And Now For Something Completely Different

 The White Sox announced the signing of ex-Cub Tony Campana to a minor league contract, and I’m excited.  If Campana makes the team as a spare outfielder/pinch runner, that will give the Sox two players measuring 5’8,” counting Adam Eaton.

Despite the steroids’ era more or less over, baseball is still all about big, power hitters facing power pitchers.  This has resulted in lots of strikeouts and walks to go with arm injuries and the occasional homerun.  Little guys—and who knows, someday, girls—can alter that equation, if they have plate discipline.

All a player like Campana has to do is stand there and dare the pitcher to throw strikes; the smaller the strike zone, the harder that is.  When Campana gets on base, he is 66 for 75 in career stolen bases.  Heck, he doesn’t even have to steal, as long as he goes from first to third on a single.

That way, everything old becomes new again in the national pastime, as Albie Pearson and Freddie Patek could tell you.

Ray Rice

An arbitrator ruled yesterday that the NFL can’t have a do-over disciplining Ray Rice of the Ravens.  Roger Goodell’s indefinite suspension of Rice—up from an initial two games—is overturned, and Rice is free to sign with any team willing to look the other way on the issue of domestic violence.  No doubt, some plucky general manager will say the star running back only hit his fiancé one time.

The arbitrator—a former federal judge and, ironically, a woman—has thrown Goodell for a considerable loss.  All that work to show the NFL as a league devoted to good works is for naught.  Instead, the league is exposed sans fig leaf.  Suddenly, that constant Sunday afternoon message of watch, indulge, enjoy and look the other way isn’t quite so mesmerizing.  A slew of former players suffering a variety of injuries don’t buy it, and neither do all female fans.

And it’s only going to get worse.  Next week, Ray Rice appears on the Today Show to rehabilitate his image (kudos to his management team in arranging that) while another arbitrator will rule on Adrian Peterson’s appeal of his suspension for using a switch on his four-year old son.  I bet Roger Goodell wishes prosecutors weren’t so willing to plea deal.  Then his job would be ever so easy.  

Footsteps to Follow In

 Walking off the field this April after Elmhurst took two from the University of Chicago, Clare let slip a secret—this was where she wanted to play.  Why, I have no idea, though I do find it strangely neat the softball field is a foul ball away from where Enrico Fermi engineered the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in 1942 under the stands of old Stagg Field.  Connect that to softball, and win a prize.

Kim Ng went to the U of C and did play softball, graduating in 1990, a year before Clare was a bun in the oven.  Ng then interned with the White Sox, who soon hired her fulltime.  From there it was assistant-GM jobs with the Yankees and Dodgers, where she worked for ten years.  Along the way Ng has also worked for MLB and interviewed four times for GM vacancies.

I’ve mentioned Ng to Clare on occasion, and it seems to have stuck.  She’s working on a paper about women in sports and will be giving Ng her due.  Maybe one of these former softball players will head a big-league front office, someday.  Maybe.

Opportunity Knocks

The great thing about baseball is how different facets of the game can appeal to you as you age.  Growing up, all I thought about was the players.  Managers were like fathers, to be respected if not always understood, while general managers and owners were as remote to me as the Pope.  But the hot stove league has me feeling downright papal, especially with the Red Sox signing Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez for over $180 million.

That should make for an interesting clubhouse.  As Clare put it, “Big Papi does not like to share” the spotlight, which is Boston’s problem.  Of more immediate concern is the sudden glut of expendable players wearing a Red Sox uniform—Will Middlebrooks and Daniel Nava would look good on the White Sox, while the same could be said of Allen Craig and Yeonis Cespedes.  With Cespedes, we could have five Cuban players on the South Side.  Eat your heart out, Fidel.

If only my powers to trade and sign players extended beyond these basement walls.

The High Cost of Free Speech in Professional Sports

Last week, the NFL fined Seahawks’ running back Marshawn Lynch a total of $100,000 for refusing to talk with the media.  Apparently, it’s not enough to earn your keep in the NFL by playing.  Now you have to talk about it, too.

But not in the NBA, where players, coaches and owners are fined on a regular basis for saying the wrong thing (see Shaquille O’Neal, Phil Jackson and Mark Cuban, among others).  In pro sports, the policy is to see no evil, speak no evil, offer up plenty of platitudes:  As a team we really worked hard this week to…

Battery, the threat of bodily harm, is not free speech; in that regard, let the fines unfold.  Otherwise, why do I and the folks at ESPN get to say the refs stink, but not the people affected directly by their calls?  Why do I have First and Fifth Amendment rights but Marshawn Lynch doesn’t?  Because he’s an athlete rather than a suspect? 

Just for fun, Mark Cuban ought to challenge his next fine as a violation of his First Amendment rights.  That would be an interesting case to follow.  

