Phil Never Lets Me Down

And I thank him for that. I really do, or I would have gone a full week without any post:

Sandberg deserves shot at managing Cubs

A pretty easy premise to work with. You just have to list a few reasons why Ryno should manage the Cubs.

Ryne Sandberg's Iowa Cubs just ended the year with the most victories in the Pacific Coast League, yet are home watching four other teams in the playoffs. Can you think of a feat that would better qualify someone to manage the Cubs?

Someone who has a track record of winning in the Majors? (Oh yeah, they tried that.) Someone who has a solid philosophy on strategy and game management? Someone who has experience managing in a big city and dealing with the media and the pressure that every former manager talks about? (Tried that too) But hey, winning the PCL isn't a bad start I guess.

Having said a polite no thanks to Ernie Banks 39 years ago and a jarring no-thanks to Billy Williams at least a few times, the Cubs again are deciding whether they want to turn their team over to one of their all-time great players. No matter what general manager Jim Hendry and Chairman Tom Ricketts ultimately tell Sandberg, it won't be as smooth as the kiss-off P.K. Wrigley gave Banks when Mr. Cub's career ended in 1971.

And here is where we get off-track.

Wrigley loved Banks. He would invite him up to his office for visits and almost always paid him above the scale for starting shortstops (albeit requiring Banks to pose for pictures signing the documents). Once or twice he vetoed trades that Leo Durocher or someone in his front office had worked out with another team, like the 6-for-1 deal that would have allowed Banks to hit alongside Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews in Milwaukee.

Has nothing to do with Sandburg.

Banks was made a player-coach in '67, the thinking being that he was almost ready to become a coach. But by the time Banks finally was finished as a player, Wrigley couldn't bring himself even to consider him as a possible successor to Durocher. He said he was "too fond of Ernie to make him manager of anything,'' including a baseball team."Managing is a dirty job,'' Wrigley said. "It doesn't last long and it certainly isn't anything I would wish on Banks.''Lots of old friends feel that way about Sandberg."
There's one school of thought that holds Sandberg should be eliminated from consideration to replace Lou Piniella because these things always end badly, and that Sandberg is too nice of a guy to handle such a failure.

They don't want him to manage because his feelings might get hurt? Oh sure, that is a solid hiring policy. Only hire people you hate because eventually they'll get hurt.

Some compare Sandberg to Alan Trammell, the Cubs' bench coach. He played 20 years as a shortstop for the Tigers before accepting a chance to manage them in 2003, seven years after he had played his last game. His first team lost 119 games and the next two 90 and 91 before he was sacked in favor of Jim Leyland, who was given Magglio Ordonez and Kenny Rogers, and the chance to manage in the World Series.Trammell hasn't exactly been besieged with offers to manage elsewhere, including a snub from the Cubs after 3 1/2 seasons as Piniella's top assistant.Is this the fate that awaits Sandberg?Hardly.

Why not? By all accounts the Cubs are heading anywhere but up so a couple 90-loss seasons aren't out of the question. Any reason he'll avoid this fate?

None of these anecdotes tell us anything about what the Cubs could expect to get if they hired the power-hitting second baseman who twice got them to the threshold of the World Series.

Then why share them, other than to hit your word count?

There's no way to predict how it would go for Sandberg.Maybe he would flame out spectacularly. Maybe he would turn into a North Side version of Ozzie Guillen, without so many expletives having to be deleted.It's a roll of the dice.

Those are the only two options? Either fail so badly you end up drinking yourself to death or become a crazy Venezuelan...and end up drinking yourself to death? Why would anyone want this job?

I say put the bones in his hands and stand back, hoping that this time next year — or the year after that, two years after that, even three years after that — Cub Nation rings with cries of "hot shooter, hot shooter.''

Ugh. Why would anyone say that? Because it works with the metaphor. Because running a baseball team is all luck, like dice.

There's no question it is tempting to see if Joe Girardi really wants to leave the Yankees to come home to the Midwest. He has proven himself as a solid big-league manager and is in almost every way a safer bet than Sandberg.

Great argument for NOT SANDBURG. That's the point of the article right?

But will he really leave the Yankees?If he does, how much of a price will you pay for that move — both now, in terms of the size and length of his contract, and over the course of time in him being able to say he sacrificed for the good of his hometown franchise?

I don't understand the last part of that run-on sentence. How much will the Cubs pay for Girardi to say he sacrificed for the good...? Why would they have to pay for that? I really don't understand.

Why not start fresh with a guy who was a great player ...

Cause God knows great players make great managers. That's why Banks worked out so wel...oh right.

...and has spent the last four years adding to his base of knowledge by managing in the minors?

Hey a solid point. Way to go Phil.

Hendry dared Sandberg to do that, and Sandberg called him on it.

Like coaching a minor league team is a game of chicken. I dare you to live in Iowa for 4 years!

It's time for Hendry to give Sandberg his dream job, no matter how badly anyone fears for Sandberg.It would be one thing if Sandberg's teams had treaded water, but they haven't. He has had three winning seasons in four years — how would Cub fans have liked to have that ratio the last 60 or so years? — and took a team that was only two games above .500 to the championship series of the Southern League in 2009.Sandberg seemed poised for another playoff run this year but his team faded late (in part because the undermanned Cubs grabbed players like Darwin Barney, Casey Coleman, Andrew Cashner and Scott Maine) and wound up tied with Memphis for the division title. Their matching 82-62 records were better than the other three division leaders but the Redbirds advanced on a tie-breaker while the I-Cubs went home.Given that it's going to be at least a year or two before the Cubs regain the flexibility to be major players in the free-agent market, it's an advantage for Sandberg that he knows the organization's young players.

All excellent points. I'll give him this part.

Case Closed.