MIAMI — It has been 27 years since a young Craig Counsell, the Marlins’ logo on his chest, stepped into the batter’s box in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. Even now, so far removed from that moment with the tying run on third base, there was no way he could forget what was going through his mind.
‘‘I was just telling myself, ‘Swing,’ ’’ Counsell recalled in a conversation with the Sun-Times during the Cubs ’ series against the Marlins over the weekend. ‘‘ ‘You have a chance to win the World Series. Swing.’ ’’
Counsell hit a deep sacrifice fly to tie the score, then scored the winning run on Edgar Renteria’s single in the 11th.
Counsell only spent parts of three seasons with the Marlins, a blip in the span of a 16-year major-league playing career and another decade as a manager. But they were formative years. His time in Florida accelerated his career trajectory, got him his first World Series ring and exposed him to the tutelage of Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland.
‘‘A lot happened really fast,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘To go from a Triple-A second baseman [with the Rockies] to playing in a World Series three months later . . . great memories.’’
It all started with a promising report from then-Marlins scout Dick Egan, who described himself in a recent phone call with the Sun-Times as ‘‘an old-timer then. Now I’m an antique.’’
Egan remembers sitting in the stands at Triple-A Colorado Springs when he got a call from Dave Dombrowski, the Marlins’ general manager at the time and the Phillies’ president of baseball operations today.
‘‘There’s no beating around the bush [with Dombrowski],’’ Egan said with a chuckle.
As Egan tells it, Dombrowski asked, ‘‘Can Craig Counsell play second base for us?’’
Egan’s response: ‘‘Yeah, sure.’’
‘‘I mean, right now, can he play second base?’’
Counsell was taking infield reps during batting practice right in front of Egan.
Egan doubled down.
‘‘I said, ‘Yeah,’ not knowing exactly what was in my report,’’ he said.
His report was written on carbon-copy triplicate paper, and his copy was back at the hotel.
Dombrowski said he would call back. When he did, the trade was done. Counsell was coming to the Marlins, and reliever Mark Hutton was headed to the Rockies. A young player who had all of four games of major-league experience was joining a playoff-bound team in exchange for a more established player.
Egan sweated through the rest of the game. Reading his report back at the hotel that night didn’t help.
‘‘I had a nice report on him, but it was not like, ‘Oh, this is a major-league superstar,’ ’’ Egan said. ‘‘And so I’m sitting there, ‘Dombrowski made the trade, and so now it’s my ass.’ ’’
Dombrowski, of course, had read the report. And more research had gone into the trade than Egan’s answer on the phone. But Egan had seen something in Counsell that ended up translating nicely to the majors.
‘‘He was always working and trying to do something out there on the field to get ready,’’ Egan said.
Egan could breathe a little easier after Counsell’s solid debut with the Marlins. He went on to hit .299 that season and became an unlikely World Series hero. And the Marlins, flush with talent and personalities, didn’t need a superstar. Counsell was the steady presence at second they were looking for.
‘‘As much as he can be quiet and introverted now, it was even more so then,’’ Cubs broadcaster Jon ‘Boog’ Sciambi said. ‘‘He was super-quiet.’’
Sciambi was in a similar situation in 1997. In the first year of his first MLB job, serving as the Marlins’ radio pregame and postgame host, he found sitting back and quietly observing served him well.
Sometime in August, Sciambi had Counsell on the postgame show. He told him, ‘‘They’re going to come to me in a minute.’’
After sitting in silence for a while, Counsell turned to Sciambi and said, ‘‘This is taking longer than a minute.’’
‘‘And then that’s where you can add my quote, saying, ‘He hasn’t changed much,’ ’’ Sciambi said, smiling.
That kind of dry humor — sometimes delivered with a straight face and sometimes with a wry grin — is still a Counsell special.
‘‘As a player, there was a mental toughness and a single-mindedness
that he had,’’ Sciambi said. ‘‘If you could have inputted that in players with more physical talent, I think it would have
been incredible.’’
He pointed to 1998, when Counsell was hit in the jaw by a fastball and didn’t go down to the ground.
Counsell said he stayed standing more out of confusion, followed by fear. He then went through the ‘‘miserable’’ experience of having his broken jaw wired shut and going on a liquid diet for eight weeks. The moment stuck with Counsell in a different way, too.
Counsell was a special assistant in the Brewers’ front office in 2014 and was in attendance when then-Marlins star Giancarlo Stanton was hit in the face by a pitch from the Brewers’ Mike Fiers and taken to the hospital.
‘‘I was literally sick to my stomach,’’ Counsell said.
The Brewers became the first organization to encourage C-flap helmets for all their players and standardized the extra protection in their farm system, which eventually became a national story in 2018.
‘‘Then some guys got hit, and they didn’t get hurt,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘And I was, weirdly, kind of proud of that.’’
More threads connecting Counsell’s time with the Marlins to his post-playing career stem from Leyland’s influence.
‘‘One of the things he always tested me on is, ‘Do you know who you are as a player? Do you know what you’re good at?’ ’’ Counsell said. ‘‘He never said it, but it’s like, ‘If you don’t know who you are, I don’t trust you.’ ’’
The gruff Leyland and even-keeled but direct Counsell have different dispositions.
‘‘He could be really hard on you, but you always knew he loved you,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘And that’s just a great trait for a coach.’’
It’s one Counsell strives to embody in his own way. When Counsell reached the end of his managing contract with the Brewers last fall and was mulling the next step of his career, he called Leyland.
Before Leyland managed Counsell and the Marlins to the World Series in 1997, he had spent 11 years at the helm with the Pirates. His managerial career ended up stretching for two decades. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame this year.
‘‘He’s had more experiences than I have, but at some points we’ve had similar experiences,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘So I was just asking him about those experiences.’’
They had come a long way from their overlap in Florida, but those days had forged a lasting connection.
Cubs fail to pull off sweep
The Cubs dropped the series finale against the Marlins 7-2 on Sunday.
‘‘It’s a good series, it’s a road-win series, but we had a chance to make it a great series and couldn’t finish it,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘A little reminiscent of the Toronto series [last weekend], where we could have finished it off and just couldn’t do it. But winning series is a good thing. Just keep doing that.’’
Cubs starter Javier Assad recovered from surrendering two home runs in the first inning to hold the Marlins to three runs in seven innings. But the Cubs’ offense, which exploded for a season-high 14 runs Saturday, had no such pizzazz. And reliever Julian Merryweather struggled to the tune of four runs and five hits in one inning.
Merryweather’s tough eighth inning featured an odd play. After he intentionally walked Jesus Sanchez, the Marlins called on a pinch runner, but Sanchez exited before touching first base. Counsell walked out to get clarity and had Merryweather throw to first to appeal, resulting in an out.
