Off-the-field Troubles

What do I find in today’s sports’ briefs?  Why more trouble for Johnny Football, of course.  It seems Mr. Manziel was the subject of a helicopter search by Texas authorities over the last 48 hours.  Manziel may have assaulted an ex-girlfriend.  Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.

Why can’t you be more like the Blackhawks’ Patrick Kane?  I’m serious.  Kane was involved in a sexual assault case over the summer that, lucky for Kane, didn’t lead to an indictment.  Since then, the Hawks’ winger has had a season where’s he’s scored points in 26 straight games, a franchise record; put himself on a pace for 50 goals, which in hockey-speak is Babe Ruth territory; and could end up as the first American-born player to lead the league in scoring.  Not that I would want him dating my daughter.

But Kane has done one of two things—come to Jesus or compartmentalized his life, with no intention of opening up the dangerous door anytime soon.  Either way, good for him.  As for Manziel, he’s now at a point in his career where fans will wish him ill, which is bad enough.  But he also may be at a point where his teammates just won’t care, as in “You want a sack?  Here, let me step aside.  Or I could just knock our quarterback down for you, if that’ll help.”

The bottom of an NFL pile is not the bed you want to be sleeping in.     

This is Ehat I was talking About

 And here, little daughter of mine, is why I’ll be keeping an eye on you—I don’t want this half-marathon stuff to get out of hand, not after 15 lunatics finished seven marathons on seven continents in seven days over the past week.  The winner was a Marine from Chicago.  Whoopee.

One of the participants said the cold in Antarctica didn’t bother her; right.  These people know they’re still going to die, yes?  Not to be Dougie Downer here, but what’s the point, how has humanity benefitted from this competition?  For my money, these people can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t call it a sport.   

Sport, Sport, Sport, Insanity

 The last two Januarys have been tough on Clare.  What she wants to do more than anything is jump out bed, get dressed, run to the gym, pick up a bat and start hitting.  She wants to be the one crushing the ball, not soft-tossing it.  Such are the frustrations of the graduated (female) college athlete.

But she has to do something to keep from going crazy, she has to compete.  Given that she can’t find anyone to play her cutthroat version of Scrabble, my daughter has signed up for a half-marathon at the end of May.  I pity the fool who stands between her and the finish line.

I tried running or jogging or whatever it is but didn’t like it; too much running.  So, instead, I try to go on 50-mile bike rides at least twice a month between May and October.  Yes, I know.  A lot of people would think that’s crazy.  Sport really is in the eyes of the beholder.

Yet, there comes a point where sport veers off into life-threatening insanity.  The half-marathon begets the marathon begets the run across Death Valley in the same way my little bike rides can turn into the Tour de France, or a bike ride across Death Valley.  And then we come across the strange, sad case of Henry Worsley, late of this earth.

Worsley was an ex-English army officer with a taste for exploration, which in my book starts where extreme sports leave off.  Worsley, age 55, got it into his head to try and become the first human being to walk—let me repeat, walk—across Antarctica.  He did it for 900 miles, never mind the temperatures in excess of 40-below and the challenge of, shall we say, going to the bathroom for number one or number two.  But Worsley had to give up 30 miles short of his goal and be evacuated to a hospital in Chile, where he died Sunday of peritonitis.

It’s a good thing Clare hates winter weather, or else I’d worry she might want to pick up where Henry Worsley left off.    

Walt Williams

Crap, crap, crap. Walt Williams died Saturday at the age of 72.  He was and most likely always will be my favorite ballplayer of all time.

Not to say I was thrilled when the White Sox traded for him in December of 1966, sending catcher John Romano and a minor leaguer to the Cardinals for Williams and pitcher Don Dennis.  Romano mostly rode the bench for the Sox behind Sherm Lollar, until he was traded to Cleveland in 1960.  There, he made the All-Star team in two of his first three seasons while the Sox basically hoped their pitching could hit well enough to make up for the lack of offense from the catching sport.  Then, in true White Sox fashion, we reacquired Romano in 1965, once he’d reached the age of 30.  Here’s the really sad part—nobody on the Sox hit more than Romano’s 33 homers the next two seasons.  Who was this Williams’ guy other than some hotshot minor league hitter?

I found out one day early the next season when Jack Brickhouse did an interview with the rookie outfielder on his Tenth Inning show.  Everything was “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “I can hit a little, I guess,” the last in response to Brickhouse noting that he had 54 doubles with a .330 batting average in the minors the year before.  I should also note here that Williams stood all of 5’6” with a real fireplug build.  Oh, and he always hustled, out to his position in  left or right field and back, or after hitting any groundball or pop up, no matter how routine; he also treated fans like they were friends.  From the day of that interview on, I rooted for Walt Williams to hit .400 and smash 62 homeruns.  That, or at least crack the starting lineup.

