Cubs' Craig Counsell is 'anxious' to get rolling. Speaking of which, is it September yet?

MESA, Ariz. — New Cubs manager Craig Counsell appeared so anxious and scared Wednesday, the day pitchers and catchers reported to the team’s spring-training facility, he might as well have been sipping an umbrella drink while nodding off in a folding beach chair.

Nobody looks or sounds calmer and cooler than Counsell, a 53-year-old in a 33-year-old’s body, a man who smiles warmly when he speaks, always seems to know just what to say and do and walked through his first real day of Cubs camp as though he were strolling along Klode Park Beach back in Whitefish Bay, Wis.

“I’ve been really enjoying myself,” he said, embracing the newness of it all. “I’ve had a ton of fun the last couple of days.”

Still, he described himself as feeling both anxious and scared as he embarks on a job so big and important, the Cubs are paying him a record $40 million over five years to do it. There are countless people to meet and get to know and an entire winning vibe to instill. But it’s “the right kind of energy that you want,” he reckons.

“You should have some anxiety,” he said. “I think you’re probably over it if you don’t have the anxiety, right? Of course you have some of it, but there’s the good kind and the bad kind, if that makes sense, and I think [I have] the good stuff.

“I like being nervous in the dugout, too. I think that’s when you’re locked in, if that makes sense. You should be on edge. You need to be on edge to get locked in, I think. Maybe that’s just how I do it, how it works for me.”

Especially in “Craig-tember,” one would like to believe. When Counsell was building a reputation as one of baseball’s finest managers over nine seasons in Milwaukee, Brewers players renamed the month of September with that admiring, affectionate twist. As they marched to the playoffs five times in the last six years, Counsell seemed to be at his best and the Brewers were awfully tough to beat.

Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer and a few of the team’s leading players have characterized last year’s late-season collapse in a certain way that undoubtedly has much truth to it — that clawing and climbing from 10 games under .500 in early June to 12 games over in early September left the Cubs with too little in the tank for the stretch run. Indeed, they looked tired, stressed and stretched thin as they collapsed in a 7-15 finishing heap and missed the postseason by one lousy game.

Some would simply call that choking. That’s not a word Hoyer or any of the Cubs have used, but it’s no wonder Hoyer — who believes that team belonged in the playoffs — was drawn to a manager whose own team was 18-11 from September 1 on. The Brewers’ division lead over the Cubs was three games entering that month; the final gap was nine.

Counsell doesn’t have much of any postseason success to brag about — one series win, back in 2018 — but his 1-through-162 history is tried and true and as impressive as anybody’s.

“If you’re going to be a playoff team, you’re going to play really critical games in September every year,” he said. “So you know what’s coming. That’s how a season works. Those are going to be critical games, and that’s what we plan on. That’s what we want to have happen this year.”

Counsell keeps a notebook in his pocket, writing down names and little descriptors as he meets players, staffers and others at camp and then hoping not to have to pull the notebook out and riffle through it when he sees a face for the second time. Understandably, it’s a struggle, but making these connections is why he’s here, he says, and “the best part” about beginning anew.

Any players waiting for a Knute Rockne or Vince Lombardi moment will have to keep waiting.

“There’s no speech that changes the world right now,” he said. “That’s a big misconception, I think, about sports. They make movies about it, but it’s really about us connecting as a group.”

The first thing he wants them to know is that he’s going to be direct with them. And beyond that:

“We want to have something special here,” he said, “and the responsibility that goes along with being on a great team, we want everybody to take part in that and realize that it’s fun but it’s also challenging.”

And sometimes even a bit nerve-racking. When they steal a glance at their skipper months down the line, though, it might not look like it at all.