Ingratitude

Pity the poor Chicago media.  They’ve abandoned all objectivity in covering the Bears—pages of space devoted to the opening of camp, film coverage that virtually leads on the early news broadcasts.  And how do the Bears react?  They announce new rules to limit media access to practice.  No filming of drills, no blogging or tweeting anything the team considers to be privileged information during practice.  Supposedly, everything goes back to normal come the second exhibition game.

“You might be shooting a specific guy, but perhaps there’s something [interesting] going on in the background,” a team official told the Trib this morning.  “There are tells [!] throughout the league, and the coaches and scouts are pretty savvy.  We want to make sure we protect ourselves.”

From what, exactly?  News of offensive schemes that don’t expose Jay Cutler’s weaknesses?  Defensive schemes that show an actual defense?   Somehow, I doubt Bill Belichick and the Patriots will go sneaking around Bears’ camp, unless they’re looking to post comedy shorts on YouTube.  Remember the old saying—sleep with dogs, and you wake up with fleas.   Rub up to the Bears, and they jerk your chain.         

Birthdays

About the same time that the number associated with a particular birthday becomes worrisome, you start to reminisce about earlier, more comfortable numbers, like the one five years ago today.  We had just finished Clare’s last summer of travel ball.

That she played at all was a surprise, but one of her new coaches at Elmhurst asked, and it was the kind of offer you don’t refuse.  In her first tournament, Clare hit a grand slam; the ball went so far Coach Mike had to wish it was spring already so he could watch the freshman face college pitching.  At nationals in Chattanooga, she whetted his appetite a little more by winning the homerun-hitting contest.  Once March arrived, the freshman would go about setting the school single-season record for home runs. 

Other birthdays come with other memories, one in particular when I turned nine; my sister Betty bought me a friction toy, an x-15 that sparked through openings in the middle.  A toy like that only comes around once in a life, as you can well imagine.  I’ve been looking for it on eBay since Betty died 5-1/2 years.

The cousins’ picnic on my father’s side of the family used to take place after my birthday, on the first weekend in August.  I hated having to make nice with people my dad grew up with; somehow, each one of them knew more about me than I did them.  The cousins are gone now, and I would give anything to have to endure another picnic.  At least Clare went often enough to grow fond of Bingo.

One time, a third cousin of mine showed up with her husband, a hotshot Chicago politician; his clout eventually went to jail, but he stayed free.  Anyhow, Mr. Alderman thought it would be fun to pitch to all the little kiddies, but he didn’t know about my 4-1/2 year old until she lined a ball into his stomach, twice.  Like they say in the commercial, How you like me now?

Some things you just can’t forget.

Me and My Schwinn

 What red-blooded American boy doesn’t want a motorcycle on his eighteenth birthday?  I did in July of 1970 and asked my parents.  When they finished laughing, I asked for a Schwinn ten-speed.  I still have it—a forest-green Varsity with chrome fenders—all these years later.

I’ve always loved riding a bike.  I’d set out from home and end up miles away in some other part of the city or a suburb.  There was no greater fun than tackling one of those massive overpasses that spanned a railroad yard, expressway or the Chicago River; the way up might have been hard, but look out below.  I never bothered to think what might happen if I needed to stop suddenly.  Oh, to be young again.

Two summers before the Schwinn, I convinced a friend to go with me on our bikes to Brookfield Zoo, ten miles from home, half of it on streets more familiar to trucks than bicycles; somehow, we survived.  With the Schwinn, I pedaled off to a date on the Northwest Side and commuted a few times to school (DePaul) in Lincoln Park.  The bike got stored away after the wedding but found the light of day after Clare learned to ride her bike.  Only Dad ended up a better peddler than his daughter.  The old man likes to do fifty miles or so on his birthday.

I once worked a summer camp where we took a tour of the Schwinn factory on the West Side; it was dark, noisy and smelled of fresh paint.  That plant helped make Schwinn king of the biking world, until cheap imports came along and turned the company into little more than a nameplate.  When the Schwinn family sold their interest in the company in the 1990s, some employees bought a satellite plant where they used to make the “Cadillac” Schwinn, viz. the Paramount, which now goes for $1000 and up—way up—on eBay. 

The plant, located in Waterford WI, still makes bikes.  If only I had the arm and the leg it costs to buy one, I might finally retire my trusty Varsity.  Then again, why would I ever do something so dumb? 

Third basemen

In the late 1960s I took solace in the play of a young White Sox third baseman by the name of Bill Melton; he was the only guy on the team who could hit with power.  At the fairly tender age of 26, Melton had amassed 91 homeruns for a team where the stolen base had always mattered more than the long ball.  Then Melton had to go fall off a roof one offseason and hurt his back; he was never the same.  Not that Harry Caray cared.  The Sox announcer turned on Melton the way he had Ken Boyer in St. Louis and would with Ron Cey on the North Side:  I don’t know why they throw [insert name here] a fastball….

