Can the Dodgers match the ’05 White Sox postseason accomplishments?

Can 2017 Los Angeles Dodgers ...

Now that we know there’s going to be a Houston Astros/Los Angeles Dodgers matchup come the World Series beginning Tuesday, I can’t help but be reminded of that magical moments of 2005 when it was the Chicago White Sox who managed to “win it all” that autumn.

... match '05 Sox postseason mark?

What was notable about the White Sox’ bid for league and overall championships was that, come playoff time, they became virtually unbeatable.

THE WHITE SOX won the first round of American League playoffs with a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox (with Orlando Hernandez making one of the greatest relief pitching performances I’ve ever seen), then lost only one game in the final round of league playoffs.

Then came their four-game sweep of the World Series proper – as they beat the then-National League Houston Astros (watching the Saturday night playoff game against New York at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, I couldn’t help but remember that extra inning home run by Geoff Blum that was a significant part of the White Sox’ ultimate victory all those years ago).

Now why is any of this particularly relevant as we go into the 2017 World Series – one that sees the now-American League Houston Astros try to win their first World Series title ever?

Chicago native Granderson to play in Series

It’s because of the Dodgers – the team that for awhile this season flirted with the notion of setting a new record for the most wins (116) in a regular season; and wound up actually winning 104, which is still very impressive.

FOR THE DODGERS are the team who this year went through the first round of National League playoffs with a three-game sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks, then went through the final round of National League playoffs by losing only one game to the Chicago Cubs.

Could it be that the 2017 Dodgers ball club will match the White Sox’ postseason achievement of an 11-1 record, which puts that team in some fairly historic categories.

Blum provided heroic moment in Houston

It’s comparable to the 1998 New York Yankees, who had a three-game sweep in the first round of playoffs, then a four games-to-two victory in the final round, then a four-game sweep of the World Series that year against the San Diego Padres (who nearly two decades later have yet to return to the “fall classic”).

Some say the 1976 Cincinnati Reds deserve recognition because they went through the whole of playoffs and World Series without losing a game. But back then, there was only one round of league playoffs prior to the World Series.

THEIR 7-0 RECORD in beating the Philadelphia Phillies, then the New York Yankees, isn’t quite comparable to what the ’98 Yankees or the ’05 White Sox did. Or what this year’s Los Angeles Dodgers manage to do – if they can pull off a four-game sweep of the World Series beginning Tuesday against Houston.

Just what are the chances of that happening? Is this year’s Dodger team going to be the historic element of the 2017 baseball season? Or is it going to be the notion of Houston becoming the first ball club to ever win championships for both the National and American leagues (which they were transferred to back in 2013, after having been in the “senior circuit” since the 1962 expansion)?

Honestly, I’m an American League fan who feels like the real American League teams all got knocked out of the running – and this year’s World Series will be the equivalent of a mid-season 1970s regular season ballgame of the old National League West.

So in that regard, I almost wouldn’t mind it if the Dodgers were able to pull off not only a victory – but a four-game sweep. It would provide an element of history to what otherwise would be remembered as the Yankees/Dodgers World Series that failed to come to be. Besides, since the Astros this year have shown they don’t really win on the road, the Dodgers (who have home field advantage) will have to be the favorite.

BESIDES, IF A four-game sweep were to become the end result – it means the baseball historians would have to delve into the records of the past to recall all the other ballclubs that suddenly became so dominant come October.

It means we’d have to give a plug to the first ball club from Chicago to take a World Series title in this century.

Which I think would be ironic since the fans of the Cubbie blue were convinced until just a few days ago that ’17 was intended to be “their year” to make some history – and certainly not a time for remembering the city’s “other” ball club.

So as I watch this week’s World Series action, I’ll admit that a key day will be Thursday. While many will think of it merely as a travel day from Los Angeles to Houston, I'll be remembering that moment of 12 years earlier at the same ballpark when White Sox shortstop Juan Uribe fielded that ground ball up the middle, then threw to first base for the final out that finally ended the White Sox’, and Chicago’s baseball championship drought.

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Remembering the Redlegs of ’57 – are the ’16 Chicago Cubs a redux?

It was all over the newspapers across the nation – rosters for the baseball All Star Game to be played next week in San Diego is going to look a lot like the American League vs. the Chicago Cubs.

 

Should Ernie have been a '57 all star?

For it seems that seven Cubs players were picked to be on the National League all star team – including the entire starting infield. That is a first; although I have to admit I had to question that fact.

BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO know their baseball history know of the 1957 all star game when fan voting inspired by a Cincinnati Enquirer initiative resulted in the bulk of the Cincinnati Reds lineup being picked as the National League’s best.

Quite an accomplishment for a team that barely won more games than it lost and wound up finishing that season in fourth place.

But it seems not even that year resulted in a ball club’s entire infield being chosen. For the one non-Red who managed to get picked by the fans to start the game was the St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan Musial – who by that point in his career was aged enough that he had been moved from the outfield to first base.

