You're the general manager of a bad baseball team. One of baseball's brightest stars, a free agent, decides he desperately wants to play for your team, so much that he comes to your spring training camp and practically begs to be signed at any price. What do you do?
If you're Dallas Green, you refer to the whole thing as a "dog and pony show." Welcome to the wonderful world of collusion. No outsider realized it at the time, but it later came to light that during the 1986-87 offseason, baseball's owners had illegally agreed to drive down salaries by not signing each other's free agents. The most notorious victim of this agreement was Andre Dawson.
Dawson debuted with the Montreal Expos in 1976 and was named the NL Rookie of the Year the following season. A centerfielder, he was a classic five-tool player. In an era when offensive totals were much lower than they are now, his career highs in various seasons through 1986 included 107 runs scored, 32 homers, 113 RBIs, 39 stolen bases, and a .309 batting average. However, playing on artificial turf in Montreal was beginning to wreck his knees. He switched from centerfield to right in 1984 and never stole as many as 20 bases in a season after 1983 after previously reaching that mark seven seasons in a row. A free agent after 1986, Dawson reasoned that the best chance for extending his career lay in playing for a team with a natural surface in a ballpark suited to his power swing. Wrigley Field fit the bill perfectly.
However, because of the owners' secret agreement, the Cubs were not interesting in signing a superstar. Dawson's agent advised him to report to the Cubs' training camp in Mesa, AZ, where reporters caught images of him standing outside the fence in street clothes, prompting Green's comment. Desperate, Dawson did something unthinkable before or since; he signed a blank contract and said he would play for whatever the Cubs thought was fair. It was a gesture that the front office could not ignore; they filled in the figure of $500,000 plus incentives and Dawson was a Cub, by far the top free agent they had ever signed up to that point.
There were other changes for the Cubs in the 1986-87 offseason. On January 30, 1987, Ron Cey was traded to the Oakland A's in exchange for infielder Luis Quinones. Cey was near the end of the line and played 45 games with Oakland before hanging up his spikes.
On April 3, less than a week before the start of the season, the Cubs made another deal with the A's. This time, they sent Dennis Eckersley to Oakland along with infielder Dan Rohn for three players who, as it turned out, never made the majors. It seemed a fairly minor deal at the time as Eckersley appeared as close to the end of the line as Cey was. He was finished as a starter, but in Oakland, manager Tony LaRussa decided his pinpoint control might be useful out of the bullpen. It was a brilliant decision as Eckersley pitched another 12 years as possibly the best closer before Mariano Rivera, saving a total of 390 games, 387 after the trade. If the Cubs had realized what they had in Eckersley, baseball history might have been very different, as future events showed.
Although most of the starting lineup still consisted of holdovers from the 1984 team, there were a few new faces. The opening-day leftfielder was Brian Dayett, a once-promising power prospect for the Yankees who had been acquired in a trade in December 1984, but spent most of 1985 and 1986 in the minors. With Keith Moreland switching to third to replace Cey, Dayett had been ticketed for rightfield before the acquisition of Dawson. Outfielder Dave Martinez was also on the opening day roster. He was a second round draft pick of the Cubs in 1983 out of Orlando's Valencia Community College and had gotten into 56 games in 1986. Rookie Rafael Palmeiro, a first baseman-outfielder and first round draft pick out of Mississippi State, had also played a few games in 1986 and was with the big club on opening day for his rookie season.
1987 Opening Day Lineup
Dernier, cf
Sandberg, 2b
Dawson, rf
Moreland, 3b
Davis, c
Dayett, lf
Durham, 1b
Dunston, ss
Sutcliffe, p
The Cubs were swept by the Cardinals in a two-game series to open the season, but recovered enough to enter May with a .500 record at 10-10. Dawson, off to a slow start, was batting .179 with 3 homes on April 23, but ripped 16 hits in the next six games, a streak that included two home runs against the Expos on April 26 and five hits against the Giants on April 29.
Dawson's hot streak heralded a great month. Chicago went 18-10 in May. By the end of the month, Dawson was hitting .283 with 14 circuit clouts. More unexpectedly, Rick Sutcliffe was apparently back as an ace starter, ending May with a 7-2 record and a 2.92 ERA. The Cubs found themselves in second place, just 2 games behind St. Louis.
