Let’s play 60
‘It will be different, but it is baseball’: Cubs and Sox are back, as each team reports to training camp 2.0
New Cubs organist John Benedeck provided some relief for baseball-starved fans outside Wrigley Field by tickling the keyboard for an hour on selected Fridays last month.
And White Sox fans have been accustomed to hearing the convincing voice of public address announcer Gene Honda before they enter Guaranteed Rate Field.
But is this as good as it gets — for now — as the Cubs and Sox attempt to kick-start next month following acrimonious nego tiations between Major League Baseball and the players unions and no guarantee that fans will be allowed inside ballparks with the more popular NFL around the corner?
And all in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Is it ideal? No.” said Sox TV analyst Steve Stone, who has the distinction of pitching and announcing for both teams. “Sixty (games) isn’t ideal. But 60 is better than no games.
“The criticism toward the owners and players is going to happen. Chicago is a union town. We hear it’s millionaires versus billionaires. But a lot of people love baseball. This is a step toward bringing people back to their normal lives.”
Things have not been normal since mid-March, when the virus outbreak all but shut down the country. MLB on March 12 canceled the rest of spring training games and delayed the start of the season. After months of negotiations with the players union, Commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday imposed a 60-game season, with opening day scheduled for July 23 or 24.
Players officially will report to their home parks Wednesday — the Cubs at Wrigley Field and Sox at Guaranteed Rate
Field — for training camp 2.0, which will last about three weeks and include some exhibition games before the season begins.
The task of reviving interest locally will be uniquely challenging for both teams. The Sox, who haven’t won a playoff game since 2008, went into all-in mode with the free-agent signings of Yasmani Grandal, Dallas Keuchel and Steve Cishek to blend with a nucleus of Jose Abreu, Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, Tim Anderson and Eloy Jimenez and ultratalented rookie Luis Robert.
The Cubs are hoping manager David Ross can rekindle the intangibles that helped a young core win the 2016 World Series but potentially could lose at least one key player to looming free agency that could lead to the start of a roster makeover.
But the coronavirus threatens to prevent fans from watching — in person — Robert in his rookie season and Kris Bryant wearing a Cubs uniform for perhaps the last time.
And regarding the virus, MLB has a 113-page manual with protocols to help keep players and staff from contracting and spreading COVID-19 during the season.
“You’re going to see a lot of managers and teams using caution,” Sox catcher James McCann said.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot tempered the optimism of Crane Kenney after the Cubs president of business operations told WSCR-AM 670, the team’s flagship radio station, he was hopeful Wrigley Field would open to fans at a limited capacity under proper health protocols.
“Fundamentally, whether it’s 8,000 or 800 or 80, there’s got to be a plan for safety,” Lightfoot said Thursday, adding she hadn’t engaged in specifics with any of the local professional sports teams.
The fan bases of the Cubs and Sox were built generations ago but could be in danger of losing many longstanding supporters.
That’s the opinion of Mike Murphy, 69, an original Wrigley Field bleacher bum who retired from the Chicago sports-talk scene earlier this year.
“The owners and (players) union have taken for granted the fans in their 50s to their 90s,” Murphy said. “They want to cultivate a young fan base, but they never come.”
Murphy equated the dilemma to his days working in sales, when it took two to three new accounts to replace a lost account.
“One new customer never will be a volume account,” Murphy said. “Why doesn’t MLB worry about their demographics with older people?”
The Korean Baseball Organization games ESPN has been televising in the early-morning hours provide a glimpse of what a return could be like for the Cubs, Sox and other major-league teams.
Mark Weidemaier, bench coach for the Kia Tigers of the KBO and a former MLB scout, said all uniformed personnel miss the fan interaction. But the mood hardly is silent, with cheerleaders performing routines on dugouts to the beat of each player’s walk-up song, with chants and beating drums.
Roughly 50 to 100 fans congregate outside the outfield fence at Champions Field to support the Tigers vocally.
“It’s not the same as in a normal season, but the players stay engaged in the competition,” Weidemaier wrote in an email. “It doesn’t affect (manager) Matt Williams, me or the other coaches as bench players from both sides do a lot of yelling.”
The Cubs and Sox could draw immediate interest if they meet in exhibition games before the season, as Kenney hinted to while discussing the likelihood of the Cubs reaching an agreement with Comcast’s Xfinity to carry the Marquee Sports Network — the Cubs’ new television station.
“Will baseball have to win back some fans who may be upset or have forgotten the game?” Benjy Pogofsky, the son of late Sox board member Larry Pogofsky. “Of course.”
“But in due time, baseball is the greatest game in the world and of all sports. Some people don’t realize this, but the players today are some of the best we will ever get to see play — the Mike Trouts, Christian Yeliches, etc. These fans (and) this city need this game now more than ever. And this game needs them.”
Unfortunately neither the Sox nor Cubs will face Trout — the best player in the game — this season because teams will play 40 games in their division and 20 interleague games against their corresponding geographical division.
At the very least, fans will want to see the locals compete for a division title — even in a considerably shortened season that was settled after months of bickering.
“This is winning first and development second,” Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito said. “We want everybody to get better and better and hone their skill set for the future. But at the same time, why even play if you’re not there to win?”
Murphy, who described himself as a lifelong Cubs fan who doesn’t root against their crosstown rivals, believes the Sox have a chance to seize a large chunk of the attention in the city if they succeed.
“The Sox were poised to have an exciting year,” Murphy said. “(Michael) Kopech and (Carlos) Rodon were probably going to miss the first half of the season (because of rehabilitation from elbow injuries). If they return, it will be a huge benefit to their rotation.”
As for the Cubs, “with this shortened season, the bullpen is going to be so important,” Murphy said. “You’re going to need three or four innings daily. I don’t know what to expect from the Cubs.”
Select fans might have one perk if the gates open. Murphy recalled the upper deck of Wrigley Field being closed on occasion as recently as the mid-1970s, prompting the Cubs to hire Andy Frain ushers to retrieve foul balls and give them to Yosh Kawano, then the clubhouse attendant, for batting practice if the balls weren’t scuffed significantly.
“Think of the chances of getting a foul ball,” Murphy said. “They’ll increase five times.”
Add the instituting of the designated hitter in the National League and placing a runner at second base to start the 10th inning — among other rule changes — and causal fans might do a double take.
“It will be different,” Stone said. “But it is baseball.”