SAY IT AIN'T SO, GOLDY

                I’ve long had a theory that some people are born with a one-city-fan gene, and offer myself as proof. I’ve lived in the Phoenix area for 21 years (where does the time go?) but have yet to shake my loyalty to all teams Chicago, the city of my birth.

                That’s not true of all the Chicagoans I know who now reside in or around the desert metropolis. My friend Chuck Brusso is such a Cubs’ fan he can’t watch the team play for fear of disappointment, but has adopted the local Diamondbacks as his team 1A. It took my wife, Susie, all of a few months to shed her allegiance to the White Sox and become a D’backs’ rooter, and her closet now boasts D’back t-shirts in several colors and styles. She even backs the team vocally in front of our home TV set, a habit I wish she’d lose. I could cite other examples, but you get the point.

                The Arizona teams might have been tougher for me to resist if they’d been good these last two decades, but such usually has not been the case. The D’backs remarkably won the World Series in 2001, their fourth year of existence, but mostly have been so-so, perennially chasing the Dodgers and Giants in the National League West. Ditto for the football Cardinals except for one Super Bowl dash (in 2008); their holding the top pick in this year’s NFL draft bespeaks their present condition. The basketball Suns are a punch line to a bad joke and the hockey Coyotes lead their league only in rumors that they’ll move. Hockey is about as appropriate to our clime as an aquarium. And yeah, we have one of those, too.

                It’s not only that the D’backs have been bad, they’ve also been dumb. Their record in player trades is dismal, highlighted by the 2009 deal that sent double-Cy Young Award-winner-to-be Max Scherzer to the Detroit Tigers for Edwin Jackson and Ian Kennedy, a couple of mediocrities. Recent trades have cost them Jean Segura, Didi Gregorio, Trevor Bauer, Dansby Swanson and Mitch Hanigar, all of whom have thrived elsewhere.

                 For my money the worst D’back move was their letting go of Bob Melvin, their manager from 2005 to 2009. In 2007 Melvin achieved what only could be called a miracle by winning the NL West and advancing to the league-championship round with a team that gave up more runs than it scored during the regular season. The sterling skipper has since impressed annually by getting the most from his money-starved Oakland A’s clubs.

                But while you wouldn’t know it from the above, the intent of this piece is to defend a D’back move rather than to condemn one. I’m talking about their trading away Paul Goldschmidt to the St. Louis Cardinal during the last off-season. Goldy, as he’s known hereabouts, was a beloved figure, ranking with Luis Gonzalez atop the team’s all-time popularity pantheon. A six-time All Star in his eight-year career, the power-hitting first-baseman was a seeming nice guy to boot, admired by fans of all ages and sexes. The deal was greeted with outrage, with the smell of burning D’backs jerseys permeating the air for weeks after it was announced.

                Like just about everything else these days in baseball (and other big-time sports), Goldy’s departure was dictated by economics. He was in the final year of a six-year, $46.5 million contract that, including a $14.5 million club option this year, would expire at this season’s end and make him eligible for free agency.  Rather than risk losing him outright, the team dealt him for what it could get. This turned out to be a young starting pitcher with upside, an apparently serviceable back-up catcher, a minor-league infielder and a 2019 draft choice, not a bad haul for what could be a one-year rental by the Cards.

                That, however, was not the only possible outcome of Goldy’s AZ saga. In a teary, full-page ad in the Arizona Republic after being traded the player said it was hard to bid goodbye to his local fans, but say goodbye he did. I have no doubt he could have stayed if he wished, and at a nice raise over his fat, option-year wage, but instead he chose to try to maximize his return in the marketplace. It’s tough to blame him for that but he’s already swimming in money, so his stance hardly could be called admirable. For jocks at his level money is an abstraction, divorced from human needs, and serves mainly as a professional measuring stick. On that stage does the bidding proceed.

                The D’backs couldn’t go all in for Goldy because they already did that for pitcher Zack Greinke in 2016, giving him a six-year, $206 million deal that has three years left to run. That has earmarked between 25% and 35% of the team’s recent annual payrolls for someone who plays only one game in five. Greinke has been successful by just about any standard (his won-lost mark in AZ is 45-25) but he isn’t much loved here, mostly because he’s considered overpaid.  Talk about irony.

                Indeed, the failure to ride the Greinke-Goldy axis to glory these last few seasons has caused the D’backs to entrench generally. Besides losing Goldy in the off-season they allowed their next-best two players, pitcher Patrick Corbin and outfielder A.J. Pollack, to escape via free agency, with only stop-gap replacements available. To say that their prospects aren’t brilliant until they rebuild is to put it mildly.

                And really, that’s OK with me. Like I said, I’m a Cubs’ fan, and while I don’t wish the D’backs ill I like the fact that their losing will keep both attendance and ticket prices low at their Chase Field home, making it easier for me to go to games. Easy is good in my book.