While both Sutcliffe and Dawson continued to have fine seasons, the team could not keep up the momentum. On July 11, they said goodbye to Gary Matthews, trading him to Seattle for a player to be named later (Dave Hartnett, who never made the majors). Like Cey, Matthews would finish out the season with his new team and then retire. By the end of July, the Cubs were still over .500, at 52-50, but had sunk to fifth place, 10 1/2 games back. On August 1, Dawson torched the Phillies at Wrigley for his 29th, 30th, and 31st home runs, driving in all the team's runs in a 5-3 Cubs victory. The Cubs played .500 ball in August, but found themselves still in fifth place, 13 games out in baseball's strongest division.
Entering September, the only questions seemed to be whether the Cubs would finish with a winning record and whether Dawson could become the first player since 1977 (and only the second since 1965) to hit 50 home runs in a season - he entered the month with 43. The answer to the first question was a resounding "no". The Cubs were flat in September. After winning their third straight game on the first, they would not win consecutive games for the rest of the season and would win just nine of their last 30 games to finish at 76-85, falling into last place.
On September 7, with the club's record at 68-68, Gene Michael resigned as Cubs manager, citing communications problems with Dallas Green. Veteran manager Frank Lucchesi, was hired to finish out the season. The dispirited Cubs went just 8-17 under Lucchesi. Dawson hit his 49th homer on October 3 against his old team in Montreal, then failed to homer in the season's final game to finish just short of 50.
It was another lost season for the Cubs, but a great one for Andre Dawson. His 137 RBIs led all of baseball and, in a year when home runs totals rose dramatically all over baseball, he tied for the major league home run lead with rookie Mark McGwire of Oakland. His 49 homers was the second-highest seasonal total in team history, trailing only Hack Wilson's 56 in 1930 (still the NL record in 1987). Dawson was selected by sportswriters as the Most Valuable Player in the National League - the first from a last place club.
After two injury-filled years, Rick Sutcliffe enjoyed a renaissance in 1987. He finished at 18-10, leading the National League in victories. He was named NL Comeback Player of the Year and just missed winning his second Cy Young Award, finishing second by two point to Phillies relief pitcher Steve Bedrosian. Thus, the Cubs nearly had both the MVP and the Cy Young winner despite finishing in last place.
However, except for Sutcliffe, the Cubs pitching was in shambles. They finished 11th in the NL, ahead of only Atlanta, with a 4.63 team ERA. Both Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux, who would go on to great careers, were full-time starters for the first time in 1987 and were hit hard, with Moyer posting a 5.01 ERA in 201 innings (although he did win 12 games, second-most on the staff) and Maddux finishing at 5.61 in 155.2 innings, with a 6-14 record. Lee Smith was reasonably effective, at 3.12 with 36 saves, but the Cubs lost so many games late that he finished with a 4-10 record.
The Cubs were only a little bit better on offense. They did lead the league in home runs with 209, with Moreland and Durham both posting career highs with 27 each. However, all that power yielded only 720 runs, good for just eighth in the league. Durham had just 63 RBIs, a testament to the Cubs team .326 on-base percentage, 10th in the league. Jerry Mumphrey had another fine year as a part-timer, hitting .333 in 309 at-bats. Martinez replaced Dernier as the regular centerfielder and hit .292. Dernier seemed to thrive in a backup role, hitting .317 in 199 at-bats.
The 1987 season paralleled 1979 for the Cubs in several ways. In both seasons the Cubs had a slugging outfielder who led the league in home runs, an ace starter (who won 18 games), and an excellent closer, but few other assets. In 1987, they had the NL MVP and in 1979, the NL Cy Young Award winner. In both seasons, the team was around .500 in September when the manager left, then collapsed to finish with a losing record. The Cubs had followed up 1979 with a terrible season in 1980; fans could only hope to avoid that fate in 1988.
1987 Cubs Batting Leaders: R - Andre Dawson, 90; H - Dawson, 178; HR - Dawson, 49; RBI - Dawson 137; BA - Ryne Sandberg, .294; OBP - Dave Martinez, .372; SP - Dawson, .568
1987 Cubs Pitching Leaders: G - Frank DiPino, 69; IP - Rick Sutcliffe, 237.1; W - Sutcliffe, 18; SO - Sutcliffe, 174; ERA - Sutciffe, 3.68; SV - Smith, 36
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