Q rating

It's okay to think that Ryne Sandberg should have been made the next Cubs manager. It's not okay to think it the way Gene Wojciechowski thinks it, however.

Maybe this will work. Maybe a guy who would have never gotten a sniff at the full-time job if Lou Piniella hadn't flamed out will break the Chicago Cubs' 102-year starvation diet. Maybe Mike Quade is the next Jim Leyland or Earl Weaver, a nobody who became a baseball somebody.

But I doubt it.

I also doubt it, but mostly because the Cubs are not a great team right now. Other managers who I doubt could lead the Cubs to a World Series title next year: Ryne Sandberg, Joe Girardi, Joe Torre, the ghost of Frank Chance.

If it happens, if Quade can lead the Cubs to their first World Series championship since 1908, then I'll believe anything -- that Barry Bonds hit all those home runs because of flaxseed oil, that Wade Phillips will be the 2010 NFL Coach of the Year.

Ha ha! Take that, Barry Bonds and the Cowboys! Wait - what is this article about again?

There are reasons why the Cubs are the Cubs -- and the decision to hire Quade is one of them. I'm not saying it's a terrible choice; just the wrong choice.

Nothing personal, but Ryne Sandberg, not Quade, should have been introduced Tuesday as the 51st manager of the Cubs. It would have made so much sense.

I mean, I guess. Sandberg had been managing in the Cubs' system for four years. Quade was a minor league manager as early as 1985 and managed the Iowa Cubs for three years. In 2004 he took them to the PCL finals, for whatever that's worth.

Sandberg isn't some Mark McGwire big-timer whose first coaching job was on the major league level. Sandberg grinded for four years as a manager in the bus and drive-thru-window leagues of the minors. He did his time for the Cubs in Class A, Double-A and Triple-A, earning Pacific Coast League manager of the year honors this past season.

He's done a nice job. He also has four years of minor league experience to Quade's 17, and zero years of big league coaching experience to Quade's four, so trying to sell him as someone who "paid his dues" as though Quade hasn't is just kind of stupid.

He also has a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, which should count for something. And he's wearing a Cubs cap on it.

The last guy to be a Hall of Famer as a player and then win a World Series as a manager: no one. It's never happened. The closest we come - ignoring player/managers, of whom there were a few in the first half of the 20th century - is Red Schoendienst, who led the 1967 Cardinals to the World Series title four years after retiring. Of course it also took Red until 1989 to make the Hall, getting in only via the Veterans Committee, and you could certainly argue that he's one of the weaker members of the Hall. On the other hand, he was also a second baseman! Draft Sandberg!

Sandberg was the consummate professional as a player, and he would have been the consummate Cubs manager. He spoke with his bat and glove when he played those 15 seasons in Chicago. But once out of uniform, he spoke from his heart.

What Sandberg's playing career has to do with his potential managerial career: little to nothing.

Go back and listen to his HOF induction speech in 2005, when he vaporized a certain unnamed former teammate (hello, Sammy Sosa). Sandberg has always been about playing the game the right way. You think he would have been intimidated managing the bizarre and undependable Carlos Zambrano? Something would have had to give, and it wouldn't have been Sandberg.

This seems to imply that someone else was intimidated by Zambrano, but Piniella was only too happy to send Zambrano home and Quade didn't have to deal with Z at his angriest or flakiest anyway. So, what are you talking about?

Sandberg would have been good for the Cubs and also good for business. If you don't think that matters, then you weren't at Wrigley Field during the final month or so of another lost season.

The Cubs drew more than 3 million fans in 2010, behind only Philly, the Dodgers and St. Louis in the NL, and ahead of the other three NL playoff teams. (Only three other teams in baseball - the Yankees, Angels and Twins - drew more. The Cubs drew more than the Red Sox.) I'm sure Sandberg would be a popular enough manager, but business isn't really suffering. And you need only ask Dusty Baker about how popularity will dwindle when you're not managing a winning team.

There are no guarantees Sandberg would have won a division, a pennant or a World Series. But he couldn't have done any worse than Piniella, whose teams failed to win a playoff game in six tries. And after the magic and heartbreak of 2003, Dusty Baker never led the Cubs to another postseason appearance. Nor did Don Baylor before him.