Williams played six years with the Sox, hitting .304 in 1969 and .294 in 1971.  Two years later, we traded him to the Indians for the immortal Eddie Leon.  After time in Cleveland and the Bronx, Williams played in Japan for a couple of seasons, then Mexico.  His lifetime batting average of .270 translates into a career WAR of 2.4, and you know what you can do with that number.

From all the above, you might expect me to say that all athletes should act the way Walt Williams did, with the inference being that all black athletes should especially.  That’s not the message I’m interested in giving.  Walt Williams played with a combination of joy and humility rarely seen in everyday life, let alone sports.  Here was someone with a God-given talent who didn’t act like he was God’s gift.  And that was years before I learned Williams had lost an infant son to meningitis while a ballplayer.  Put another way, Walt Williams was the person I wanted to be like on my best days.

I was happy when the Sox brought back Williams as a first base coach in 1988, but I never made any effort to contact him.  That waited until Clare was nearly six in August of 1997.  Williams was managing the Altoona Rail Kings in the now-defunct Heartland League, and the Rail Kings were visiting the Will County Cheetahs.  I made some calls, bought some tickets and arranged to meet my hero.

He looked just like Walt Williams and acted just like he did as a member of the White Sox.  He signed a ball I have with the autographs of various Sox players, putting his name next to Luke Appling’s.  “He could hit,” said Williams of the Sox all-time hit leader.  “I liked him.”  Then Williams, ever gracious, posed for a picture, standing next to me with Clare in between us.  I wanted my daughter to see you didn’t have to be a giant to be an athlete.

I also wanted her to see something else.  Maybe she did.

You Can't Handle the Truth

 The Tribune ran a story today about a financial-news website that claims the White Sox have suffered the fifth worst decline of a pro sports’ team in its fan base over the past ten years, and part of me wants to cry foul.  I mean, this is the Tribune, where all things Cub—except maybe for Sammy Sosa’s oddly proportioned body—was news all the time back when newspaper and baseball team were part of the same corporation.  And the story runs, not so coincidentally, just two days before the start of SoxFest.  But this is one case where figures don’t lie.

According to 247wallst.com, the Sox averaged 28,923 fans a game when they won the World Series in 2005; ten years later, that figure was down to 21,947.  Those figures are bad enough, but they become really depressing when compared to the Cubs.  A 2005 team that went 79-83 outdrew the Sox by an average of 10,000 fans a game.  Last season, the disparity verged on 15,000 a game.

     The Sox vice president in charge of spinning facts offered up a whole bunch of excuses, my favorite being the bad weather last spring.  Funny, but teams never cite good weather when attendance jumps.  It’s always on account of good team play.  I wonder if bad weather ever affects Cubs’ attendance.

The Trib story also noted both a decline in Sox TV ratings and a growing disparity between Sox and Cubs’ viewership.  Long story short, the Cubs are more than three times more popular than the Sox.  So much for Hawk Harrelson commanding a legion of devoted listeners the way Harry Caray once did.  A platoon, maybe, but nothing more than that.

As luck would have it, I was talking baseball to someone yesterday who told me his wife refuses to attend games at the Cell because it’s in a bad neighborhood.  No, it’s not, but you can’t fight perception.  Well, maybe you could had you decided back in the 1990s to develop the area around the new stadium, but that decision was never made.  And there are consequences in life, especially for a pro team owner who as always acted too smart by half.       

Oh, Those Purists

This is sweet.  MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week that he sees a softening of anti-DH animus among National League owners, which has fed speculation the DH could come to the NL as part of the next players’ agreement in 2017.  And I say anyone who disagrees is a no-good purist.

The anti-purists could always be heard or read touting the joys of interleague play or an extra round of playoffs.  In Chicago at least, a good deal of those people identify with the Cubs.  Take manager Joe Maddon, for example.  He just loves all the moves that come with having the pitcher bat.  (The double-switch, be still my beating heart.)  So do the broadcasters.  I wonder how they’ll like being called purists for standing in the way of change.  My guess is they won’t make that much of a fuss because, in the end, they’re all good company men (and I do mean men).

