EXTRA: Return of “the Vulture,” and of past, to baseball in 21st Century

'The Vulture' returning to baseball

Something I’ve noticed about being a fan of professional baseball these days – following a ballgame has the ability to make me feel like an antique.

Not only are all the guys who I followed as ballplayers when I was a kid back in the 1970s long-gone from the playing field, they’re no longer really employable as managers or coaches.

Now most definitely a part of baseball past

MY OWN PERSONAL favorite ballplayer as a kid was Lou Piniella of the New York Yankees who went on to a lengthy managerial career with a championship in Cincinnati, a decade’s worth of contending ball clubs in Seattle and even a stint as head of the Chicago Cubs. Yet at age 75, his day in baseball is done.

More typical is Chicago White Sox manager Ricky Renteria, who at age 57 is barely older than I am. With most of today’s ballplayers having barely been born in the final years of the 20^th Century.

So it was with a bit of joy that I read the reports Friday about Phil Regan – the old relief pitcher of the 1960s and early ‘70s who got hired as a pitching coach with the New York Mets.

Even Ozzie has become a relic

Regan turned 82 back in April. Considering that one-time star shortstop and manager Ozzie Guillen is now considered an antique at age 55, it feels comforting to know that baseball has someone who was once a teammate to pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale – and was even a part of that Cubs’ ballclub of 1969,

AS IN THE one that managed to fall behind the New York Mets, who went on to win the World Series that year, and give Cubs fans tales of how a black cat (rather than tired, worn-out ballplayers) caused them to lose,

Of course, Regan was the ballplayer remembered best for his nickname – “the Vulture!” Which he got during his time with the Los Angeles Dodgers when he often managed to come into a ballgame and do something that cost his team the lead (and the starting pitcher credit for the “win”), but because his team would recover and win the game, Regan himself would wind up credited with the victory.

Joy in vulturing a victory

Which makes me wonder if we’ll get a return of talk of relief pitchers “vulturing” wins? Which I certainly would consider more interesting than constant speculation about the exit velocity (how hard the impact on the ball by a bat is) every time a home run is hit!

I still remember Game 2 of the 2005 World Series, where Mark Buehrle of the White Sox pitched 7 solid innings and was on his way to a World Series win when relief pitcher Bobby Jenks came in and blew the lead. The look of relief on Jenks’ face the following inning when the White Sox managed to recoup the lead and win (with a Scott Podsednik home run) was one of joy I’ve never seen duplicated on a ballfield.

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Chgo v. N.Y., Round 1; 2017 World Series preview, or baseball fluke?

The New York Yankees are making their annual trip to Chicago to play baseball, but it’s not the usual one.

For due to the quirks of interleague play, the Yankees will be headed to the North Side this weekend – taking on the Chicago Cubs in a three-game series beginning Friday.

GOING INTO FRIDAY’S game, both ballclubs are in first place in their respective divisions, which I’m sure will have some people getting all worked up into thinking this weekend is a potential preview of the World Series – Yankees vs. Cubs!!! – and a rematch of 1932 and 1938.

 

Not that any serious baseball fan of the Cubs wants to relive either of those seasons – the Yankees won both years in four-game sweeps. ’32 will forevermore be famed for that home run Babe Ruth hit that he may-or-may-not have called in advance, while the ’38 Yanks of Joe DiMaggio swatted aside the baby blue bears as though they were insignificant.

In short, there’s not a whole lot of history between the two ballclubs – the Chicago/New York baseball battles throughout the years have involved the White Sox; and as it turns out will occur June 26-29 at Guaranteed Rate Field on the South Side.

Historically, the White Sox were the ones that had something of a rivalry with New York and the Yankees (although the coming of modern-era divisions and an emphasis on local rivalries has diminished that), while the Cubs were the ones who engaged in their rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals for Midwestern supremacy.

A RIVALRY THAT fits in perfectly with the modern-day divisional structure.

Not that any such rivalry would have been possible for the White Sox, since back in the days when St. Louis was a two-team baseball town, even at their low points the Sox could count on being better than the St. Louis Browns of old.

But this week will give us the one-time City Number One versus City Number Two, although there are enough players who’ve done double duty for both ball clubs.