Sandberg: he might not win, but hey, who has? Of course, I could just as easily say this of Quade, whom you're busy crushing. And for the record, Piniella's teams may not have won a postseason game but they did win the NL Central in back to back years, the first time the Cubs made two straight postseasons in literally a century. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that yes, Sandberg could have done worse than that. For all I've said about Dusty Baker over the years, he got the Cubs closer to the World Series than at any time since 1945. Sandberg could certainly have done worse than him.

There weren't a dozen baseball fans outside the city of Chicago who knew who Quade was when the Cubs asked him to pitch long managerial relief for the final 37 games this summer. I'm not sure there were a dozen fans in Chicago who knew who he was.

Ha ha hyperbole! Quade was the third base coach. Plenty of people who follow the team knew who he was.

Even after he was hired Tuesday, I had two baseball fans tell me, "You hear about the Cubs and Quade?" But they mispronounced his name: calling him, Qu-aid, instead of Quad-ee.

"Two non-Cubs fans I spoke to had only seen Mike Quade's name written down, therefore he sucks."

People know Sandberg's name. People name their kids after Sandberg.

Not a reason he should be hired as manager.

I'm all for rewarding loyalty. Quade spent 17 years managing in the minors and four years as a major league coach. On Aug. 22, he replaced the beleaguered Piniella, who called it quits and returned home to Tampa to care for his ailing mother.

Love how buried this was when he talked about Sandberg's four years of "grinding" at the top.

Quade finished 24-13 as interim manager and showed a nice, firm touch when handling players such as shortstop Starlin Castro, a gifted but sometimes brain-cramped rookie who needed the occasional tough love. Quade also got seven wins out of the revitalized Zambrano. And he earned the support of key Cubs veterans.

Douchebag. Shouldn't be hired.

That support, those 24 victories and the fact that the Cubs are on their second 100-year rebuilding plan likely had a lot to do with Quade's hiring. Plus, he's a likable, personable, grinder type of guy.

Wait, they're both grinders? How will we settle this grudge match? Quick: both go to the outfield and take turns shagging David Eckstein pop flies. Winner gets a football punted and then signed by Darin Erstad, and also the job as Cubs manager.

Still, Quade has only 37 more games of big league managerial experience than Sandberg. Now compare that to Sandberg's big-game experience. And with all due respect to Quade, those 37 games were played when nothing was on the line for the Cubs.

37 more games of big league managerial experience... plus 13 extra seasons in the minors. Might count for something. Also, at the risk of bashing my own team, what big game experience does Ryno really have? He has ten career playoff games under his belt and his team lost seven of them (though his personal playoff numbers are great, albeit in a very small sample). During his 15 seasons with the Cubs, he played on two first place teams, zero other teams that finished even as high as second, and three last place teams. I love the guy, but it is hard to find many recent Hall of Famers with less "big game experience."

Make no mistake: The Cubs' payroll isn't going to approach the $145 million the Ricketts family spent in 2010 to finish fifth in the NL Central. It is a roster with a handful of talented young players, but also a roster with the ball-and-chain contracts of Alfonso Soriano and Zambrano.

So, maybe it doesn't matter that much who the manager is, huh?

You wonder if owner Tom Ricketts liked Quade not only because of those 24 victories but also because he might have come more cheaply than Sandberg. He definitely was a less expensive alternative to Piniella, as well as to New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who told reporters Tuesday that he had considered the idea of managing the Cubs. No way would Girardi have signed the same contract as Quade: a two-year deal with a club option for a third.

Given how little value the average manager adds to a team, I'm definitely cool with not shelling out big dollars. As, again, you yourself mentioned just a few paragraphs ago, Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker - high-priced managers with pedigrees - couldn't get the Cubs to the World Series. If someone who has never managed in the big leagues couldn't possibly do worse, as you claim, why am I supposed to believe that Quade would do worse either?

Sandberg was slightly surprised and more than slightly disappointed when he learned he hadn't gotten the Cubs job. But that's baseball. It's like in "Bull Durham," when Nuke LaLoosh says, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains. Think about that for a while."

It's exactly like that. Or something.

It rained on Sandberg Tuesday. By the end of next season, we'll know if Cubs fans got soaked too.

If the Cubs don't win next year, and they almost certainly won't, it's not going to be due to Quade vs. Sandberg. Okay? You wrote this whole article around why Quade was a bad choice and I don't see a single good reason. Pretty much all you have is "Well, Sandberg played for the Cubs and was good at it." That's not a reason not to give a guy a job, but it's certainly not a reason to give him a job without question, is it?