Several years ago, Melton took the job of postgame analyst on Sox telecasts, and he’s actually good, what you might call a critical homer; he wants the team to win, but he’ll tell you all the reasons why they’re not.  Better yet, he never pretends to have been more of a player than he was.  Stacey King, take note.

Melton the announcer has had the good sense not to pull a Harry Caray with Sox rookie Tyler Saladino, a 26-year old who’s come out of nowhere to claim the starting job at third.  National Public Radio has been following Saladino through the minors over the past four years, and they seem to have gotten it right—Saladino doesn’t have an ounce of flash to him; rather, he’s a ballplayer who looks steady and projects smart.  I can live with that.  

Bear Down

On Saturday, the Cubs were no-hit for the first time in 49 years and 10 or so months, not that the Tribune seemed to notice.  No, the Sunday sports’ section was devoted to the Bears, and I do mean devoted, starting on page one.  New head coach John Fox got the full Andy Warhol treatment in a picture, with just enough room left for the first five paragraphs of a story on the Cubs.

The Trib devoted three—count ‘em, three—full pages to Fox’s career.  I learned that, as the stepson of a Navy SEAL, Fox values “discipline and mental toughness”; he believes “if players know you genuinely care about them and they know you can make them better, they’ll do anything for you”; his coaching mantra is “smart and tough”; as the Giants’ defensive coordinator “players came to detest and respect him for his want to always keep the pads on and the contact high”; and defensive end Michael Strahan thinks Fox’s “constant emphasis on being physical was crucial to his own development” into a Hall-of-Fame player.  You don’t say.

The above could be read as a level 5 hurricane warning, if hurricanes manifested themselves as questionable coaching philosophies leading to serious injury.  From everything I can see, John Fox wants his players to lead with their heads on a tackle and the leave the thinking to him, which makes sense given how often their heads will be ringing.  I wonder what the concussion count is for this guy.  Players beware, and reporters take a more critical look at what you write in praise.

Strange Luck

My friend Frank saw his first no-hitter in 1962, when he was 10; Bill Monbouquette of the Red Sox beat the White Sox 1-0 at Comiskey Park.  Yesterday, Frank was at Wrigley Field, where Cole Hamels no-hit the Cubs, 5-0.  I’m going to have to ask Frank if he believes in reincarnation.  If so, he may be the second coming of Albert Charles Dunn, who survived the Titanic and Lusitania sinkings, along with two others.  Talk about luck.   

Different Paths

Clare and her boyfriend Chris went exploring the Finger Lakes yesterday while we settled for nothing greater than a lagoon, the one in Humboldt Park to be exact.

Chicago’s park system is a wonder, second only to New York’s, and I’m not too sure about that qualifier.  What comes after Central Park?  If you have to pause, then the Big Apple may be trying to get by on reputation alone.  What comes after Lincoln Park?  Well, you can start with Humboldt Park, let alone Jackson and Washington, one of which will be home to the Obama Presidential Library.  And we don’t even need to consider the Garfield Park Conservatory here (although you might want to go anyhow).

Humboldt is the legacy of Jens Jensen, a Danish immigrant who fell in love with the Midwestern prairie.  As superintendent of the West Parks (don’t ask, it’s a long story), Jensen decided to bring the prairie to this park on the Near Nothwest Side.  Jensen arranged a river, lagoon and trees to invoke a sense of Illinois as it existed before the arrival of us European folk.  On top of that, Jensen happened to be buddies with a number of Prairie architects, so the park is filled with Prairie-designed planters and light fixtures as well as a boathouse, part of which has been converted into a café.  Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t design any of it, but I suspect he would’ve liked eating at the Boathouse Cafe.  I recommend the Monte Cristo sandwich and an umbrella table.  Consider the view of the park as dessert.

Jensen, like Frederick Law Olmsted, wanted city people to find nature in a park; we did that after lunch with a walk around the lagoon, which is bordered with a full array of prairie flowers.  The area used to be Polish, then Puerto Rican, and now it’s gentrifying, like the neighborhoods around the 606 Trail a little further north.  The park long has been a hotbed of baseball, though recently it’s had to yield some space to soccer.  Really, not all change is for the better.   

A Crack in the Glass Ceiling, or not

 San Antonio Spurs’ assistant coach Becky Hammon won the NBA Summer League championship this week, which led Commissioner Adam Silver to more or less predict Hammon or another woman would one day head up an NBA team.  To what extent Silver would help make that happen, he didn’t say.

