Wonderboy, Found

The new-old bat arrived Monday, and Clare was very excited.  “It looks perfect,” she told me over the phone.  “Can you come pitch batting practice?”  That’s the big advantage of attending school one county over.  It’s too far to commute, but close enough to summon parents when needed, and I was needed.

I stood behind a screen and tossed balls with my daughter no more than fifteen feet away.  It was like watching a mortar up close—what went in zoomed out, with the balls mostly coming to a rest on the warning track at the Elmhurst Bluejays’ home field.  Something about a ball your child hits rattling the fence that does a soul good.

Clare has a strong but not a vicious swing; she won’t screw herself into the ground going after a pitch.  With her, it’s all about the hands.  They’re so quick.  I mean, the girl flicked her bat, and balls went sailing.  Where does a gift like that come from?  Maybe the milkman.  

This all reminded me of the time eight years ago, right before Clare tried out for two travel teams (and made them both.  Talk about an embarrassment of riches.). Every day for a week we went out to practice, fielding first, then hitting.  Flyball, groundball, fastball, repeat.  Each day was 90-degrees plus.  The infield dirt was so powdery it worked its way into my underwear, making for an interesting off-color.  Even though that field was shorter than the one yesterday, Clare couldn’t quite get a ball over the fence.  She did it twice with the new Wonderboy.

            NCAA-sanctioned fall ball starts in another week or so.  That’ll be the next test.

The Empty Nest

            I drove Clare to and from grade school five days a week, junior kindergarten through eighth grade.  Then she graduated, and the trips stopped.  It wasn’t long before I found a new job, as doorkeeper during four years of high school.  I was there when she walked out the door in the morning for the three-block walk to school and there in the afternoon when she returned.  Then came another graduation.  Three months later, our daughter went away to college.

And the house was empty, no one to wake up, cook for, yell at or counsel.  Michele and I had all the time in the world to consider what we had wrought as parents.  Let me say here that one of my greatest failures as a father was not teaching my daughter how to close a dresser drawer; she is congenitally unable to do so, even after walking into one.  There’s also time to remember bedtime stories and a sudden hug to Grandpa so tight and unexpected he nearly toppled to the floor.

          Then Clare came home in May, and left in August, and came home, left and came home.  Saturday morning, she left for her senior year of college.  The dog hates it, and so do I.

A Civil Rights Game, or Not

            Once upon a time, baseball abided by the rules of Jim Crow, but no more.  Now, MLB honors Jackie Robinson every April 15 (the date in 1947 when Robinson broke the color line) and holds an annual civil rights game.  Too bad Bud Selig has such a narrow definition of civil rights.  What about gays and women in baseball?  Here would have been the perfect venue to address that subject.  Maybe April 15, 2014.

Anyway, the White Sox hosted this year’s festivities and game.  The Negro Leagues’ All Star game took place at Comiskey Park, where Larry Doby broke the color line in the American League on July 5, 1947.  Of course, history is no bar to tearing down a ballpark.

            Josh Phegley hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth as the Sox topped the Rangers, 3-2.
     

The High Cost of HItting

             Hitters are crazy when it comes to that one tool of their trade.  Ted Williams was forever shaving and weighing his bats while Ichiro uses a kind of humidor to keep bats from absorbing moisture.  That extra fraction of an ounce apparently would throw his whole swing off.

            There’s not much you can do with the composite bat used in college.  Basically, it’s a matter of love it or toss it.  With luck, a bat will last for around two seasons.  Then it’s shopping time, with a softball bat going for as much as $350.  In comparison, an expensive Louisville Slugger costs $129, or thereabouts.

            Clare’s first bat was plastic, very affordable.  But once she moved on from Wiffle Ball, we needed something a bit firmer.  We got away with an old wooden bat in T-Ball, then used the same aluminum bat for two years of Pony Baseball.  Sticker shock didn’t set in until high school.  And to think $200 seemed like a lot of money.

            If memory serves, at one time or another I used different Louisville Sluggers trying to be Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski and Jackie Robinson; the bottlenose bat was like the one Nellie Fox used.  Alas, whatever the bat, the swing stayed pretty much the same, but at least I didn’t go broke from summer to summer.  Times have changed more than a little.

