Two Wrongs

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sure do make it fun.  Peterson got away with the proverbial slap on the wrist in court for using a switch on his four-year old son, and he argued that Goodell’s indefinite suspension that came after the court ruling was in essence ex post facto.  A federal judge agreed.

The NFL intends to appeal, and Peterson wants to get back to work.  Goodell’s case looks weak—he tried to apply a new conduct policy to Peterson, on top of which the arbitrator who did his bidding was a former league employee.  How do you say “bias”?

In a perfect world, the NFL loses its appeal, and nobody picks up Peterson, who so far has shown far less remorse for his transgressions than Ray Rice has for his.  If only we lived in such a place.     

Injury

Can you both dislike a player and not wish him ill?  That’s basically how I feel about Derrick Rose, someone who got a free pass when it comes to academics (Google the rumors in re high school and college) only to be dealt the injury card a third time this week at the age of 26.  There’s luck and what Derrick Rose has.

It’s impossible to tell how good Rose will be after surgery to repair the meniscus in his right knee.  He may yet, though I doubt it, justify the $94.3 million contract he signed with the Bulls in 2011.  Injuries happen all the time in pro sports.  Consider the career of Greg Bollo.

A 6’ 4” right hander out of Western Michigan, Bollo signed with the White Sox in 1964 and made the team at the age of 21 a year later.  He pitched a total of 29.2 innings in 1965-1966, and then vanished.  Bollo’s major-league career was over before he could celebrate his 23^rd birthday.  I always wondered why, if for no other reason I liked the name “Bollo,” which struck me as a little like “Bukowski.”

Around the time Greg Bollo turned 70 I found out what happened while reading an online CNN Money story on Tommy John and Frank Jobe, the surgeon who saved his career.  According to John, “We had a kid when I was with the White Sox named Greg Bollo who could really throw the ball.  But after he had [bone] chips taken out in 1966, he was never able to come back.  There were a lot of guys like that.  It was a real shame.” (“Surgeon Should Make Cooperstown ‘Cut,’” Chris Isidore, CNN Money, 7-27-07)

Elbow, knee, shoulder, back—the body will betray an athlete a hundred different ways.  The lucky player will have a big contract that provides protection.  But with or without a boatload of money, the career is over, and life goes on.

The Sunshine State

Guess who said, “If I can’t go to Florida next spring, you can’t either” when I broached the subject last fall.  Hint:  It wasn’t me.  Guess who’s going to Florida the week after next.  Not me.

But johnny-on-the-spot Clare the softball-team G.A. will, after turning an Arkansas lemon into the sweetest Florida lemonade this side of the snow belt.  The weather in Arkansas is so bad that by Monday they had already cancelled the Friday tournament in Fayettville AR.  The new G.A. was then given the job of trolling the Internet to find a replacement, which she did in good ol’ Kissimmee, where some CCIW teams have been known to play.  In fact, Kissimmee and the Bluejays’ stomping grounds at Orlando are pretty close, but Valpo will be in town a week ahead of Elmhurst.

The girl won’t get to play or visit former teammates, but she will get to soak up the sun, which is more than you can say for me.    

Stop the Insanity

If only stories in the sports’ section could talk to one another, then MLB Commissioner Manfred and Sox manager Robin Ventura would be on the same page figuratively as well as literally.

The top story on page five of today’s Tribune sports mentions the commissioner’s concern over declining offense.  Then, in the story below, Robin Ventura says he might go north with 13 pitchers.  Manfred and Ventura are dots begging to be connected, if not erased.

For openers, the more pitchers on a roster, the less offense, unless Manfred has found a way to clone that hard-throwing lefty, Babe Ruth.  Thirteen pitchers means no room for the next Smoky Burgess or Lenny Harris to get a pinch hit, no room for the next Allan Lewis—or do you say “Panamanian Express”?—to steal a base pinch running, no room for the next Johnny Blanchard to be a platoon-player extraordinaire.  Instead of that, we get the late inning, lefty-lefty matchup.  Thank you, Tony LaRussa.  (And, yes, the ten-man staff also allowed for flexibility on defense as well.  Think Ray Oyler or Mark Belanger coming in at short in the ninth inning to steal a hit or two with their fielding.)