They’ll probably let it go after saying something like the columnist in Sunday’s Tribune.  He wrote that, “Baseball is too great a game to be ruined by a rules change, so if it happens we all will just have to deal with it.  But for some of us, the best part of National League baseball is the strategy.  Baseball is a thinking person’s game, after all.”  And here I’ve always loved baseball for its simplicity vs. the choreographed complexity of the NFL.

But for the columnist, “watching Jake Arrieta hit a home run is almost as fun as watching him pitch, and who can forget ‘Big Z’ [Cubs’ pitcher Carlos Zambrano] breaking the bat over his knees after striking out?”  Here’s another way of looking at it: Arrieta hit .152 last season with 2 homers and 2 rbi’s while Zambrano, whose temper may have helped wear out his welcome in the big leagues, managed 24 career homers, 71 rbi’s and a .238 batting average.  I’ll take a good DH any day.

Mr. Columnist wants things to stand as they are and “let NL fans enjoy watching the game played the same way it was more than a century ago.”  If someone blows up the new, state-of-the-art Cubs’ clubhouse or the light standards, we’ll know who to blame.

That's Why They Play the Game

 Don’t I look dumb after the Bulls’ game of Saturday night?  We go into Cleveland losers of six out of the last ten games against a Cavaliers’ team that’s 16-2 at home.  On top of that, it’s the debut of Cleveland’s new coach, Tyronn Lue.  How do you spell a Bulls’ 96-83 win?

It’s always a good thing when your team turns the ball over just seven times.  Somehow, the Cavs did even better, with a mere four turnovers, but they negated that by shooting 9 of 22 at the free throw line and sinking 4 of 24 three pointers.  Talk about a team looking unprepared to play.  How nice it had nothing to do with Fred Hoiberg’s crew for a change.  Now, if they can just keep it up….

When Thinking Outside the Box Doesn't Work

 The Cleveland Cavaliers just fired their head coach, David Blatt, who had a career record of 83-40 with the Cavs since the start of last season.  So much for the rewards of thinking outside the box.

 The hire raised eyebrows because most of Blatt’s coaching experience had been in Israel and Russia.  Former NBA guard Tyronn Lue takes over as coach.  All of which leads to the question, was hiring Blatt a mistake?

I say a team is entitled to do whatever it wants in the name of getting better, as long as it’s willing to deal with the consequences.  In 1949, the Yankees hired a relative nobody to take over for manager Bucky Harris, and the new guy, by the name of Casey Stengel, made a name for himself soon enough.  Stengel in turn was let go after the 1960 season.  His replacement, Ralph Houk, managed one of the greatest teams in MLB history to a World Series win the next year and the one after that.

Phil Jackson was another relative nobody, coaching-wise, when he took over the Bulls in 1989; the rest is NBA history.  Then the Bulls went to the nobody-well once too often in picking college coach Tim Floyd to replace Jackson.  Floyd proceeded to go 49-190.  Long story short, it all depends.

If the Cavs made a mistake with Blatt, the Bulls appear to have done the same when they dumped Tom Thibodeau for Iowa State coach—and former NBA guard—Fred Hoiberg.  Thibodeau was a taskmaster who confused games in February with those in May (he never got to June).  So far, Hoiberg has been little more than a guy with a clipboard.  What it comes down to sometimes is two wrongs, inside the box or out, don’t make a right.

Possible Second Thoughts

The White Sox were kind enough to send a calendar in the mail yesterday.  On the cover is a shot of the Cell that looks downright…Comiskeyish.  I say that because I have a picture of Comiskey from the 1930s in the basement, and you’d swear the one begot the other; both are exterior shots.  The calendar one has to be because once you get inside, you’re not in Kansas anymore.  

None of the calendar photos emphasize the pitch of the upper deck; I wonder why.  Five of the months feature food or alcohol shots.  And here I thought the Sox wanted to get away from the outdoor saloon notoriety the team had under former owner Bill Veeck.  Four pictures were of the Cell when empty.

How sad, yet appropriate.

Progress

For the first time in NFL history, a team has hired a woman to its coaching staff.  I think.

It’s just that I can’t tell what exactly a “quality control special teams’ coach” does; the Bills’ website acts as though everyone should know.  I understand the role of a bullpen coach in baseball, and a bench coach and even an assistant hitting coach, and No, no MLB team has yet to hire a woman in any of those capacities.  Still, I’m suspicious here.  Last season, Kathryn Smith was administrative assistant to Bills’ head coach Rex Ryan, and now she’s moving on to quality control.  Maybe I don’t know enough about football jobs to be properly impressed.     

