Opening Day

The White Sox started the season at home against the Twins, in March.  What could possibly be wrong with that?

Not the weather, with temperatures in the windblown sixties.  Not Alejandro De Aza, the first Sox player to hit two opening-day homers at home since Minnie Minoso in 1960.  Not Chris Sale, who picked up the win pitching into the eighth.  Not Ronald Belisario, who made his White Sox debut on the mound by showing off a classic Chicago beer belly.  And not Cuban exile Jose Abreu, who had two line-drive hits and for a day at least looks like he can handle the hard stuff. 

No, the problem was Paul Konerko, missing his first-ever Sox opener in sixteen years.  Clare was six when Konerko played for the first time on the South Side, and now she’s 22.  Time is relentless. 

St. Augustine

St. Augustine

We stayed an extra day in Florida and drove to St. Augustine.  Standing on the ramparts of a 17^th century fort has a way of putting things in perspective, sort of.  Anyway, I kept an eye out for the Fountain of Youth, but no luck.  I would’ve shared a sip or two with “Sweatie” Freddy Garcia.  He was released by the Braves on Tuesday.   

Florida Finis

             It’s always nice to be proven right as a prophet.  A team that started 1-3 in Florida ends their stay at 8-4, winning the final two games by scores of 10-0 and 4-3.

With Tufts bumped from our schedule, the Middlebury game, our last here, emerged as an important measure of how good the Bluejays are; Middlebury went 26-11 last year in the same conference as Tufts.  I’ve been talking about defense helping out the pitching, but this time it was the other way around.  Tiffany, one of our two starters, hales from downstate Illinois, where Cardinal fans predominate; she certainly has a bit of Dizzy Dean about her.  The girl believes in good ol’ country hardball, the 12” version.  Despite three infield errors costing two runs, Tiffany was less fire-baller than magician, especially in turning a pitcher-to-home-to-first double play with the bases loaded and nobody out.  Clare had a hit and an rbi in each game.  Her 11 rbi’s are the most she’s ever had in Florida.  That’s nearly a pace of an rbi a game, which would give her both the single-season and career rbi records.

I was so caught up in the game and afterwards—doing stats and talking to Coach—I’d forgotten this was it: no more Florida for this player.  Clare knew and was pretty upset.  I did what a parent is supposed to and consoled my daughter.  I can only hope she’ll do the same for me when the time comes later this spring.

Keeping Count

Michele put it best:  “I could have spent all day watching Clare hit,” which is to say our daughter went 4 for 8 with three doubles, this despite a gale wind blowing in.  By my count, the wind cost her two homers, though the coaches, bless them, put it at four.

For parents, this is college sports at its best—their child doing well along with the team.  Elmhurst took both games, banging out 23 hits to push their record to 6-4 with two more games tomorrow.  The outfield looked like the vacuum aisle at Target, each girl a Hoover with her glove.  Our left fielder Ele recorded her second assist in six games while Clare made a nice catch on a ball the wind kept blowing away from her.  And, as ever, Megan in center fielder covered ground like a Hoover strapped to a Harley.

The other nice thing about the day is that Clare got two of her doubles against a junk baller.  That’s headline worthy, given that my daughter loves to hit fastballs.  Whether they come in fast or slow, Clare has six doubles and a triple among her hits, good for eight runs and nine rbi’s.

We could have watched all day, indeed. 

Half Empty or Half Full?

 

The remaining three days in Florida kick off at 9 AM.  Today, we walked in from the parking lot to “YMCA” by the Village People playing on the sound system.  Twenty-five minutes later, everybody was lined up for the National Anthem.   My two greatest thrills as a parent have been to watch my daughter hit homeruns and see her stand at attention during the Anthem.

Two totally different Bluejay teams showed up today.  They lost the opener 8-0 to a team playing its first game of the season, only to turn around and shut out their next opponent, 7-0.  So, is the proverbial glass half empty or half full?  Given that life is hard enough without being a pessimist, put me in the half-full camp.  Speed and defense will keep us in games we would have lost last year, and, if the pitching comes around, then we’ll surprise people.  Look, if I'm going to freeze my butt off starting next week, I have to stay positive.  The alternative is just too grim to bear. 

