Cubs Become Big Business : Tribune Co. Spends $30 Million on Free Agents in an Attempt to Erase Image of Lovable Loser

Cub Manager Don Zimmer surveys Patterson Field, swinging a bat in the grass like a man with a seven-iron and no place to be. The possibility of the Cubs returning to the World Series for the first time since 1945 is sweet in the air.

The reason is evident: The Cubs’ training facility holds $30 million worth of free agents.

“Didn’t cost me a cent,” Zimmer said. “And we didn’t get no leftovers.”

The Cubs were a fourth-place team last season, a team with the National League’s second-best batting average and its second-worst earned-run average, 4.34.

The off-season brought a most un-Cub-like maneuver. The unlikely trio of Zimmer and General Manager Jim Frey--two old-time baseball men--and Don Grenesko, a former banker who at 42 is club president, decided to dive into the free-agent pool in a way the tradition-heavy Cubs never had.

They signed left-handed starter Danny Jackson to a four-year, $10.5-million contract.

They signed outfielder George Bell to a three-year, $9.8-million contract.

They signed right-handed stopper Dave Smith to a two-year, $4.9-million contract.

With option years, the contracts will cost $30 million.

The club payroll for this season is $27 million, an increase of more than $13 million since last year and about $7 million more than the Tribune Co. paid when it bought the Cubs in 1981.

“When you spend the kind of money we did, you better be a contender,” Frey said.

The Cubs bolstered their injury-stricken pitching staff by adding Jackson, who had his one outstanding season in 1988, going 23-8 with a 2.73 ERA for Cincinnati; and Smith, who had 23 saves for Houston last season. Smith has converted 85% of his save opportunities in the past six seasons.

The addition of Bell gives the Cubs a heart of the order as sturdy as any in the game--a lineup that includes three former most valuable players and a couple of good young hitters.

Jerome Walton, the National League rookie of the year in 1989, will lead off, followed by Ryne Sandberg, whose MVP season was in 1984, and who hit .306 last season with 40 home runs.

For all the commotion over the team’s signing of the free agents this season, many believe the most confounding move has been its failure to renegotiate the contract of Sandberg, who can become a free agent after the 1992 season.

Next up after Sandberg is Mark Grace, who has hit .296, .314 and .309 in his first three seasons in the majors.

Then come Bell and Andre Dawson. Bell had his MVP season with Toronto in 1987, with 47 home runs and a league-leading 134 runs batted in. Dawson had his MVP season the same year, with league-leading totals of 49 home runs and 137 RBIs in his first season with the Cubs.

The only real questions this spring have been at third base, which rookie Gary Scott will play on opening day; and behind the plate, where Zimmer says he has “two No. 1 catchers”--incumbent Joe Girardi and onetime starter Damon Berryhill, who is coming off a season of rehabilitation after rotator-cuff surgery.

The off-season moves were in many ways symbolic of the Corporate Cubs who have evolved under the Tribune Co., whose ownership has coincided with baseball’s extraordinary economic changes of the past decade.

“It’s no longer a mom-and-pop operation where you didn’t have to work with contracts,” said Grenesko, a man of such traditional appeal that Marshall Field’s department store has featured him in its Father’s Day ads.

The changes sit fine with some of the Cub faithful.

“It impresses me,” said Harry Caray, the longtime baseball broadcaster who is in his 10th season with the Cubs. “It proves they’re going to play the game by the rules as they are. I’m for ballplayers getting all the money they can. If it seems ridiculous, blame the owners.

“The game has changed. It used to be you developed your own talent, and the team or the organization who had the best scouts would eventually be the best team. You used to say Musial was the Cards, DiMaggio was the Yankees and Williams was the Red Sox. Now those long tenures are no more. Guys play out their contracts and sign with whoever offers more money.”

This year, the Cubs were offering.

“Obviously, we needed additional pitching help,” Grenesko said. “We took a hard look at the minor leagues and saw no one who would have impact in ’91. Trades obviously are very difficult to get done, with contracts involved. We felt the only avenue left to us was free agency, something we had never really done in the past. We were taking a new step, at least for the Chicago Cubs.”

Under the ownership of the Wrigley family, the Cubs used to trade players rather than meet their growing salary demands. A Wrigley once said: “No ballplayer is worth more than $100,000 a year, and I’m not sure they’re worth that much.”

This season, the major league minimum is $100,000. The Cubs have changed with the market.

Frey, who first joined the Cubs in 1983 and managed them to the National League East title in ‘84, never worked under the former ownership.

“There have been so many changes in baseball since (the Tribune Co.) bought the Cubs,” Frey said. “In our business, there’s one thing people always want to hang their hats on, and that’s tradition, and their memories of different clubs.

“The current ownership is 180 degrees from the previous ownership. They never drew more than 1.7 (million) in their history. Now it’s close to 2 1/2 million.”

Despite the changes--none of them more striking than the installation of lights at Wrigley Field in 1988--the image of the old-fashioned, bumbling Cubs lives on.