When I was a mere boy, the White Sox made do with a staff of ten pitchers.  In 1965, they had two relievers, knuckleballers Eddie Fisher and Hoyt Wilhelm, who amassed over 300 innings between them; sinker-baller Bob Locker added another 91 innings.  In addition, four of their starters, including a young Tommy John, made relief appearances.  I could see the virtues of the expanded staff if that meant saving arms, but pitchers appear to get hurt as much today as in 1965.  If the knuckleball and sinker (along with maybe the screwball) are more forgiving on the arm/elbow, then teams need to bring those pitches back.  (Oh my, girl knuckleballers.  That would never do, now would it?) 

I keep waiting for a team to show how everything old can be new again.  But it doesn’t look like that’ll happen this year.  

Character Building

From what I can tell, Clare had a barrel of fun in Birmingham over the weekend.  The temperature for the first game Friday was a “delightful” 24 degrees.  That means bees in the bat, bees in the mitt, bees in the butt on the bench.  The mercury never did climb into the 60s, so Sunday’s finale was cancelled, but there was no rescheduling the flight.  Instead, everybody got to hang around town and airport until departure time at 6 PM; that included a team meal so bad the restaurant manager tore up the bill by way of apology.  Isn’t there an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song that goes “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again”?  Or Birmingham, for that matter.

The flight to Midway took two hours, followed by baggage wait and the drive back to Indiana (how sad, that.  Indiana wants me, I won’t…).  Clare tumbled into bed at 10:30, the perfect end to a day that started around 5 AM.  This is why college athletes are encouraged to take easy schedules, at least in-season.  Playing, practice and travel wreak havoc on GPAs. 

Parents, don’t raise your boys or girls to be cowboys or cowgirls.  But equip them with good study habits, by all means.  

Love It or Leave It

 Oh, do Cub pitchers dislike the notion of speeding up the game.  (Sox pitchers probably do, too, but nobody thought to ask.)  Why can’t they leave things alone? starter Jason Hammel complained in today’s Tribune.  “It’s a great game.  How many times are you going to flip these things and change the rules and bend them here and there?  Football is going to become flag football very soon,” and readers are left to wonder if Hammel can tell one sport from another, or if he suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder.

Over at the Sun-Times, Jake Arrieta was quoted as saying efforts to speed up the game are “ridiculous.”  He thinks it’s all about getting “16-to-30 year olds more interested in baseball,” which will fail.  “I don’t think you completely change the way the game’s been played forever because we can’t get people to put their iPhones down.”  Good to know that Arrieta doesn’t suffer from that very same bad habit.            

No, he just worries about a spur-of-the-moment decision to attract “people that don’t necessarily even like baseball anyways.  If they don’t really like the game of baseball, the people that do love the game of baseball are going to suffer for it.”

People that do love the game—how ungrammatical and yet crystal clear.  Arrieta means only ballplayers can love the game, and fans who agree with those ballplayers.  Somehow, I’ve ended up with the iPhone crowd, and I don’t even own one.

Speed-Up

New Commissioner Manfred and the Players’ Association have announced a plan to speed up the game by basically adapting the same approach a sixth-grade teacher uses to keep the boys in line: Don’t step out of the box, warm up now, let’s go the cameras are on.  No detention for breaking the rules, just fines and possible suspensions.

One thing the mlb.com story didn’t mention was what to do about Fox broadcasts; low scores are no bar to three-hour plus games; Joe Buck’s droning on only makes it seem like four.  So, a modest suggestion to the powers that be that could help with Fox and more:  Announce a bonus plan starting at, say, $500,000, for umpiring crews with the shortest average game times over the course of the season.

Oh, and a minimum qualifying time of two hours and thirty minutes.    

Calendar Confusion

The temperature this morning bottomed out at six-below, with a wind-chill factor of God knows what.  The only reason to get out of bed is because pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp in Arizona.  I’d prefer it be Florida, but I digress (as in noting that Clare will be dealing with a range of temperatures from 34 to 65 degrees this weekend when Valpo softball plays in beautiful Birmingham Alabama).  