            Clare used the same bat her first two years of college, good for thirteen homeruns; too bad about the crack that developed.  So, junior year meant a new bat, we won’t mention the maker.  Just $300 put down in the hope of yet more long balls to come.  Two was not enough.  Two made my daughter think there was something wrong with her.  Two led her to talk to a teammate who used the same bat with the same disappointing results.  Two drove her to eBay, where she found a “slightly” used version of her old bat for “just” $240.

Free shipping, though, and Clare’s picking up the first $150.  Fingers crossed until she can try it out.

The Finch Report

             As recently as three days ago, if you had asked Clare what she thought of softball star Jennie Finch, her answer would have been, Not much.  That all changed over the weekend.

            Clare worked Finch’s softball camp, held at the Chicago Bandits’ dome facility; it pays to be a former Bandit, and it doesn’t hurt when your former player has the last name of Finch.  Anyway, I can report in true TMZ fashion that Jennie Finch is a…really nice person!  Seriously.

            For openers, she told Clare she had beautiful blue eyes, and she actually thanked my daughter for pitching in, so to speak.  She was fine with pictures where people weren’t paying for the privilege, and, over the course of three days, she didn’t snap at any underling.  Impressive, to say the least.

            I drove Clare to the camp on Sunday.  It was 8 AM, and mothers were getting off the L with their daughters for a full day of instruction; other mothers were in the parking lot, rousing their charges from out of the back of the family SUV.  Camps like this aren’t really about learning but seeing: What does a professional woman athlete look like?  Oh, her.  She’s pretty and nice.  I can be like that, too.  A ten-year old comes away feeling that way, and it’s worth the $175 fee.

            Clare spent two days assisting Crystl Bustos, Finch’s former teammate on the U.S. National Team.  Bustos was a great power hitter, so, obviously, she talked hitting.  She’s an imposing presence and probably a little intimidating.  It helped that Clare could take what Bustos said about swing mechanics and break it down for the middle-school crowd.  A number of parents thanked her for doing so.

            Like my daughter, I have mixed feelings about Jennie Finch, though for reasons other than that age-old rivalry between pitchers and hitters.  I just wonder if she ever wanted to pitch in the big leagues.  Yes, Jennie Finch could strike out baseball players trying to hit a 12-inch softball.  What about striking them out with a baseball?  That would have been interesting.

            The high point of the weekend for Clare was shagging flys; Jennie Finch hit one to her.  What was it like? I asked.  “Well, you could tell she’s not a hitter.”

             Spoken like the all-time homerun hitter for Elmhurst College softball.

A Happy 100th Birthday

             My father would have turned 100 today.  He died in December of 2000, when Clare was in third grade.

            I don’t know of anyone who worked harder than Ed Bukowski.  He dropped out of school in seventh grade to help his mother with the mortgage on their new bungalow (where I grew up, though my grandmother had moved back to the old neighborhood of Bridgeport long before).  He spent the 1930s working the assembly line at the Ford Torrence Avenue plant before joining the Chicago Fire Department in 1943.  Where other men stormed the beaches at Normandy, my father spent 35 years fighting fires in and around the South Side.

            The Fire Department employs a 24-shift, one day on followed by two days off.  This set-up allowed for something called “hobby jobs,” though with three kids, my father found it to be more of a necessity.  Periodically, his schedule meant working 13 straight days between both jobs, at the firehouse and Wesco Spring, where he drove a delivery truck and pitched in to help keep the machines spitting out metal springs for whatnot purpose.  As I said earlier, he came home too tired to play any catch.  But he made sure I grew up a White Sox fan.  Bill Veeck wrote, "If there is any justice in this world, to be a White Sox fan freed a man from any other form of penance."  My father must have wanted me to experience the absolution afforded at 35th and Shields.    

            He took me to my first game on June 15, 1962, Sox vs. Angels; I was the only kid in a group of workers from Wesco.  We had what were called loge seats, in the upper deck right along the first base line and close to the railing.  You have to understand that the upper deck at Comiskey Park didn’t occupy the stratosphere as it does at the Cell; those obstructed-view causing posts also made it possible to have the upper deck virtually hover over the field.  Yes, it did feel like I was at church, in part because architect Zachary Taylor Davis also designed churches, which could explain the arches that circled the park; they could have passed for stained-glass windows, sans glass.  The Sox won, 7-6.

