Not much more than a year ago the trumpets sounded as he arrived at Wrigley Field.
Shout it from the Waveland rooftops: Cubs General Manager Ed Lynch finally had done something right. Something dramatic, expensive, completely un-Cublike. Lynch had saved the season.
New closer Rick Aguilera would save the day.
More Top Picks Tp Link Archer Be230 Be3600 Wifi 7
Lynch had traded pitching prospects Jason Ryan and Kyle Lohse to Minnesota for Aguilera and former Cubs pitcher Scott Downs. Aguilera had agreed to the deal only because the Cubs had sweetened his pot to nearly $8 million for two seasons. But he surely would be worth it: In 17 appearances for the Twins, he had gone 3-1 with six saves and a 1.27 ERA.
After applauding Lynch in print, I drove home listening to talk-show callers rave about the trade. Cubs closer Rod “the Shooter” Beck had gone from saving 51 games to shooting himself and his team in the foot. Beck finally had given up and agreed to elbow surgery.
Who knew how much Beck and his chain-smoking, gum-chomping, arm-swinging spirit soon would be missed? Not I. In the wild wild-card summer of ’98, Beck almost always found a way to win. After Aguilera blew his first save opportunity at Wrigley, to Florida, he began finding ways to lose. The guy couldn’t save stamps.
What happened to the closer on course for 300 saves, the one with two World Series rings and three All-Star Game appearances? While Beck’s body language on the mound always said, “You ain’t got a chance,” Aguilera’s reeked of, “Please don’t hit this too far, sir.”
The nicest thing you can say about Aguilera’s two years in Chicago is that he has unfailingly been one of the nicest baseball players you’ll ever meet–ever the stand-up, blame-taking gentleman. But there has been much blame to take. By virtue of his critical role, no Cub deserves more blame for the Great Collapse of ’99 and the April-May free-fall from which this year’s team can’t recover.
“Gaguilera” has been the biggest bust in two busted seasons.
For this 38-year-old, it came to this a few weeks back. With home-crowd boos ringing in his ears, Aguilera took his stretch and came set, appeared to freeze, finally called time and waved out catcher Joe Girardi. Then he tried again. Again, he finally had to back off the rubber. It appeared as if he no longer could pull the trigger.
Ben Hogan, who was still as deadly as ever from tee to green, quit playing golf because his nerves no longer would let him draw back the putter. Some in the Cubs’ dugout feared Aguilera had reached that point. He had spent the last three seasons finishing off meaningless games for no-hope Twins teams. Now the pressure at pitcher-haunting Wrigley before a demanding media and old friends such as Kevin Tapani and Mark Grace who were depending on him was too much.
Aguilera was one closer who always had prevailed more with stylish talent than crazy-man guts or guile. His mechanics were always as perfectly shaped as his beard. But when he first came up with the Mets, some teammates who weren’t impressed with his courage cruelly nicknamed Aguilera “the bearded lady.” That persona occasionally reared its bearded head at Wrigley.
For new manager Don Baylor, watching comeback after comeback canceled by bullpen collapses was “excruciating.” Finally he called Aguilera, one of his captains, to his office and told him, “That’s enough.” Aguilera’s velocity still was hitting his usual low-90s m.p.h., but his splitter was splitting only the middle of the plate. Aguilera was demoted.
“He didn’t like it, and I didn’t enjoy doing it,” Baylor said. “But I just couldn’t keep putting the ballclub through that, and I didn’t want to see a 15-year veteran keep getting booed in his own park.”
But once more Aguilera has bounced back with the season lost and expectations lowered. Last summer he fooled management by posting a 1.56 ERA in his last 31 appearances. Now he has converted his last five save opportunities–including Friday’s, his 300th. No trumpets. Only toothless Tigers.
Aguilera piles up saves the way Sammy Sosa seems to hit homers–when they don’t really matter. You remember so many times each has failed in season-turning situations that you wonder how you missed Sosa’s 16 homers and Aggy’s 11 saves.
But as Grace said, “Good for Aggy. Three hundred is really cool.” If only a few more had come when Ed Lynch needed them most