So ’57 was the year that gave us a National League best of Johnny Temple at second base, Roy McMillan at shortstop and Gus Bell at third base. With eventual National League most valuable player Ernie Banks as an infield reserve and the lone Cub representative that season.

IT’S NO WONDER the National League, weakened with an infield like that, managed to lose to the American League 6-5 in the game played at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium.

 

Should Carpenter be all-star starter in '16?

Which makes me wonder if having such a Chicago Cub presence on the National League all star team this year will have some sort of equal negative effect? Is there something similar to the ex-Cub factor in the World Series that applies to the All Star Game?

I know some people are already convinced the Chicago Cubs of the 2000-teens are a baseball dynasty – one meant to win championships galore. Even though I’d argue such boasting is way ridiculously premature.

They haven’t won a thing yet. Even for those Cubs fans who want to think that 2015 was something mighty special, keep in mind that the record books indicate the New York Mets wound up being the National League champions.

 

The non-Reds starter of  '57 as chosen by "voters"

THE CUBS WOUND up being just one of several ball clubs that came close, but wound up winning nothing.

Besides, the point of the All Star Game is that it is meant to be an exhibition – some mid-season fun to break the monotony of the 162-game marathon that is professional baseball.

I can’t help but think the National League could have done better than to load up the infield from Clark and Addison to represent them come next week.

Besides, while I’m sure that Cubs fans are feeling over-bloated with joy at having their team’s players in such prominent roles, it could wind up being that the most prominent Chicago story that comes out of the All Star Game will wind up focusing on Chris Sale.

HE’S THE WHITE Sox pitcher who currently has more wins than anybody else this season in baseball, and could wind up being the American League’s starting pitcher for the game.

 

Will Sale be the ultimate Chicago all star?

What happens if Sale winds up being the guy who shuts down all those Chicago Cubs during the few innings he pitches, and winds up being the winning pitcher for the American League?

It could mean that the eventual World Series that Cubs fans already are convinced will be theirs come October 2016 will wind up being played with the challengers getting home field advantage.

That is, presuming that both Chicago ball clubs don’t wind up sitting in front of television sets at home come October while other ball clubs play for the championship of ’16.

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Reliving 9-decade-old baseball scandal more interesting than current season?

It’s popping up on various websites to the point where I feel compelled to mention it here – some four minutes of newsreel footage that was shot during the 1919 World Series.

This all came later

That being the one in which the heavily-favored White Sox lost five games to three to the Cincinnati Reds, and eight White Sox players were indicted (but eventually acquitted) a year later on charges that their loss was a criminal conspiracy.

YES, WE GET to relive the “Black Sox,” the eight ballplayers who reportedly took gamblers money in exchange for losing the series – because a White Sox loss was worth more to gamblers “in the know” than a Cincinnati defeat would be.

I first saw the video turn up on a CBS Sports website, although I later on Friday saw it on Sports Illustrated, Salon.com, and ESPN – just to name a few Internet sites.

Not that we’re getting any ball games, or any action we can easily follow.

It is some footage from Game Three (which the White Sox won behind the pitching of rookie Dickie Kerr), THEN Game One, in which White Sox star Eddie Cicotte kind of looks like he’s just milling around the pitcher’s mound.

RATHER THAN TRYING to field his position in any meaningful way. Then again, who’s to say what is really happening in these snippets.

Which, unfortunately, are the little we have left of that particular World Series. Major League Baseball now goes out of its way to prepare documentary films of each World Series.

The 'hero' of '19?

I even own one of those boxed sets that contains every single World Series video – which go back only to 1943.

So all those years when the Chicago Cubs meant something were not preserved. Nor were any of those years in the early part of the 20^th Century when the image of the “Chicago White Sox” meant an elite organization in professional baseball.

Allowing observers admission

ALL WE GET are 1945 (when a war-torn Cubs team couldn’t beat the return of Hank Greenberg and the Detroit Tigers), 1959 (when the “Go Go” White Sox beat Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, but no one else) and 2005 (still envisioning that surprise home run by Scott Podsednik to win Game Two).

How some of us remember it

Which is what makes the sight of Cicotte and outfielder Joe Jackson seem all the more remarkable – we get to see them as living human beings. Even if the video quality kind of stinks.

Then again, these newsreels (for Pathe News out of Canada) spent many decades dumped in a swimming pool that was then covered over with dirt and ice for use as a skating rink.

The fact that anything survived for us to be able to watch today is near miraculous. And it gave me my kicks.

PARTICULARLY BECAUSE BEING able to see just over four minutes of video may be the highlight of the season thus far for a White Sox fan.

It seems the ball club isn’t anywhere near as awful as it was last year. But it is still a team that will barely win half its games. Not exactly something to get worked up about.

The current Sox star

Better we can relive the memories of Kerr, who managed to get credit for winning two ballgames – even though it appears he was not among the ballplayers included in the fix, and may have even had teammates undermining his efforts with their uninspired play.