I’m curious about any backlash to that first-ever hire, and not the caveman kind; that you expect.  What do women’s sports’ advocates think of Hammon?  A quick Google search didn’t turn up anything, but still I wonder.  Look hard enough, and you’ll come across a pro-Negro Leagues’ sentiment, along the lines that something important was lost when Jackie Robinson broke the color line.  There are those who prefer being a big fish in a small pond.  I’d take my chances in the bigger venue.

Hammon credits Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich for taking a chance on her; Clare hasn’t found a second Popovich yet.  Clare’s old hitting coach has mentioned opening up his own school and hiring her.  But the Pride of Elmhurst College wouldn’t be showing little boys how to hit.  Girls do softball, and the spirit of the Negro Leagues carries on.

¿Habla Español?

Royals’ starting pitcher Yordano Ventura’s season just yo-yoed fast enough to cause a bad case of whiplash.  Ventura, he of the headhunting tendencies on the mound, was sent to the minors on Tuesday; the 14-game winner of a year ago is struggling this season at 4-7 with a 5.19 ERA.  But before Ventura could pack his proverbial bags, the Royals brought him back due to a season-ending injury to pitcher Jason Vargas.  Ventura should consider himself lucky.

Or not, given his semi-exile in an English-speaking world.  You see, major league baseball would rather not talk about its language problem—the front office and coaches all speak English while some 28 percent of the players are Hispanic.  Basically, teams have a coach or two who speaks Spanish along with a few more-or-less bilingual players.  But considering the money involved, this is no way to run a big business.

Have you ever been struck by accents while traveling in the U.S.?  I have.  The first time we were in New York, I had to suppress my “Huh?” reflex to the speech sounds and patterns I heard, and that was before moving on to Boston.  I mean, whatever happened to the letter R?  Now apply the same experience to baseball.  “Spanish” means one thing to a Dominican player, another to a Cuban, another to a Venezuelan, and something else again to a Colombian.  Put three such Spanish-speaking players on the mound for a conference, and what have you got?  Something between my excellent adventure to the East Coast and an updated version of the Tower of Babel.

Yordano Ventura had a 3.20 ERA last season.  What happened?  Maybe Royals’ manager Ned Yost (born in Eureka, CA) or pitching coach Dave Eiland (Dade City, FL) speaks enough Spanish to find out, but I doubt it, and the team has all of one Spanish-surnamed coach listed on its website.  Most likely, Yordano Ventura and anyone like him struggle to be understood and understand.  Unless baseball can borrow that universal translator from Star Trek, it had better get serious about going bilingual.   

Early-bird Special

I was up this morning at 5:45 AM.  The last time that happened it was for softball.  According to some old notes of mine, we all got up at 4:45 one fine June morning for a Saturday tournament in (not so) beautiful Kankakee, an hour-plus south of Chicago.  Our first game was scheduled for 7:30, and everybody had to be there an hour before game time, everybody, that is, except for the coaches.  They got to be late and not have to run laps.

But today the daddy taxi went in the opposite direction, to O’Hare Airport, so Clare could catch an early flight to Syracuse and spend the weekend with her boyfriend, Chris.  Let me just say that I hate bumper-to-bumper traffic at 60 MPH.  You count your blessings, though.  God and nature didn’t see fit to throw in a little rain.

And the real silver lining is we had the whole day to play.  Michele took some time off so we made our way to the far northern reaches of Cook County, where the Chicago Botanic Garden is located.  Smelling the roses may not count as sports, but beating the $25 parking fee does.  We parked in a nearby forest preserve and walked in; for some reason, pedestrians are let in free.  At least I thought it was close by.  We spent over an hour walking each way, on top of the time spent exploring the garden.  In my house, this kind of activity is known as Doug’s version of the Bataan Death March.  How people exaggerate.  Everyone who started on our little march finished.  Maybe not everyone is talking to me, but they lived. 

Bit by Bit

Clare was nine or ten the day my elbow popped throwing BP to her; that balanced out the pain in my shoulder, which was different from the pain in the small of my back.  If only I hadn’t slipped on ice in the parking lot of Miami Bowl two days before starting a job that had me carrying 50-pound-plus coils on my back and climbing up racks to reach them.

I’m not complaining, either about the job or the elbow.  The one made me appreciate what my father said about all work being honorable; the other I’d go through again in a heartbeat for what it’s led to.  But a person does seem to accumulate aches and pains along the way.  Oh, well.

The one thing I don’t do but would like to try at my age—let’s just say 65 isn’t a number all that far away—is fast-pitch.  Perhaps you say line ball.  Whichever, it’s what guys did where I grew up.  And I belonged to a group of guys who did it until we were 40.