My personal contribution to the Elmhurst cause had a tough day, with one hit and an rbi for both games; worse yet, the clean-up hitter in the first game had two homers.  After nearly eight years, I now understand this to be part of some cosmic plan that has to play itself out.  Usually, Clare waits until I give in to despair before going on a tear.

Why should this year be any different?

Spring Training

The only spring training game that fit our schedule was Mets vs. Braves at the ESPN Sports Complex at Disney.  I am not a fan of the mouse.  Naturally, his dog Pluto helped throw out the first pitch.  The Braves’ season ticketholder selected for that honor must have needed help.

As luck would have it, both starting pitchers were ex-White Sox, Carlos Torres for the Mets and Fred “Sweatie Freddy” Garcia for the Braves.  I can still remember the day the Sox acquired Garcia from Seattle.  It was a Sunday in early June, the first day of practice for the summer high school team Clare was playing for; she just happened to be fourteen months away from starting high school at the time.  She asked me if it was a good trade, and I said, Maybe.

That will be ten years ago come Clare’s graduation this spring.  Time flies, even for a master of junk and deception.      

Answers

We played with a full roster today, which may explain the 5-1 and 6-0 victories over Oberlin and Rutgers at Camden, respectively.  If I know anything, this may be the best defensive Bluejays’ team of the past four years.  And fast.

Bella and Ele, the two missing players, are obscenely fast left-handed slap hitters.  They basically don’t exist in baseball outside of Ichiro Suzuki.  But in softball everybody tries to load up on fast lefties who can dink, bunt and slap their way on courtesy of the shorter base paths (60 feet vs 90 in baseball).  This is at the heart of the small-ball approach to the game.  Clare belongs at the other end of the spectrum, long ball.    

The other thing I know is my daughter is a streak hitter in the extreme.  Today, Clare went 3 for 7 with two doubles, four runs scored and an rbi; the single was headed for extra bases until the Rutgers right fielder made a great play just to knock the ball down and keep it from skipping past her.  No games tomorrow, so we’ll have to wait until Monday to see Clare if stays hot.

We get a nice off-day with a spring training game, Mets vs. Braves in Orlando.  But another softball family won’t be so fortunate.  At one of the other fields today, our conference rival North Central went up against Tufts.  The Tufts pitcher beaned a North Central batter, who went down, tried to get up and then appeared to pass out; she had to be taken away in an ambulance.  The games we play can bring joy or sadness.

They also carry a degree of risk either way.       

Cheers

The softball complex is just over a mile from our hotel, on the other side of a long, winding rise.  You can hear the players well before you see them.

You can always hear softball players; it’s part of the game, different from baseball.  Boys in a dugout may chatter, heckle or yell, but they will not do organized cheers the way softball players do.  I grew used to it and even enjoy it for the contrast.  Girls who cheer are also girls who slide into second base, spikes high.

Before a game, Elmhurst players gather in a circle and go through some sort of organized shout, part war chant and part boogie.  After that, there’s a song “You get on, I get on, [fill in the blank]” for the top of the order followed by an individualized cheer for the batter.  Two years ago, the dugout serenaded our leadoff hitter with an Eddie Money song, Take Me Home Tonight; now, that was impressive.  With Clare, it’s either “Boo-cow-ski!  BUKOWSKI!” or “Clare-bear, Clare-bear!”  Personally, I like it more when my daughter just goes BOOM!

We did better today, splitting a pair, but no BOOM.  Clare had an rbi in two games.  Tomorrow, we should be at full strength, which will give us an idea as to our prospects this spring.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

 Our games are in Clermont, Florida, about a half-hour west of Orlando.  It’s a gently rolling landscape home to lizards that look to be midget-sized cousins to chameleons.  So far, none of them has run onto the field to interrupt a game.

The weather, you ask, especially all you Midwesterners?  Well, it’s jeans in the morning and shorts in the afternoon.  After one day, I’m already a little burnt, but I’ll live.  This is a much better red than from windburn. 

Into every life some rain must fall, which is to say we dropped both games by scores of 4-2 and 12-5.  But we’re missing two starters, and Clare went 3for 8 with a double, a triple and 3 rbi’s.  At least those are stats that could keep me singin’ in the rain.

Let it be known the first person I rode this season was not an ump but one of the opposing coaches.  Her team is up by seven runs, and she’s having players steal bases and try to squeeze home a run.  When one of her players lined out to our pitcher, the coach shouted, “Good swing!” to which I added, “Better catch!”

