But for a Bounce

In baseball, there are genius front-office executives and geniuses who catch lightning in a bottle and then lose it when they switch teams.  In other words, Theo Epstein—I’m absolutely serious—and the flash in the pans.  Think Syd Thrift, Larry Himes and the just-departed Dallas Green.

Green came to the Cubs in 1981 as team president and general manager.  He huffed, and he puffed, and he blew the old P.K. Wrigley ways down and had the North Siders challenging for a pennant within three years.  But for a ball that went through the legs of first baseman Leon Durham against the Padres, the Cubs would have taken on the Tigers in the 1984 World Series.  And wouldn’t things have turned out differently for Dallas Green and Cub Nation?

As it was, Green left in 1987, but not before he forced the Chicago City Council to accept night baseball at Wrigley Field.  Yes, it was a quirky tradition that set off the Cubs from the rest of major-league baseball, and it minted generations’ of fans who, as youngsters, came home from school and caught the end of the ballgame on WGN TV; those kids grew up to become the foundation of the team fan base in the 1980s and ’90s.  That said, the only reason Wrigley Field didn’t have lights is because World War II got in the way.

Wrigley bought the equipment with the intentions of letting there be light at Clark and Addison; then came Pearl Harbor, and the equipment was donated to the war effort.  So, the grand “tradition” was nothing more than an accident, or conspiracy, if you want to link FDR to both Pearl Harbor and a lightless Wrigley Field.  The brusque Dallas Green couldn’t have cared less about history.  He huffed, and he puffed, and he got his way, only to be let go for Jim Frey, whom Green had hired to manage the team in 1984.  The first night game took place in August of 1988.

Good karma, bad karma, I don’t know.  But at least Cub fans got to keep their ballpark.  I would’ve put up with Green’s blustering if he could’ve saved Comiskey Park.