A Numbers' Game

The White Sox intend to open the season with 12 pitchers while the Cubs will go one better, at 13.  You know what they say: Stupid is as stupid does.

I grew up in an era when 10-man staffs were the rule.  The extra pitchers can be traced in large part to Tony LaRussa, so right there you know it’s overrated.  What value does a face-one-batter pitcher bring to the team, especially when he can’t get that guy out?  Now, consider what a bench player does.

He can catch the ball; pinch run or pinch hit; and platoon.  To me, that’s worth a lot more than some Father Time lefty nibbling at the corners.  But I am not a genius in the mold of LaRussa, Ventura (!) or Maddon. 

Venues

Venues

In no particular order, the three most beautiful baseball sites I’ve ever gone to are Comiskey Park on the South Side; the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; and Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York.  Clare never saw Comiskey, but the ballpark played a major role in her coming to be.

In the wake of that miracle, we twice took our daughter to the Field of Dreams; the second time I pitched to her, she nearly took my head off with a line drive up the middle.  We couldn’t hit at Doubleday Field, but we did sit on the wood benches behind home plate and watched as the sprinklers turned the outfield grass a glistening green.  Entry into heaven from either field would not be a bad idea.  (Obviously, for hell you’d walk through Yankee Stadium).

I’m thinking venues because of McDonald’s and its so-called All-American Games, featuring the most talented male and female high school seniors from around the country.  (Somehow I doubt that many people care about the girls outside of immediate family and future college coaches, but maybe I’m wrong.)   For no good reason, a dunk contest was held Monday on a specially constructed half-court inside the Chicago Theatre, which over 94-plus years has hosted the likes of Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra and Lyle Lovett (who we saw last August).  There was no better place to see basketball than the old Chicago Stadium.  (Fate: see Comiskey Park.)  I never would’ve thought or wanted to see Norm Van Lier and Jerry Sloan at a State Street movie palace.

Or baseball or hockey.  There’s a place for everything, or so I always thought.

HRx3

Well, at least I didn’t fall off my Exercycle when it happened, back-to-back-to-back homeruns given up by John Danks to the Colorado Rockies.  But I probably would have had I read the way Johnny Boy explained it in the paper:  “I felt myself falling back into some of my old tendencies.”  Gosh, ya think?

Right now, the White Sox are leading the world in thin-air, Cactus League homeruns, a major-league leading 46.  All of that counts for nothing come Opening Day next week.  I do think my Sox will hit way better than last year’s team, and they do have three solid starters in Chris “God” Sale, Jose Quintana and Carlos Rodon.  But after that, it’s Danks and Co. 

Come our number four and five starters, Katie, wherever you are, bar the door.  

I Don't Mean to Beat a Dead Horse....

 But there are certain things I just can’t let go.  Last night, I watch a bunch of college basketball players going through the ritual of cutting off pieces of the net.  This morning in the sports’ section it’s all Final Four.  And then I get a picture from Clare.

She’s been out at the Valpo softball field since 8 AM.  Noah visited last night and left the place flooded.  Guess who has to help man the pumps?  That’s right, the graduate assistant Clare.  After two hours of pumping, they’re not even close to getting the tarp off the infield.  All those NCAA “student-athlete” commercials show young men and women overcoming adversity, of a sort.  It builds character, though I bet most of the Final Four players are more interested in improving their chances in the NBA draft.

Just once, I’d like the NCAA, CBS, TBS or ESPN to show the spring mud and the college programs that have to deal with it.    

Happy Easter

This is a part of the NCAA they don’t talk about.  Valparaiso was scheduled to play Youngstown State at Youngstown Friday and Saturday, with Valpo returning home sometime Saturday night.  For players—or graduate assistants, like Clare—living close to school, that meant the chance to spend Easter at home.  Then the weather got in the way, necessitating a game on Easter.  It’s too bad no one on the team is old enough to remember the lyrics from a CCR song: “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again,” or Youngstown, the other side of the border with Pittsburgh.  Clare took some of the players to church before the game.