Take the Yankees squad that will take the field at Wrigley. Starting shortstop Starlin Castro was once supposed to be a Cubs star of the future, while Cubs fans still remember the glories of relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman who was acquired in a mid-season 2016 trade from the Yankees, then skedaddled back to New York as a free agent once the season ended.

THEN, THERE’S ALSO Yankees manager Joe Girardi, the pride of Northwestern University who also was once a Cubs catcher and whom some Cubs fans are delusional enough to think fantasizes about the day when he’ll be able to leave New York to once again don a Cubs uniform.

Actually, it makes me wonder if the Yankees are now subject to the Ex-Cub Factor – three or more former Chicago Cubs on the roster is the Kiss of Death to any World Series-bound ballclub.

It even took down the Yankees in 1981 – which had pitcher Rick Reuschel, catcher Barry Foote and outfielders Oscar Gamble and Bobby Murcer. Even though Murcer played the bulk of his ballplaying career as a Yankee, it seems his Cubby stint tainted him in the eyes of the baseball “gods” and that wound up being the year a Dodgers team was finally able to defeat New York.

Of course, there also have been other Yankees who did stints in Cubby blue, including Hall of Fame-quality relief pitcher Rich Gossage, toupee-clad infielder Joe Pepitone (who looked stylish while he played) and even a guy who was a personal favorite ballplayer when I was a kid.

THE LOU PINIELLA who smashed water coolers to ease his temper (and making a game-saving defensive play in that 1978 tie-breaker with the Boston Red Sox) just always seemed out-of-place during that stint he was the Cubs manager.

I’m sure the hard-core fan of Cubdom can rattle off endless lists of people who did double duty for both ballclubs.

All I know is I have my ticket for Friday’s game; the first time since 2004 that I’ve set foot in THAT ballpark. I’ll be watching to see how Cubdom reacts when it is in the presence of a team that has enough on-field achievements to justify a haughty attitude, while wondering myself what the chances are this could be a World Series preview.

And I most likely will be giving the outside world – the part that actually thinks Donald J. Trump makes a credible government official – little thought.

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Summertime reminiscences appropriate – even if Chicago memories fall short

“Harold. Harold.”
 

A youthful Harold who fell short of Hall

In my mind, it’s the mid-1980s in Chicago. The only question is whether it's a political rally involving the city’s mayor as in Washington. Or the White Sox’ right fielder as in Baines?

I COULDN’T HELP but remember the baseball career of Harold Baines, who on Sunday was formally rejected yet again for a spot within the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

As it was, the Hall of Fame got two new members – neither of whom have much of anything to do with Chicago.

Unless you want to recall how one-time Milwaukee Brewers owner/baseball commissioner Bud Selig originally tried to get into professional baseball by buying the Chicago White Sox so he could move them to his home Wisconsin city. A move that never occurred – although some people of a certain age can remember 1968-69 when the White Sox played a few ballgames each season at Milwaukee’s County Stadium.

Although my baseball reminisces prefer to remember on-field activity, rather than front office shenanigans. And baseball reminisces were definitely on my mind – my way of downplaying the first significant snowfall Sunday that hit Chicago.

IT’S EITHER REMEMBER Harold Baines, or think about how the snowfall was heavy enough that my father’s car wound up skidding into a ditch, and my 13-year-old niece wound up having to steer the car out while “grandpa” pushed. She’s still excited!

 

Belle set Sox team HR record in 1998

But as for me, I recall how Baines was the true talent of the White Sox of the 1980s – an era that had one division title in ’83 and a whole string of mediocre to crummy ball clubs in other years.

He was big enough to be brought back to the White Sox for two more stints; in the 1990s and the beginning of the 21^st Century – while also bopping about other American League teams as a professional hitting machine. Texas, Cleveland, Oakland and his home city of Baltimore also saw him play – and the Orioles actually include him in the team’s personal Hall of Fame.

 

Sosa topped him that same season w/ Cubs

That, and the statue the White Sox have erected to Baines at the newly-renamed Guaranteed Rate Field are likely to be Harold’s honorifics. He did go through a career as a quiet kind of guy who didn’t try to bring a lot of glory to himself.

