The 2014 Major League Baseball season has been over only a few days and already the Chicago Cubs are bungling things for next season.
In a series of events as coordinated as a parade down Main Street, Joe Maddon opted out of the last year of his deal as Tampa Bay Rays manager on Thursday, and a day later the Cubs fired manager Rick Renteria a year into his three-year contract. Reports of Chicago hiring Maddon leaked before Game 7 of the World Series, earning the Cubs a scolding by the league office and forcing all parties to deny it was a done deal.
In one sense, it is hard to blame the Cubs for pursuing Maddon. He has a track record maximising talent on a budget, and the Cubs could use just such a man with their crop of promising youngsters. However, the club’s behaviour in this pursuit – whether or not it constitutes tampering – has been unbecoming of such a venerable organisation. Renteria has every right to feel aggrieved, as do the Rays.
For years, the Cubs have been known as baseball’s “lovable losers” as they chase a first World Series title in more than a century. They have not won a championship since 1908, nor played for one since 1945.
This kind of classless behaviour puts the “lovable” part of that moniker at risk. Should the Cubs succeed in hiring Maddon, for both their sakes, they had better put the “losers” tag to rest or risk alienating even those who have stuck with them through generations of mediocrity.
pfreelend@thenational.ae
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