So, after I pull on two sweatshirts with sweatpants over long underwear, what do I get to read at the breakfast table?  A Tribune sports section with not one, not two, not three, not four but five, yes five, stories on the football Bears, whose season opener is nearly seven months off.  The White Sox and Cubs, weather willing, are set to play in just about seven weeks.  What will the Bears do about their mistake-prone mope of a quarterback, Jay Cutler?  Who gives a crap?  I want baseball.

Oh, and to the folks at the Trib: Yes, old habits are hard to break, but try to motivate yourselves to do two baseball stories a day, one on the Sox and one on the Cubs.  You don’t own the North Siders anymore.     

Mistakes Were Made...

 Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the difference between “lightning bug” and “lightning,” or “apology” and “Alex Rodriguez.”

Rodriguez issued a handwritten apology yesterday sadly devoid of the right words.  Yankee fans were told, “I take full responsibility for the mistakes that led to my suspension for the 2014 season.”  Whose mistakes?  Rodriguez could just as well be saying that a subordinate screwed up, which is true in a way.  He goes on to note, “I served the longest suspension in the history of the league for PED use.”  So?  Does he want a medal?  Truly, this was a case of the punishment fitting the crime, if only person at fault would admit it.  But he prefers to say the commissioner and players’ association both consider the matter over, which means—now wait for it—“I’m ready to put this chapter behind me and play some ball.”

Do you think Rodriguez read Lou Gehrig’s farewell address at Yankee Stadium for inspiration?  Me neither.

On the Cusp of Pitchers and Catchers

 Driving to Valparaiso yesterday was like leaving the rear for the front lines—evidence of the enemy was everywhere, snow piled high and packed hard.  Either the good people of Indiana have run out of salt, or they’ve lost the battle to clear their roads of slick spots.

Clare had just time enough this Presidents’ Day for lunch, after which there was practice and ever-so-many jobs for the new graduate assistant; arranging the team menu for out-of –state travel is hard enough, more so when you factor in Friday is Lent and Birmingham Alabama might not be up on meatless options.  But Miss Manners got the job done.

If Clare has a few seconds between practice and class to think about baseball, the MLB app will give her all the updates she could want.  Daddy, though, is what they call a digital immigrant, someone rooted in hardcopy, not screens.  For him (me), late February meant runs to Charles Drugstore, to scan the magazine rack.  Many of the baseball publications I bought combined girlie-magazine graphics with New York Post prose.  CEPEDA: Fiery Leader of Cards.  CLEMENTE: His Inner Struggles.  Charles Atlas and his minions took up lots of ad space inside.  Steroids had nothing on them.

Baseball Digest was classier.  It offered stories like “Bill Melton: The New Harmon Killebrew?” [alas, no, he fell off a roof and screwed up his back] and “[Angel] Mangual of the A’s: An Angel with a Quick Bat/His development allowed Oakland to trade away Rick Monday” [a mistake, that].  I particularly enjoyed the annual rookie report, about how Don Lung in the Cubs’ system “has potential to be another Santo” and the Phillies’ Lowell Palmer “knows how to pitch.”  Really, scouting is a hit-or-miss proposition.

They more or less stopped printing baseball magazines before I stopped buying them.  Big, fat scouting reports with spray charts and hot-and-cold breakdowns of a hitter’s strike zone; Street and Smith’s annual predictions; and the Baseball Register.  And, whenever updates came out, I bought the Bible, aka the Baseball Encyclopedia.  Needless to say, the above always kept me from poking fun at my wife for buying issues of Vogue.

The hardcopy tradition carries on, precariously, with Who’s Who in Baseball.  I’ll have to see if Barnes and Noble has it in yet.

         

Tony Gwynn, Contd.

The Valparaiso baseball team is playing this weekend at San Diego State, alma mater of Tony Gwynn.  “If I were there, I’d probably cry,” Clare admitted yesterday.  