“We’re always identified as one of those teams that has struggled, yet we won two divisional titles in the ‘80s,” Frey said.

What many remember are teams such as the 1969 Cubs, who led the division for the first 155 days of the season and held a 9 1/2-game lead over the New York Mets in the second week in August, only to lose the division title by going 8-17 in September.

People remember the 1984 Cubs, the East champions who beat the San Diego Padres by scores of 13-0 and 4-2 in Wrigley Field, only to go to San Diego and become the first team to lose a five-game National League playoff after taking a 2-0 lead in games.

Those are the Cub legends, even though the Cubs have won two divisional titles in the past seven seasons.

“The image and idea everybody has of the Cubs is an ancient one,” Frey said.

“If losing is what they’re thinking being a Cub means, if they’re content with not winning everything, then that’s what they like. I like the idea of winning a championship.”

He and Grenesko outwardly have little in common, but they share that sentiment.

“I think it’s time the Cubs had a winner,” Grenesko said. “It’s time for them to be in the World Series. We have been lovable losers. We’re tired of that.”

But in a year when the Cubs spent freely to acquire players, they disregarded Sandberg’s interest in extending his contract.

Sandberg, who is signed this season for $2.2 million with a club option for 1992, had sought a three-year, $15-million extension. When a deadline Sandberg set for discussion passed, he vowed to speak no more of it.

To some Cubs observers, there was a problem with that picture.

“It’s the Cubs who broached the subject about renewing the contract,” Caray said. “But when a certain day passed, Sandberg, being the gentleman he is, said he wasn’t going to talk about it. He hasn’t said one bad word. It’s not like Rickey Henderson.”

The Cubs are aware of the risk that comes with signing free agents.

“There’ve been many failures,” Grenesko said. “The Yankees, California, Kansas City. A number of teams have done this and failed. To a certain extent you’re rolling the dice.”

Some believe the Cubs are rolling the dice with Bell, who had a reputation as a brash malcontent with Toronto, where he had tumultuous relationships with General Manager Pat Gillick and former manager Jimy Williams.

“That was a concern,” Grenesko said. “Is he a troublemaker? Can he get along with ownership, management, the fans? We looked at the situation, and George wanted to be a left fielder. He had a difference with a manager who wanted him to DH. It led to problems. Maybe he needed a change of scenery.”

Bell has his change of scenery now--it includes a ballpark of invitingly cozy dimensions--and has had, by most accounts, a cheery spring with the Cubs, who will play him in left field. Zimmer has told him that he probably will be replaced for defensive purposes in the late innings of games the Cubs lead, and Bell is agreeable.

Besides Bell’s defensive liability, there is some question about his batting average, which slipped to a career-low of .265 last season. In part, it could be attributed to a vision problem he experienced because of a fluid buildup around the retina of his right eye in late August. In August and September, Bell hit .231.

Still, he has averaged 28 homers over his seven full major league seasons.

There are questions about Jackson and Smith as well.

Jackson, who underwent shoulder surgery in 1989, was on the disabled list three times in 1990, although one time was after he was hit on the forearm by a line drive and another was the result of a viral infection. The Cubs say he has been examined and re-examined, adding that they are unconcerned that he has pitched fewer than 118 innings in each of the past two seasons.

Jackson joins a rotation that includes Greg Maddux, Shawn Boskie, Mike Harkey and Mike Bielecki. Harkey was bothered by tendinitis in his shoulder last season. Former ace Rick Sutcliffe is coming off shoulder surgery, and if he is ready to start, Bielecki would probably go to long relief.

In the bullpen, Smith joins left-handed stopper Mitch Williams, whose knee injury last season probably cost the Cubs some victories. Smith has a career 2.53 ERA and had a 2.39 ERA last season, but he is 36.

“If you look at it, the history of free agents is not a good one,” Grenesko said. “Performance typically falls off the year after they sign a big contract. We wanted to find guys who it doesn’t matter if they just signed a three- or four-year contract for tens of millions.

“We’ve got guys like Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson who play hard no matter where they are in their contract. We’ve had others who have, in essence, quit playing. I think the three players we got this year, we’re very, very pleased. They have the personality that they hate to lose. They’re fiery types.”

The Cubs don’t look forward to taking the free-agent plunge again soon.

“I hope we don’t have to go back in the free-agent market again,” Grenesko said. “To be a consistent winner over a long period of time, you have to have a strong minor-league system and scouting organization.”

First, there is this season, and the Cubs are not the only team that is confident.

“You think Pittsburgh thinks they’re going to win? You think the Mets think they’re going to win?” Zimmer said.

“For people to pick you to win, I love it. I’d rather have 20 writers pick you to finish first than have them pick you fifth or sixth, because that means you have a stinking ballclub.”

But if winning becomes a regular occurence, if more championships follow the two East titles of the ‘80s, what will that mean to all of the far-flung Cub fans, most of them weaned on failure?

“I wouldn’t know till we win,” Zimmer said.