MOST DEFINITELY UNLIKE Sammy Sosa later of the Chicago Cubs (for whom he was traded to the Texas Rangers for in 1989), who along with Hall of Fame slugger Reggie Jackson may have been the most over-bloated egos to ever play professional baseball.

'Eck' had a Vet Cmte vote Sunday

Not that Harold was the only former Chicago ballplayer or former ballplayer whose name brings to mind bad memories for our local ballclubs to be on the list of considerees by the hall’s Veterans Committee – which considers baseball executives and gives second-chances to former ballplayers already passed over by the Baseball Writer Association of American membership.

There was Albert Belle, the star 1990s slugger for the Cleveland Indians (who belongs to that team’s personal Hall of Fame) who had a two-year stretch with the White Sox – and in fact in 1998 set the team record for the most home runs in a season.

Had Vet Cmte vote, but not enough to get Harold over top

Belle hit 49. But that was the same year that Sosa had his 66 and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit 70. They “saved” baseball (or so we thought). While Belle was just an afterthought.

McGWIRE WAS ONE of the ballplayers also passed over on Sunday, along with Will Clark of the San Francisco Giants – who in 1989 was the Most Valuable Player of the National League playoffs.

Of course, we in Chicago remember that year as the one in which a Cubs team containing future Hall of Famers Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson perhaps should have won – only to get beat by Clark and his big bat.

Came closest to getting elected w/ Chi ties

With the Giants then going on to lose that World Series to the Oakland Athletics – who also were led by McGwire (in his pre-Cardinals days) and Jose Canseco (who finished up with the White Sox in 2001) and Hall of Fame relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley.

I mention Eckersley because it seems that the one-time Cubs pitcher (on that division-winning team of 1984) was among the former ballplayers, along with one-time White Sox star Frank Thomas, to cast ballots on Sunday.

FORMER ATLANTA BRAVES and Kansas City Royals general manager John Schuerholz was picked unanimously, while Selig took 15 of the 16 votes cast.

Lou Piniella, considered for a managerial career that included a stint with the Chicago Cubs, took seven votes, while none of the others under consideration got enough votes for the Hall of Fame to acknowledge their totals.

Not even one-time New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, whose professional life also included a brief 1980s stint as a part-owner of pro basketball’s Chicago Bulls.

Would you really rather think about Sunday's snowfall? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Of course, Steinbrenner sold out his share of “da Bulls” in the mid-1980s right BEFORE Michael Jordan was drafted out of the University of North Carolina and began the process that led to that 1990s stretch of championships that is Chicago’s only taste ever of New York Yankees-like athletic success.

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Chicago Yankees? Not as ridiculous as you might want to think it sounds!

I rooted for the New York Yankees when I was a kid (back in the era of Billy Martin vs. Reggie Jackson vs. Thurman Munson, all up against George Steinbrenner), and even today can’t count myself amongst the types of fans who claim “Yankee Hatred.”

Back when Bucky wore 'red' socks

I just don't see the point. Apparently, I’m not alone. Not even in Chicago.

THE NEW YORK Times last week gave us a graphic based off a Facebook study that determined how big each major league baseball club’s fan base was geographically.

It’s not the most scientific of methods – people who indicated they “liked” the Facebook page of a particular ball club were counted as “fans.” It's about as scientific as an Internet poll asking people if they're a "Brittney" or a "Christina." But the graphic literally makes it possible to see – by zip code – which team dominates the local baseball fans.

Guess what?

The White Sox dominate on Chicago’s South Side and surrounding suburbs going down to Kankakee County, while the Cubs rule/drool in the northern part of the metro area. And yes, the Cubs have a regional fan base that extends into the rural Midwest, while the White Sox are purely an urban phenomenon.

LOOK AT A national map, and you see a swath of baby blue across northern Illinois, eastern Iowa and northern Indiana. With a big black blotch right in the middle – that blotch being the White Sox fandom that screws up the Cubbie perception that they prevail over all in their path.

'Joey Pep' in baby blue

None of this should be a surprise. It fits in with the commonly-accepted, and century-old, idea of the South Side/North Side split between the ball clubs.

But what caught my attention while going through the zip-code through zip-code breakdown of Chicago was that there were also stray out-of-town teams that get some fandom here.

And in most cases, it really is the hated Yankees.

