By Donald G. Evans

The word Rookie is often used as a derogatory, as in “Rookie Mistake.” Rufus, my old assistant in Kennicott Park’s after school program, after swatting away an attempted shot, would chide the five-year-olds, “GET That OUT of HERE, ROOKIE!” Rookies are often subject to hazing rituals, ridicule and general lack of respect. Veterans sometimes insist the rookies carry their bags. Rookies are in the same lot as newbies, green horns, pledges and fresh meat. (Hey, prisons have Rookies, too, you know).

Yet here we are, pinning much of our hopes on not one but two Rookies. Geovany Soto, having played in only 18 games last season and 30 in all over parts of three seasons, qualifies, under the Major League Baseball definition, as a Rookie. He started two of three playoff losses to Arizona in last year’s post season, nudging veteran Henry Blanco off the roster and late-season acquisition Jason Kendall to the bench. He hit a home run. Soto, then, has some experience, but not enough to graduate.

Kosuke Fukodome, under MLB guidelines, is also a Rookie. Fukodome's nine years in Japan, his 192 home runs, his four home runs to help Japan win the first World Baseball Classic in 2006, the MVP award he won there that same year—none of it counts, Very tricky, these Rookie Guidelines. No college, minor league, international or overseas experiences entitles you to skip the year of indoctrination into The Bigs.

It is an indoctrination, but it’s also a test. In a full season of playing with the best, much can and will be learned about a player. The trajectory of a player’s career is determined largely on this first full season. Is he a starter? A scrub? Still developing? Good but not good enough that the team won’t go out and find somebody better?

Rookies generate perhaps more excitement than any other player because the road ahead is long and sparkling. If a Rookie, a kid, can arrive fully developed, then our team, Our Cubbies, might benefit from his illustrious talents for, literally, decades, to come. We hope that these Rookies will turn into All-Stars and, in turn, Hall of Famers.

Get out the checklist: Soto and Fukudome are All-Stars. Rookies and All-Stars. This happens rarely; in fact it has happened to the Cubs just three times before, most recently in 1955, when pitcher Sam “Toothpick” Jones made the squad. Other than that: catcher Toby Atwell in 1952 and Don Johnson in 1944.

Sam Jones no-hit the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0 on May 12 in his “Rookie” season, becoming the first African American to accomplish the feat, but despite leading the league in strikeouts wound up losing 20 games for the 1955 Cubs (against 14 wins). Stan Musial once said Jones had the best curveball he’d ever seen, and indeed Jones led the league in strikeouts again in his second full season; he was 9-14. After just two years in Chicago, the Cubs traded Jones to the St. Louis Browns. He had a couple of real good years in the late 50s for the San Francisco Giants, including another All-Star season in 1959, but finished his career an average pitcher, winning 102 and losing 101 games.

Don Johnson hit .278 with two home runs and 71 RBI as a 31-year-old Rookie, and statistically that first full season was probably his peak. He did hit .302 the next season and scored 94 runs (10^th in the league) for the National League pennant winners (and would have been an All-Star again had the game not been cancelled due to the war), but his RBI total dropped to 58. After that he was a part-time player.

Toby Atwell’s best season was also as a Rookie, when he had career highs in batting average (.290), RBI (31), runs (36), hits (105), doubles (16) and games played (107). His Cubs career lasted just two seasons and his major league career only five.

Which brings up the point: great Rookies don’t always turn out great. The history of Cubs Rookies sadly mirrors the history of the franchise in general. Sparks that don’t turn to flames.

In 1989, the Cubs had the two most promising Rookies in the National League. Jerome Walton won the Rookie of the Year Award, and his fellow outfielder Dwight Smith was second in the voting. Walton hit .293 his Rookie season, including a 30-game hitting streak, and stole 24 bases; he was the best center fielder the Cubs had seen since, I don’t know, Rick Monday. His average fell to .263 the following year, fell again to .219 in 1991, and had plummeted to .127 by the time the Cubs got rid of him in 1992. He stole just 22 bases after that initial season, and he never again got a sniff of 30 straight games with a hit. Smith hit .324 in 1989, a year in which the Cubs won the National League East, but in four more seasons on the North Side he never approached that level of success again. He hit a low in 1991 with a .228 batting average, just three home runs and 24 RBI.