We chalked a strike zone on a playground wall, and then set about lying whether or not a pitch hit the line.  It was the same for our foul lines—when we were up, that ball was to the left of the tree, but when we in the field, it was definitely foul and to the right of the second oak.  Grounders had to be fielded before the parked Buick, and a throw from the outfield that hit the box on the fly or bounce was a double play.

A lawyer, a doctor, a teacher and a professor—we were all a bunch of overaged kids, swearing and lying and swinging off our front foot.  But at 41 our schedules conspired with our bodies to bring a halt to our games.  I kept up for a while after that pitching to Clare at a nearby school; three or four pitches a minute taught her always to be ready, and me to duck when she lined a rubber ball up the middle.  If there are any grandchildren, maybe I can learn to throw left handed.          

Theo's Dime

The Cubs just announced they’re designating right-handed starter Edwin Jackson for assignment.  Two years ago, Cubs’ president Theo Epstein signed Jackson to a four-year $52 million contract.  Guess who’ll be on the line for the $15.6 million still due on that contract?  Hint:  It won’t be me.

But it would’ve been had Jackson signed with the White Sox.  Like the great majority of U.S. professional sports’ teams, the Sox play in a publicly funded arena.  Better yet (for them), rent is, or was, based on attendance, which means the worse the team plays (think Tyler Flowers), the less it hurts.  The public stadium authority is loath to disclose particulars of the lease agreement, so it is theoretically possible that things have changed and the Sox now pay a flat fee, sort of like renters in the real world, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it.  

Now, back to the Cubs.  The Jackson contract is a $52 million dollar hit to the organization, a very expensive lesson and a mistake Epstein will be slow to repeat.  (For what it’s worth, the Sox also had Jackson once upon a time, but he wore out his welcome inside of a year.)  This is the kind of market lesson conservatives love, or should.  And when the White Sox signed Adam Dunn to a four-year, $56 million deal back in 2011, that  constituted government interference  in the marketplace.  Jerry Reinsdorf  money not spent on a mortgage and property taxes for his own facility was money wasted on a big donkey. 

All of which means I’m not laughing too much at Theo Epstein eating crow today.  I know from experience how it tastes.  

Go Fish

Growing up, my sister Barb loved to fish; this and firecrackers somehow defined her summers.  As the child did, so too the adult, to the point of taking our parents up to Wisconsin to fish (and buy illegal fireworks on the way home).  She also wanted to include her niece, but the idea of holding a pole instead of a bat never appealed to Clare.  

That’s because both her parents passed along a strong dislike of the activity.  (It’s not a sport until you’re making like Ahab with Moby Dick.)  For Michele, fishing was the torture of sitting in a rowboat while her little brother—now an attorney successful enough to be blackmailed with the following—delighted in watching the float on his line bob up and down in the water, hour after hour.  For me, fishing meant slimy scales and worms.  I also wasn’t too keen on being bait for flies.

I did have one perfect fishing trip, with my mother on a Sunday just before the start of eighth grade.  We took the Kedzie Avenue bus down to the lagoon in Marquette Park; I felt very important resting a special, telescoping pole resting against my shoulder.  I seem to remember my mother still dressed in her church clothes, heels included.  My dad was working his shift at the firehouse that day.  Going fishing beat sitting around as the only adult in the house, I guess.

For a change, the White Sox were chasing the Twins instead of the Yankees that September.  I remember bits of a ballgame on somebody’s radio, and my mother smiling.  I must have caught a fish. 

Legends of the Hidden Temple/Ninja Warrior

 When Clare was small, we used to watch Legends of the Hidden Temple on Nickelodeon.  Well, kind of watched.  My five-year old was too busy bouncing off furniture to pay much attention to those pesky temple guards lurking in the shadows.  Contestants tried to cross the water without falling in, Clare tried to leap from chair to couch without cracking her head open.  No sugar that I’m aware of was ingested before show time.

The NBC summer hit American Ninja Warrior is the Hidden Temple on steroids (double entendre or factual observation, your pick).  Men and women with way too much time on their hands train in order to get through an obstacle course designed by the Marquis de Sade or a close friend; anybody want to run up a perpendicular wall?  If she’s home, Clare will watch, though she doesn’t feel the urge to jump on any furniture.  Seeing all these wannabe Tarzans, I really miss Kirk Fogg.  Now there was an mc.     

Anniversaries

Clare was pretty excited about the ten-year anniversary of the World-Series winning 2005 White Sox, especially after she learned five players would be appearing at Frank Thomas’ restaurant down the street from us.  That was until she found out it would cost to the tune of $200 for five autographs.  But I’m sure it’s all for a good cause.