Half a season in 'other' pinstripes

RIGHT IN THE zip code where U.S. Cellular Field is located, 5 percent of the locals are Yankees fans. Just as in Beverly and in 60601 – the heart of downtown Chicago.

In Hyde Park, that figure of Yankees fans boosts to 8 percent. Although it should be noted that that one South Side neighborhood was the lone Cubs outpost to the south of Roosevelt Road – albeit by only 35 percent for the Cubs and 34 percent for the White Sox.

A native Chicagoan Yankee

Of course, this shouldn’t be a complete shock. Anybody who ever attends a ballgame when the Yankees make their annual trip to Chicago knows there is a contingent of fans root, root, rooting against the home team.

It’s like the Yankees have become the default favorite team – a trend that makes sense in parts of the country that have no other ball club locally to root for.

ALTHOUGH THERE IS one other thing I noticed – it seems to be limited to the South Side, where the Yankees are “Team Number Three” across the region. But to the north, it seems fans who don’t want to root for either black and silver or baby blue root for the Detroit Tigers or the Boston Red Sox.

It ended for Sparky at Comiskey

Go to Lincoln Park or Old Town, and it’s the Red Sox who are the next favorite team – 4 percent. Which might be all the more reason for a Sout’ Side Yankees fan to look down on the tawny set who reside there. While those living around Wrigley Field consider the Tigers their next ball club (4 percent) to root for.

For what it's worth, my favorite ballplayer as a kid was Yankees outfielder Lou Piniella -- even with that notorious temper. But my adult self always thought that his temper and Yankee ways just contradicted that Cubby blue.

NY "Louuuuuus" were Chi "boooos"

With all the on-field gaffes he had to cope with, it's a wonder he survived the experience to go back to New York as a part-time baseball broadcaster.
 

FOR THE RECORD, Cook County as a whole roots 40 percent for the Cubs, 38 percent for the White Sox and 4 percent for the Yankees, as opposed to 47 percent of Will County residents rooting for the White Sox, 37 percent for the Cubs and 3 percent for the Yankees.

Sound pretty contrarian? Perhaps it is. Although there was another figure I noticed that showed me the real malcontents of Chicago baseball fans. It’s 28 percent.

It is both the number of Wrigley Field-area residents who root for the White Sox AND people surrounding U.S. Cellular Field who root for the Cubs. Talk about people whose houses likely get egged every Halloween.

And those who spark a civil war each summer that only ends when the Chicago Bears pull their annual sports uniting act of the city each autumn.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: My own Facebook page doesn't indicate my "liking" of any particular major league ball club. But if anyone ever does a study of defunct professional sports teams, I'll turn up as a fan of the Chicago Sting.

What is Theo thinking? Or, does Red Sox karma get quashed by Cubbie-ness just as badly as Yankees mystique?

I’m not a Chicago Cubs fan, but I still remember the managerial hires by that ballclub that saw Gene Michael and Lou Piniella come on board.

Particularly in the case of Piniella, but also with Michael as well, there was the sense that the Cubs were reaching out to a real-live New York Yankee. Bringing in one of the Bronx Bombers (both men had been ballplayers, managers and executives for the team) to the North Side was assured to bring a winner to Chicago.

AS THOUGH A Yankee could overcome that very un-cute matter of losing so often that Chicago Cubbie-ness isn’t anywhere near as sweet as it sounds.

The lesson I learned is that Cubs losing is powerful enough to overcome Yankee winning (take the 1981 World Series, where Bobby Murcer returned to the Yankees to see them lose – because his interim with other teams included a two-year stint with the Cubs).

If there is something to be learned from this, it is that there are no saviors. No one is going to suddenly come in and make a respectable baseball franchise out of the Chicago Cubs.

Anybody who seriously believes that is just as absurd as those people on the South Side who seriously think that dumping Ozzie Guillen as manager was the lone move needed to make the White Sox winners again.

WHY AM I rambling through all of this?

It’s just that mental aggravation is what I felt when I first saw a Chicago Tribune report (which admittedly ripped off the information from Boston’s WEEI radio) that Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein is going to leave the team so he can take a job at the head of the Cubs.

Those gossip column tidbits about fans seeing someone who looked like Epstein this weekend hanging around the Lincoln Park neighborhood? Maybe they weren’t totally intoxicated!