Again, this is all amazing to me.  If I look to my right, I can see the photo of Clare and yours truly with Walt “No Neck” Williams, taken when she was five.  The picture means more to me than it ever will to my daughter.  Bumping into Bill “Moose” Skowron at SoxFest freshman of college went a little better, especially when Skowron told Clare to take the ball up the middle without concern for the pitcher’s head (add expletive where you think Moose may have put it).  But Gwynn, the perpetual National Leaguer, is the man for my daughter, more so maybe than Frank Thomas.

So, we go back to how baseball relates to people in a way football and basketball can’t, at least for anyone normal sized.  Imagine what would happen if a woman were ever to make a big-league roster.  Right, owner Oprah?

By Her Bootstraps

Think of Valparaiso Indiana as Buffalo New York West.  When the winter wind blows off Lake Michigan, it snows to the point of human despair.  Yesterday, we had sun all day in beautiful Berwyn, but Valparaiso, 75 minutes away in good traffic, was under a blizzard warning.  Not that Clare really cared.

No, the de facto graduate assistant for Valparaiso softball is now official, picture on the website and everything (with bio to come).  When the team found out, the players started chanting “Coach Clare, Coach Clare,” and the girl in question loved it.  Her first official job was to look at some pitching tapes.  “I want to be able to say it’s more than her release point if there’s a problem.”  Of course, having Elmhurst College’s all-time homerun hitter study pitching is a little like Ronald Reagan reading the Communist Manifesto.  What will anyone get out of it?

Scandal

Yesterday, Little League International stripped Jackie Robinson West of its national title for using players outside its district.  In other words, they cheated.

What most people don’t realize is that the Little League World Series consists of all-star teams from the various districts; I doubt if a majority of people watching the Series on ESPN knew that.  They assumed, as most Chicagoans did, that the players on Jackie Robinson West had been together all season and fought their way to the Series.  No, it’s not like the 2005 Sox—or 1908 Cubs—slogging through 150-plus games to reach the playoffs; it’s more like the American League and National League All-Stars facing off in the Series.  That takes some of the romance out of it.

Jackie Robinson West (the name is synonymous with a district or league) apparently took players from outside its district to put on its all-start team for tournament play.  That’s clearly wrong.  The only defense I can see working is “Everyone does it.”  If so, social media will serve as the defense attorney for JRW.  Personally, I root for the underdog, and Chicago is always the underdog.

The only silver lining right now is that the scandal doesn’t do any favors for ESPN.  Like I said in the summer, these are kids playing, not pros.  To confuse the one with the other helps no one, least of all kids.

Connect the Dots that Spell "NFL"

 What’s not to like about the National Football League, what with new Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan declaring at his first news conference, “We’re going to build a bully, and we’re going to see if you want to play with us for sixty minutes”?  Talk about keeping your word.  The Bills have gone out and signed offensive lineman Richie Incognito, he of the bullying tendencies and 2013 eight-game suspension.  (In the NFL, bad words come before actions.)

Meanwhile, the Rams are trying to extort a new stadium out of St. Louis because the team is stuck in a facility already twenty years old; rumor has the Rams wants to move back to southern California, from whence they came in 1995.  Only Roger Goodell has made it clear to owners that franchise relocation is a league, not a team, decision.

Gosh, isn’t that what used to be called “restraint of trade,” in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

Glass Ceilings--and Hardwood Floors

 The Tribune picked up a story today on Natalie Nakase, who has gone from UCLA point guard to assistant video coordinator with the Los Angeles Clippers, with some overseas coaching in between.  Nakase wants to be an NBA coach, to which I can only say, Good luck.

The story, of course, was far more positive.  In fact, the bad guy—because he doubted—is Nakase’s father.  Maybe the senior Nakase knows something his daughter doesn’t, like the tenuous nature of her position.  A new coach or GM, and she’s gone, which also holds true for Becky Hammon, the first-ever female NBA assistant coach.  Hammon’s just lucky she has Gregg Popovich for a boss.  Popovich, who chalked up NBA win number 1,000 last night—won’t be fired anytime soon.  Then again, he could always retire at the end of the season.