Then, we can carry it through to the present – where the bright, shining star of this season seems to be Jose Abreu, the Cuban sensation who after one month of the season is leading the American League in both home runs and runs batted in.

AT HIS CURRENT pace, he’d hit about 55 home runs this season. I don’t expect that to happen. Nor do I expect him to avoid the whole of 2014 without a slump.

An 'unblessed' place for decades

But it is something that gives hope for the near future. And something that White Sox fans can actually see.

Unlike the promises being made by Chicago Cubs management of ballplayers now in places like Knoxville, Tenn.; Boise, Idaho or suburban Geneva who might someday amount to something, if the baseball “gods” permit it.

When was the last time those “gods” permitted anything positive when it came to the Wrigley Field scene?

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I found myself most amused by the images of New Yorkers watching special scoreboards erected that allowed them to follow the action -- not all that different, really, from those people who follow ballgames by reading real-time summaries off their computer screens while the games are being played.

316-292, + 1

By leaving now, Lou Piniella gets to ensure that he won’t wind up as just another losing manager of the Chicago Cubs.

As things stand, in his 3 ¾ seasons as the boss on the playing field, his teams managed to win 52 percent of their games. Although the way things are going this season, there was a slight chance (if they had lost 31 of their final 38 games) that the team’s overall record under Piniella would drop below a winning record.

IF ANYONE IS capable of putting together that big a streak to finish a season, it is the Chicago Cubs (although after seeing the White Sox Saturday night blow their first game in extra innings, then give up a lead in the 9th inning of a second game, I wonder about them as well).

So Piniella, the man who played in four World Series with the New York Yankees and managed in one other with the Cincinnati Reds, along with being the manager when the Seattle Mariners reached a point in their history when they were actually a significant franchise, is now on his way back to Florida (he’s a life-long Tampa area resident). Sunday against the Atlanta Braves will be his last game in a Chicago uniform.

Which likely clears the way for one-time star second baseman Ryne Sandberg to take over the team, which I will admit intrigues me because it will place both of Chicago’s major league ballclubs in the hands of their star middle infielders from the 1980s.

Ryno versus Ozzie Guillen. That will be a personafication debate for the future.

FOR NOW, I can’t help but look back at Piniella, whom I must admit was a favorite ballplayer of mine when I was a kid – and whom I got to interview as a reporter-type back in 2000 when his Seattle Mariners knocked the White Sox out of the playoffs that year in three straight games.

A part of me always wondered just how much an association with the Chicago Cubs would wind up besmirching his overall record.

For all those people who thought that Piniella was somehow bringing New York Yankee-like vibes to Wrigley Field, I’d argue that the drag of the Cubs always seems to overcome that. Yankee ties didn’t make Gene Michael (114-124 in 1986-87) a winning Cubs manager, and I know those people who like to think that the reason the Yankees themselves didn’t win the World Series in 1981 was because they had made the mistake of reacquiring outfielder Bobby Murcer from the Cubs.

Even though Murcer always thought of himself as a long-time Yankee who succeeded Mickey Mantle in center field, that trade made him the requisite third ex-Cub on that ’81 ballclub, thereby allowing the “Ex-Cub Factor” to kick in and even take down the mighty Yankees.

AS FAR AS Piniella is concerned, I don’t think he did quite as much damage to his reputation. He did win those two division titles. And he is he first Cubs manager to walk away from the team with a winning record in quite a while.

It will be just another set of circumstances that helped add a few years to what baseball writer George Castle called the “The Million-To-One Team,” the title of his book about the Cubs and what Castle said were the odds any team would have to overcome to be as unsuccessful over such a long period of time as the Cubs have been.

Too many people will remember Piniella’s Yankees playing days (and all those water coolers that got smashed amidst Lou's fiery temper), particularly that moment in the 1978 tie-breaking playoff against the Red Sox when he managed to stop a base hit in the sun by Jerry Remy from becoming more than a harmless single. Had Piniella lost sight of the ball and Remy had managed to get extra bases, there’s a good chance that shortstop Bucky Dent’s monumental home run in that game wouldn’t have meant much of anything.

Others will remember his fiery temperament in Cincinnati and in Seattle, particularly in 2001 when he managed a team to 116 regular season wins (still a record), although that team wound up falling short to the Yankees themselves.

SO HERE IS hoping that Lou enjoys retirement, since I doubt he is going to latch onto any other ballclubs. It seems now that the managers of major league baseball clubs are the guys roughly my own age (Ozzie is 46, Ryne will turn 51 next month) who were ballplayers when I was in college and a young reporter-type person in Chicago, rather than the ones who were ballplayers when I was a kid.

Here also is hoping that Lou’s mother, whom he cited as part of his reason for not finishing out the season, recovers from her illnesses.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: With Sunday’s 16-5 loss to the Atlanta Braves, the Chicago Cubs complete the Lou Piniella era with an overall record of 316-293. Mike Quade begins his managerial stint meant to finish off the season on Monday against the Washington Nationals. The real competition is to see if Quade becomes even less memorable a Cubs manager than Jim Essian (part of 1991).