You don’t run up the score on Bluejays.  

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"

I always ask this question when I fly:  How many gremlins can fit on the wing of a plane?  Answer:  It depends, but at least two if you look close enough.  And I always get the window seat next to the wing.  William Shatner’s got nothing on me.

So, flying’s tough, but I do ok.  The guy sitting next to Michele, though, he was a treat.  First, he asks us if we’re going to move around a lot.  Michele says No, “We’re low maintenance.”  That’s a good thing because he has the aisle seat, “And I’m on new meds.”  Oh, how we didn’t need to know that bit of information

Luckily, Mr. Meds kept it together for the duration of the flight, even when you couldn’t see anything out the window (which he hinted at wanting, maybe because he had a way of dealing with mischievous gremlins).  We stepped into the plane out of 40-degree weather and flew to a place where the thermometer is brushing 80.  Ah, Florida in March.

The season starts tomorrow, at high noon, of course.

Brackets and Shin Splints

 Maybe I’m wrong, but all this NCAA men’s basketball bracket hoopla is a bunch of crap.  Anywhere you go, from work to your I-pad, it’s March Madness, so mad in fact that no one wonders how the tournament will affect the course work of all these “student” athletes.  Clare and her teammate Rachel have a monster test this afternoon their professor has deigned to move up for them; if they don’t pass the course, they don’t graduate regardless what the softball team does this year.  That’s what college is, at least for everyone not a Division I athlete.  And maybe I’d feel differently if my daughter were one, too.  Yes, maybe, but no child of mine would be walking through life without finishing college if for simple fact that I’m vain.

On a related note (and, granted, a rough transition), Tigers’ shortstop Jose Iglesias has been slowed this spring by persistent pain in his shins.  Well, it appears he has hairline fractures and is likely to miss significant time.  The consensus is Clare’s box-jumping last winter resulted in the same injury.  In that case, the baseball player might want to see how the softball player managed the pain.

I Predict that in 2014 Clare Will....

Nostradamus lives through Billy Williams and Clare.  Before the start of a season, the Cubs’ right fielder liked to write down what he thought his stats would be.  This strikes me as a sublime motivational tool.  I mean, who writes down that they’re going to lead the league in strikeouts?  All right, other than Adam Dunn?  And it helped get Williams into the Hall of Fame.  So, I’ve been doing the same with Clare since freshman year high school.

She writes everything down, seals it in an envelope, and we open it come June.  The girl has nailed her batting average (.425, no less) on one occasion and come within .003 of predicting her slugging percentage (a Ruthian .703 senior year high school).  Which brings us to the envelope she handed me yesterday before heading back to school.

How many homeruns, I wonder.

Taking a Stand, or a Stance

This is how you can tell Florida is just days away—when we met for hitting at Stella’s yesterday, Clare wanted praise while I was looking for perfection.  Cue the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

There was one other hitter at Stella’s, a girl maybe two or three younger than Clare.  She looked pretty good, given her god-awful softball stance.  If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it, literally, a thousand times:  legs wide apart, butt out, bat poised over the back shoulder, the whole body rigid like a statue.  And then you have my daughter, reminiscent of Lance Berkman or a right-handed Boog Powell—feet no more than three feet apart, left foot tippy toe, knees and torso bent slightly, bat parallel to the back shoulder, the whole body in a swaggering calm.  You know what people used to say when Clare started out in softball?

“She’s got a baseball swing.”  This wasn’t exactly meant as a compliment.  What these coaches meant was that Clare swung as if the ball were coming down at her, the way a curveball might; in softball, pitches tend to rise up at the batter.  I can’t say to what extent she’s adjusted, only that her stance works.  If I ever end up with a ball-playing granddaughter, I’d want her to be just like her mother that way.

 

Modern Family, This Family

 

With a thousand little things to do for Florida, Clare decided to come home and spend the night on Saturday.  It was like old times—dining room table a mess with school stuff, country music playing, the house pulsing with this child’s energy.  Michele and I sat watching “The Natural” on one of the cable channels; Clare joined us to watch Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs hit the pennant-clinching home run for the Knights.  God, I love how Buffalo’s War Memorial Stadium looked in the movie.