Regardless the pro sport, women will only advance as far as ownership allows them to.  When people think of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, they identify Rickey as the general manager who made it happen, but Rickey was GM and part owner of the Dodgers.  It wasn’t as if someone in the owners’ suite was going to stop Rickey from signing Robinson.

Until the next Rickey buys into a team, women can expect to make fitful progress as coaches and execs, if that.  Trust me, there are no Branch Rickeys in Chicago.  There used to be Oprah Winfrey, and she’s richer than Croesus.  Too bad for Natalie Nakase (and Clare Bukowski, for that matter) Oprah would rather own a network than a team.

The Making of an Apprentice, Non-Trump

The de facto graduate assistant went on her first road trip of the season, accompanying the Valpo softball team to a weekend tournament at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.  The things she learned, like how an arm could hurt after throwing four hours’ worth of soft toss or a butt from sitting on an oversized bucket to chart pitches or how to carry two cases of water from the gas station down the road back to the hotel without dropping anything or getting hit by a passing car or how to print out boarding passes for players without one.

None of this was especially hard for Clare; she wants to learn everything that’s part of being a coach.  What she didn’t expect, though, was the lesson from the lineup card.  “I kept looking for my name.”  It wasn’t there.

Dodging the Draft

The Tribune did such a good job breaking the story on what the NFL wants in order to hold its 2015 draft at the Auditorium Theatre downtown, only to ruin it with a columnist’s piece on Sunday that the three-day circus would be “A boon, not a burden.”

First, the likely costs.  Ostensibly, there won’t be any to the city, because a private group is handling negotiations.  Odd, then, the NFL should feel the need to “request that you and your team keep confidential the content of this request letter and the fact that you have received” said letter.  Now, why would the NFL be so touchy about the public finding out it expects “party spaces”; “sponsor activation zones”; and free police escorts for draft choices flying into town, to say nothing of plenty of guaranteed hotel room availability for league and media personnel?  Three million might cover costs, or four million.  Or more.  Of course, it’s possible the final tab will be considerably less because the private group drove a hard bargain while negotiating, but I doubt it.

Which brings us to the columnist arguing why the city should bend to the NFL’s wishes:  “Holding the draft in Chicago represents a nationally televised 72-hour long commercial, whether it’s recurring shots of the skyline or cutaways to Gran Park and the lakefront that leave an impression on potential vacationers and conventioneers in the audience.”  Given all the above, “how steep is the price to locals really?”

Well, let’s see.  Weren’t a new Comiskey Park and a rebuilt Soldier Field, both helped along with public funding, supposed to accomplish pretty much the same thing?  Ditto the soon-to-be renovated Wrigley Field (though done privately).  I’d like to know how many blimp shots Chicago’s gotten over the last twenty years, every one of them breathtaking in its own way.  Add them up, and then subtract all the losses by the respective teams and all the Capone or Murder City comments that won’t go away.

What will you be left with then?      

Ouch

Ouch

The Tigers had to know this could happen.  Victor Martinez sat out all of 2012 with a torn ACL in his left knee.  Granted, his next two seasons were first-rate, but why commit $68 million over four years to a 36-year old first baseman/dh (Martinez used to catch, until people my age started to steal on him)?  Now, he’s torn the meniscus on that left knee while exercising.  Martinez could be back in four to six weeks, or not.

Ball clubs get into to trouble when they forget to look at the age of players.  GMs assume throwing enough money after a free agent will somehow turn back the hands of time.  But anyone signing a player 35 or older for more than two years is playing with fire.  Just ask the Tigers.

And to think the knock on female athletes is they’re susceptible to knee injuries.

Signing Day

The sports’ pages today are full of signing-day stories:  he (definitely not she) went to this football school, or that one, or this one and that one (for the talented but confused athlete).  Division I is a world of its own.