Multiply by Two to Get Half

Clare will be spending much of the next six weeks at Immaculate Conception, a small high school literally next door to Elmhurst College.  Back in the day, we wanted her to go there, but Clare only had eyes for the Morton Mustangs.  Better late than never, I guess.

Last fall, Clare did an internship with the IC athletic director.  He was impressed enough to ask her back to work—for pay—at IC sponsored events.  This weekend it was a basketball tournament; my daughter kept the book.  The good news is it makes the time go by, keeping track of baskets, fouls and whatnot.  The hard part is the timeouts.  Clare always says how many were used whenever she’s asked how many a team has left.

As you might expect, the athlete (I wouldn’t call her “ex-” yet) is hard on the refs, especially females.  “They have to be twice as good to be considered equals,” she said over the phone.  This shouldn’t be true, but it is.  The hitting coach on Friday sounded Clare out on the possibility of joining him in a new venture.  Somehow, I doubt she’d have many boys asking her for batting tips, or fathers thinking they should.

Déjà vu

Clare went hitting yesterday, in part because she wanted to and in part for a class assignment on risk assessment; the hitter put down her bat long enough to take pictures of possible problem areas around the facility.  At some point she and her old hitting coach also talked philosophy.  The Valpo coach employs an approach different from her volunteer.

That discussion carried over into our kitchen, with Clare demonstrating respective approaches.  Just let’s say my daughter believes in a more fluid stance and swing.  Watching this budding coach act out her swing between the kitchen sink and the refrigerator, I thought of all the other times I’d seen her do that, in one room or another, one field or another.  And here we were again, in the start of my daughter’s 24^th year.

I don’t ever want it to stop. 

Big Hurt Birthday Treat

For reasons best known to himself, ex-White Sox great Frank Thomas has opened up a place some four blocks from our house.  When people think of Berwyn, it’s more on account of the bungalows than the craft brews or nightlife.  But The Big Hurt Brewhouse was where the birthday girl wanted to go and eat.

Her boyfriend Chris proved his worth by checking on the Big Hurt’s whereabouts; yes, he would be at the restaurant when we arrived.  In fact, he didn’t even have to be asked to have his picture taken with Clare.  Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, that shot of The Hurts, Big and Little, has gone micro-viral.  Thomas is a celebrity who didn’t have to be bothered; in fact, he acted as if it were no bother at all.  With that kind of attention to his patrons, Thomas may become a restaurateur on a par with Stan Musial.  At least I hope so. 

Happy Birthday

Twenty-three years ago this afternoon Clare came into the world at West Suburban Hospital.  I was in the delivery room, watching a miracle and Final Jeopardy.  There was a TV mounted on the wall, and I guessed right, “What is haggis?”  My daughter will tell you her dad appeared on the show when she was three.

 Clare drove home yesterday night for a long birthday/Thanksgiving holiday with news—she’s going to the spring-break tournaments with the Valpo softball team.  In fact, she’ll be with the team for all its games next year.  Not bad for a kid who walked into the coach’s office the first week of class and talked her way into being a volunteer assistant.  Now she’ll see up close how they do things Division I style.  Me, I’ll continue to think the bigger they are, the harder they fall, until shown otherwise.    

Due Process

Growing up, I treated athletes as heroes, and maybe they were.  Or the times were different, so that police and reporters looked the other way when somebody drank too much or let loose with their fists.  Whatever the reason, I never had cause to connect a member of the White Sox to felony behavior.

How times have changed, as Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson can attest.  Peterson pleaded guilty to charges that he hit his son with a switch.  The plea kept him out of jail but didn’t put him back on the playing field.  NFL Roger Goodell has suspended Peterson for the rest of the season, a decision Peterson is appealing.  I agree.

No, I didn’t beat Clare with a switch or anything else.  Yes, I believe in sparing the rod.  But more to the point, this is the grownup world, where due process has to apply.  If an arbitrator finds that the NFL Players Association agreed in collective bargaining to the commissioner having broad disciplinary powers, then I have no problem with Peterson going bye-bye.  MLB and its players have hammered out a disciplinary code that seems to work; just ask Alex Rodriguez.  Adrian Peterson deserves no more, no less.

Athletes aren’t heroes any more than they’re role models, but they are individuals with the right to due process.  If you’re looking for a villain here, it’s the prosecutors in Texas who signed off on no jail time for Peterson.  You can’t play behind bars, unless they’re doing a remake of “The Longest Yard.”  

Giancarlo Stanton Strikes It (Super) Rich

Here’s my problem with the Miami Marlins signing Giancarlo Stanton, their 25-year old star right fielder, to a 13-year contract worth $325 million—taxpayers are footing a lot of that salary.