According to the reports, Epstein would get more than $15 million to run the Cubs for the next five seasons. If he wins, he will become a Cubs demigod who will have employment for life.

IF HE DOESN’T, he’ll be dumped on as badly as the Cubs’ last demigod, Sammy Sosa – who in so many ways is what that franchise is all about (although that’s a subject for another day’s commentary).

Now none of this is official. Even the Tribune is reporting that actual compensation still needs to be finalized, and may not be done so until the end of the week.

So Wednesday afternoon’s radio rumor from The Hub could easily become Wrigleyville’s pathetic joke by Thursday morning. We’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.

It’s just that I don’t see this ballclub being turned around in a winter’s notice. It will take a long, drawn-out building process (and things could still go wrong). Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there also are no guarantees.

WHICH IS WHY I really don’t get why Epstein would want to come to the Cubs. I do understand why he’d want to leave Boston – a place with whiny fans who are (deservedly so) emotionally traumatized by the way their team played so badly in September that they wound up out of the playoffs altogether.

Leaving those people in the lurch is what they deserve.

But falling for the ivy at Wrigley Field? I can’t help but wonder how long until he kicks himself and starts having the same thoughts that outfielder Lou Novikoff once had – that the ivy was poisonous.

The speculation always is that whoever happens to be in charge of the Cubs when they do eventually win something (no National League championship since 1945, no World Series title since 1908) is going to be regarded as a baseball genius. It will permanently set their legacy.

AS THOUGH EPSTEIN really needs that. The 2004 World Series title for the Red Sox, followed up by another one in 2007, already did that for him.

All he’s doing if he comes to Chicago is risking getting entangled in the muck otherwise known as Chicago Cubbie-ness. Come to Chicago and get caught up in the losing ways of the Cubs, and we’ll quickly see that perhaps Epstein wasn’t all that bright – and maybe those two Red Sox championships in the past decade were some sort of fluke (the Yankees were really a better ballclub in ’04).

Which makes me want to scream at Theo that he should have a long, hard talk with Piniella – who despite his playing days on championship Yankees teams and his managerial stints with a champion Cincinnati Reds team and several near-misses with Seattle Mariners ballclubs, is going to forevermore carry around the stink of the Cubs.

A blotch on an otherwise intriguing career in baseball. One that maybe Piniella could talk Epstein out of enduring for himself.

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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).

Will today’s ball players turn old-school after they play out the ’09 string?

I must admit to finding it humorous whenever a contemporary baseball manager complains about how the modern-day athlete doesn’t take “the game” as seriously as the old-school athletes did back in the days when he played.

The latest example of this trend is Ozzie Guillen of the Chicago White Sox, who got upset that his ball club blew a big lead and wound up getting its butt kicked on Saturday, only to react by calmly lounging around the clubhouse and watch television.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL, TO be exact.

In short, his ball club that some of us Chicagoans had dreams would actually accomplish something this season was playing like a losing ball club just playing out the string of games (one more week, and the 2009 regular season is over).

What I find amusing about this tirade by Ozzie, or any other contemporary manager, is that I am old enough to have first learned about baseball back in the days when they were the ballplayers – and it was a batch of grizzled old farts who remembered the days of DiMaggio and Musial who were the managers.

Actually in Ozzie’s case, he was a rookie shortstop for the White Sox back when I was in college. But in the case of Lou Piniella, I remember him as a favorite ballplayer of mine back in his prime days with the New York Yankees – and still remember his defensive stop in the outfield in that 1978 tie-breaking playoff game between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox that ensured the Red Sox did not tie up the game in the ninth inning, and forever assured that one-time White Sox shortstop Bucky Dent would have his moment of baseball glory.

BUT I CAN remember when it was those managers of old who would rant and rage about the new era of ballplayer who had no loyalty to team or to fans, and was all about themselves and the money.

They were talking about guys like Piniella and Guillen, and all of their ballplaying contemporaries – who now are the management of many professional baseball organizations.

Now perhaps some of you will argue that somehow, these guys have matured in their aging years. They aren’t the same now as they were back in their 20s when they were ballplayers.

Or maybe it’s just that all this talk about old-school thought is somehow sort of a crock.