But I do know how you can tell if the job means anything.  Say special-teams’ play helps win two straight games next season.  Would Ryan single out Smith’s contribution at a news conference?  Conversely, say special teams loses two straight games.  Would Smith get fired?

The Wrong Lesson

An aerial photo from the 1930s shows Comiskey Park flanked by parking lots on the east and west.  Most of the buildings to the south of the park across 35^th Street were gone by the time I started attending games in the early 1960s, or at least I think they were.  What I do know for sure is that we never ate at the ballpark, and there was no place to eat right outside.  My father always had a hot dog stand or cart we could go to, which was fine by me.

When Jerry Reinsdorf got his new stadium, he wanted even more parking rather than development.  The idea was for fans to come to the park and spend all their money there.  Twenty-five years later, and the area still looks like a shopping mall awash in parking.  So, why are the Cubs making like Reinsdorf? 

I’m not talking about the team’s longstanding feud with the rooftop owners.  Those guys banked on peeping-tom protection in the Constitution, only there is none, as courts have ruled.  Too bad.  But now the Cubs are developing a plaza/beer garden outside Wrigley Field which will compete with area establishments, of which there are many.  On top of that, early this week, the team floated the idea of a 100-foot security perimeter extending from the park out onto Clark and Addison streets.  In other words, two North Side thoroughfares would be squeezed, damn’ the ripple effects, to keep the mad bombers away and, just maybe, serve as an extension of the plaza.  Did I mention it’s going to serve drinks?

The Cubs are the beneficiaries of not one golden goose, but two, Wrigley Field and Wrigleyville.  Kudos to the team for staying at Wrigley, and shame on them for trying to siphon away business from the neighborhood.  Lose a goose, and you could end up with the same emptiness that surrounds the Cell.      

Player's Remorse

Yesterday, former Steelers’ receiver Antwaan Randle El told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that, at the age of 36, he sometimes has to go down stairs sideways and has memory problems.  As for regrets over his choice of sports, Randle El said, “If I could go back, I wouldn’t” play the game that made him famous.  A 14^th round draft choice of the Cubs in 1997, Randle realizes he “could still be playing baseball.”

I wonder if baseball is listening.  Randle El regrets the choice he made as an athlete.  Does Brian Jordan, who was a Pro Bowl alternate at safety for the Falcons only to walk away for baseball?  I doubt it, not if a 15-year career with over 800 rbi’s means anything.  MLB is forever talking about making baseball relevant again to African-Americans.  But would the commissioner dare include the stories of Antwaan Randle El and Brian Jordan?  I would.   

Get Real

Many if not most sportswriters are sloths with typing skills.  That was obvious when a columnist in the Sunday Tribune sports’ section decided it was time to explore the idea of a second team for the third largest football market in the NFL.  He apparently thinks the Jacksonville Jaguars would be a perfect fit for the Windy City.

Why?  Well their owner went to school at the U of I Champaign-Urbana.  Oh, and everything is so unsettled now what with the Rams moving and maybe the Chargers and/or the Raiders, so why not the Jaguars, too?  But who’s going to build this fantasy stadium?  Why, the Jaguars’ owner, of course, because he’s a billionaire.  And did he get that way by putting up his own money or other people’s?  So much for following the who/what/when/where/why tenets of good journalism.

The columnist thinks that the Rams are going to pony up nearly $1.9 billion to fund a new entertainment district with stadium in the LA suburb of Ingleside.  And I am the walrus.  But if I’m not, and all this moving around can be done without involving public funds, then go at it, I say.  But just remember this, which our sloth columnist found too much of a bother to find out—the Jaguars presently play in a municipally-owned facility.  If you’ll pardon my metaphor, why would they want to pay for a billion-dollar cow when they can get the milk for free, if not in Jacksonville then someplace else?           

Picture Perfect

This is how football should always be, like the divisional playoff game Saturday night between the Packers and my (well, almost) Chicago/St. Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals, won by the Cardinals 26-20 in overtime.  Holy Johnny Unitas, what a game.

Green Bay got the ball on their own four-yard line down by seven with 55 seconds left in the game and their season.  Not to worry, not with Aaron Rodgers at the helm.  (Is it possible to both hate and admire a player at the same time the way I do Rodgers?)  With time expiring, Rodgers let go a 41-yard Hail Mary in the end zone.  Of course, his receiver caught the ball.  We’re not talking the Chicago Bears here.  Score tied, the game goes into overtime.