Anniversaries can be tough on teams as well as fans.  The Sox also had a 10-year anniversary in 1969, bringing back heroes from the ’59 pennant winners.  Only the date—July 20^th—coincided with Neal Armstrong’s moonwalk.  And the team stunk, to the tune of 94 losses that year.  A little over 13,000 fans, including yours truly, showed up that afternoon to see their Sox drop a doubleheader to the first-year Royals.

A year later—July 19, 1970, to be precise—future HOFer Luis Aparicio was given a day by an even worse Sox team (56-106).  At least they managed to beat the Orioles before an “overflow” crowd of 18,587.  The moral of the story here is that some things are better commemorated alone, like the first ballgame your dad took you to (June 6, 1962, Sox over Angels) or the first game with your daughter (June 17, 1997, Sox over Cubs, yes!).  Those anniversaries can be celebrated without scheduling conflicts or the embarrassment caused by comparing then to now.   

Halftime

I took out my Lindy’s Baseball Preview from the spring to check on the quality of its crystal-ball gazing.  So far, not so good: Robin Ventura, AL manager of the year (still possible with divine intervention); Robinson Cano AL MVP (not with his 30 rbi’s, .251 BA and complaints of a year-long tummy ache); and Rusney Castillo AL Rookie of the Year (as soon as he improves on a .230 BA good for 6 rbi’s).  The NL predictions start with the Marlins’ Mike Redmond as NL Manager of the Year.  Redmond was fired in May.

In a way, the mistakes are part of the reason you buy a baseball magazine; it’s fun to ask, How could you guys get things so wrong?  Of course, Lindy’s picked the White Sox to win their division, so the question hurts more than a little, though I suspect Yankee fans must love how the cellar-dwelling Red Sox were picked for first.  And, for what it’s worth, the magazine was right about Carlos Rodon being a top prospect.  Micah Johnson?  A fan can hope.

Who knows, maybe it’ll all come together for Lindy’s by the postseason.  I’ll check back then.           

Foxed

Here is your Fox Network All-Star lineup for the broadcast booth to do the MLB’s midsummer classic: Harold Reynolds—couldn’t hit, can’t announce.  Joe Buck—if only Harry Truman were right and the Buck stopped (talking and talking and…).  Ken Rosenthal—a bow tie in search of a beanie.  Tom Verducci—who did he know to get his job?     

Wait—and with any game on Fox, that’s all you do while enduring plugs for upcoming Fox shows, like the latest Ryan Seacrest dreck—there’s more.  MLB gave Fox a run for the money with two dumb offerings all its own, the Franchise Four and the four Greatest Living Players.  The four greatest players for a non-expansion team or even first-generation expansion teams?  That’s Friday-night bar talk suitable for January.  As for the best in Marlins’ history, who cares?

Supposedly, the greatest living players are Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench.  The first two I’ll grant you, but why not Nolan Ryan over Koufax, or Greg Maddux even?  Johnny Bench?  Not while Yogi Berra draws breath.  And what about that red-blazered, rotund gnome running around the Great American Ballpark last night?  Love him or hate him, Pete Rose has the stats to belong to any such group of demigods.

But I do like that the game determines home-field advantage for the World Series.  And I love watching All-Star Game MVP Mike Trout play.  You can only hope that Willie Mays could see him, too.

The All-Star

Major league baseball should give my daughter an award; better yet, they should hire her because she gives a damn’.  Yesterday, she was out of the house by 7 AM to drive up to Evanston, where she worked a softball camp at Northwestern (it pays to network with coaches at tournaments).  Basically, Clare spent five hours throwing soft-toss to girls with college softball dreams.  Then, she fought rush-hour traffic to get home in time for dinner and All-Star Homerun Derby on ESPN.  Today, Clare goes back to Valparaiso and spend a day doing softball stuff in the office, after which she’ll watch the All-Star Game.  Go, Chris Sale.

The girl was a baseball All-Star herself, twice in Mustang Ball.  Her coach was bright enough to pick her, which is more than I can say for the guys coaching the actual game that first year; they let the only female All-Star bat but not field.  Oh, and she got a hit in her first All-Star at-bat, a sharp single to left. 

Her second All-Star appearance she entered the homerun derby, but nothing happened that day.  Clare had to wait another two years for when she was a 12-year old Bronco.  Now, that was a homerun derby.  The only girl among 25 boys finished fifth, consistently hitting the ball to the wall, if not quite over.  But there was plenty of power to come in high school and college.

I can barely remember who won yesterday (Todd Frazier) and haven’t a clue about last year’s winner.  I have far more important All-Star memories to hold onto.

Old-school Cake

Jeff Samardzija cracked wise over the weekend about the notoriously cramped visitors’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field, calling it “an engineering gem.”  Then he said something interesting, paradoxical and maybe a little Freudian, as in a slip:  “It reminds you of a time when players weren’t pampered with spas and saunas and things like that.”  This is definitely someone who wants to be old school and have his big contract, too.