Kerry Wood struck out 20 Houston Astros on May 6, 1998 in what many baseball experts consider one of the all-time great pitching performances. The Astros managed just one scratch hit that day, in Wood’s third career win. He won the Rookie of the Year award in 1998 with a 13-6 record, despite spending the final month of the season on the disabled list. Wood’s sore elbow that season was just the beginning of arm problems that included Tommy John surgery in 1999, and partly because of that Wood never won more than 14 games. Though Wood has been resurrected as a closer this season, he has yet to graduate to the upper echelon of baseball’s great pitchers.

Mark Prior, often aligned with Wood because the two flame throwers came onto the scene at around the same time, struck out 147 batters in just more than 116 innings his Rookie year of 2002. Prior had his best season in 2003, going 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA and finishing third in the Cy Young voting in that almost season. But Prior missed the All-Star game that year with elbow problems, and was just 18-17 in three more injury-marred seasons and is now a part of the Cubs disappointing history.

Then there was Ken Hubbs. In 1962, he became the first second baseman to win the Gold Glove Award, and was voted Rookie of the Year. He was the best second baseman to come to the Cubs since Johnny Evers. But Hubbs was killed in a plane crash before the 1964 season.

That was around the same year Lou Brock was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Brock made his debut with the Cubs in 1961, and in his official Rookie Year of 1962 hit just .263 with 16 stolen bases in 23 attempts. The Cubs gave up on that raw talent, with different results than discarded raw talents like Corey Patterson, Hee-Seop, or Geremi Gonzalez.

Which brings up another point: poor or so-so rookie starts don’t always preclude future greatness. Sandberg was never a highly touted prospect; in fact, he was a throw-in as part of the Ivan DeJesus-for-Larry Bowa trade. In 1982, Ryne Sandberg’s rookie year, he started out 1-for-32, but recovered to put together a Hall-of-Fame career. Greg Maddux was the youngest player in baseball in1986, and debuted as a pinch runner in the 17^th inning against Houston before surrendering a game-winning home run in the 18^th. In his official Rookie Year of 1987, Maddux was a disappointing 6-14 with a 5.61 ERA; the next year began his streak of 17 straight seasons with at least 15 wins, a streak that encompassed four straight Cy Young awards. He, too, will be in the Hall of Fame.

The Cubs veterans mandate the team’s Rookies to dress ridiculously as part of their hazing. Last fall, after the Cubs clinched the National League Central title, rookies were required to walk from the ballpark in Cincinnati back to their hotel in female superhero attire. Carmen Pignatiello was Supergirl, Sam Fuld Batgirl, and Kevin Hart Wonder Woman. Mike Fontenot was in pigtails.

What will it be for Geovany Soto and Kosuke Fukudome? Little Bo Peep and Little Red Riding Hood? Blossom and Bubbles of the Powerpuff Girls?

And who will be Buttercup, the third Powerpuff Girl? Juan Mateo? Micah Hoffpauir? Is there another Sandberg or Maddux that will far surpass their early expectations?

The assumption is that these Great Rookies will be the future of the team, but too often those first hints of greatness are all you get. Jerome Walton, Dwight Smith, Ken Hubbs, Geremi Gonzalez…it’s a long list of players who never improved upon what they did that first year. There are so many obstacles in the way of greatness: injuries, plane crashes, lightning. Other players around the league figure things out about the Rookies, and sometimes the Rookies don’t reradjust. Confidence can be shaken. Circumstances might not be ideal.

Fukudome is 31, the same age as Don Johnson when he wowed the Wrigley crowds in his first season. Thirty-one is generally the prime of a baseball player’s life, maybe a little beyond. Soto never hit more than nine home runs or better than .273 in his first six minor league seasons, but emerged in 2007 as a would-be star. He’s still only 25.

It’s a Rookie Mistake to think a great first half of a first full season means much, but then again…sometimes it does. Billy Williams won the Rookie of the Year in 1961, and for the next 13 years was everything the Cubs hoped and thought he would be.

Here’s hoping our Rookies turn out more Williams than Walton.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others, and he will soon have a story appearing in the Xavier Review.