Cubs players young and old keep oral history tradition of baseball alive

New York Times

a day ago

CHICAGO — When Craig Counsell was a fresh-faced rookie second baseman with the 1997 Florida Marlins, the veterans had a postgame routine.
Win or lose, they would gravitate to the training room and talk about what just happened on the field.
'Or just bull—-ing,' Counsell said. 'But in between the chatter was talk about baseball.'
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That was a team loaded with veterans, such as Darren Daulton, Bobby Bonilla and Gary Sheffield. The Marlins went on to win the World Series and Counsell famously scored the winning run in Game 7.
Those BS sessions are where Counsell, now the Chicago Cubs manager, got his education about baseball.
'It's where you learn how to act, it's where you learn about the highest level of the game, it's where you learn what not to do, it's where you learn what you want to do,' Counsell said. 'You learn there's an oral history to the game and how you will be treated. … Often, how you are treated as a younger player is how you're going to treat the next generation behind you.'
Twenty-eight seasons later, despite all the advancements in technology that allow us to shelter ourselves from the outside world, the oral history of the game is still being passed down in training rooms, dugouts, clubhouses and team planes. Perhaps nowhere more than with Counsell's Cubs, where the old players and young players are treating each other pretty good these days.
'I know, like, it's a little thing, but I know a flight attendant who worked one of our flights recently,' Cubs pitcher Jameson Taillon told me the other day. 'She had also worked flights for a different team and she's like, 'You guys are so much more interactive. You are all talking to each other.' I was like, 'Oh, what does the other team do?' She said the minute they get on the flight, it's headphones. No one interacts. For us, we have guys going up and down the aisle. Everyone's just moving around, talking, it's cool.'
Justin Turner, Taillon and Ben Brown were recently sitting around discussing how Nolan Ryan's career spanned from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, which got them into a deeper conversation.
'We were talking about that in the locker room actually, just like how closely connected you are in baseball,' Taillon said. 'We did it with Justin Turner. You can connect him to (Hall of Fame pitcher) Robin Roberts through like five or six dudes. (Roberts) played in the '40s and '50s. That's something I hope never gets lost in baseball, just understanding the history and how closely connected we are to each other.'
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Roberts pitched 19 years, starting in 1948 and finishing in 1966. It took me a few minutes to make a connection between him and Turner, and it only took three players.
Roberts finished his career with the 1966 Cubs and he pitched with Fergie Jenkins, who came back to the Cubs at the end of his career and pitched in 1983 in front of a second baseman named Ryne Sandberg, who finished his Cubs career in 1997, when a 26-year-old pitcher named Miguel Batista appeared in 11 games (getting tagged with an 0-5 record). Batista was a 40-year-old reliever on the 2011 Mets with Turner.
Turner and Taillon talked about the oldest guys they played with, and although Cubs pitcher Drew Pomeranz wasn't in that conversation, he noted he would win that competition.
'Jamie Moyer,' he said. 'I was there for his 49-year-old win.'
A 23-year-old Pomeranz started 22 games for the 2012 Rockies and was locker neighbors with the almost-50 Moyer, who broke into the majors with the 1986 Cubs. Moyer led Pomeranz around, showed him the ropes and wasn't shy about sharing his advice and stories of a lifetime in the game.
'They would just come out of him, you didn't have to ask,' he said.
Something Moyer might've learned from Rick Sutcliffe or Dennis Eckersley on the Cubs almost 40 years ago could be passed down today on a pitching staff that includes seven pitchers between the ages of 33 and 38 and young starters such as Brown (25) and Cade Horton (23) and up-and-coming closer Daniel Palencia (25).
Pomeranz credits advice Randy Wolf gave him about keeping a mental checklist on the mound. Taillon said Gerrit Cole, a contemporary in Pittsburgh and New York, taught him about creating a weekly routine.
I got the idea for this column after hearing about how Taillon and fellow veteran Matt Boyd were teaching younger Cubs pitchers to chart pitches, which is apparently a lost art these days.
'When we were in the minor leagues, the day after you pitched, you did the computer in the stands,' Taillon said. 'Day two, you did video. Day three, you'd chart in the dugout. Every day as a starter, you were working during the game, and it taught me a lot about watching the game, not just sitting there and wasting time in the dugout. … I think it's less about doing a chart, more about let's see if we can learn how to watch what's going on. I think that's true in life, in general.'
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When we talked, Taillon had just returned from throwing a bullpen session, and he noted that Brown and Horton probably stopped to watch because they saw Boyd there.
'Now, when we're out there for the game today, they might want to ask me questions about what I was working on or what I was doing, which is really cool,' he said.
Taillon noted that he takes in as much as he gives out from younger players, particularly when it comes to things like nutrition and training techniques, which have evolved since his days as a high schooler in Texas.
'You get on the right team with the right guys and it's like I want to talk pitching with Ben Brown because he's such a great dude,' he said.
Brown feels the same way.
'We're just constantly in conversation,' he said. 'Whether he's asking me questions or I'm asking him. I feel like our relationship is so unique and special in that way, and he's so humble that he would want to listen to what I have to say about something.'
Palencia credits conversations he's had with guys like Pomeranz and Ryan Pressly, whose job he took, with helping him figure out how to do a very stressful job.
'Drew and Pressly, we talk about the game a lot,' Palencia said. 'Every time we're watching games, we talk, like what you can do in this situation. If you got a two-run lead, you can just attack here because a solo homer is not going to beat you, don't let the games speed you up, stuff like that.'
Taillon said during a game, infielders like Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner will come up to him and talk about pitches he threw. Palencia said Turner gave him confidence after he blew a save in Miami.
'It's easy for some position players to be worried about their at-bats or whatever,' Taillon said. 'Our guys are invested in everything.'
Last week, we were talking to Javy Báez in the visiting dugout on the South Side. I told him how Pete Crow-Armstrong, whom he was traded for in 2021, said he used to watch Báez's base running as a learning tool. Báez, the wild-swinging baseball artist, broke into the majors 11 years ago and is now the veteran on a young, first-place team.
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'It feels great, honestly, that people look up to me,' he said. 'But what I tell young guys is to not copy but to take some stuff from the players that they look up to and just do it yourself with your style. And if it works, you gotta keep using it.'
Crow-Armstrong (23) and Matt Shaw (23) don't have to look far for role models in their clubhouse. Swanson, Hoerner, Ian Happ, Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki, on and on. Everyone has something to offer.
'The more different guys you're around, the different organizations you're in, you see different ways and styles of doing things, and you kind of cherry-pick the stuff that you like and that applies to you and that you think you can use to make you a better player,' Turner said.
Counsell remembers how a veteran hitter he played with in Arizona showed him how to anticipate pitchers' patterns.
'My favorite guy to just be around hitting was Mark Grace,' he said. 'It was just very simple for him, and the way he communicated it was very simple, and really it was helpful for me.'
While it's his job to run the team, Counsell is self-aware enough to know that some of the best advice and encouragement comes from teammates, not coaches and managers.
But on occasion, he will offer his two cents.
'We faced (Justin) Verlander the other day and they pulled a clip of Counsell's homer off Verlander,' Turner said. 'He said, 'Look guys, if I can do it …''
(Top photo of Justin Turner talking with Matt Shaw: Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)