In baseball and probably all sports, “old school” is what you did as opposed to the current generation.  “Old school” meant something different to Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Jim Palmer.  To me, it’s hustle plus an absence of showboating.  Like Joe Maddon says, act like you’ve done it before and you’re going to do it again.

Old-school, or “throwback,” uniforms are the same way, what you wore vs. the current fashion.  For a lot of fans, anything from the 1980s is old-school; to me, it’s merely offensive to the eye.  The White Sox and Cubs honored Minnie Minoso and Ernie Banks yesterday by going way back, to wearing 1959 travel (Sox) and 1958 home (Cubs) uniforms.  To fans of a certain age, nothing could have been more beautiful.

I like stuff from the old days, the caps and jackets and jerseys.  I have a lot and for my birthday will probably get a 1940 Oakland Oaks cap from Ebbets Field Flannels.  Too bad the prices aren’t throwback, too.  We’re talking $44 here, plus shipping.   

A**es and Elbows

Cubs’ starter Jon Lester described the White Sox’s Chris Sale this way in the Tribune:  “He’s asses and elbows going everywhere.  He chucks the hell out of it [the ball, yes?].”  Lester meant it all as a compliment, but I’m more let-sleeping-dogs-lie when talking about an opponent.  Sale may feel sensitive about his elbows.

In any case, paired against Lester the Sox lefty gave up one run yesterday afternoon on six hits and a walk to go with ten strikeouts; Sale becomes the first pitcher since 1900 to strike out ten batters in seven straight starts on the road.  Did I mention Tyler Flowers had two hits and two rbi’s?  Really, end times.

Lester, the $155 million man, falls to 4-8 while Sale, the $32.5 million “bargain,” improves to 8-4.  I’m not criticizing the Cubs for the monster contract.  This is the state of baseball today, and who knows what Sale will demand when his club-friendly deal runs out at the end of the decade.  Free-agent acquisitions Lester and Adam LaRoche both have been disappointments so far this season.  But the bigger the contract the greater the blowback when production flags.  Luckily, not my problem, not today.        

Back in Time

Clare has been spending her weekends this summer helping recruit for Valpo.  Because of byzantine NCAA rules, she can have more contact with people than her coach, especially when it comes to parents.  Fathers see that Valpo tee shirt, and they come a-flocking.  How come I never did this?

All of Clare’s travel teams were local; sometimes, you had girls from different counties, usually Cook and DuPage, but that was it.  According to my daughter, the teams now are so un-local the players don’t practice on off-days.  They can’t; everyone lives out of state.  At least that was the case with the New Jersey team Coach Clare watched yesterday.

The good news was she got home in time from the tournament out in Elgin to watch the Sox-Cubs game with me.  Talk about Go-Go redux—the Sox score one run via hit-by-pitch, stolen base, sacrifice bunt and sac fly, enough to win, 1-0.  Of course, back in the day, it wouldn’t have taken 2:40 to play the game, but, like they say, things change.

Fandom

Yes, I was one of those kids who’d lay in bed at night with a transistor radio smashed against my ear, listening to the White Sox and Senators; that Bob Elson didn’t put me to sleep should have been a warning of the insomnia to come.  The transistor was especially busy the summer of 1967, when the all-pitch, no-hit Sox made a run for the pennant that fell short the last five days of the season.

I’ve gotten better since then.  I try not to watch West Coast games that will only interfere with my sleep, and I no longer curse God for not letting the White Sox win (see 1967, above).  But I did catch myself this morning thinking, Two out of three is all I ask, against the Cubs at Wrigley this weekend.

Clare picked up her fandom from me, down to its rabid dimensions; the girl could get into a fight over who has the better shortstop, I swear.  Part of it is my fault, yes, but I also think some of this craziness is in the water.  Chicago is a town nuts about sports.  Other cities may live and die with a team or two, but not for so many the way Chicagoans do.

Part of it is our shared blue-collar roots; we had ancestors who dreamed of playing on a field instead toiling in a factory.  The dream if not the jobs were passed on.  You can especially see this with White Sox fans.  Outside the Cell, we’re so many professionals in a workday world, but, buy a ticket to a ballgame, and it’s a convention of union pipefitters, Local 5.  The same is probably true of the Bears and Blackhawks.  The Bull used to be a blue-collar team in the days of Sloan and Van Lier, but they’re the one team in Chicago now that’s all state-of-the-art marketing.  The Cubs I’ll give a pass to.

And what of New York fans?  Never have so many grown so entitled over the success of so few, viz., the Yankees.  I get a particular kick out of Knicks fans, who think the game was invented by coach Red Holzman in the early ’70s.  Wow, two NBA titles.  Red, meet Michael.     