That’s because Dade County and the city of Miami financed most of the $600 million-plus Marlins’ baseball complex that opened in 2012; factor in interest payments, and the public will be on the hook for anywhere between $2.4 and $3 billion.  (Exact figures are hard to come by since no one wants to talk about it.  Public officials tend to blush when word of their gullibility breaks, just as teams don’t want to be seen for the greedy entities they are.)

Any team in any sport can sign any player it wants, as long as the same rules hold for those involved and their fans.  I can buy a new car every January, just as long as I can meet my mortgage payments.  If I can’t do both, (and trust me, I can’t), the repo man will drive away with one possession while the sheriff’s deputy evicts me from the other.  Fear of financial ruins makes for great discipline in the real world.  Professional sports teams ought to try it sometime. 

That, or taxpayers should force them to.

Senior Day, Revisited

Michele and I earned our good parent stripes yesterday by attending the last game of the season for the football Elmhurst Bluejays.  Clare’s boyfriend Chris is a football graduate assistant for the archrival North Central Cardinals, who managed a 38-31 win.  We sat outside, Chris called plays from the press box.

God, it was a cold Senior Day, 32-33 degrees, gray sky with a breeze that crawled down my neck and up my sleeves.  I will never again complain about the mediocre weather that Clare had in April.  Not that the parents minded, I’m sure.  They walked out with their sons who had spent a young lifetime on the gridiron.  By 4PM that would all be over, because this is Division III (Wheaton College excepted, because they get the religious kids who don’t want to go to the big schools but will take a chance on the pros).  When it was over, there were floral bouquets and memories.

Just like in April.

What, Derrick Rose Worry?

Nothing can bother Bulls’ star guard Derrick Rose, not allegations that his high school transcript was doctored and somebody else took his SAT and not the reaction to recent comments he made.  Rose is coming two seasons marred by torn ACLs.  His return so far has been slowed by several small injuries.  This week, Rose explained why he and the team weren’t going to rush things, or at least he tried to explain.

Once his playing career is over, “I don’t want to be in my [business? charity? foreign policy?] meetings all sore or be at my son’s graduation all sore  just because of something I did in the past.”  When social media lit up with criticism, Rose responded by saying “I could care  less” about criticism.  Presumably, that includes Charles Barkley calling such talk “flat-out stupid.”

Here’s what’s stupid—a 26-year old making just under $19 million a year for a team valued at $1 billion.  Priorities, people, priorities.  

The Pied Piper, a.k.a. Scott Boras

Player agent Scott Boras is proof positive of reincarnation—the man has to be the Pied Piper of Hamlin, take two.  Boras turns general managers and owners into the most adoring of children.

PPB is more than a little worried about the national pastime.  Mr. Boras doesn’t like the way teams are moving away from free agency to developing their own talent, and he wants to see changes in how MLB does the World Series.  In an interview with the Tribune this week, Boras proposed the idea of a neutral-site Series, a la the Super Bowl.

“If we continue to do this [having the home team play, literally, at home] on a regional scale, we’re going to lose something that baseball deserves, and what it deserves is world attention.  There is a sacrifice of two, three or four [home] games for a team, but the betterment it brings to baseball on the whole far exceeds the detriment.”

I wonder how much revenue such a change would cost the Piper, I mean, Scott Boras?      

Victor Martinez

As a White Sox fan, I love Chris Sale, which is probably why I hate the Tigers’ Victor Martinez, with his career .517 batting average and .563 on-base percentage against Sale.  So, what’s the silver lining to the Tigers’ resigning Martinez to a four-year contract worth $68 million?

Basically, his age.  Martinez will be 36-39 during the course of that deal.  He’s already slow on the bases, but the Tigers don’t dare pinch run for him because for fear of losing his bat late in the game or extra innings.  At some point, you get stuck playing the contract instead of the player (See Adam Dunn and Alfonso Soriano.).  Nothing like running a .200 hitter out there game after game.  I look forward to that day with Martinez.  Maybe he won’t bother to wait to the end of the contract to start losing it.

A fan can hope, and Chris Sale, too.

Veterans Day

Twenty-six years ago today, I had planned out a lecture on what would have been the 70^th anniversary of Armistice Day.  I wanted my students to understand the folly of bad foreign policy and the horror of war, but God had other plans.  Instead, I spent the day at the hospital, where my father underwent an eight-hour operation for the removal of a brain tumor.

On a Veterans Day when Clare was in sixth grade, we went to a place called Baseball Alley for a late autumn practice.  I could be a real d.i. of a coach.  Clare would get a hundred groundballs at third base, more if I thought she needed it.  Then I pitched to her, fastballs and sliders.  She liked the one more than the other, so I threw mostly sliders to break her of the habit of moving her front foot and bat in opposite directions:  Stop doing that, for chrissakes!  Maybe I should mention that my daughter sometimes tried to get out of these practices by saying she had too much homework.

Anyway, it was a warm November 11^th, around 11 AM.  We were on the smaller of two fields, the one she had just aged out of, and for good reason.  The girl kept hitting my pitches over the fence.