Enter the Cardinals’ Carson Palmer, who in quarterback years is more than twice as old as I am.  On the first play from scrimmage, Palmer scrambled to his right, threw against his body and hit receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who proceeded down the side line for a 75-yard gain.  Two plays later, Palmer underarmed a five-yard shovel pass—let me repeat, a shovel pass—to Fitzgerald for the winning touchdown.  The forces of evil will now go into hibernation until July, give or take a few voluntary team workouts.

There may be people out there who felt the game lacked sufficient violence, but not me.  At the risk of repeating myself, I like football best when concussion-like hits can be avoided.  For examples, see above.

And far be it from me to make fun of any of the 65,089 fans in attendance, but why did they go?  I had a perfect seat on the couch, unlike that half of the crowd sitting opposite of the Rodgers’ and Palmer touchdown drives.  You could argue it’s the same for baseball, and maybe it is.  But an infield seat (lower deck only) allows me to see the hitter-pitcher duel up close along with all the infield play while an outfield seat lets me watch the outfielders up close and still get a decent glimpse of the action happening in the infield.  Maybe it all depends on what sport you love most.

Wet Behind the Ears

 The White Sox have just hired Jason Benetti to replace Hawk Harrelson in the broadcast booth for home games this year.  At the tender age of 32, Benetti was all of seven in 1990, the last year the Sox played in Comiskey Park.  That means virtually all of his I-remember stories will date to the Cell.  Benetti will have next to no memory of watching a game under the left field grandstands in the Picnic Area or how the smell of fried food wafted up to the stands or how taking three or four steps in from the entrance on 35^th and Shields brought you within sight of the field in all of its emerald-green majesty or…

But this is the way of the world and certainly no fault of Benetti, who has a chance of becoming the voice of the franchise if he’s any good.  All of my daughter’s memories of the White Sox are tied to the Cell, too, for that matter.  The Big Hurt, Paulie, Gordon—their only context for Clare comes with a concrete saucer.  It’s her loss, and mine.

As Different as Night and Day

 Here’s the difference between Cubs’ fans and White Sox fans: Say some Cubs’ fans find themselves on a latter-day Titanic.  They’d all be telling one another, “Hey, half of the ship is still above water.”  Standing next to them is a couple of Sox fans.  One looks to the other and sighs, “The good part of this tub’s already sunk.”

Yesterday, the Cubs Convention opened downtown.  Fans were crawling out of the woodwork to line up and drink the Cubbie Kool-Aid.  Next weekend is SoxFest.  Right now, people in the Sox front office are drawing straws to see who has to go on stage first; nobody wants to face a room full of hungry, grumpy lions.  It’s that or the deep blue sea.

Spoiled Rotten

Former college great and NFL running back Lawrence Philips, age 40, died in a California prison yesterday.  Officials believe that Philips, convicted of domestic abuse and trying to use his car as a weapon as well as being a suspect in the murder of his cellmate, committed suicide.

My guess is that the convict was no worse a human being than the college or NFL player.  It was talent on the gridiron that most likely kept Philips out of jail.  But once that ability to shed tackles and score touchdowns left him, Philips was destined to end up where he did.  This is what happens to athletes who never mature.

I remember a softball tournament where a star player was holding court.  As I recall, she was a pitcher who’d had a really good game, probably a lot of strikeouts and rbi’s to stoke her college dreams (and, no doubt, her parents’).  What struck me first was how this 13- or 14-year old was all buddy-buddy with adults, joking around and slapping backs.  Then she went out for the seventh inning and got rocked, the big lead turning into a loss.  After that came the yelling and swearing; the girl threw her glove almost as hard as opposing batter had hit her pitches.  Lawrence Philips couldn’t have done it better at that age.

The Votes are In, You Lose

NFL owners have voted, and the Rams are moving back to Los Angles.  Well, not Los Angeles, but Inglewood, in a privately funded stadium part of a $1.7 billion entertainment complex.  Not a built complex, but a proposed one.  I wonder how long until the Rams propose a little public funding for their stadium?

And where does this leave St. Louis?  With an empty Edward Jones Dome, built with public money to the tune of $300 million back in 1995, that’s where.  Of course, St. Louis civic leaders and public officials didn’t go down without a fight.  They begged the Rams to go for a new $1.1 billion private-public riverfront project (home of the River Rats, maybe?), but to no avail.  Nothing like seeing the leading citizens of your community throw themselves at the feet of the NFL.

Public funding for the homes of professional sports’ teams never turns out well.  Back in the 1980s, when the White Sox were threatening to move to Florida, I helped author a plan that called for turning Comiskey Park into a working national monument.  Technically, the federal government would have picked up the tab of renovation—with the emphasis on historic, not Jumbo Tron/luxury-suite new—so maybe I’m talking out of both ends of my mouth here.  But I know this.  What we proposed was rooted in history, not Hollywood fantasy.   

