May 11, 2005

The Paul Sullivan Interview

Affectionately known as ‘”Sully” by his contemporaries in the media, Paul Sullivan is in his twelfth year covering the baseball beat in Chicago.  He’s seen his share of baseball, and is not afraid to write the truth.  In this interview, he tells us what he thinks went wrong with the Cubs last year, and what he thinks they should have done coming into this season.  He also talks about what it was like dealing with Sammy Sosa, and touches on the continuing steroid saga.

The Heckler: What’s your background, and how did you get started in the business?

Paul Sullivan: I got an English degree at the University of Missouri and came to the Tribune in 1981 as a copy clerk.  I moved my way up thru the system.  I was a reporter city side.  I worked for Mike Royko for two years, and preps plus for two years.  I covered the Hawks for one year.  That was my first full time beat, and then I moved on to baseball in ’94 full time covering the Sox. 

TH: Did you ask to get into sports?

PS: No, Royko made the decision for me.  You worked a couple of years under Royko as his legman, and basically he decides where he wants to put you, or if he wants to put you anywhere.  He could have, I guess, just fired me.  But he took pity on me and sent me to sports.  I had no intention of getting into sports.  I’ve spent the last eighteen years there, so I guess it’s an ok beat. 

TH: So Royko had that much influence at the paper that he determined where people worked?

PS: He had a lot of influence; he saved my career.  If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know what I would be doing, probably washing dishes.

TH: How did he save your career?

PS: He hired me when I was being let go by the Tribune to be his legman.

TH: What were the duties of the legman?  Was it doing research for stories or getting his coffee?

PS: It was doing his reporting, though you definitely did get coffee.  It was mostly reporting and research.  For instance, I had to research everyone in Congress’s war records.  If they fought in a war, and compare that to their voting record whether they were pro war or anti war, or pro hawk or anti hawk.  It was a massive research project.  Royko didn’t have the time to do it, so I spent hours in the library, and then he’d write one column on something I worked two months on.  But it was worth it.  It was a great experience.

TH: Was he a tough boss to work for?

PS: He was a very tough boss to work for.  He was like a Bobby Knight type where he would be in your face and screaming, and you couldn’t stand the guy while you were working for him some days, but he also had a mellow side.  He was hilarious, and obviously a big Cub’s fan as everybody knows, so we had that in common.  I think that’s probably why he sent me to do sports, because we always talked about the Cubs so much. 

TH: Does being the beat writer for the team instead of a columnist affect you as far as the questions you ask the players, since you see them everyday?

PS: I don’t think people understand the difference between a columnist and a beat writer.  A beat writer is supposed to be fairly objective.  Obviously if I was totally objective it would be pretty boring, but I think most of it is based on the premise of objectivity.  A columnist can say whatever he wants.   He can go off on a rant against one of the players.  I’ve got to deal with the players, so I try to get along with everyone if I can.  It’s not always possible, but I think I make an effort.

TH: Being an employee of the Tribune, have your superiors ever put any constraints on you as far as what questions you could ask or what you could write about?

PS: No, they basically leave me alone.  The Tribune gets criticized a lot, but I’ve shown before that I’m willing to criticize the general manager like Ed Lynch, or Jim Riggleman, or Andy MacPhail even.  If criticism is merited, I’ll criticize, but I’m not a ripper or a guy just looking to knife people, and there are some guys like that.  The Tribune basically leaves me alone.  I find my own stories everyday and send them in just like any other beat writer.

TH: Aside from the injuries, what do you think was the biggest problem last year why this team didn’t make the playoffs?

PS: Injuries to Wood and Prior primarily.  I think that hurricane actually hurt them more than they can say or anyone can say, because even though it gave them a nice break at the beginning of September, they had to play the last three weeks straight.  That one road trip was really killer, because I had to do all of those games.  I’m not making excuses for them, they did it themselves, but that last road trip was a pretty grueling trip.  It seemed like they were getting over it, and then they blew those games in New York, and after that, it was all down hill.  I’m not saying the hurricane is the fault, but they were mentally and physically exhausted at the end.

TH: How would you compare Dusty Baker as a manager to previous managers of the team?