            The first major-league ballplayer I ever laid eyes on was Angels’ outfielder Albie Pearson.  He stood all of 5’5”, one inch shorter than Clare.  As to anyone who stood taller than my father, I can’t think of a name.  

Father and Child Reunion

            Monday Clare watched the CMA Music Festival on ABC, billed as “Country’s Night to Rock.”  (Why not Wail Twang?)   About an hour in, my daughter took out her guitar to practice.  Something sounded off, so Tuesday she went and had the guitar restrung.

            Country music, guitars, Western wear—who is this child?  If I didn’t see with my own eyes last night her eating five pierogi and watching the Sox, I’d swear she was no child of mine.  Of course, I’d be wrong.  

The Hitting Coach

             Today, Clare went to her hitting coach for the first time this summer.  She’d been mad at him—and herself—since spring.

            Youth sports is all about lining up “expert” coaches; you can’t be a star quarterback, pitcher or cleanup hitter without some help on the side.  Clare started seeing Jim in the summer before high school.

            I’d like to think I made his job easy by breaking my daughter of the habit of putting her foot in the bucket on sliders away; Clare’s front foot went away from the ball when she swung at hard breaking pitches.  But the main way I made things easy was by contributing a gene or two to a natural-born hitter.  There wasn’t that much to fix.

            Jim didn’t last long in his first go-around.  Call it too many voices—his, the travel coaches and Euks, the varsity coach.  So, we did without Jim’s services until senior year, when Clare thought she was done with travel and wouldn’t be playing in college.  But she wanted to go out on a high note, and did.  Going back to a hitting coach helped Clare tie the school single-season record for homeruns, at 10.  And that drew the attention of colleges, so the hitting coach really did resurrect a career.

            Jim leaves Clare’s mechanics alone (trust me, it’s a beautiful swing) while encouraging her to visualize her at-bats.  That translated into six homers freshman year at Elmhurst, and another seven sophomore year.  Such high hopes we all had for this spring—a second straight trip to the postseason tournament, more homeruns, a shot at the NCAA Division III tournament.  But the team slumped, and Clare only managed two homers.

            She desperately wanted answers, and Jim tried to provide them.  Nothing worked, April came and went, junior year ended.  Now, Clare wants to finish strong again.  I try not to pry too much about what goes on in a session.  With me, it’s all “stop crowding the plate, or they’ll jam you” and “cut down on your swing with two strikes, even Ted Williams says so.”  I can only hope Jim says the same in the course of an hour.

            My daughter may be the only girl whose father gives her hitting manuals for a gift, Williams and Charlie Lau so far.  I want Clare to visualize being good enough to get that kind of instruction.  And I want Jim to help her visualize having a senior year for the ages.  All I know for sure is they talked things out for a half-hour before the hitting started.   

The Man in the Picture

 

            Last week, our local paper devoted its front page to a photo with the caption, An Era Ends.  The picture shows Clare and two teammates with high school coach Tom Eukovich.  This spring was Tom’s last after eleven years as varsity coach.

            “Euks” happened to be Clare’s second-ever coach.  She ended up on his fall-ball baseball team as an 8-year old.  We were the only team with a coach who shaved his head and started a girl in the infield.  It was the first time Clare faced live pitching, and she loved it.  She also loved the drill where Coach taught his players to do “banana” on the base paths.  Until then, everyone tried to run the bases by turning on a dime, so to speak, only you can’t do that.  The best way to go from home to second or third base is to make a series of long, shallow ellipses in the form of a…yes, banana.  The lesson really clicked with Clare.  So did the coach.        

            The summer between sixth and seventh grade, Euks invited Clare to play on his high school team, made up of j.v. and varsity players.  Playing fast-pitch softball for the first time ever, my daughter looked like a midget among giants.  She held her own, though, and got some hits.  Euks invited her back each of the next two summers.

            Clare started all four years in high school and helped Euks win four straight regional titles.  He repaid the favor by making calls to college coaches on her behalf.  Euks says he’s coming to a lot of Clare’s games next spring; talk about your double whammies.  I’ll be dealing with softball past and present while dreading a softball-less future.  They say there’s no crying in baseball.  But that’s a different game.