As soon as Redford-Hobbs finished circling the bases, it was back to homework for Clare, but only until the app on her phone announced that Adam Eaton had hit an inside-the-park homerun against the Dodgers.  “Hey, the game’s on television,” I said.  “Well, now I have to watch it,” replied my daughter.  And she did.  Later, someone fell asleep on the couch like Linus in the pumpkin patch, and someone else (not me) got up at two in the morning to lead her to bed.

Four days to the start of the season.

Crunching Numbers

For the past three years, I’ve scouted our Florida opposition by looking at the previous season’s stats for team batting average; runs scored; home runs; stolen bases; errors and earned run average.  It’s also good to know who the best returning players are.  I then forward the info to my daughter.  We like to be prepared.

That said, I’m not sold on sabermetrics.  Algorithms and baseball (it doesn’t seem to have infected softball yet) aren’t necessarily the perfect tools Bill James would have you believe.  Consider the case of Diamondbacks outfielder Gerardo Parra.

According to baseballreference.com, last season Parra had the greatest defensive year ever by a right fielder.  Parra’s significant stats were 274 chances with 15 outfield assists (runners thrown out trying to advance) and 3 errors for a .989 fielding average.  Plug these and some other numbers into the magic equation, and Parra’s defense won the Diamondbacks four more games than his replacement was likely to have done.  Well, we wouldn’t want Roberto Clemente out there in right, now would we?

Or Jeff Francoeur, for that matter.  In 2007 when he played right field with the Braves, Francoeur handled 351 chances—77 more than Parra—with 19 outfield assists and 5 errors for a .986 fielding average.  So, the player with more chances and more assists (and just two more errors) generated a measly 1.3 defensive wins above replacement.  Huh?

Or consider OPS, on-base plus slugging percentage.  On-base percentage—basically, hits plus walks as a new kind of batting average—has its uses.  Players who don’t walk a lot tend to make poor leadoff batters, and strikeouts are the bane of sabermetrically inclined G.M.s like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein.  The danger is too great a belief in obp.  Maury Wills had a career on-base percentage of .330 and his teammate Willie Davis totaled just .300.  But Davis still managed to play for eighteen years because he had other skills equally important.

Slugging percentage is a mathematical way of separating slap hitters from sluggers.  Maury Wills’ career slugging percentage was .331.  The determining formula assigns a value of .250 for a single, .500 for a double, .750 for a triple and 1.00 for a home run, so it’s pretty easy to see that Wills mostly hit singles over the course of  his fourteen-year career.  In comparison, Hank Aaron’s career slugging percentage is a more robust .555 and Babe Ruth’s a fairly incredible .690.

But all slugging percentage really does is tell you Maury Wills shouldn’t be batting cleanup or Babe Ruth at the top of the order.  Now take that measure of limited value to make yet another, OPS, and you have the essence of sabermetrics.

Or so says Johnny Old-timer.  

Weather, Anyone?

Yesterday, the temperature broke 50 degrees for the first time all year, and Clare finally got to go outside for practice.  She could do it again on Friday, when there’s another 50 in the forecast.  Too bad they’re also predicting anywhere from 4-16 inches of snow tomorrow.  Welcome to the world of spring sports in the Midwest.

Many years ago, before Clare was born, I had the good fortune to meet Hall of Famer Luke Appling at a memorabilia show; Appling played shortstop for the White Sox from 1930 to 1950.  “You had to dig the snow out of your neck” playing the infield in Chicago in April, he told me.  Ballparks come and go, ballplayers, too, but the misery of a Chicago spring endures.  That holds especially true for softball in March.  I make a habit of wearing long underwear and have, on one occasion, helped shovel snow out of dugouts.

Chicagoans on both sides of town choose to ignore the weather on Opening Day; optimism rather than wind chill is what matters, if for just that one game.  When the White Sox beat the Twins 3-0 for their home opener in 1971, I was all of eighteen; the long johns stayed at home.  Not anymore.

Change of Venue

The NCAA is very fond of running “student-athlete” commercials during big basketball and football games.  With March Madness coming soon, watch for them on a screen near you.

The thing of it is, they’re a joke or a lie when applied to jock-factories (and you know who you are, and it ain’t Stanford).  In Division I, athletes accommodate their sport at all times, or they don’t stay athletes for long.  In Division III, sports will accommodate the athlete, if ever the NCAA wants to shoot a commercial.

