I get ticked off every time I see John Mabry man first base for the Chicago Cubs.

 

Good old #17

Not because he pales in comparison to Derek Lee, the best hitter in baseball last season.  Not because he’s spent three stints with the arch-rival Cardinals.  And not because the Cubs have a bunch of minor league players who could perform as well as Mabry for a fraction of the salary, although none of these factors appease me any.

 

I get ticked off because John Mabry wears a #17 on his jersey.  #17 is Mark Grace’s number.  As bad as it is to see another Cub wear it, it’s worse to see it on an awkward, white, right-handed first baseman.  If Freddie Bynum wore #17, it might not be as bad.  But seeing someone with some similarities and some differences sport it appears incongruous and awkward.

 

Why the heck isn’t Gracie’s number retired?  Good question.  The numbers are there: .303 career average, .383 OBP, .442 SLG, 1,179 runs scored, 1,146 RBI, 2,445 hits, 511 doubles, and 1075 walks to just 642 strikeouts.  But more than that, he was a team captain and the face of the franchise for a decade.

 

His cult status in Chicago is well known, but Grace was admired throughout the country.  Without question, the 1998 Cubs are my favorite team of all time.  So when I began my college career at Pittsburgh in 1998, I doused myself in Cub paraphernalia everywhere I went.  Did I get a lot of comments from people about Sammy Sosa and the historic home run chase?  Nope.  “Cubs fan, huh?  I like Mark Grace,” is the type of comment I got constantly.  Not just from awestruck college girls, either; heterosexual men, who were not huge Cubs fans or even necessarily baseball fans, loved Mark Grace.

 

What has endeared so many to Mark Grace?  His good looks, infectious smile, charm with reporters, corny commercials, hustle, lack of batting gloves, and intelligent play have all contributed.  On a personal note, watching his 2,000^th career hit in person against Dustin Hermanson of the Montreal Expos in 1999 is one of my fondest ballpark memories.  Wrigley Field erupted after that double in a way that I’d never experienced before.    

 

But to finally answer the initial question, Mark Grace’s number isn’t retired because he’s upset at how Cubs president Andy McPhail and GM Jim Hendry handled his departure in 2000.  Mark has maintained that all he would need is an apology to forgive them (and God willing, replace Bob Brenly as the WGN color commentator for Cubs games).  But the fact that John Mabry’s wearing #17 leads one to believe that such an apology is not forthcoming.

 

Sosa and Grace share some Cubbie blues

I realize that not every team retires a player’s number immediately upon his retirement (or in the case of the White Sox and Harold Baines, immediately upon trading him at age 30),  but I don’t recall any Cub wearing #23 between either time Sandberg retired and his number retirement ceremony last year.  Also, if you look up and down the Cubs’ current 40-man roster, you’ll notice that no one is wearing #21 right now.  This might indicate that the Cubs plan on some sort of reconciliation with estranged outfielder Sammy Sosa.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong. Sammy had a greater career with the Cubs than Gracie did.  But Sosa has been ostracized from the Cubs through his own actions, while Grace has been removed from the club through the actions of its upper management.  The Cubs need to wait for Sosa to make an apology to retire his number, yet they must make one themselves to retire Grace’s number.  So it doesn’t bode well that Grace’s odds of getting his number retired are lower than Sosa’s odds of apologizing to the Cubs for walking out during a game.

 

But whether he apologizes or not, Sammy Sosa’s going to make the Hall of Fame.  Because of the plethora of slugging first basemen during the 1990’s, Grace almost certainly won’t get inducted.  That’s why Mark Grace, more loved than Sosa around Chicago and across the country even during Sosa’s prime, needs to have his number retired more.  Like Ron Santo, it’s as close to Cooperstown as he’s going to get.  And the way the Cubs are playing right now, a Mark Grace number retirement ceremony is the closest the Cubs will get to a meaningful game in September.