Alex Rodriguez, in a Glass House

            How fitting that Alex Rodriguez should start his season at the Cell.  After all, the Black Sox played just across the street from where A-Rod held his press conference.

            Personally, I think Rodriguez is guilty of using PEDs and should receive stiff punishment.  All I ask is that due process is respected.  The “best interests of baseball” authority of the commissioner shouldn’t be invoked; it’s a relic of the 1920s, an era not known for fairness.  There’s a procedure in place for disciplining players, so use it.  If Rodriguez wins, let that be the punishment owners deserve for looking the other way when their players started doping.

            I’ve got no dog in this fight, as the saying goes.  Owners and players do what they do, expecting fans to follow along, damn’ the ticket prices (and parking and concessions…).  Unfortunately, somebody has to own a team and somebody has to play on it for the magic to happen.  It would be nice if both sides could at least go through the motions of wanting a relatively clean sport.  And maybe they will.

            White Sox fans were hard on Rodriguez all night while a large New York contingent sounded moderately supportive.  Player scandals bring out the worst in fans.  If the home team employs Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds, fans are blind to the obvious.  When the home team hits the road, other fans will bait players to the point of obscenity and beyond.  A little humility is in order, I think.  Before they boo too much, Chicago fans would do well to remember that seven of the Black Sox did cheat.  (Their getting due process is another story.)  And no self-respecting citizenry should ever have cheered Dennis Rodman, not even once.

            As for New York, you guys are stuck with A-Rod.  Welcome to your perpetual hair shirt.  

The Worst of Times, and the Best

            More than any other sport, baseball employs its past to measure its present.  The slightest streak or accomplishment invites comparison to the last time something similar happened.  When you’re winning, that’s great, oh, but when you’re losing, it can hurt.  And the White Sox are in a world of hurt.

            The current ten-game losing streak along with a season record of 40-69 invokes constant mention of the last time the team was so bad.  In the blink of an eye, today becomes 1970, when the Sox last lost 100 games, 106 to be precise.

            I was 18 then, in the summer between high school and college.  On the day of my graduation from St. Laurence, Walt Williams went five for seven with five runs scored in a 22-13 win over Boston at Fenway.  That put their record, on the last day of May, at 18-29, with another 38 wins to be spread out over the next four months.  Not that I refused to listen to them in the car after I got my driver’s license in June.  My sister lent me her Chevy Impala convertible for two glorious weeks that summer.  I drove out into the country with the top down, on top of the world while driving beneath a starry sky.  The radio switched between the Beatles, the New Colony Six, the White Sox.  It was a South Side thing.

            In late September, the Sox named a new manager; he would be the best I’ve ever seen in Chicago.  No, not Tony LaRussa but Chuck Tanner.  The man just did things differently.  Tanner made a starter out of knuckleballer Wilbur Wood (who recorded four 20-win seasons to three for HOFer Phil Niekro); batted Bill Melton leadoff at the end of the ’71 season to help him win the home run crown (three homers in two games to edge Reggie Jackson); and let Richie Allen be Dick Allen, as long as he hit.  In a word, Tanner innovated.  How novel in Chicago.

            The White Sox also brought up a good deal of talent in the early ’70s.  Terry Forster made the team as a 19-year old in ’71; he was six months older than me.  The next year, it would be Goose Gossage, a year older.  And the year after that would see Bucky Dent (21) and Brian Downing (22).  The Cubs were Ernie-Banks old.  The White Sox were cocky and young, like me.  What could possibly go wrong?

            Bill Veeck bought the team after the ’75 season.  He let Chuck Tanner go and started trading the young talent—Forster and Gossage for Richie Zisk, Dent for Oscar Gamble, Downing as part of a deal for Bobby Bonds.  Tanner ended up winning a World Series with the Pirates while Veeck eventually hired Tony LaRussa.  So, it all evened out, I guess, or would have had LaRussa won a championship in Chicago rather than in Oakland and St. Louis.

            So, the silver lining in this miserable baseball season is to be reminded of 1970, when I was little more than a boy, and 1971, when very young, talented ballplayers started showing up in the White Sox dugout.  As for the 2012 season, Clare can remember the summer she was 21.