Easter dinner for one college softball team today will take place at a Panera’s in Toledo.  But some family tradition must go on, so Michele and I will drive out to Valparaiso tomorrow with leftovers and an Easter basket.  Growing up, I had to find my basket Easter morning; my parents were in the habit of hiding it.  But what can you hide in a studio apartment like Clare’s?  Father rabbit will just have to make a formal presentation. 

Glass Half-full, Right?

 In his last two starts, White Sox leftie John Danks has pitched 11 straight scoreless innings, to bring his ERA down to 5.66.  This is progress, of a sort.  Another 11 and Danks could get it under 4.

It’s funny.  Danks had a rough spring but didn’t worry about it.  Erik Johnson had two bad starts, and he’s sent back to Triple-A.  I’m sure the Sox weren’t influenced by Danks’ $14 million dollar contract.  You can’t send that back to the minors.

And let’s not forget Jacob Turner, who, after getting shelled in his last appearance, said he’d starting bearing down.  Never mind, at least that’s what I’m thinking after Turner was given a two-run lead to protect yesterday.  He made it through the eighth only to give up a two-run homer in the ninth and a walk-off in the tenth.  But, hey, at least he wasn’t getting beat by any seeing-eye bingles, though Turner’s pitches probably had hitters’ eyes bulging.     

Joe Garagiola

I should have liked Joe Garagiola more than I did.  He was Midwestern sincere; Catholic, like me; and funny, if not quite as sharp as Bob Uecker.  Garagiola also devoted considerable effort to helping out ex-ballplayers who’d fallen on hard times.  Moreover, Garagiola had to deal with the considerable ego of Harry Caray when they both did Cardinals’ games on the radio.  My sympathies there.

But just once I wanted to hear Garagiola—or Vin Scully or Ernie Harwell, for that matter—challenge the baseball establishment, something along the lines of “The Dodgers were wrong to leave Brooklyn” or “Why in God’s name would the Tigers want a new ballpark?”.  What I remember instead is Garagiola doing the 1985 All-Star Game from the Metrodome in Minneapolis.  That was the ballpark with foldaway stands and the “baggie” in right field.  Garagiola deemed it a major-league facility.  No, it wasn’t.

I guess this says as much about me as it does Garagiola.  Lord knows Fox, ESPN and the MLB Network don’t have anyone with anything close to Garagiola’s talent in the broadcast booth.  On second thought, I do like him more.

 

Kids Say the Darndest Things

 Earlier this month, Mike Ditka called Barack Obama “the worst president we’ve ever had,” though probably “great to play golf with.”  Last week, cornerback Richard Sherman called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell “just a face” and “just a shirt” for daring to suggest the automatic ejection of any player after his second personal foul in a game.  Apparently, anyone who’s “never stepped foot on the field and understood how you can get a personal foul” shouldn’t make the rules.  Talk about a Gospel story gone rogue.

But far be it from me to single out football players.  Ex-pitcher Curt Schilling can’t seem to go a day without making a dumb remark.  And last week Adam Eaton of the White Sox said that 14-year old Drake LaRoche “a leader” in the clubhouse.  How can people so physically gifted sound so stupid?  It really makes me appreciate Charles Barkley.  Maybe Sir Charles can give lessons to fellow athletes on how to keep foot and mouth separate.    

Tennis, Anyone?

Some idiot tennis tournament official said crude, dumb stuff about female players sliding by on the coattails of the men; that man, thankfully, no longer has a job.  Then some idiot player said men should get paid more because the men’s game is more popular.  Forget history with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert and Steffi Graf and just think Serena Williams.  This guy thinks he’s more popular than her?  Get real, buddy.

But this idea of equality strikes a chord with me, maybe to the point I’m going to say something dumb here: women should play five sets to a match just like the men do.  This way, there’ll be even less cover for idiots to say dumb things.  Women regularly played best-of-five sets in the 1980s and ’90s.  Then things got dumb.      

Paying Her Dues

This is what happens when the NCAA athlete has the dreaded prefix “ex-” attached.  She stumbles out of bed at 6 AM (instead of 5:30, because she wants the extra half-hour of sleep), gets dressed and goes out into the cold to pick up breakfast for the softball team, which will be eaten at the start of a five-hour bus ride to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.  Welcome to the life of a sports’ graduate assistant.