 

Not Speaking Ill of the Dead

 Former Negro Leagues’ and MLB outfielder Monte Irvin died yesterday at the age of 96.  What struck me were his career stats of 99 homerun, 443 rbi’s and a .293 batting average, which helped earn Irvin election to the Hall of Fame in 1973.

Now compare those numbers to Minnie Minoso’s from the age of 30 on—118 homers and 595 rbi’s.  The stats come from baseballreference.com, which puts Minoso’s birth date at November 1925 while Wikipedia gives it as November 1922.  So, those numbers could be from the age of 33, not 30.  (Maybe the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations will allow researchers to settle this question once and for all.)  Either way, Minoso had a career batting average of .298 to Irvin’s .293.  I’m sorry, if one goes into the Hall of Fame, the other has to as well.  If anything, Minoso should have gone in first. 

Tuesday, Through a Frosted Window

 January is a tough month for anyone not a masochist but still wanting to stay active.  I cannot bear to join the mentally challenged who think it’s not only ok but imperative to ride one’s bike through the snow and cold.  Don’t be surprised when bodies on bikes are found come the spring thaw.

And I won’t cross-country ski.  Michele and I have talked about it, but that would mean actually going out in the snow.  Anyway, I really hate seeing cross-country skiers on the news after a blizzard somewhere distinctly urban.  What could be more precious than someone on skis trekking down Broadway or Fifth Avenue?  On second thought, there is—people who practice cross-country skiing in the summer on bike trails.    

That leaves ice skating, which I truly wish I had learned as a kid.  The whole Hans Brinker thing speaks to me, zipping along frozen canals to immortality.  Only the Sanitary-Ship Canal doesn’t freeze over, probably because of what the “sanitary” part means.  My parents did buy me a really nice pair of skates, but the best I could do was figure out how to get up off my ankles and walk on the ice without falling.  Clare, of course, did learn to skate and loves it.  If she didn’t hit a ball first, I’m sure she would have gotten into slapping a puck around and throwing the occasional hip check.

Oh, well.  The Mid West is all about delayed gratification.  Spring will arrive, eventually, and I will bike.  Right past those thawing bodies, too. 

Home Field (Dis)Advantage

Tough weekend for the home teams in the NFL—Houston, Cincinnati, Minnesota and Washington all lost their wildcard games.  The home fans are supposed to be the twelfth man, like at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, right?  Or maybe it’s just so much noise to gloss over the cost of a playoff ticket.

In any case, the home team should always lose when fans act like they did in Cincinnati Saturday night.  In the third quarter of the Steelers-Bengals game, injured Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was carted off the field to the accompaniment of boos and garbage tossed his way.  But Karma’s a bitch, as they say, as Bengals’ fans discovered when their players matched them for bad behavior.  Two personal-foul penalties late in the game set up the Steelers’ winning field goal. 

If only the clowns were confined to Cincinnati; alas, they’re everywhere, including Chicago.  We don’t throw stuff as much as chant, with B******t! the odds-on favorite.  And, yes, White Sox fans are as likely to do it as anyone else.  You don’t have to be nice to opposing players, and, heaven knows I did my share of catcalling when I enjoyed seats just four rows from the field at Comiskey Park.  But in the end, it’s just a game that reflects back on us.      

Hoosiers

I dare you to watch the movie “Hoosiers” in a hermetically sealed room and not smell the sweat.  You could say this is a film that reeks of atmosphere.

At Elmhurst, Clare worked out in a newer, oversized gym where softball and basketball more or less coexisted come January.  At Valpo, she’s traveled back in time to a Hoosiers’ facility for winter practice.  It’s an old gym, dark and confused as to when best to be cold (for God’s sake, not now) and when to be hot (certainly not in spring, summer and part of fall).  The only basketball players on hand are ghosts, overseen from the shadows by the specter of an old coach or two.  You might even hear the echoes of Converse All-Stars squeaking across the hardwood floor.

Softball players tread carefully in such a place. 

A Made-for-TV Event

This is Wildcard Weekend.  Rejoice, oh football fans.  Your sport and the only way to watch it have taken over, Outer Limits style.  Do not try to adjust your channel.

A good thing for the NFL and its advertisers they can do so easily without me.  I don’t drink beer, I don’t want to buy a new pickup.  The ads are pitched to demographics that do.  I am merely a voyeur.  Let’s keep it on the down low.

