Dan McGrath says there’s no conspiracy. But where’s his evidence? Where’s the proof that a tight little cluster of Tribune Company overlords, whose chain of command descends to the Cubs clubhouse and the Tribune sports department, isn’t jerking the hapless satraps at the bottom? Satraps like manager Don Baylor and sports editor Dan McGrath.
Too wrought up to let the matter go, Mariotti was back at it the next day, accusing “Cubs management” of “using sinister methods to undermine Sosa’s reputation” to lay the groundwork for dealing him. “Tribune Co. would prefer to wage an ungrateful smear campaign than reward a beloved player with a long-jackpot contract that ensures he will be a Cub for life. Finally, Sosa has been broken.” And last Sunday Mariotti perspicaciously described the plot as coming back to haunt its perpetrators. “They have spent so much time badmouthing and degrading Sosa, the Cubs now run the idiotic risk of diminishing his trade value to another team.”
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Lest Mariotti’s analysis be dismissed as one man’s opinion, his colleague Rick Telander made some parallel points in his Friday column, albeit at a healthier diastolic level. “Conflict of interest” was Telander’s theme, and his subject was the debate over how free Cubs fans should be to drink themselves into belligerence. Combining reporting with analysis, Telander provided the most lucid overview yet of the May 16 fracas set off when a Cubs fan grabbed the hat of Chad Kreuter, a Dodger catcher, and various Dodgers poured into the stands.
Well, it is something. If not a conspiracy, it’s certainly an absurdity–which could be what Telander was getting at. I went over that passage with Dan McGrath and asked if he could disagree.
The culprit in the cap caper had been revealed June 5 by the Tribune Company’s own John Kass. And a good thing it was that the Sun-Times wasn’t first to the details. Kass used his exclusive knowledge exactly as the Sun-Times would have–to ridicule the competition. “Beer had nothing to do with starting the brawl. Instead, it was stupidity of the cold sober kind,” he wrote. “What makes this difficult–for me as a loyal White Sox fan–is that the stupidity oozed out of a Tribune Co. employee….Josh Pulliam is a customer service representative for NTC/ Contemporary Publishing Group in Lincolnwood, a Tribune subsidiary that publishes textbooks.”
There are other conspiracy theories that need to be mentioned in passing here. There’s the theory, acknowledged by Mariotti, that Sosa and his agent instigated the falling-out between Sosa and manager Baylor to make it easier for Sosa to get to a winning team. There’s the theory that Mariotti and Telander, by attacking the Tribune Company beast, are serving the ends of competing Hollinger International, which isn’t chopped liver either. There’s even the proposition E-mailed around by Lakeview’s Tom McClurg that “the Tribune planted this guy…to steal Kreuter’s cap knowing that it would set off a reaction, resulting in Dodger suspensions and civil litigation.” As in, if we can just get half of every other team suspended for hooliganism for enough games, the Cubs have as good a shot at the pennant as anybody.
Tribune sports bears the unavoidable burden of the corporate company it’s forced to keep, but Adee doesn’t believe in guilt by proximity. “I know the people in the Tribune sports department,” he told me. “I don’t think for a second they’d bend to that pressure. I tried to hire Dan McGrath. I know John Cherwa [assistant managing editor for sports]. They’re good journalists.”
