A bit more than two hours before the series opener Tuesday against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, White Sox manager Pedro Grifol stood with one foot on the bottom step of the visitors’ dugout and looked out at a gloomy sky.
‘‘We’re in the midst of a little storm,’’ he said.
Gray clouds had blown in, and intermittent lightning flashed in the distance. But Grifol, the second-year skipper with an almost unimaginably awful record of 76-147, wasn’t talking about the weather.
‘‘I should say a storm, not a little storm,’’ he told the Sun-Times. ‘‘This is a storm. But this is what a manager does.’’
What does a manager do? With a good team, the hope is that he sharpens its edges so it’s dangerous enough to beat anybody. With a rebuilding team, the hope is that he helps bridge the abyss between nothingness and relevance in a way that makes losing less demoralizing and painful.
There is no inkling yet that Grifol, 54, has done anything of the sort. Not only did his .342 winning percentage rank last among Sox managers who made it through at least a full season, but only three managers in the history of the major leagues lasted as long as Grifol has with a winning percentage that was even lower.
They were Doc Prothro, who went 138-320 (.301) from 1939 to 1941 with the Philadelphia Phillies; John McCloskey, who went 190-417 (.313) from 1895 to 1908 with the Louisville Colonels and St. Louis Cardinals; and Fred Tenney, who went 202-402 (.334) from 1905 to 1911 with the Boston Nationals, Boston Doves and Boston Rustlers.
That’s three men out of the 842 who, according to Baseball Reference, have managed at least one big-league game.
But you probably knew that already.
It’s always a spectacle when the Sox and Cubs get together during the season, even if the Crosstown Whatever-We’re-Calling-It has lost a lot of rivalry juice between the lines. This time, however, the most compelling thing to think about might be the contrast between the managers in the dugouts.
It’s not quite Dusty Baker vs. Ozzie Guillen, Lou Piniella vs. Guillen or Joe Maddon vs. Rick Renteria, the man the Cubs fired to make way for him. But on one side this time was Craig Counsell, whose five-year, $40 million contract is the richest ever for a skipper. And on the other was Grifol, who’s under contract through 2025 but would be on the first bus out of town — along with reviled chairman Jerry Reinsdorf — if Sox fans had anything to say about it.
Counsell, not the most expressive sort, at least made a halfhearted attempt to sound the rivalry horn.
‘‘I think these experiences are cool,’’ he said. ‘‘Any time you get two teams in one city — and this is my first experience with it — it should be great for the fans. You bring your buddies who are on the opposite side. It should be fun.’’
Fun? The Sox came in 30 games under .500 — so cartoonishly bad they actually made the Cubs, who were 28-30, look good. Maybe we should have thought of the Sox as batting .250 for the season in the won-loss department, just in case it sounded any better than 15-45.
No? You’re right, it didn’t.
Counsell lived through a couple of losing seasons as a manager, his first and second years on the job in Milwaukee. The Brewers weren’t nearly as bad as the Sox, but nobody was singing Counsell’s praises back then.
‘‘It [was] always going home after you’re losing, you’re thinking about, ‘I could’ve done something better,’ ’’ he said. “When you lose, that’s what you think about. When you [win], it’s just easier to sleep.’’
For Grifol, Counsell said, ‘‘It’s got to be tough.’’
Well, then, how tough is it?
‘‘I’m sleeping good, man,’’ Grifol said. ‘‘I’ve got a lot of faith. I’m a faith-based man. I believe everything happens for a reason. There’s some good that’s going to come out of this. I’m going to keep going strong forever.’’
Maybe so. But maybe not with the Sox.
‘‘I’m a White Sock until I’m not a White Sock,’’ he said.
‘‘Believe me when I tell you, I don’t get too far ahead. I don’t make those decisions. If the decision is made, it’s made. I’ll deal with it when it happens — if it happens.’’
And if it does?
‘‘Everything will be all right,’’ he said.
