Cubs should make serious pitch for Girardi

Joe Girardi and LeBron James look nothing alike.

The former was a squatty, white, baseball player and the latter a tall, black, basketball player.

Yet somehow Girardi and James connected in the recesses of my imagination Saturday in Wrigley Field.

How could that be?

Well, Girardi is the no-brainer choice to be the next Cubs' manager but few believe they have a chance to get him.

I think they can by invoking James' recent odyssey.

Unless the Yankees re-sign Girardi soon, he'll be to baseball free agency this autumn what James was to NBA free agency this summer.

After James, the drop-off to everyone else on the Bulls' wish list - including Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh - was precipitous.

After Girardi, the drop-off to everybody else on the Cubs' wish list of managerial candidates - including Ryne Sandberg and Bob Brenly - is just as precipitous.

Four years ago Girardi and Lou Piniella reportedly were finalists to manage the Cubs. The timing was wrong for Girardi after a messy divorce from managing the Marlins.

Now things are different. New York has been Girardi's buffer between Florida and Chicago, and he might even win his second straight World Series title there this year.

But Girardi is an ex-Cub player, a native of Peoria who grew up rooting for them and someone uniquely qualified to understand the unique challenge of managing them.

Girardi is in the final year of his Yankees contract and most believe he'll return to them. How could anybody leave behind those resources, right?

Easily, that's how, and LeBron James again is the similarity.

Since joining Wade and Bosh with the Heat, James has taken heat for taking the easy way out. Now if he wins that's what he's supposed to do.

Ah, but winning an NBA title in Cleveland would have made James special.

Staying in New York would be Girardi's easy way out. There's nothing special about winning with the Yankees.

No Cubs manager is supposed to win a World Series. Each hopes to but it's sort of like hoping two left feet win "Dancing with the Stars."

However, the risk/reward ratio is much more appealing under the Ricketts ownership in Chicago than the Steinbrenner ownership in New York.

This time around Girardi is the ideal person to try to perform the impossible in Wrigley Field. He attended Northwestern. His wife is from here. He owns property here. A huge chunk of his heart is here.

"I'd say that he'd never leave the Yankees," a baseball lifer mused on Saturday, "except that this is home."

That's another similarity to James, who had to pick between his hometown of Akron and titles in Miami. If he stayed and won there he'd be an icon, just as Girardi would be if he returned to win one here.

Folks, the pitch to Girardi is that he should come home to the Cubs just as James should have stayed home with the Cavaliers.

The Ricketts shouldn't concede anything to the Yankees but instead appeal to the dreamer in Girardi.

Tell him he can become a cornerstone of the Cubs' plan to become the Yankees, or at least the Red Sox, of the National League.

Most of all tell Joe Girardi he doesn't want to come out looking like LeBron James.

mimrem@dailyherald.com