Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella called a rare team meeting before Thursday night’s game against the Rockies, explaining that his foundering team needed a few encouraging words.
“I don’t like meetings. I’ve said that many times,” Piniella said. “But I thought we needed one because we have gone through some adversity and some tough luck. I just wanted these kids to believe in themselves.”
For diehard Cubs fan Matt Trewin, who moved to Denver from northwest Indiana eight years ago, the emergency meeting came as wonderful news. He was disturbed by the team’s 1-6 slide, and by a quadriceps injury to star Alfonso Soriano that is expected to keep the slugging outfielder out until Sept. 1.
“This team needs a turnaround – ASAP,” said Trewin, one of thousands of Cubs fans who turned Coors Field into Wrigley Field West. “We need to begin the turnaround with this series. We do that, we can control our own destiny.”
The Cubs took a step in that direction Thursday, throttling the Rockies 10-2 and moving a half-game behind idle Milwaukee in the National League Central.
Trewin is a typical long-suffering Cubs fan. Every spring, Cubs fans believe they’re going to soar to baseball heaven, yet they always pack a parachute for the inevitable free fall.
“I know pain,” Trewin joked.
This season’s flight has been especially turbulent. The club spent $10 million to lure Piniella off his fishing boat and back into baseball. It signed Soriano to a free-agent deal worth $136 million over eight years, the fifth-largest deal in major-league history. It re-signed slugging third baseman Aramis Ramirez for five years at a cost of $75 million. Infielder Mark DeRosa, then a career .273 hitter, pocketed a three-year, $13 million contract. Former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jason Marquis got a three-year, $21 million deal.
General manager Jim Hendry went above and beyond the call of duty to reel in left-handed starter Ted Lilly. During the winter meetings in Orlando, Fla., Hendry worked through a pending heart attack to sign Lilly to a four-year, $40 million deal. Hendry was hooked up to an EKG machine at an Orlando hospital when the deal was consummated.
All told, the Cubs spent $300 million to improve a team that lost 96 games last season.
Then the team fell flat on its face coming out of the gate, posting a 22-29 record at the end of May – and losing two more to start June.
“Talk back home was that the season was over, and that we had wasted all of this money,” said Chicagoan Michael Markovich, who journeyed to Denver for the four-game set. “It was like, ‘Who’s worse, the Cubs or the White Sox?”‘
Then it all turned around. From June 3 to the start of the Rockies series, the Cubs went 36-24, the best record in the National League in that span. The high point came in late June when the Cubs won seven straight games, including a dramatic three-game sweep of the Rockies at Wrigley.
“In an instant, it went from the depths of disappointment to ‘We’re going to go all the way and we’re going to be there in October,”‘ Markovich said. “That happened in just seven days.”
Star first baseman Derrek Lee can’t help but smile when he hears accounts of the Cubs’ trials and tribulations.
“I just know we are a good team,” he said. “We spent the money to bring in the talent and it’s coming together. It took a while early for the guys to jell and get to know each other.”
And what of the team’s recent slide?
“There’s a lot of baseball left to play,” he said. “We are right where we need to be. Like I said, we have the talent.”
Piniella figures if the Cubs can start getting some timely hitting, they’ll be just fine. The Cubs arrived in Denver with just two hits in their previous 34 at-bats with runners in scoring position.
“That’s why we’ve lost,” he said. “We don’t hit too many longballs, so when we get people on, we have to get them in.”
But overall, Piniella sounds happy he’s managing, not fishing.
“Every season has its peaks and valleys, but this is a good young team,” he said. “The thing you have to do is make sure you get out of those valleys.”
That’s what the Cubs are attempting to do at Coors Field, backed by plenty of their frustrated, but eternally hopeful, faithful.
Staff writer Patrick Saunders can be reached at 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com.
Love and heartache
Few fans cherish their team more than do Cubs fans. As the pennant race heats up, there is plenty to love about this year’s team. But there is reason for trepidation, too:
Love: Rebounded from a 22-31 start to get back in the thick of NL Central hunt.
Heartache: Lost six of seven, and four straight, entering current four-game series with the Rockies.
Love: Spent $300 million in the offseason, including an eight-year, $136 million contract for Alfonso Soriano and a five-year, $75 million deal for Aramis Ramirez.
Heartache: Both players are hurt.
Love: Cubs pitching, lead by Carlos Zambrano and Ted Lilly, ranks third in the NL with a staff ERA of 3.94.
Heartache: Cubs fans still have trouble believing in closer Ryan Dempster.
Love: Team batting average is a solid .268.
Heartache: Club tied for 13th in NL with just 89 home runs.
PATRICK SAUNDERS