PS: I think he’s probably the best manager they have had since Leo Durocher.  I think his track record speaks for itself.  People want to focus on all the hoopla last year with the Steve Stone thing.  I don’t think that was handled particularly well, but as far as his overall year, they won a lot of games without Prior and Wood.  He kept them in the race all year, so I think he takes a lot more blame than he deserves.

TH: You mentioned Riggleman earlier – What did you think of him as a manager?

PS: I didn’t think he was that good of a manager.  He was okay, but I think managing is part psychological and part tactical.  You’ve got to be able to deal with these guys and I think Riggleman, for whatever reason, seemed real removed from the whole clubhouse.  Where as Dusty, for better or worse, he seems pretty involved with his clubhouse.  Riggleman, Levebre, Treblehorn; there’s a whole bunch of them that you could really say were the same guy to me.  They were all blah, they were just there. 

TH: What do you think of the team’s chances this year?

PS: I think they’ve got a good chance.  I think the Cardinals are going to come back to earth.  If Wood and Prior are healthy, as they claim that they are, I think they should be okay.  They’ll be in the race, at least.

TH: Do you see them making the playoffs?

PS: Right now, I don’t think I would pick them to go to the playoffs.  But that’s coming off of this Borowski thing (going down with an injury during spring training).  A lot of it’s going to depend on Corey (Patterson) too.  I think that’s a really tough spot for him.  He doesn’t seem like a leadoff type of a hitter to me, but they’re making him do it.  He’s gritting his teeth and doing it, but I’m interested to see how far they go with that experiment, because I really don’t see that working.

TH: Are there areas that you think they should have addressed in the off-season that weren’t with this team?

PS: I think they should have improved the bullpen more.  They got rid of Farnsworth.  As much as Farnsworth aggravated all of us, (he was great material for the Heckler) I really think that he had a lot of talent that if he put it together, he could have a good year.  We saw it a few years ago.  I don’t think that was a good move trading him and not getting a major leaguer in return.  I think they should have looked harder for a closer.  I don’t think the Dempster closer thing was ever in anyone’s mind.  I think that was something that they threw at us for whatever reason.  I do agree with the Sammy Sosa move, even though they didn’t get much for him.  I think they thought the starting pitching was so good that it could carry the team, and it can, but if they’re injured, they’re in a lot of trouble. 

TH: You mentioned before that leading off was a tough spot for Corey (Patterson).  Do you think they should have addressed the leadoff position?

PS: The only position they could have really squeezed a leadoff guy into… it would have had to have been an outfielder.  Maybe a Jacque Jones.  I can’t think of who was all out there.  It is hard to get a good leadoff guy, but I just wish they would leadoff Walker (before he was injured) and move Corey down in the lineup.  If you look at the stats last year, Walker, when he was leading off, was among the top average wise leadoff hitters in baseball.  I’m not down on Corey.  I think he’s going to have a big year, but he just strikes out too much to be a leadoff hitter to me. 

TH: How difficult was it dealing with Sammy as the Cub’s beat writer?

PS: It was aggravating.  I’ve probably written hundreds of stories about Sammy Sosa, and maybe a couple of handfuls of them have been what he could think of as negative.  And that’s all he ever thought about, was the times you criticized him.  He was like a one strike and you’re out guy.   You criticize him once and you’re through.  I was just talking with Frank Thomas ten minutes ago.  (This interview was conducted in Tucson during spring training)  I had a lot of fights with Frank when I covered the White Sox, but we still talk, and we can still have a normal conversation.  So I think he (Sosa) was just too thin-skinned for Chicago.  You have to have a thicker skin if you’re going to play in this town and he didn’t have it. 

TH: Barry Bonds recently blamed the media for his problems.  Was Sosa comparable to Bonds in that aspect where he acted like a jerk to the media like Pedro Gomez mentioned that Bonds was?

PS: No, most of my career I had a good relationship with Sammy.  It was only after the cork episode that something changed.  I covered him for five seasons and I would say three and a half of them were great.  Once I criticized him for the cork thing, that was it.  I just ignored him after that.  I didn’t have any problems.  If we were in a big group session interviewing him, he wouldn’t be rude to me or anything.  He was professional mostly, but not all of the time.  I wish him well.  I hope he has a good stay in Baltimore and a good career.  I just think it’s better off that they don’t have him here. 

