendry can deal with that."
100 club
Only six teams in Chicago baseball history have won 100 games in a season--the Cubs five times and the White Sox once. The Sox are on pace to win 109 games after Friday night's loss to Minnesota. They would have to go 94-34 in the remaining 118 games to surpass the 1906 Cubs' win total.
1906 Cubs 116-36
1907 Cubs 107-45
1909 Cubs 104-49
1910 Cubs 104-50
1917 White Sox 100-54
1935 Cubs 100-54
Margin of victory
Since 1900, the biggest victory disparity between the city's two baseball teams came in 1932, when the Cubs won 41 more games than the Sox. The biggest margin the Sox have enjoyed is a 30-game advantage--in 1901, 1954 and 2000. At their current pace, the Sox will win 40 more games than the Cubs--109 to 69--which would be the biggest gap the South Siders ever have enjoyed. There have been only seven seasons in which one team has won 30 or more games than the other, with the Cubs accomplishing the task four times to the Sox's three.
Record Wins
1901 SOX 83-53 83 +30
CUBS 53-86 53
1910 SOX 68-85 65
CUBS 104-50 104 +36
1929 SOX 59-93 59
CUBS 98-54 98 +39
1932 SOX 49-102 49
CUBS 90-64 90 +41
1934 SOX 53-99 53
CUBS 86-65 86 +33
1954 SOX 94-60 94 +30
CUBS 64-90 64
2000 SOX 95-67 95 +30
CUBS 65-97 65
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dhaugh@tribune.com
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