Influential Ross enjoying sunset of playing career

CHICAGO — The moments are slowing down as the days get shorter. It’s late July, the morning of a Friday day game, and David Ross is riding Jake Arrieta’s fancy electric bike down Waveland Avenue beyond Wrigley Field’s left-field bleachers.

The fans gathered by the players’ parking lot double-take him as he coasts by in a T-shirt and shorts. Right before he wheels in and offloads his loaner, he gives a slight wave to his onlookers, who had him pegged once they saw the gray in his beard.

“Good morning, Grandpa,” one fan yells, and Ross smiles, heading over for an autograph stop on his way into the office. Once inside the old ballpark, Ross waves to the security guards and food-service employees by the back entrance, making every second of their small talk count prior to ducking into a corridor, finding an unlabeled door, and winding his way to the Cubs clubhouse.

Ross is 39 years old and in his 15th season in the Major Leagues. He has been a member of the Cubs for a half-season and still somehow seems to know everyone around here. Maybe it’s because he knows there are only so many mornings like this left before it’s all over.

Ross is always the first to remind you that he’s “just not a very good player.”

At the moment, his season batting average is .232, and that’s more or less in line with his career numbers. He’ll occasionally run into a homer, but he’s a longtime backup catcher. That’s his calling. He’s learned how to live it every day and he’s learned how to embrace it.

But now it’s embracing him. As soon as he declared that 2016 would be his last season as a player and he would then dedicate his future to his family, the yearlong retirement party began. Ross had decided to sign a two-year deal with Chicago prior to the 2015 season because it was a club brimming with young talent, had a wise and innovative manager in Joe Maddon, and had signed Ross’ friend and confidant Jon Lester. The two had done famously well together in 2013, when Ross served as a de facto personal catcher for Lester and the Red Sox ended up winning the World Series, with Ross catching all four wins in the Fall Classic and squeezing the final out.

The Cubs signing got sweeter still when the club brought in right fielder Jason Heyward on a huge-money, long-term deal. Heyward was a 20-year-old phenom when he broke into the bigs with the Braves in 2010, and his lockermate was Ross. Ross might not have had the high-Draft-pick pedigree, but he had some years in The Show behind him, and Heyward was green and in need of guidance.

“It started in L.A. [in 2002] with guys like Dave Roberts, Shawn Green, Paul Lo Duca,” says Ross, who broke into the Majors with the Dodgers. “Those guys, I kind of owe the world to. Just because I look back at that and they were such a good example, and I’ve been fortunate enough to stay in the game that I’m trying to just emulate how they helped me, and hopefully I can pass along some kind of little nugget to these guys.

“And what’s cool about that is that these guys were established big league players — very, very good players, really good careers — and they treated me just like I was, you know, not a veteran on the team, but just like I was everybody else. They talked to me, they always were pumping me up, they got on me, as long as I was doing my thing, they didn’t rip me too bad, and they’re good human beings and they treated me with a ton of respect and they were great for how young and naïve I was.”

Ross passed it on to Heyward, and when the two were reunited before this season, Heyward paid it back in his own way, contacting the Cubs’ traveling secretary, Vijay Tekchandani, and informing him that …

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