Contrast the above to what happened with Clare as a high school senior—nothing, at first.  Athletes at Morton West didn’t go on to play in college all that much, so there was never a school-sponsored signing day.  What happened is that Clare’s softball coach Eucs told me to tell the Sun-Times where she and her son were going.  I was the official team scorekeeper, whose duties included calling up the Chicago papers with scores and recaps.  The Times also put letter-of-intent announcements in the Transactions’ section. 

So, if you looked real hard one day in the spring of 2010, you could have seen that Clare Bukowski was going to play softball at Elmhurst College.  That was it.  Pictures and breathless stories about dreams come true were saved for another day and a different sport. 

Heavenly Tour, Contd.

I took Clare to her first game at Wrigley Field when she was eleven.  We saw the Brewers and Cubs, with a healthy (!) Mark Pryor striking out 16 in eight innings only to have the bullpen lose it in the ninth.  Hate the team but love the park, I advised, which Clare has done all the times since on her visits to Clark and Addison.

So, I do go to the enemy’s lair from time to time and hope to God that this Ricketts’ “renovation” doesn’t ruin the wonder of the place.  If it does, at least there are plenty of old pics and clips on the Internet to remind everyone of what once was.  I stumbled on one this morning, a home movie showing what was probably Opening Day 1938.  The newly planted ivy had yet to bloom, nor had the two lines of potted trees (yes, really) angling down beneath either side of the scoreboard.   

As ever, one thing led to another after that until I found myself looking at a clip of the Cubs-Yankees World Series of 1932, game one, I think, at Yankee Stadium.  Again, hate the team but love the park, how your grandfather—or my daughter—could pull the ball down the lines (originally 295’ in right, 281’ in left) while not even Paul Bunyan could take it out to dead center (490’).  Marvel at the incredibly close-in second, or mezzanine, of the three decks and the copper frieze that hung from the roof.  Then ask why such a thing of beauty had to be torn down.

What George Steinbrenner said is not what the pictures show, but what do I know?   

Snapshots

A number of years ago, Mary Frances Veeck and I got to talking about heaven.  For her, it involved time enough to read all the books she had ever wanted to.  For me, it was the chance to visit all the ballparks, the real ones.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to take in a game at the Polo Grounds with that centerfield over 500 feet deep and a left field just 280 feet down the line, and 258 in right? Talk about a horseshoe design for maximum effect.

Until the pearly gates swing open for yours truly (assuming they do) , I keep an eye out for old stuff, like that newsreel of the 1919 World Series that was found buried in the Yukon; now I know what Redland (not yet Crosley) Field looked like from the cockpit of a biplane flying overhead.  And next time you watch an episode of Homerun Derby, just remember they filmed it at the other Wrigley Field, in south Los Angeles.  Vines grew on the outfield wall there, too.

Ebay is another good place to catch glimpses of the past.  A few months ago someone put up pictures of Luke Easter and Minnie Minoso in front of Comiskey Park, 1952, and now there’s a photo of Sam Mele standing in the outfield at Griffith Stadium in D.C., same year; a light tower in the right field bleachers looks to be growing out of Mele’s left shoulder.  And that big, double-decked grandstand in left—they don’t build them like that anymore.

At an opening bid of ninety-nine cents, how can I pass this up?

XLIX: It's Greek to Me

 I just don’t get the mass appeal of football, or want to.  For me, the Super Bowl matters more as a harbinger of pitchers and catchers than anything else (and next year’s game is set for February 7, less than a week before most p’s and c’s report to camp).  And the commercials—has it really come to this, Americans wanting to be entertained through advertising while stuffing their faces with junk food?

There must be a lot of prime-demographic guys out there who dream about going to a bar, drinking a beer and ending up as a real, live version of Pac Man; I don’t.  Hardly anyone complains about the length of time—just about four hours—of the ad-bloated Super Bowl; I do.  And when was the last time a World Series ended in a fight?

This is what happens when a game is severed from its roots.  With baseball, the ghosts of Ruth, et al hover over proceedings, always ready to pull the game back from the abyss the clown powers that be would drive it over, if only they could.  But the ghost of George Halas has left the building, and the Bears don’t play in Wrigley Field anymore.  Or the Patriots at Fenway.