These are the Veterans Days I remember.

Teaching Moments En Masse Courtesy Chicago Bears

Teaching Moments En Masse

The Bears-Packer game ended at 10:50 PM last night, and Clare called three minutes later with a question.  “The announcers keep saying how good a coach [Marc] Trestman is.  Then how can they lose, 55-14?”  A good question.

Basically, Cris Collinsworth was showing how not to provide color commentary.  What he saw before him was a team in total disarray, this coming off a bye.  The 3-4 Bears had an extra week to recover from their 51-23 whipping by the Patriots and this is how they respond.  Cris, a good football coach doesn’t let his team get outscored 101-37 in back-to-back games.

Clare called because her inner coach was upset.  So, I tried to turn the football apple into a softball orange.  What would you do, I asked?  I reminded her of similar situations during her years of playing, of coaches who lost their players and those who never had them.  How do you avoid that?

The simple answer is, by winning, which is the product of talent and preparation.  Clare tells me that even Division I players get confused when a coach hitting grounders shouts out “6-4-3” for a short to second to first double play.  I’m pretty sure that would be Lesson One on Day One from Coach Clare.  Old man Halas played enough baseball with the Yankees to appreciate that.

Dog Days, Part Two

In August at least, there’s still baseball, however bad.  In November all you have is a gray sky and windswept lawns.

Every morning, I look for the Transactions notices, always hidden, always somewhere different.  Clare, child of a new age, gets the same news from an app.  Poor kid, that means she has more time to think about miserable she is.  Valpo is located smack dab in the middle of a toilet bowl for weather.  Who knew there was such a thing as a “snow belt,” courtesy of Lake Michigan?

The general managers will be meeting soon; that should be good for a few stories.  And the winter meetings are next month, although it’ll be Cubs, Cubs, Cubs, free agents and Wrigley.  After that, January, and after that…

You get the idea.

Maddon Speaks the Truth

Addressing Chicago media yesterday at a local bar, new Cubs manager Joe Maddon referred to Wrigley Field as the “cathedral across the street.”  The White Sox could never hire anyone who talks that way.

Just try and imagine the same press conference held at 35^th and Shields.  What would Maddon have called the Cell—that saucer across the street?  That mall?  That perfect reflection of group think?  Maddon didn’t get the chance because Jerry Reinsdorf is done taking a chance on personalities.  Phil Jackson and Ozzie Guillen may have won championships for his basketball and baseball teams, but they also took the spotlight away from the Chairman, who always needs to be the sharpest guy in the room. 

Joe Maddon would have done the same.

The North and the South

Chicago baseball commands a loyalty for one side or the other, North Side or South.  It really is a kind of civil war that can pit brother against brother, if not father and daughter.

The loyalties trace back generations, to when the Cubs drew from surrounding North Side neighborhoods, generally prosperous and WASP.  In contrast, the White Sox were blue collar and anything but Protestant—Catholic mostly, but also Jewish and black.  Again, it was a neighborhood thing.  Only the class differences have changed since the Sox played their first season in 1901.  Just don’t expect Sox fans to act as though they’ve got money.  Their ancestors would rise from the dead and beat the crap out of them if they did.

There is one demographic with class implications, though, that’s still relevant.  The Cubs draw younger, unmarried fans ready and willing to spend their disposable income while the Sox have more families in the stands.  Moms and dads aren’t in the habit of spending a day—or night—at the ballpark drinking away yet another home-team loss.  That as much as anything explains why the Cubs have drawn so well over the last fifteen years or so regardless of their record.

And by hiring Joe Maddon, it looks like they’ll outdraw my Sox in 2015.  The Sunday newspapers ran so much Cub stuff you would’ve thought it was the start of the season already, not early November.  Nothing like a picture of Maddon and Tampa players holding a python to send a message to the South Side—this guy is going to steal your coverage.

The best Sox fans can do is look for the silver lining.  Chicago sports media always falls for the big personality, like Mike Ditka or Ozzie Guillen.  It also falls for the new guy in town because he’s not the old guy and maybe he’ll have a fun personality, too.  Think Dusty Baker, Lou Pinella and Marc Trestman.  When things go south, it can happen incredibly fast, with sports folk leading the charge to tar and feather the latest old guy.  This I hope is Maddon’s fate.

Or not.  Before long, the Cubs will announce how great season tickets sales are going; the Sox will probably keep that a secret.  But the team isn’t so dumb as to think it can just keep chugging along.  If they don’t win, families and everyone else will avoid the Cell like the plague (which would turn it into the ideal site for an Ebola quarantine, if nothing else).  When the Cubs introduce Maddon tomorrow, the clock starts ticking for general manager Rick Hahn and manager Robin Ventura.  They ignore it at their own peril.