PERHAPS THE GUYS who were complained about back in the day are just using the same tired old rhetoric when it comes to letting people know their frustration about poor play on the field.

Because I’m sure there are plenty of baseball people who could come up with stories about Ozzie Guillen being less than a team player or giving top effort on the field.

Could it just be that Guillen, and all the other managers who complain about this new-style ballplayer of today, are just a little short-minded about what things were truly like in their playing days?

Could it be that some people deal best with a crushing defeat (which is what happened on Saturday) by trying immediately to forget about it and not dwell on it to the point where it interferes with one’s future athletic performance?

IN FACT, ABOUT the only point of Guillen’s rant that I truly agree with was his assessment of football in general – a game whose point I have never comprehended.

“Stupid-ass football when those (bleep) players don’t give a (bleep) about you,” says Guillen, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Of course, one could argue that the way the White Sox played in the past month, going from a team that had an outside shot at a division title and success in the American League playoffs next month to one that will need a miraculous turnaround this week to avoid finishing the 2009 season with a losing record, they also didn’t care about us fans who bothered to pay attention to the activity on the field.

So with one week left to the regular season, what should we remember about this year – one in which both teams would like to think they were contenders for a time, but in reality both fell short of the level of quality they could have achieved.

IN MY MIND, that perfect no-hit game back in July by Mark Buehrle was the highlight – a quality performance that (for one day) put the White Sox in first place. It’s just too bad they couldn’t hold on to anything, and couldn’t even finish out the season in close contention for a division title.

I suppose it was something that the Sporting News recently acknowledged that game as the performance of the first decade of this century – particularly since it made Buehrle the only pitcher in the 2000s to pitch two no-hit games.

So while baseball may continue into the early days of November, our Chicago teams are out of it. And Guillen may continue to rant about the “old school” days, just like the Sox players of today will someday complain that the athletes of the 2030s just don’t play as competitively as they did back in the old days of 2009.

Complaining ballplayers and Chicago teams winning nothing. Some concepts are truly timeless.

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What a wimpy response!

Perhaps it was the ghost of Lee Elia lingering in a corner of the manager’s office at Wrigley Field, but someone clamped their hand over the mouth of Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella.

The Elia diatribe (which White Sox fans love to quote, particularly the part about 85 percent of the world working for a living, and the rest being Cubs fans) has become the standard by which all baseball managers are judged when they lose their tempers.

PINIELLA HAD THE potential to top it when he was asked following a particularly pathetic Cubs loss to the Milwaukee Brewers whether he had considered replacing star hitter (but lame defensive player) Alfonso Soriano in left field.

“You’re damn right I thought about it,” Piniella snapped. “You think I’m stupid or something?”

But then, he silenced himself, although the look in his eyes gave the impression of someone who had many dozens more words to say.

Which is too bad, because if ever there was a baseball personage with the potential to top Elia’s obscenity-laced schpiel of 26 years ago (it repeatedly implied that in addition to being unemployed, Cubs fans are the types of people who perform certain sex acts often featured in pornographic films), it is Piniella.

PINIELLA THE BALLPLAYER was actually a favorite of mine when I was a kid who actually enjoyed the on-field antics of the 1970s-era New York Yankees (particularly the play of former White Sox players Rich Gossage and Bucky Dent). It’s hard to say how many baseball dugout water coolers got bashed beyond repair because Piniella took out his on-field frustration on someone else’s drink of water.

That same attitude was maintained during his managerial stints in New York, Cincinnati, Seattle and Tampa Bay. Although the one time I covered him as a reporter (the first round of the 2000 American League playoffs, when the White Sox got stomped by Piniella's Mariners), he was mellow and in good cheer. I guess winning does that to you.

I always wondered just how Piniella would cope with the notion of being affiliated with the Chicago Cubs. The organization’s losing ways were bound to make him crack, and are bound to put a blot on his baseball career – similar to how Dusty Baker may have won a division title in his first year as a Cubs manager, but finished his four-year stint in Chicago with a losing record.

Despite his attempt at manners on Thursday, I wonder when the memorable outburst will come. There’s no way “Sweet Lou” is going to be able to “stifle” himself forever.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Another Cubs loss nearly provoked a Lou Piniella outburst (http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=406953)