As tradition would have it, 1997 was a fairly typical year for the Chicago Cubs. The Also-Rans boasted a power-packed line-up of potential Hall of Famers (Ryne Sandberg and Sammy Sosa), a handful of on-base guys (Mark Grace and Shawon Dunston) and a few young faces with great potential — like starting pitcher Geremi Gonzalez and outfielder Doug Glanville. Which is why the season caught so many Cubs fans by surprise: the team started losing in late April and didn’t stop until September. Their final numbers reflected their futility: they were dead last in the NL with only 68 wins, which tied them with the even more hapless Phillies. If the arc of the Cubs’ ’97 season was ever downward, then the arc of Cubs manager Jim Riggleman was upwards — a reflection of his increased irritation and angry outbursts. By the end of September, the Chicago baseball press were following Riggleman around like a pack of hounds. He was “good copy” — questioning the team’s attitude and criticizing unnamed players for being “selfish.”

The 1997 season is emblamatic of Riggleman’s style: he’s not above criticizing players, speaking his mind, or making tough decisions. In the middle of the ’97 season, in an effort to provide some spark to the Cubs’ line-up (and to signal that no one was above being called out for not producing) he benched Ryne Sandberg, then defended his decision in public as lynch mobs formed on Michigan Avenue. Riggleman then confronted outfielder Sammy Sosa in the Cubs clubhouse, when the outfielder insisted on playing loud Latin music on his boombox, even after a Cubs loss. Sosa regularly ran through Riggleman’s signs and seemed so intent on hitting thirty homers that he remained unphased by the Cubs’ play. By July, the Cubs were two teams: a Latin team clustered around Sosa and an increasingly disaffected core of veterans who were tired of losing.

The betting for the ’98 season was that if it came to a choice between Sosa or Riggleman, the Cubs skipper would be gone. Which makes the ’98 season that much more of a surprise: not only did Riggleman stay on, he patched up relations with Sosa, united the Cubs’ clubhouse, and re-jiggered the Cubs line-up, batting Sosa ahead of on-base hitting machine Mark Grace. The result was a Cubs’ revival that surprised even the most die-hard Cubs fans, earning the team a spot in the National League playoffs. “I treat players the way I want to be treated,” Riggleman said in the middle of the season, an admission, perhaps, that his ’97 irritability was misplaced, but also a signal that his policy of discipline had not been forgotten. In ’98, Sammy Sosa began to take instruction, turned down his boombox and yielded to Riggleman’s signs. Riggleman even had a bounce in his step when he went to the mound. At one point, he admitted that team losses fed his irritability. ”It know it eats at me daily,” he said.

Riggleman’s reputation as an outspoken disciplinarian followed him to Seattle, where he took over as the Mariners’ interim-manager in 1998. It didn’t take him long to become the darling of the Seattle media, who learned that he was as good a copy for the Post-Intelligencer as he had once been for the Chicago Tribune. Coincidentally — or perhaps not — the kinds of divisions that had plagued him in Chicago were present in the Mariners’ clubhouse. When some of Seattle’s players (including some of the team’s more medicre pitchers) criticized Ichiro Suzuki, Riggleman (an Ichiro defender) lit into them. Why were players criticizing Ichiro? His answer was blunt to the point of being painful: “Pettiness, seventh-grade mentality, just pettiness of whatever jealousy, pointing fingers, deflecting responsibility, lack of accountability, just a lack of a character. These things happen when you’re losing; you’re not seeing that happen with winning teams now. But those winning teams go out and lose a couple games and you’ll see it.”

A tiger doesn’t change its stripes and Jim Riggleman will remain Jim Riggleman — he’s an outspoken disciplinarian with a good baseball mind, but he cultivates controversy and isn’t above leveling criticisms not only at players, but also at owners, scouts and general managers. If he is given a poor product he’ll say so, as he did in Seattle (“the deficiencies start at the top,” he said), where his off-the-cuff remarks made him fanatical supporters among Mariners’ fans, but few friends in the front office. Which is why Don Wakamatsu is now in Seattle and Jim Riggleman is in Washington. He will “tighten the ship,” impose discipline and shake things up. If being bad-tempered will make the Nats hit, field, pitch and run better, he’ll be a hero. But if that doesn’t work, don’t be surprised if “Gentleman Jim” trains his sights on Mike Rizzo and Stan Kasten. When he does, they’ll wish they were somewhere else — or they’ll wish he was.