Who matters more? Does it really matter? It's baseball in Chicago

I’m sure some baseball fans are making half-wit jokes these days about how the only place the Chicago White Sox matter is in Havana – where the Major League Baseball delegation that is touring Cuba this week bears a strong Sout’ Side flavor.

The pride of Havana in Chicago? Or...

Four major league ballplayers with Cuban ethnic origins will be in and around Havana through Friday, including star Sox slugger Jose Abreu and former shortstop Alexi Ramirez – who may well wind up begging for his roster spot back by the time spring training comes around.

IT WON’T BE the White Sox going to Cuba to play some spring-training games (the Tampa Bay Rays were chosen from a bowl a few weeks ago). But the Cubano fanaticos de beisbol will get to see the elite of the White Sox portrayed as part of the game’s elite.

And for what it’s worth, Abreu got to see his son for the first time in more than two years – it was one of the drawbacks of fleeing his country that he had to abandon his family.

Although from news accounts, it seems the two occasionally have talked on the phone. And when Abreu’s son was brought to the hotel where Jose was staying, the cap he had perched on his head bore the Old English-style Sox logo that would make the boy welcome in just about any South Side establishment.

Of course, much of the public attention to baseball in the past couple of weeks involved trades made by the Chicago Cubs that supposedly reinforce their championship dreams.

INCLUDING THE FACT that some St. Louis Cardinals ballplayers chose to leave that team so they could play for the Cubs. Which led me to stumble across a parody story recently that said Cardinals manager Mike Matheny left St. Louis to become a third-base coach for the Cubs.

... the pride of Chicago in Havana?

Those Cubs fans who think the whole world revolves around their preferred ball club are sky-high.

Although all I can remember is the winter following the 1977 season when New York Yankees pitcher Mike Torrez left the team for a big-money contract with the rival Boston Red Sox.

Everybody was convinced this was the gesture that ensured the Yankees’ downfall. The Red Sox ascension to their rightful place as champions. All would be right with the world.

Only in fantasy is Matheny becoming a Cub

IN REALITY, WHAT happened in 1978 was that memorable tie between the two and that one-game tie-breaking playoff. In which Torrez wound up being the losing pitcher who gave up that immortal home run to one-time White Sox shortstop Bucky Dent.

A scenario I could see befalling the Cubs as much more likely than a championship.

Is this the Cubs fate?

Besides, I couldn’t help but notice the Crain’s Chicago Business report that found a Nielsen Scarborough study finding the most popular Chicago sports teams to be the Bears and the Blackhawks – with the two baseball clubs bringing up the rear.

That’s what a Stanley Cup will do for a team’s popularity, compared to promises to flirt with championship status that ultimately fell short for both the Cubs and White Sox.

AND BEFORE ANYONE of the Cubbiedom status goes on much, I couldn’t help but notice both baseball teams experienced slight upticks in their popularity. Even the White Sox, who were one of baseball’s biggest disappointments in 2015.

Even with Jose Abreu, whose performance in ’15 may have been the best on the team but didn’t match up with the 2014 statistics that made him the American League’s Rookie of the Year.

Perhaps an Abreu 2016 resurgence (along with performances closer to what was expected this year by several White Sox players and the acquisition this week to play third base of Todd Frazier from the Cincinnati Reds) could be what brings South Side baseball back up to anticipated levels.

What will happen come the next Chicago city World Series?

And who knows, if paired up with another Cubs team that doesn’t embarrass itself, perhaps we could get that dream season of an all-Chicago World Series – one that would let us put the South Side/North Side debate to rest for all-time with a White Sox victory.

  -30-

Ventura best ballplayer, Sveum most experienced (sort of) manager. Matheny most likely to succeed during ‘12?

Now that the Chicago Cubs have let it be known that Dale Sveum will become their new field manager, it seems that the ballclubs that people across the state of Illinois root for all have new leadership.