Clare won’t enjoy her bus ride because she’s like her father, who believes it is always better to drive than to be a passenger, not that I ever get motion sickness the way my daughter does.  And she doesn’t want to risk taking medicine that will zonk her out; the four hours would be better spent writing a paper than half-sleeping.  Whatever condition she arrives in at Central Michigan, Clare can count on an afternoon of warming up pitchers and maybe charting their pitches.

But, hey, the Chippewas’ coach told the Valpo coach at least it’s not supposed to snow, so that’s something.  So’s the four-hour bus ride back to Valpo.

A Little Down Time

 This is a tough stretch for me and my daughter.  It’s the second half of March, and she should be hitting a softball, with me sitting in the stands watching her hit a softball.  Trust me, some habits are really hard to let go of.  But Elmhurst softball goes on, even if we don’t.  On top of that, Valpo starts conference play this week, so Clare will be on the road in Youngstown Ohio facing the mighty State Penguins on Easter Saturday.  Either we color Easter eggs late Saturday night or after church Sunday, whenever Clare can drive back home.  After Easter dinner, our daughter’s basically gone the next six weeks, unless we go to see her.

That’s why it was nice she drove in for Palm Sunday; we make a great crowd for the Passion reading of the Gospel.  After all that calling for Barabbas, father and daughter spent the afternoon relaxing on the couch watching spring-training baseball.  That’s how I came across the Mets’ Curtis Granderson talking about using a hitting tee.  He didn’t like it at first, but Kevin Long, the team’s new hitting coach, talked him into it, and now Granderson loves it.

What I enjoyed was listening to Granderson, who referred to all the parts of his swing as a “dance.”  Only now, Long and the tee have convinced him, “We go dancing after the game.”  In other words, Granderson dropped all the little tics and whatnots that went into his swing.  Now, it’s: bat ready to hit, hit.  Granderson made it sound so simple, which leads me to think he has a future down the line as a hitting coach.

      The White Sox will fly around the globe in search of talent.  Curtis Granderson was born in south-suburban Blue Island and attended school at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where one of the professors on my dissertation committee had him for a student (tough teacher, gave him a B).  The Tigers took Granderson in the third round.  Twelve major-league seasons and 263 home runs later, I’d still like to know why the Sox didn’t take him in the first or second round.   

If Only

With the rest of the world watching NCAA March Cash Madness, I probably had spring-training baseball all to myself, and I was more than happy to watch the White Sox beat the Cubs.  Note to the team favored to win the NL pennant in 2016: You may want to rethink things after John Danks (!) shuts you down over the course of five innings while striking out seven.  Ditto for the White Sox holding you guys to one hit on the game.

The Sox won by a score of 3-2 in a contest that went 2 hours and 22 minutes; it helps when both teams total all of five hits.  Better yet, there were no commercials.  Everything between innings was some sort of mini feature on the Sox.  I came away from the game not feeling beer bloat or the need to buy a car (or Viagra).  Talk about a pleasant surprise.  If only they could do this just once a week, if not on local broadcast then on MLB Network or Fox.  How about it, Commissioner Manfred?

March Madness

For me, March Madness is like the Super Bowl, important more as a signpost pointing to spring than anything else.  In high school, I followed UCLA because of my connection to Lew Alcindor.  Who knew, right?

But Alcindor and I were both taught by the then-Christian Brothers of Ireland, Alcindor at Power Memorial in Manhattan and me at St. Laurence O’Toole in beautiful, muddy unincorporated Stickney, Illinois.  When Brother O’Dwyer, aka The Walking Holiday because he was so old he might die at any moment, wasn’t extolling the career of that good Catholic Johnny Unitas, Brother might tell us a story or two about Alcindor.  The conversion may have caused the holiday.