TH: As the beat writer, is there anything you suppressed at the request of a player, or something that you thought might affect your relationship with a player that you kept quiet?

PS: Just once.  Kerry Wood had an injury in ’99 where he was sent to the hospital with a tiny hole in his heart.  I found out in spring training and I was working on it and I didn’t write it.  I wanted to talk to him first, and then he blew out his elbow in spring training.  So I talked to him and said I knew about this heart thing, but since he’s out for the season anyway, I said I’ll just not write it.  And then at the end of the season I’m going to write it, if you want to talk about it then.  So I held it for the whole season, and he agreed to an interview at the end of the season. 

TH: Do you think baseball has addressed the steroid issue the right way, and how do you think it has affected the game?

PS: Obviously it changed the record books with Sammy and McGwire, possibly Sammy.  I agree that there should be stricter testing, but I don’t think the blame is being put on the right people.  Sure the players, you’ve got to blame the ones that did it, but Sandy Alderson was the GM with Oakland when McGwire and Canseco were there, and I think Giambi was just coming up.  That whole organization to me…they were the ones who legitimized using in baseball because people could see them doing it, and they were getting away with it.  And I even asked Sandy Alderson a couple of weeks ago about this, and he suspected Canseco, but he never said anything to him.  So I said, why didn’t you say something to him and he said, “Well, he had already denied it.”  Well, you’re his boss, so if he knew you knew, maybe he would have stopped doing it or been afraid of doing it.  I think he was an enabler, and once Oakland got all juiced up, everyone thought, well, they’re doing it.  I think he’s one of the worst offenders.  Donald Fehr, keeping the drug testing policy off the table; that was a bad thing.  Bud Selig obviously; there’s a lot of people to blame, and not just the players.  Probably the media too because we were focusing on smaller parks and the harder baseball when obviously we weren’t looking and it was right in front of our eyes.  People basically ignored it, just thinking, they’re taking creatine and andro, or some lesser supplement.  So I blame everybody, including myself.

TH: As a member of the media, and everybody was saying the ball was juiced, the parks were smaller, and the talent may not have been as good; did you think in the back of your mind watching these guys that they were on the juice and you just kept it suppressed?

PS: I’ve had Cub’s players tell me, why don’t you write about Sammy, and I said, you want to come out and say you’re accusing him; then sure, I’ll write about it.  But, no one ever would and I had no proof of it, so you can’t write something when you don’t have any proof.  I still think there’s a lot of players that weren’t called to that hearing that I think were on steroids.  I think the people that they selected for the congressional hearing; I’d like to see what went into that, because obviously they were only trying to get McGwire.  They didn’t ask Sammy hardly any questions.  For one thing, I think this is going to help Frank Thomas’s career because he’s legitimately a no-steroids guy who’s still going to hit 500 home runs probably.  I think this makes him a lot better in hindsight. 

TH: Do you think the records should be stricken from the books if it’s found out that these guys did use steroids?

PS: I don’t know since it was legal and wasn’t banned in baseball.  McGwire was doing it, so that’s a tricky question.  Would you get rid of Dock Ellis’s no hitter because he threw it on acid?  Is that a performance-enhancing drug?  That became a legendary story, so why don’t you put an asterisk by his name?  I’m sure there are players that did amphetamines, so should we put asterisks by their names because they were on amphetamines when they hit home runs?  There’s always going to be new drugs, improved drugs, drugs that nobody is able to detect.  I think this is an issue that is going to go on and on. 

SportzNutz Columnist Darrell Horwitz isn’t shy when it comes to “A Fan Speaking Out”… he holds nothing back and tells it like it is, from a fan’s perspective.  A Chicago native, Darrell is a lifelong Cubs and Bulls fan. Along with his “A Fan Speaks Out” column, Darrell is the fan writer for the Chicago Cubs, here on SportzNutz.  If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email Darrell at darrell.horwitz@nutzworld.net