Except for maybe those few far northern Illinois types who curmudgeonly root for the Milwaukee Brewers. Then again, I’m willing to ignore Wisconsin until their residents can come to their senses on Gov. Scott Walker.

BUT FOR NOW, back to baseball.

Where the Cubs announced that Sveum will leave those Brewers to become the manager, running the team on the field for new baseball boss Theo Epstein – who’s going to be able to claim a serious baseball coup.

For it seems that Epstein’s old ballclub, the Boston Red Sox, seriously thought they were getting Sveum to run their ball club.

But the Brewers’ hitting coach decided that trying to break a loser tradition like the Cubs have is preferable to getting involved in that insane asylum of a ballclub that perpetually finishes second to the New York Yankees (2004 was truly an aberration).

SOME WILL SNICKER. Some with pooh pooh the situation. While I can’t help but wonder about the new managers for the Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago White Sox.

Which will draw their own comparisons. Because on paper, the Cubs got the most experienced manager – which isn’t saying much.

For Sveum had a brief stint at the end of 2008 as acting manager of the Milwaukee Brewers. That’s it.

But that is more than Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, who was a minor league instructor for the ballclub as his reward for being a part of that Cardinals team of ’04 that got overwhelmed by the Red Sox in the World Series that year.

EVEN THAT IS more than Robin Ventura of the White Sox, who hadn’t been in professional baseball at all since hanging it up as a ballplayer in 2004.

But that is his reward for being the White Sox’ best third baseman ever – which is saying even less than calling Sveum the most-experienced manager of the trio. It is a sign of just how awful the White Sox have been at the “Number 5” position during their century of existence.

There’s a reason why White Sox team historian Rich Lindberg once wrote a team history (just prior to them winning their first division title in 1983 under manager Tony LaRussa) that was entitled “Who’s on Third?”

I kind of find it hilarious that all three of these managerial slots are going to guys who have never managed a major league ballclub before. That’s going to be a lot of rookies in the dugout – although those of you who want to believe the “conspiracy theories” that LaRussa will wind up in some sort of “adviser” position with the White Sox to help guide Ventura may want to think differently.

THAT’S ALSO A lot of white guys getting chances to prove themselves, at a time when the sport faces charges that it doesn’t do enough to advance the opportunities for non-white guys who can no longer get their bats around quickly enough on a 95-mph fastball for base hits.

So what will the cheap rhetoric be like come 2012 as all of our baseball fans try to find new ways to taunt each other?

I can sense that the White Sox will be the ones to boast of how talented their manager used to be on the field (although like many other Chicago ballplayers, he got his only crack at a World Series playing elsewhere – 2000 with the New York Mets, in their losing effort to the Yankees).

Sveum, who played for the Brewers and a few other ball clubs, and Matheny, who was a reserve catcher for the Cardinals, can’t come close.

YET I’M SURE Cubs fans will claim they got the guy who was desired by those carmine-colored sox, as opposed to the pale hose manager who likely wouldn’t have been even considered by any other ballclub.

It will be the source of our bickering for the next year – that and trying to argue which ball club has a better reject that we wish we could get rid of – Alfonso Soriano of the Cubs or Adam Dunn of the White Sox?

Both of them have monster-contracts that make them untradeable unless their Chicago team wants to pay virtually their entire huge salary to play ball elsewhere.

But if Dunn can come even close to matching those stats of yesteryear (which he did as recently as 2010 with the Washington Nationals), things could be very interesting at U.S. Cellular Field in ’12. Much more than at Wrigley Field.

BUT LET’S BE honest. It may well be a long-shot for both teams.

It could turn out that Matheny manages to take the World Series champion Cardinals and keep them in contention to the point where they make a serious challenge to repeating.

Why do I get the feeling Matheny will be the big winner here. Him, and perhaps former Cubs infielder Ryne Sandberg.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the Baseball Hall of Fame member were to somehow get the Milwaukee Brewers managerial post and lead the Cerveceros to their first league pennant in 30 years?

  -30-