Will Jimenez join ranks of ballplayers who bite Chicago Cubs’ fans on their behinds for seasons to come?

Eloy Jimenez is the star ballplayer from the Dominican Republic who is expected to be a significant part of the rebuilt Chicago White Sox ballclubs that will play in future years. 

Coulda been a Cubs star, but w/ Sox instead

And his quality of play will most definitely be studied these next two days. Every little move he makes will be watched for evidence that he’s making his former employer “suck it” big time.

FOR JIMENEZ IS the big White Sox star whom the Sout’ Siders acquired in a trade a few years ago with the Chicago Cubs. Jimenez was the guy whom the Cubbies knew had potential to be a big star – but they let him go in a trade to acquire a more-experienced pitcher.

Yes, Jose Quintana has been a solid pitcher for the Cubs – giving the ball club what they expected when they acquired him. Yet I can’t think of a single White Sox fan who’d rather have Quintana back.

Jimenez has finally made it to the major leagues this year, has had some big ballgames (particularly against the New York Yankees) and could very well join all those Cubano ballplayers the White Sox have acquired to create a talented (and potentially championship) ball club.

And now, due to the concept of inter-league play, the White Sox will be playing the Cubs. The White Sox will be the visiting ball club – traveling to the North Side for a two-game series.

 

Wound up winning Sox champ instead

YOU JUST KNOW that White Sox fandom will be rooting for Jimenez to be the big bat who beats the baby blue Cubbie bears over their batting helmet-clad heads. While I don’t doubt Cub-dom will hope that Jimenez turns out to be insignificant – or perhaps makes an error or strikes out at a key point in the game.

All so they can spew some trash talk that this Jimenez kid (he’s only 22 now) is a bust who won’t ever amount to anything special!

A Hall of Famer … for dreaded Cardinals

Of course, there have been several dozen ballplayers who managed to do time with both the White Sox and Cubs. There also are those players whom the Cubs have managed to let go – only to have them turn into stars somewhere else.

Take the case of Jon Garland, who back in 1997 was a first-round draft pick of the Cubs. Only to be traded to the White Sox a year later for more-experienced pitcher Matt Karchner.

White Sox would gladly have returned him

GARLAND EVENTUALLY DEVELOPED into a solid starting pitcher for the White Sox, and was a significant part of their pitching rotation in 2005 – the year they brought Chicago its first World Series victory in 88 years (and first of the 21^st Century).

Before anyone starts thinking the key to the White Sox acquiring major league talent is to make a trade with the Cubs, I’m sure many Sox fans will recall the 1974 trade that saw Cubs legend Ron Santo have an absolutely awful (a .221 batting average, 5 home runs and 41 runs batted in) stint with the Sox.

That, even more than his overbearing, Cubbie-loving personality, is why his persona will always be detested on the South Side.

But it hasn’t always been good times for the Cubs and their fans, who had to endure decades of grief over the 1964 trade that saw then acquire pitcher Ernie Broglio in exchange for outfielder Lou Brock – who went on to become a St. Louis Cardinals star, a great base stealer, and a Hall of Famer.

THAT IS ONE trade that Cubs fans wish could be erased from baseball history. Or at least the chapters related to Wrigley Field.

Sox would have refused his return

I remember back when Cubs fans tried downplaying that deal by insisting that an even bigger embarrassment was the 1992 deal where the White Sox eagerly acquired slugging outfielder Jorge Bell for a skinny Dominican kid outfielder Sammy Sosa.

The same Sammy who bulked up and went on to hit all those home runs (600-plus), only to get tagged with tales that he used steroids and that his whole experience was a fraud. All the more reason why White Sox fans never felt any sense of loss at the trade while many Cubs fans now try to pretend that Sosa never really happened!

Although one wonders if Jimenez has the chance to become an even bigger embarrassment to the Cubs than any of these deals – if he continues to show his stardom in Chicago!

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Is Jose Quintaña trade the next Jon Garland deal? Or next Sammy Sosa?

The only surprising part about the Chicago White Sox trading away their top pitcher on Thursday is where he wound up – many baseball fans were convinced Jose Quintaña would wind up wearing the pinstripes and interlocking “NY” logo of the New York Yankees.
 

Changing uniforms, but not his home city

Instead, Quintaña is going to the Chicago Cubs; who gave up four ballplayers in their minor league system. Including the two who supposedly were the top prospects they had for their future.

IT’S ONE OF those deals that could come back to bite the Cubbies on their behind if any of those young ballplayers develops into a key to the White Sox’ next championship ballclub – whenever in the future that may occur.

It would be the Cubs’ luck that the “Cuban revolution” taking place on the Sout’ Side will win a pennant, and one of these no-longer-a-Cub players will get the key hit to win the Sox their second world series of this century.

Of course, baseball fans know there always is uncertainty.

For it also could turn out that Quintaña could be the key to gives the Cubs a jolt this season and helps them return to the form that enabled them to win their first World Series of this century just last year.

IN WHICH CASE, it would be just like the White Sox to provide the key piece to enable the Cubs to be able to claim to have more World Series titles in recent years (’05 for the White Sox and ’16 for those baby blue bears) than they do.

Cubs fans' fantasy all-Chicago trade?

So this trade is a gamble, as much of baseball always is. No one knows for sure how things will turn out, and we’ll probably need to wait a couple of decades before we can definitively say if somebody seriously screwed up with Thursday’s deal.

Could this wind up like the 1998 trade where long-forgotten pitcher Matt Karchner went to the Cubs for a minor league ballplayer who turned out to be Jon Garland – one of the starting pitchers who led the White Sox to that ’05 World Series championship.

The White Sox fans' retort

I’m sure that’s the dream from the perspective of 35^th Street.

ALTHOUGH UP AT Clark and Addison streets, they’re probably thinking more along the lines of that 1992 trade where the Cubs gave up an aging (but still capable) George Bell in exchange for a young outfielder whom the White Sox had written off as too stubborn to learn new ways of improving himself as a ballplayer.

Both of these Steves pitched better ...

Some six years later, Sammy Sosa hit those 66 home runs in a season and began that six-season streak in which he began bashing home runs at a pace only matched by Babe Ruth at his 1920s peak.

Which for a while made Cubs fans want to think of this trade as some sort of ultimate steal. Except that with all the steroid speculation that the rumor mill insists on tagging to Sosa, there are many White Sox fans who feel nothing but relief that their favorite ballclub doesn’t have to live with that albatross around its neck.

... for the other Chicago ball club

According to the Chicago Tribune, this is the 15^th time the two Chicago ballclubs have made trades with each other. We’ll have to see how things pan out.

THERE WILL BE some White Sox fans who will give extra scrutiny to outfielder Eloy Jimenez and pitcher Dylan Cease – who are now part of the Sox’ future rather than the Cubs. Although considering that the Cubs had these ballplayers this season at teams in South Bend, Ind., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., it would seem that maybe 2019 is the soonest we’ll see them in Chicago.

Still a freakish image to contemplateS

Although it wouldn’t be unheard of for one team’s player to have better luck on the other side of Chicago. I still remember former Cub Steve Stone (yes, the broadcast guy) being a key pitcher for that 1977 White Sox team that seriously contended for a championship, while Steve Trout (a local boy from suburban South Holland) missed being a part of the ’83 White Sox team that went to the playoffs but made up for it the following year by being a part of that ’84 division-winning Cubs ballclub.

So what’s it going to be for Quintaña?

Will Thursday go down in baseball history “infamy” for this trade? And on which side of Chicago will it wind up being detested, while beloved by the other part of the local baseball fandom?

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