Now Teams Will Play Mind Games With Managers

Usually when a baseball team needs a new manager, it chooses the guy who can cuss loudest or spit farthest.

Not the Chicago Cubs. After narrowing their most recent choice to two men, Tom Trebelhorn and Tony Muser, management made each submit to “psychological testing” from a California firm (where else?) in an attempt to determine which man was more suitably equipped for the job. Trebelhorn eventually was hired.

Although such tests are supposed to remain confidential, copies of the questions and answers have been leaked exclusively to this newspaper.

Because another publishing house, the Tribune Company, owns the Cubs and is thereby the employer of anyone applying to work for the team, we believe Cub management will understand and fully support the public’s right to know.

Here, then, are the test results:

Question: If you could be any tree, which tree would you be?

Trebelhorn: I’d be a Cub tree!

Muser: I would be a mighty oak, strong and sturdy, able to weather any storm, with deep roots in the community and long branches reaching out to embrace anyone and everyone who comes to me for shelter or leans on me for support.

Trebelhorn: A big Wrigley gum tree! With ivy up and down the side!

Q: One answer per question. Pick a number from one to 100.

Muser: I fail to see what bearing the answer to such a meaningless, abstract question could have on whether a baseball manager could get the most out of nine individuals.

Trebelhorn: 100. That’s how many games we’ll win if you hire me!

Muser: Over how many years?

Q: A train pulls into Union Station at 7:15. Twelve people get off, nine get on. At Addison Street, another 16 passengers get on board, while 27 get off. How many people were Cub fans?

Muser: Is this a.m. or p.m.?

Trebelhorn: All of them! Everybody’s a Cub fan!

Muser: Wait a minute. The train doesn’t go from Union Station to Addison.

Trebelhorn: Does too! Does too!

Q: What is Nolan Ryan’s middle name?

Trebelhorn: Not a Cub! Unfair! Not a Cub!

Muser: Nolan.

Trebelhorn: Nolan what?

Muser: Nolan Ryan’s middle name is Nolan.

Trebelhorn: Nolan Nolan Ryan? Whaddayou, nuts?

Muser: Ryan’s real first name is Lynn.

Trebelhorn: Oh. I knew that! Can I change my answer? I knew that!

Q: Which newspaper do you read?

Muser: (No response.)

Trebelhorn: (No response.)

Q: If you were manager of the Cubs, would you or would you not be a supporter of the National Rifle Assn.?

Trebelhorn: Well, that’s a pretty personal question. I believe a man’s beliefs should be, uh, you know, whatever he believes.

Muser: Is this a trick question?

Q: Three White Sox are in a bar after curfew. Do you: (a) Snitch to their manager? (b) Sit down and buy them a round? (c) Snitch to the newspaper?

Muser: Snitch to the newspaper!

Trebelhorn: Snitch to the Tribune!

Muser: That’s what I meant! He took my answer!

Q: Final question. Runner’s on second, nobody out, Cubs down by a run, bottom of the ninth inning. Do you sacrifice the runner to third and play for a tie? Or do you go for broke by letting the batter swing away, going for a two-run inning to win the game?

Muser: Well, personally, even in circumstances of such exigency I have found it prudent deferring to the percentages, through logical albeit transpicuous means. Therefore, in all likelihood you would deem it justificatory in my opting to advance the runner to third so that the tying run would advantageously be 90 feet from scoring. Of course, it also would depend on computer readouts from my laptop PC and any accompanying corrigendum, plus the particular velocity of the wind as calculated by the Beaufort scale of the World Meteorological Organization and innumerable other intangibles, from none of which I, as manager, would be exculpatory.

Trebelhorn: Ditto.

The two contestants were duly thanked and told to go change for the swimsuit competition.