By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/31/franconas-been-there-maddon-would-like-to-do-that/Terry Francona has been here and done that. If there’s anyone in baseball who knows what it’s like to steer a team heretofore in the
wilderness and under heavy curses, actual or alleged, it’s Francona.
A man who shepherded the once-snake bitten Red Sox to shove back with everything they had, only beginning when Dave Roberts
stole second on Mariano Rivera with the Sox three outs from an elimination sweep, isn’t exactly going to let a Cub uprising in Game
Five of this World Series bite him that hard.
He won’t even let the team plane breaking down en route back to Cleveland, as happened after Game Five, delaying the Indians’
return until 5 a.m. Monday, bite him that hard.
Francona loved his Red Sox teams. The ones who won not one but two World Series in the century’s first secade. And, even, the
one that collapsed in September 2011 in a chicken-and-beer morass, the one he admitted he lost control upon, the one that provoked
him to fall on his sword before he might have been executed.
But he loves his Indians just as much. At least. On Saturday night, after they pushed the Cubs to the brink from which they wrestled
back Sunday night, Francona made it plain these were his boys no matter how the World Series ends up finishing.
“I like these guys a lot. They are very special,” he told a reporter. “I don’t think you have to have the stamp of a World Series on your
team to feel this way. Sometimes things happen you can’t overcome. They’ve done a really good job of overcoming a lot. But if it got
to a point where it was too much, that wouldn’t take away how I feel.”
Part of what these Indians have overcome is losing one of their best hitters (Michael Brantley) and two of their starting rotation (Carlos
Carrasco, Danny Salazar, though Salazar is a bullpen option for the Series). And what both of these teams really want to overcome,
no matter how they have to do it, is a combined 179 years of extraterrestrial wilderness history between them.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon feels the same way about his guys. He felt that way last fall, when they got bushwhacked in four straight
by the Mets in the National League Championship Series. He’s felt that way no matter how hard the Indians determined to make the
Cubs—the world favoured Cubs, since maybe last year’s winter meetings—sweat for anything they got in this Series.
And he’s felt that way no matter how deeply the public perception ran that he was being out-generaled on almost every flank, that
he was playing checkers against a Francona playing chess but jumping and crowning him at opportunities Maddon sometimes
seemed to think weren’t there yet.
In Game Four, with the Indians lead a still-manageable 4-1, Maddon had a classic chance to use his half-resurrected young thumper
Kyle Schwarber in a slot that might have closed the deficit to a single run. He could have sent Schwarber to pinch hit for Ben Zobrist
in the sixth, with Anthony Rizzo aboard on a leadoff double, and thought of slotting Jorge Soler into left field.
Francona has no scruples about using six pitchers, five infielders, and four outfielders including maybe three left fielders in a single
one of these games. Zobrist may be one of the Cubs’ more reliable World Series hitters, but here was a chance for Maddon to put
some pressure on an Indians team to whom pressure is just another word for nothing left to lose.
If the Schwarbinator connected, Dexter Fowler’s surprise solo home run off Andrew (The Invincible) Miller an inning later might have
tied the game. Instead, it was an excuse-me run after Jason Kipnis in the top of that inning hit a three-run homer that kept his promise
to break every Cub heart he could while he was in this Series against the team for whom he grew up rooting.
Well, so be it. In Game Five, Maddon watched his boys shake off an early 1-0 Indians lead with a three-run third that only began
when Kris Bryant, until then one of the Cubs’ more pronounced World Series flops, earned his pay and maybe his pending National
League Most Valuable Player award, sent a 1-1 service from Trevor (Dem Drones) Bauer into the left center field bleachers.
Maddon even had an ace in the hole going in. He got with Aroldis Chapman before the game. He told Chapman, who’s notorious to
a small extent for not feeling all that comfortable coming in with men on base, to be ready for earlier duty than he was accustomed
to pulling if the Cubs had a lead.
He lifted his effective starter Jon Lester after six. He sent rookie Carl Edwards, Jr. out to start the seventh. Then, with one out and
a man on second following a leadoff single and a passed ball that might have been a wild pitch, he called for Chapman.
Chapman looked six parts assassin and half a dozen parts juggler, but he kept the Indians off the board and punctuated it with a
game-ending, wind-whipping strikeout on Jose Ramirez. And Maddon looked like the genius who’d come in from the cold. “Nobody’s
ever just run to the bat rack when Chapman comes in the game,” Francona said admiringly.
Which was almost as clever as Dodger pitcher Brandon McCarthy tweeting, “baseball is so rooted in traditions that hitters still take
their bats to the plate against Andrew Miller even though they’re not needed.”
Francona sometimes handles a difficult player decision, like keeping Mike Napoli out of the starting lineup to begin one World Series
game, by sitting the man down and playing cribbage with him. Maddon encourages his players to channel their inner kids, even
telling them to dress for Halloween on the flight to Cleveland for Games Six and (they hope) Seven.
Maddon has to keep the Cubs, especially the team’s youthful core, from over-pressuring themselves. They got into a 3-1 Series hole
that way. In Game Five, the Cubs looked like they were having fun for the first time since the set began. Francona’s Indians use their
underdog status almost like a Twister mat, and none of his players ever seems to mind when he ends up at the bottom of the inevitable
pileup.
The fact that the World Series is a lot closer than a 3-2 Indians advantage would let you believe doesn’t seem to trouble either skipper.
The fact that one of these previously-bedeviled teams is going to return to the Promised Land while the other returns to the wilderness?
Don’t ask.
“I don’t vibe at that frequency,” Maddon said in June when asked about curses—as he’s probably been so often he could write a book.
Call it
Curse You! Francona’s already written his, with his 2004 and 2007 World Series rings and, while he was at it, his memoir after
leaving the Red Sox.
Billy goats at the gate vs. black cats in front of the dugout. Colavito for Kuenn. Brock for Broglio. Ken Hubbs vs. Steve Olin and Tim Crews.
Bobby Bragan vs. the College of Coaches. The Friendly Confines vs. the Mistake on the Lake. Leon Durham vs Jose Mesa. The liner off
Charles Nagy’s glove vs. the double play hopper off Alex Gonzalez’s chest.
Rookie of the Year vs.
Major League II. (Each team’s even
represented in bad movies.)
The Cubs and the Indians taking the World Series back to Cleveland. Where someone’s going to end a drought, and someone else is
going to go into either the 69th or the 109th year of their rebuilding effort. That’s the way the pizza puff or the Polish Boy* crumble.
Cub Country wants the final message to be, “Terry Francona, you busted one curse already, now it’s
our turn.” The Indian Isles want the
final message to be, “Wrigleyville, you waited
that long,
one more year won’t kill you.” Which is still liable to be less harmful to the nation’s
health than any possible outcome of the concurrent presidential campaign.
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* —
Relax. The Polish Boy has nothing to do with cannibalism and everything to do with a sandwich including kielbasa on a bun with
barbeque sauce, cole slaw, and chips. It may be Cleveland’s most iconic sandwich.
