Dale Sveum and Rick Renteria scrapped for their careers as big-league players, paid their dues as coaches and dreamed about managing the Cubs team that finally ended a century-and-counting championship drought.
In terms of style and personality, they also couldn’t have been more different, which was kind of the point when the Cubs fired Sveum after 197 combined losses during the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
Where Sveum had a constant 5 o’clock shadow and could be gruff with the media and brutally honest about his players, Renteria put a happy face on the teardown and could begin to actually see what the Cubs were building – at least until Joe Maddon opted out of his contract with the Tampa Bay Rays after the 2014 season.
So much has changed around this gentrified neighborhood since then. Even the bar where team president Theo Epstein fired Sveum over drinks shut down and will reportedly be replaced with something called a Capital One Café. But in thoughtful gestures that recognized how the Cubs got here, both Sveum and Renteria now have 2016 World Series rings.
“We felt like they both came in and busted their butt to help our young players get better,” general manager Jed Hoyer said Wednesday at Wrigley Field. “They were both put in a position where we were rebuilding. Obviously, we were honest with both guys about the rebuilding process. But both guys were ultimate team members.
“Their willingness to go along – to execute the plan that we had set out for them, to play oftentimes with either inexperienced players or shorthanded – was remarkable.
“We think both Dale and Ricky had a big impact on our young players and really helped us win a World Series. It was the right thing to do to give them a ring.”
MLB
In contrast to the media blitz surrounding the private Steve Bartman ceremony, the Cubs quietly gave a ring to former general manager Jim Hendry, who now works as a special assistant for the New York Yankees. USA Today columnist Bob Nightengale included those nuggets within a revealing story about White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, who raved about the job Renteria has done during a rebuilding year on the South Side.
Hoyer – who knew Renteria well from their time together with the San Diego Padres – was there for the ring presentation last month in a hallway outside the visiting clubhouse before a crosstown game at Wrigley Field.
“I love the fact that the White Sox are high on him and have been happy with his contributions,” Hoyer said. “Not to go back over history, but he was put in a tough spot. We made a decision that at the time we even admitted wasn’t necessarily fair to Ricky. And the least we could do was to give him a ring.”
Chairman Tom Ricketts – whose family signed off on the gifts – is widely respected within the organization for the way he took an interest in the draft, knew scouts by name, invested in infrastructure and visited minor-league affiliates.
“There’s a long history with this organization,” Hoyer said. “A lot of people had a part in us winning in 2016. It wasn’t only people that were still here in 2016. A number of people had an impact on our players, whether it was through managing, through scouting, through player development.
“We thought the right thing to do was to honor those commitments to our team by giving them rings. And not acting as though you had to be here in 2016 necessarily and be part of the organization to have impact.”
Hendry’s group built the pipeline in Latin America that produced catcher Willson Contreras and left enough assets for the Epstein regime to flip and acquire players like Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell and Kyle Hendricks. Former amateur scouting director Tim Wilken – who now works as a special assistant for the Arizona Diamondbacks – had the vision to draft Javier Baez and Jeff Samardzija.
Sveum, who earned a 2015 World Series ring as the Kansas City Royals hitting coach, hired coaches Chris Bosio and Mike Borzello and left his mark with the pitching infrastructure and game-planning system that helped market trade chips like Samardzija, Ryan Dempster, Scott Feldman and Matt Garza.
The Cubs already gave a ring to ex-pro scouting director Joe Bohringer, who now works as a Seattle Mariners special assistant, and a number of long-time, behind-the-scenes employees who left before It Happened.
“When you take a step back and look at any championship,” Hoyer said, “there are just so many people that have an impact on it.”