Hendry Must Go After Bradley Fiasco

CHICAGO — The simplest approach would be to dismiss Milton Bradley as a worthless, miserable, psychotic, no-good jerk who somehow would sour the happy vibes at a Boy Scouts meeting, all of which is inarguably true. But the bigger problem in Cubdom, which is experiencing a more acute depression than usual in its 101st consecutive season without a World Series title, is the brainiac who signed him last winter.

That would be Jim Hendry, the general manager. Once so driven by his job that he signed pitcher Ted Lilly to a $40 million contract while in his hospital bed following a heart procedure, Hendry overthought himself on Bradley to the point of wrecking a potentially historic team. He gambled that Bradley could be the offensive threat to push the Cubs past the first round of the postseason, ignoring the long, poisonous pattern of Bradley distracting or downright disrupting every team that has employed him. Rather than savor a healthy clubhouse chemistry mix, Hendry dumped the popular and versatile Mark DeRosa and replaced him with Bradley, the antithesis of good vibes, selflessness and 162-game peace.

The result was a human implosion not often seen, even in the vat of hopelessness that is Wrigley Field. In a wicked five-month swoop, Bradley ripped Cubs fans as racists, engaged in a confrontation with manager Lou Piniella, threw a ball into the stands when there were only two outs in the inning, alienated himself from his teammates and, over the weekend, took a blowtorch to the entire franchise and was suspended for the remainder of the season. If Milton Bradley, the old board game company, had a game for Milton Bradley, the baseball malcontent, it surely would be Trouble.

“It’s just not a positive environment,” said Bradley, one of the most negative people on God’s green earth, in an interview with a suburban Chicago newspaper called the Daily Herald. “I need a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment. There’s too many people everywhere in your face with a microphone asking the same questions repeatedly. Everything is just bashing you. You go out there and you play harder than anybody on the field and never get credit for it. It’s just negativity.

“And you understand why they haven’t won in 100 years here, because it’s negative. It’s what it is.”

If he wasn’t such a troubled soul, I would LOL! Bradley needs a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment? Um, the Cubs needed a stable, healthy, enjoyable right fielder and instead got a mope. And if they’re ever going to climb from their 101-year black hole, it’s certainly won’t be with 25 Milton Bradleys. What they must do, as soon as possible, is either cut him and eat the remaining $21 million on his contract or ship him to a team that at least will pay $3 million of the bill. The Cubs have done some real dumb things in their history, but considering their payroll was the third-highest in the majors and they’re barely above .500 after a season of injuries and gross underachievement, the Bradley idea ranks among the worst.

“There are issues that we¹ve had throughout the year that in the last few days became too much for me to tolerate,” Hendry said in announcing the suspension. “I’m certainly not going to let our great fans become an excuse. I’m not going to tolerate not being able to answer questions from the media respectfully. Whether you feel like talking or not, it’s part of all of our jobs. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way. I’m not going to allow disrespect to other people in that locker room and uniformed personnel, and I’m certainly not going to let a player, as was mentioned in the article, [talk about] negativity of the organization.”

Yet shouldn’t Hendry (right) whose every offseason move backfired woefully, be sent on his way right behind Bradley? With a new owner finally in place in Tom Ricketts, who hopes to pare a $140 million payroll by $40 million and create some semblance of a farm system, the time is right for a new front-office boss with fresh ideas to tackle the toughest job in baseball. Jon Daniels, the young Texas GM who built a farm system and melded kids with veterans, might be ripe to leave with the Rangers fighting money and attendance issues. Same goes for Josh Byrnes, another youthful GM who could be pried from the Arizona Diamondbacks. If Ricketts wants to think real large, how about Theo Epstein, who might want a new challenge — and an identity of his own — after winning two World Series in Boston and having to share credit with his three bosses?

Chicago is a city of soft, homerish media who have allowed too many franchises to slide while busy brown-nosing management. From what I’ve seen, no one in the dying print media here has demanded Hendry’s hide. But if he were working in New York and wasting money on Bradley — not to mention his lavish overspending on Wrigleyville pariah Alfonso Soriano ($136 million), perpetual problem child Carlos Zambrano ($91.5 million), disappointing outfielder Kosuke Fukudome ($48 million), always-injured third baseman Aramis Ramirez ($75 million), inconsistent pitcher Ryan Dempster ($52 million) and former Notre Dame football player Jeff Samardzija ($10 million) — they’d have run him out of town long ago.

Bradley should be the last straw. He wasn’t the first to suggest echoes of racism in the stands; he could trade notes with former Cubs manager Dusty Baker, outfielder Jacque Jones and reliever LaTroy Hawkins, among others. “I’m talking about hatred, period,” Bradley said. “I’m talking about when I go to eat at a restaurant, I have to listen to waiters bad-mouthing me at another table. Sitting in a restaurant, that’s what I’m talking about — everything.” And what exactly happens in the Wrigley stands?

“You can’t do nothing. You listen to them yell at you,” he said of the alleged racial taunts. “All I’m saying is that I just pray the game is nine innings, so I can be out there the least amount of time as possible and go home. … It’s nothing brand-new. It’s nothing that just started when Milton Bradley came here. It’s the same stuff [the media] wrote about at the beginning of the year. It’s not like it’s a surprise or a shock or brand new to me or anyone else. That’s the way it has been. It’s not a brand new story. There’s nothing new to write about.”

Do understand that Cubs fans are equal-opportunity critics, having heaped abuse upon white flops such as Todd Hundley and Kent Mercker and all sorts of managers. I’m not saying a few idiots wouldn’t drop an n-bomb or something similarly ignorant, but the problem isn’t racism. The minute Bradley was signed, I predicted a dreadful season in which he’d feud with fans, fight with Piniella and not produce. How right I was — .257 batting average, 12 home runs, 40 runs batted in, .378 on-base percentage. The year before in Texas, in a relaxed environment compared to defeat-scarred Wrigleyville, he hit .321 with 22 homers, 77 RBI and a dynamic .436 on-base percentage. Hendry fooled around and fell in love with Good Milton.

Bad Milton should cost him his job. His moods sucked the fun out of a ballpark that at least had hosted two postseason series the previous two autumns, however brief. His teammates can’t wait to see him leave. “At the end of the day, he was provided a great opportunity to be part of a really great organization with a lot of really good guys,” Dempster told beat reporters. “It just didn’t seem to make him happy — anything. Hopefully, this is a little bit of a wake-up call for him, and he’ll realize how good of a gig you have. It probably became one of those things where you start saying things that you’re putting the blame on everybody else. Sometimes, you’ve just got to look in the mirror and realize that maybe the biggest part of the problem is yourself.”

“If you don’t want to be here, send him home,” Ramirez said.

“From our standpoint, nobody was making an effort to isolate him from groups,” Reed Johnson said. “For the most part, that was his choice.”

All of which was known about Milton Bradley during his volatile days with the Rangers, Padres, Athletics, Dodgers and Indians, all since 2002. There’s always a general manager out there ready to play risk/reward, thinking he can solve the psychological puzzle and reap the benefits. Hendry played the game and whiffed badly.

“When you have high expectations, it’s just the way the world is in professional sports,” he said. “When you don’t produce and there are high expectations on the club, individually, you’re going to get some criticism. We all live in that world. There’s more scrutiny in the world now.”

Amid that scrutiny, someone has to pay for making poor decisions. The Cubs, entering Year No. 102 of an eternal rebuilding plan, should reboot a creaky, old system with a new boss.

By Jay Mariotti

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