As a boy, I watched my 1964 White Sox win 98 games, only to fall one game short of the Yankees and an American League pennant.  There was a finality to that year’s AL standings I’ve never been able to overcome, even with the advent of the (now expanded) wildcard in baseball.  The overlords do it to maintain fan interest; they do it to sheer the sheep a little longer.  One flock of fans got shorn into last November, another through February 7.  Rejoice.

One System Fits All

 Paul DePodesta was hired away from the Mets’ front office this week by the…Cleveland Browns.  Yes, that’s right.  A former baseball GM (with the Dodgers) known for analytics will be switching sports.

DePodesta wants the world to know how much he loves football, how he would’ve taken a job in the NFL had the Indians not hired him first.  Right.  Well, better late than never and never a better opportunity than with a franchise that screams dysfunction (hello, Johnny Manziel).  Tell me one thing, though: How is De Podesta going to get those square pegs into round holes?

Baseball and football would seem to have little intersection save for the latter sport’s borrowing terms like “home run” and “centerfield.”  What makes a great offensive lineman doesn’t readily translate to middle infielders, but DePodesta and the Browns no doubt will be hailed for, get ready, “thinking outside the box.” Only they’re not.  These days, anyone who looks good with a laptop can get hired by a front office.  DePodesta, who assisted Billy Beane in the creation of Moneyball, proves that.  Now, let’s see if he can hit a home run with the Cleveland backfield.

The Votes Are In

 First, I read a passionate defense of HOF candidate Mike Piazza that dismissed all allegations that the former catcher did steroids.  Two days ago, I heard a sportswriter cite Piazza’s acne-filled back and extreme mood swings as evidence of steroids’ use and reasons not to vote for him.  Well, Piazza will be giving his induction speech at Cooperstown come this July.

Either Piazza is right and he never did steroids, or he’s confident that real proof will never come out.  Personally, I wouldn’t want to be guilty of something while proclaiming my innocence; that would only come back to bite me somewhere sensitive.  For Piazza, that would mean blackmail or juicy details spread over weeks in the New York Post.  So, I’m going with the man is innocent of PEDs.

Still, I’d change HOF voting procedures.  Is there any bigger group of cowards than HOF voters?  They want guidance on how to handle players from the steroids’ era.  Hint: decide for yourselves whether or not PEDs’ use was right, and then have the courage of your convictions.  You want Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens enshrined, fine, then vote for them.  Problem solved.

I’m more concerned with players left out of Cooperstown for no good reason—basically, other than that they didn’t play long enough in New York.  Tommie John, Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso, Billy Pierce, Alan Trammel, Lee Smith: what a mass of talent to go unrecognized.  Again, let me suggest that fans take the place of the veterans’ committee to decide on players no longer on the ballot.  Make a list of candidates and set a number—not a percentage—of votes to qualify.  Then open up the voting for a two-week period at $25-$50 a vote; either mandate one vote per person or allow ballot-box stuffing like they do for last roster spots for the All-Star Game, I don’t care.  Any player who receives the necessary votes gets inducted.  That, or the top three.  And do it every year.

Baseball wants my money all the time.  Why not as a HOF voter, too?

Closer to Home

Guess who sent a representative to the recent climate change conference in Paris?  Why, the NHL, of course.  Truly, of all the major sports, hockey is the most affected by climate change.  After all, warm temperatures and ice don’t mix.

That’s pretty much what Omar Mitchell, NHL vice president for corporate social responsibility (and doesn’t that sound like an oxymoron), told the Washington Post: “We need cold weather; we need fresh water to play.  Therefore, our game is directly impacted by climate change and fresh water scarcity.”  Some might argue the opposite, that the NHL has too much water in places like Columbus and Edmonton.

If we’re going to talk about a business being responsible, why not start closer to home with an issue like concussions?  The NHL hasn’t exactly been in the forefront of research and safety measures.  And what about health care and pensions?  Compared to baseball, NHL players today get a pittance; it can only be worse for players from the ‘60s and ‘70s.  Being responsible doesn’t mean being all wet.    

Sort of Humble

On Sunday, Bulls’ guard Jimmy Butler took an elbow to the mouth in Toronto, which may be why he only scored two points in the first half against the Raptors.  Not to worry.  Butler told teammates he’d do better the rest of the way, and, oh boy, did he ever.  Butler poured in a franchise-record 40 points in a half to lead his team for a come-from-behind victory, 115-113.

