He’s in Cubs fans’ hall of blame
In an illogical turn of events, Dempster has become a villain
come at Wrigley Field. He’s being portrayed as obstructionist, as an obstacle to the new regime’s grand design.
Dempster is in the final year of a contract that pays him $14 million this season, and the Cubs have not exactly been subtle about their desire to move him. The younger, cheaper arms Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer are seeking in exchange for him can’t get here soon enough.
Building blocks to a brighter future? Heck, they’ll probably help this year — look how well Anthony Rizzo, the poster child for Theoand-Jed Guys, is doing. There are 60-some games left — let’s put a Theo-and-Jed team together and make a run at those Reds. They’re hardly invincible — Dusty Baker is still the manager.
Who needs Dempster?
Dempster, though, has been a reluctant pawn in this scenario. As a 10-year major-league veteran with five years of service to one club, he can’t be traded without his consent, a leverage perk the players gained through collective bargaining more than 40 years ago.
Dempster is no dummy. He knows his long-term future with the Cubs is no brighter than Luis Valbuena’s, but his service time gives him a say in what happens next for him. He’s taking advantage of a workplace right most of us take for granted. At 35 and with 2,147 bigleague innings on the odometer, he won’t get many more chances
Somehow, though, this makes Dempster disloyal to the Cubs, as if their future is his concern. When they’re trying to unload him? He’s not the one suggesting a move from Chicago.
Dempster isn’t your random ’85 Bear, but he is (or was) a popular figure, most notably for the charity work he has done to raise awareness of and research funding for the medical condition that has threatened daughter Riley’s life since she was born four years ago.
But he’s standing in the way of Theo and Jed’s master plan, like a humble old shopkeeper resisting a high-rise development. He must go.
Other than import Rizzo and maybe Paul Maholm, what have the Boston Boys done to inspire such loyalty among Cubs fans? How’s Chris Volstad working out? Could we get a mulligan on Tyler Colvin for Ian Stewart? Does it bother anybody that what they left behind in Beantown has turned into quite the mess?
Then again, there’s no telling with Cubs fans. They hooted at Fred McGriff when he balked at coming here in a deadline deal in 2001. Now they’re hooting at Dempster because he doesn’t want to leave.
They poured on the love for Ron Santo this weekend as his Hall of Fame enshrinement was celebrated with Ron Santo Day and other festivities. It probably didn’t come up that in 1973, as the Cubs were disassembling the team that had broken so many hearts in the previous few years, Santo exercised his newly acquired 10-andfive rights to reject a trade to the California Angels.
A week later, he was OK with going to the White Sox for Steve Stone. He didn’t want to leave Chicago. He never really did, and we loved him for it.