EPSTEIN EYES THE HALL OF FAME
HE isn’t a coach. He doesn’t hit, he doesn’t pitch, he doesn’t even play. But if the Chicago Cubs can turn around this World Series with back-to-back road games in Cleveland over the next two nights, Theo Epstein is heading for baseball’s Hall of Fame. What does he do? He runs things. He appoints, he organises, he trades. And his brilliance as general manager is on the brink of breaking the two most famous curses in American sport. He is one down already. In charge at the Boston Red Sox in 2004, Epstein ended what was known as the Curse of the Bambino — a World Series drought for the franchise stretching back to 1918. The Red Sox had sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920, and had not won a World Series since. Epstein’s smarts wiped that slate clean after 86 years. Then, in 2011, he joined the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs’ drought is the longest and most notorious in all American sport, stretching back 108 years. It is known as the Curse of the Billy Goat, after a local tavern owner who hexed them upon being ejected, with his foul smelling goat, from a World Series game at Wrigley Field in 1945. Under Epstein, the Cubs have now won their first National League pennant in 71 years, and trail the Cleveland Indians 3-2 in the World Series, but with momentum on their side. Nine of the 11 teams that have levelled 3-3 in game six have gone on to win deciding game seven, and the crown. If that happens, it would be the equivalent of Epstein winning the league at Newcastle and then going off and doing it at Preston North End. The year before Epstein moved to Boston from the San Diego Padres — he earned a law degree while he was there, having already graduated from Yale in American Studies — the Red Sox had a very promising regular season record of 93 wins and 69 losses. Epstein’s ideas were the icing on the cake. He arrived in 2002, aged 28, and won the World Series in 2004 as the youngest general manager in the sport’s history. He did it again in 2007, too. It was different at the Cubs. In baseball, 90 losses in a season is considered disastrous. There is no relegation, but if there were, 90 defeats would be the drop point. When Epstein arrived, the Cubs had lost 91 games that season and 90 or more games on five other occasions in the past 14 years. They finished bottom of the National League Central in his first three years in charge. But, slowly, Epstein turned it around. Insightful trades brought in key players and in 2015 he secured top coach Joe Maddon from the Tampa Bay Rays. The rest is, quite literally, history. The Cubs went from a punchline to the strongest team in baseball this season. The World Series has been a setback — Cleveland led 3-1 going into game five — but there is a growing feeling the Cubs could take it to the last game now after winning on Sunday night. There are 312 inductees in Baseball’s Hall of Fame, but only 28 executives. If the Cubs win in Cleveland, it will become 29, and few will have deserved it more. World Series, game six: LIVE BT Sport 1 from midnight.