Process of Elimination

More often than not, family and friends will say how I “made” Clare into a ballplayer, as if such a thing were possible.  My not-yet-four-year old picked out the bat and wiffle ball all by herself at the Avenue Drug Store in Oak Park.  After that, anything else played with a ball was a distant second.

Oh, Clare tried soccer and basketball, playing both with the abandon of a runaway bulldozer.  I didn’t see that she had much of a future in either sport unless they did away with penalties and fouls.  Clare also loved serving in volleyball, but she never grew into enough of a giant to make use of that skill.

One summer, I signed her up for tennis at a camp the high school was running, and the tennis coach did say some nice things.  This is where money came in; we could only spend it on one sport.  So ended any chance of the next Serena hailing from Berwyn.

Clare loved throwing a football at recess in grade school, which could explain why her boyfriend is an ex-offensive lineman; it’s all about protection.  She also loves to swim, to the point we were told she was a lock to make a swim team as a 10- or 11-year old.  But softball and swimming are both spring sports.  The splash my daughter was meant to make had to be on the diamond, and over the fence.

Soccer Frenzy

Yes, Chicago does have a professional women’s soccer team, the Red Stars, who coincidentally play in the same college sports’ complex that once housed the softball Bandits.  Talk about a missed chance for synergy.

The Red Stars should see a bump in interest now that the U.S. women’s team has won the World’s Cup; beat somebody by a hockey/baseball score of 5-2, and the curious will come out, if only one time.  According to the Tribune, women’s soccer is doing quite well both on the high school and college level.  One of the reasons, I think, is there’s no real shadow cast by the men’s game.  If anything, a casual sports’ fan can probably name more female players (Chastain, Solo, Wambach) than males.  Too bad for the Chicago Fire, but an opportunity for the Red Stars.

The other day, a sports’ columnist in the Sun-Times criticized the Stars’ owner for complaining over a lack of media coverage.  You see, “it’s not the media’s job to increase attendance or raise interest in the game.”  No, but writing about the 6-10 Bears 24-7 accomplishes both those ends.  

The game ended up being the most-watched soccer telecast ever in the United States.  American soccer fans must be like 17-year locusts, only they come out every four years.  That, or media coverage does create a buzz.  At the very least, a little time and space could be devoted to seeing if the Stars are in fact ready to come out.  And I know just where to start.  The Sun-Times has a weekly outdoor column heavy on fishing.  Use the space from all those photos of record-breaking carp for women’s soccer.  Or trim the pieces of a certain columnist.  The Bears won’t miss the attention, trust me.

 

1:54

It all depends on when you join up.  For Clare, the White Sox mean hitting, as in Frank Thomas and Paul Konerko and Carlos Lee and Maglio Ordoñez and A.J.  Pierzynski and Jermaine Dye and….For me, growing up in the shadow of the Go-Go White Sox, it was Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox and Gary Peters and Juan Pizarro and….It all depends.

Maybe the 24,593 fans who showed up for last night’s matchup between Chris Sale and Mark Buehrle were more my kind than Clare’s.  Either way, they saw a glorious pitching duel between two lefties who hate wasting time between pitches.  Despite giving up a combined 17 baserunners, Sale and Buehrle finished their business in 1 hour and 54 minutes.  Why can’t it always be that way?

Sale was going for a major-league record of nine straight starts with 10 or more strikeouts, but he fell four short.  The Blue Jays had a plan—swing early and swing hard—that produced two solo shots and a lot of quick outs.  For once, it was the other team getting killed by bad defense; all the runs against Buehrle were unearned, much unlike the two ovations he received; those were earned from his 12 seasons on the South Side.  The fast outs turned into a 108-pitch complete game for Sale.

Buehrle will be a free agent at the end of the season.  Would he be too old to bring back at age 37?  I hope not.

  

Ramblings

I was able to corral Michele and Clare Thursday afternoon for a walk on the 606, a 2.7-mile trail along a repurposed railroad spur.  The trail, sitting atop an embankment similar to the NYC High Line, bisects a number of gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods north and west of downtown.

It was a good walk, if on the dangerous side.  Pedestrians, cyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders, dogs and toddlers are not meant to share the same space, or at least they haven’t learned to yet; we saw one bicyclist nearly flip over his handlebars trying not to hit a three-year old whose parents had let him walk ahead unattended.  From what I could see, common sense did not match family income.

The city of railroads could lend itself to slew of such trails.  The only problems would be cost (2.7 miles at $95 million) and safety; some of the potential trails would be located in still-active train corridors.  You can be dumb on the 606 and come away with nothing worse than a few broken bones.  You can’t be dumb around rolling stock.

