There needs to be a movie about the work Theo Epstein has done and here's why
For transcendent executive Theo Epstein, the Cubs were his Magnum Opus
By
Matt Snyder
•
2 min read
Someday, there will be a movie about Cubs team president Theo Epstein.
There has to be, right? Because this almost seems like fiction.
In 2002, Epstein became the youngest general manager in history and it was for the Boston Red Sox. At the time, there were three amazingly long championship droughts:
Chicago Cubs, 1908
Chicago White Sox, 1917
Boston Red Sox, 1918
It's not fair, but the truth of the matter is the White Sox were kind of lost in the shuffle here, nationally. The overwhelming majority of the "curse" talk revolved around the Red Sox and the "Curse of the Bambino" and the Cubs with the billy goat nonsense.
Thanks to the Cubs in 2016, all three are now dead. The two mainstream ones were both ended under Epstein's watch.
In Epstein's first go-round in Boston, he inherited a talented mix, but he also acquired the likes of Curt Schilling and David Ortiz while having the stones to trade team icon -- at the time -- Nomar Garciaparra. Still, he didn't have to rebuild.
The Cubs were another story. Epstein took over after the 2011 season. The team had just posted a 71-91 record and the farm system was, by most accounts, in very bad shape. The big-league roster had some talent, but was deeply flawed.
So, for the first time in his career, Epstein took the long view and started a massive rebuild. One of his earliest moves was a trade that sent Andrew Cashner to the Padres for a young first baseman by the name of Anthony Rizzo.
The Cubs would bottom out at 61-101 in 2012 and then finish in last place in each of the next two seasons, but things all turned around in 2015 as The Plan started to come to fruition.
And in 2016, it happened. The Chicago Cubs are World Series champions.
Theo Epstein had painted his Magnum Opus.
Sure, some naysayers will make some ridiculous claims about "tanking," but it's not even remotely applicable here. If you sort through Mike Axisa's piece on how the Cubs were built and the takeaway is "all you have to do is lose on purpose for a few years," I don't know what to tell you. Maybe just stop watching and/or thinking about sports because they aren't for you.
If it were as simple as just losing a few years to turn things around, we wouldn't have seen the droughts we did. We wouldn't have seen the Royals go from 1985 until 2014 to make the playoffs. We wouldn't have seen the Pirates go from 1992 to 2013 without a winning season. We wouldn't have seen the White Sox championship drought and, no, we most certainly wouldn't have seen the Red Sox or Cubs droughts end on Theo Epstein's watch.
Hall of Famer? No doubt.
Best baseball executive of all-time? We'd probably need to take a deeper dive, but no one else was able to do what he did with either the Red Sox or the Cubs and he did it with both.
Central character in a movie of his life? As the signs around Wrigleyville were saying the past several years ...
It's Gonna Happen