For me, Butler’s postgame performance was better yet.  A breathless TV reporter tried to compare Butler to Michael Jordan for breaking Jordan’s record of points scored in a half, but Butler would have none of it.  Then the reporter asked if the hero of the game intended to fly the plane home, he was so obviously talented.  Butler laughed and checked what must have been an impulse to ask, Are you f’n’ nuts?  Instead, the Bulls’ star asked the reporter if he wanted there to be another game.

Things could be getting interesting with and for the Bulls.  Butler has called out his coach as well as himself in recent weeks.  I can’t tell if it’s made much of a difference with Fred Hoiberg, but Jimmy Butler has upped his game in a way you don’t often see with pros these days.  For most guys, it’s all talk and little walk.  Butler, though, is doing the walk without getting called for travelling.

The Refrigerator

William “The Refrigerator” Perry attended yesterday’s Bears’ game, to the delight of fans who saw him.  That wouldn’t have included me.

Perry played on the defensive line for the Bears, 1985-1993.  Somehow, he played well, despite having to haul 335-plus pounds around on a 6’2” frame.  Other players that size might have looked sculpted; Perry looked fat to obese.  His love of food was treated both as a joke and an endorsement tool.  Who knows how long he could have played with an understanding of conditioning.

Looking at Perry, I couldn’t help but see a human being out of control.  After his career ended, Perry ballooned to over 400 pounds, which had to be a contributing factor to his diabetes if not his alcoholism.  Several years ago, he came down with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a condition that affects the nervous system.  It should have come as no surprise that Perry didn’t walk into Soldier Field.  He was pushed in a wheel chair.

Back when he played, I wanted Perry to exhibit more self-control over his body and his health.  Now, I just want to know what the NFL is doing for him.  Ditto the Bears.  One of the McCaskeys gave Perry a jersey with his old number on it.  No. 72 needs considerably more; he’s broke and living in some sort of retirement community down South.  I can only hope the family that benefitted so much from William Perry is quietly underwriting at least part of his care.      

Catapult

It’s the last day of the NFL regular season, and I’m ecstatic because it means we’re into January.  Yes, it would’ve been nice had the Bears made the playoffs, but I can still pass the time just fine rooting against the Packers and Patriots while pulling for the Cardinals (a South Side team, if twice removed).  Before you know it, the Super Bowl will take up the first week of February.  The game’s going to be played in Santa Clara at Levi’s Stadium, home of the 49ers and, according to one website, “the greenest and most technologically advanced professional football stadium in the United States.”  That must mean no trough urinals.

Two weeks after the annual orgy of food and commercials pitchers and catchers report.  Of course, it used to be I didn’t need football to get through the winter.  I had Clare and softball.  I’d drive her to her Sunday practices, which ran from September through mid-March, and stay to watch.  She had this coach who was the second coming of Busby Berkeley the way he choreographed drills.  It was a thing of beauty to behold, enough to get me through another week of snow and cold…until the snow and cold of the high school season started in late March.  But those days are gone, and now it’s the NFL that bridges winter to spring for me.  So be it.  

Scorer's Decision

I’m sure those very smart people at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) have done research on it, but, in case they haven’t, allow me this January observation—baseball scoring has undergone a profound change over the last sixty years or so, from the days of Frank Malzone to Manny Machado.

In 1958, Malzone won a Gold Glove at third base despite 27 errors and a .950 fielding average.  In 2013, Machado won his Gold Glove based on a .973 fielding average; Machado was 13 errors short of perfection.  Eric Chavez did even better in 2006.  The A’s third baseman committed all of five errors for a .987 fielding average—and Gold Glove.

Does this mean Frank Malzone was a butcher back in the day?  I doubt it.  My guess is that the reduction in errors is the product of two factors, starting with grounds keeping.  Remember the 1960 World Series, with the ball hopping up to hit Tony Kukek in the throat in the bottom of the eighth inning of game seven?  Kubek didn’t get an error, but I’m guessing there were a lot of bad hops back then with official scorers deciding that fielders should have handled regardless.  The pebbles have mostly been excised from infield dirt in the years since, and scorers have taken a more generous/realistic view of what can and can’t be handled.  And I’m OK with that.

Unless the SABR folk have information otherwise.     

Sibling Rivalry

Some of the best history written today comes by way of obituaries.  Frank Malzone, a third baseman for the Red Sox from 1957 to1966, died the other day.  The NYT obit noted that Malzone said he learned baseball by watching his brother and SISTER play.  Malzone allowed that his sister Mary “handled herself well.  Line-drive-type hitter.  No power.”

Too bad Malzone never saw Clare hit.