Florida is just a week off now.  Clare’s ready to go, but she wasn’t ready to find herself playing second base at practice yesterday.  That came about because Coach has to find someone to do it the first four games; the starting second baseman feels that she can’t afford to miss class.  Hence, the accommodation.  The good news is that #7 should be back in right field for Opening Day.  She’s more the last option than the first.

Next Year

Clare was talking about one of the freshman:  “She’ll probably take my place in right next year.”  That’s when my notion of time will change.  It won’t be pegged to “when Clare played freshman year” or any time after in high school or college.  It will just be next year, for me.

Four for Four

Yesterday, new White Sox leadoff man and center fielder Adam Eaton went three for three in a game, which is always nice, but that doesn’t beat Clare.  Today, she was accepted into her fourth graduate program in sports management.  Now, if she could just get a shot at one of the outfield spots with the Sox...

Peaking Too Soon

When Clare goes to her hitting coach, he stands behind a screen to pitch.  Yesterday, he told her, “I’m glad we only went for a half-hour.  I don’t think the netting would’ve held up much longer than that.”  In other words, his pupil was dialed in.

The only problem with that is it’s another fifteen days before Clare’s first game in Florida.  Until then, more snow and barely the hope of a thaw in the forecast.  But it could be worse.  Two other CCIW teams already are playing in Florida.  Even before we go, they’ll be back with nothing to do but wait and practice indoors.  Unlike football, you can’t play softball on ice or in the mud.  It really is a skill game.

Skill Sets

Skill Sets

Russell Wilson played two years of A-ball for the Rockies, averaging .229.  Wilson quarterbacked the Seahawks to a Super Bowl win last month and put in an appearance at the Texas Rangers’ camp yesterday in Surprise, Arizona.  Team officials hope some of Wilson’s football success will rub off on their players.  What would they do if it was the anemic batting average that proved contagious, instead?     

Michael Jordan hit .202 his one season of AA ball while “retired” from the NBA.  Jordan managed more errors in the outfield than Wilson recorded over two seasons playing second base.  As a baseball prospect, Jordan showed himself to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time.

Here’s my point: Baseball looks a hell of a lot easier than it is.  See above.  If Russell Wilson and Michael Jordan were colossal failures, how much worse could female athletes be?  Put another way, I’d never pick Hoyt Wilhelm in a fight over either Wilson or Jordan, but the man threw a slow ball (technically, a knuckler) for 21 years, all the way into the Hall of Fame.

You mean to tell me someone like my daughter couldn’t do the same?  Just give her the chance.

Ink

   

I happen to belong to a one-person religious sect that holds there are no tattoos in heaven.  Naturally, my daughter wants a tattoo.

A skull?  No.  Angel?  No.  Devil?  No.  Something with wings?  No.  Something with roses?  No.  Barbed wire?  No.  Boyfriend’s name?  I don’t think so.  My name?  Hell hasn’t frozen over.

But Clare texted a picture of what it could look like—a small five-sided figure above an ankle.  “Home plate has a lot of meaning for me,” she told Michele yesterday.

You decide.  

Hypotheticals

What kind of father am I?  It snowed another four inches last night, Clare had back-to-back three-hour practices this weekend, and I’m shooting hypotheticals at her over the phone.  But, hey, don’t say you’re going to graduate school in sports administration without expecting to be challenged by the old man once or twice.

To wit: This week, Curie High School in Chicago was stripped of its city boys’ basketball crown for having seven academically ineligible players on its roster.  (Note in passing: This would never happen with a girls’ team.)  Officials were tipped off to the situation before game time, but, with ESPN on board to broadcast the contest, the show had to go on.

 The question here involves responsibility.  What about the Curie parents, the coach, the athletic director and/or the principal?  Who do you blame, Ms. Bukowski?  The one thing Clare knew for sure was that, at her little-regarded high school (where she helped the assistant A.D.), there were weekly eligibility updates.  And, as a sophomore, Clare sometimes went from DH to second base depending on the starting senior’s eligibility that day.

Clare tends to be a stickler for the rules, so I may have to get a “Not on My Watch” button to give her when she lands her first job in the real world.  Beware, potential cheats.