I am old enough to have passed beneath the 606 when it was a working rail spur connecting area factories.  First, the factories left, then the box cars.  The upscaling of neighborhoods, or “gentrification” if you will, is a surprising, complex thing.  People are paying big bucks to live in loft space where assembly lines once stood and in the houses of those workers who once manned such lines.  I don’t completely understand it, but I do appreciate the chance for a nice walk, even if it’s in kind of a cemetery with the potential for a trip to the emergency room.   

Coverage

At least the Sun-Times ran a full-page photo of Chicago Sky forward Elena Delle Donne handling the ball.  Maybe they wanted to make up for the “coverage” that followed, all 34 words of it.  In comparison, the Tribune was downright effusive with 10 full paragraphs on the Sky’s game with the New York Liberty.  The Sky can’t really complain, though.  They’re the one local women’s professional sports’ team that gets TV time on the local sports, something I’ve never seen for the softball Bandits.  Is there pro women’s soccer in Chicago?  I honestly don’t know.

To the uninitiated, there might seem to be all sorts of women sports’ stuff on TV right now.  What that really means is Serena Williams at Wimbledon and the U.S. national team in the Women’s World Cup finals.  But ten days from now, you won’t see much of anything this side of beach volleyball.

Deja vu

There I was, running through the store in search of the possibly extinct half-watermelon (try fitting a seedless bowling ball in the refrigerator or eating both halves before things get squishy) when I heard it over the PA, the The Go-Go’s Our Lips Are Sealed. And just like that it was the summer of 2007 again, with us driving through Iowa on our way to Kansas City.  I debuted a new CD midway through our little eight-hour drive.  Our dear daughter had never heard Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell, never mind a girl group.

The rain and the heat and humidity that third week in July made it hard to forget those games.  This was also the nationals where Clare decided she wanted to hit homeruns.  As I write this, she yells down to me that there was a tornado in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, but that was the next summer, when no one could better her at putting balls over a fence.  Some things you just remember.

Connecting Dots

            The Cardinals stand accused of hacking into the Astros’ computer system; Angels GM Jerry Dipoto steps down in a feud with manager Mike Scioscia; the window for signing international prospects opens: you see the connection, right?  If not, bear with me.

 Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ GM, developed an advanced analytics’ system when he worked for the Cardinals; someone in the St. Louis front office may or may not have wanted to see if Luhnow left with intellectual property that did not belong to him.  Dipoto was upset the Angels’ coaching staff didn’t make greater use of data he passed along.  And thirty teams are using a mix of sabermetrics and old-time scouting to sift through the world of 16-year old Caribbean prospects in search of the next superstar.

Yet for all the computer memory employed, algorithms tested and programs written, the subject of women’s talent never seems to come up for serious consideration.  How sad, with July 5th the 68^th anniversary of Larry Doby breaking the color line in the American League.   

You Gotta Be Bleepin' Me

 So, let me see if I’ve got this right:  The ten-games-under-.500 White Sox limp into St. Louis to face the 27-games-over Cardinals, who’ve just swept three games from that other Chicago team.  Oh, and we’re 14-27 on the road vs. St. Louis’ 22-7 at home.  Naturally, the Sox take both games, 2-1 and 7-1.  How to explain it?

I mean, Tyler Flowers hits meaningful homeruns in both games; Carlos Sanchez collects three hits to move within 19 points of hitting his weight; and the justly-maligned Alexi Ramirez chips in with two hits (and no errors at short).  This is almost enough to make a fan speechless.  But enough to start believing?  We’ll see.

Record K

Last night in St. Louis Chris Sale joined Pedro Martinez as the only pitchers in MLB history with eight straight starts of ten or more strikeouts.  Sale went eight innings, giving up one run on six hits and a walk to go with 12 punchouts.  Of course, the 26-year lefty didn’t win, but he didn’t lose, either.  And for us White Sox fans this season, that’s a real silver lining.

The sad part is that, without a crazy bounce, Sale would have lost, 1-0.  Luckily, Jose Abreu hit a grounder that caromed off of second base into the outfield, allowing Sale—on base with his first-ever hit—to score the first Sox run.  Oh, but the second inning, that was pure 2015 White Sox.  We had the bases loaded, nobody out, and got nothing out of it.

First up was Tyler Flowers, weighing in at 245 pounds and a .211 batting average; Flowers struck out on three pitches.  Carlos Sanchez (195/.164) followed with a double play to end the inning.  But Sale must’ve put the Cardinals in a funk, because they couldn’t mount anything against him or four relievers.  Tyler Flowers then evened up his number of bats into the stands and homeruns for the game at one with a solo shot in the 11^th for a White Sox winner.  My cheers were all lowercase.