I also watched some when Ray Meyer had those good DePaul teams in the late ’70s and early ’80s; it was like watching my father on the sidelines.  But now I honestly couldn’t care less.  People will bet an estimated $9.2 billion trying to pick a winner, to which I say, Good luck.  That, and remember money corrupts.  This is why I prefer the pros (with the exception of NCAA D-III, for reasons that should be obvious by now).  It’s all on the up-and-up, except for the PEDs, and they’ve got a handle on that now.  I think.  

Fathers and Sons and Blah-blah

 My, my, this Adam LaRoche thing has really taken off in the past 24 hours.  It seems that LaRoche decided to retire after White Sox vp Kenny Williams asked him to cut back on bringing his 14-year old son Drake to games.  From what I gather, the family last year had arranged it so the boy could be away from school for extended periods to go to the ballpark with his father, whether home or away.  Basically, Williams wanted the kid’s ballpark appearances to be cut in half, at a minimum.

I don’t blame LaRoche for reacting how he did, and I don’t blame the Sox for asking, though they could have done better due diligence when they signed the veteran first baseman, who had his son around a lot when he played with the Nationals.  Williams says he wants the focus to be on winning, and that’s fine.  Maybe now the Sox will cut down on the kiddie stuff between innings at the Cell.  I want to see the game, not 10-year olds in a footrace.

This wouldn’t even come up with other sports.  For openers, who’d want to hang out at Halas Hall?  A kid could get crushed (or threatened by Jeremiah Ratliff).  Bringing your son to practice would almost constitute abuse.  With basketball and hockey, the players can barely take care of themselves, let alone others.  As ever, baseball is the sport closest to the real world, which leads me to ask.  Adam LaRoche has a 12-year old daughter who plays softball.  Why didn’t he want her at the ballpark, too?   

He Gone

My daughter is becoming the bearer of all news baseball.  Clare called yesterday afternoon and advised me to sit down so she could deliver the news—Adam LaRoche was retiring.

What an odd bird.  When the White Sox signed LaRoche to a $25 million two-year contract in the winter of 2014, I kept hearing about what a great clubhouse presence he would be.  LaRoche also said Konerko-like things in the paper, so everything seened good.  Then I saw the ZZ-Top beard and started wondering, who is this guy?

Things only got weirder during the season, one that saw LaRoche hit a meager .207 with 12 homers and 44 rbi’s; in 2014, his stats were .259/26/92.  The diminished production was compounded by what I call the-look-and-walk after strikeouts.  LaRoche would trudge back to the dugout, dragging his bat and staring back at the catcher or out at the pitcher.  With LaRoche striking out 133 times in 2015, I got to see the look, and the walk, a whole lot.

I will say this for him, though—he’s now walking away from $13 million in salary.  LaRoche could’ve milked back spasms into one or more trips to the DL or forced the Sox to cut him, which they never would’ve done.  No, the leadership I heard so much about showed itself on Adam LaRoche’s last day as a member of the White Sox.  Kudos on that.

More of the Same

 A day after the White Sox trotted out John Danks to get hammered, they turn to 24-year old journeyman—as in on his fourth team already—Jacob Turner, who proceeds to give up four runs in three innings against the Royals.  On the spring, Turner is 0-2 with a 10.77 ERA.  He’s given up 13 hits in 7-2/3 innings.

But is he worried?  Not from the sounds of it.  Turner said on the White Sox website that, “The stuff has been pretty good, the execution has been a little disappointing at times, especially out of the stretch I feel like.”  Hmm.  A pitcher uses the stretch for when there are runners on base.  Hey, I’ve got an idea!  Why not allow fewer baserunners?  It couldn’t hurt.

Turner is nothing if not an optimist.  He says, “A few ball have found holes, but obviously when that happens, you have to bear down and get the next guy out.  That’s what I’ll focus on next time.”

Why wait?

He Said What?

Who you crappin’, John Danks?  You’re a starting pitcher whose ERA hasn’t been below 4 since 2010; your spring stats so far are a 1-2 win/loss record with a 12.10 ERA; and you’re going to make a shade over $14 million this year, come hell or high water or early exits.  And you mean to tell me that giving up eight runs in 4-1/3 innings yesterday was OK?

That’s basically what Danks said after yet another stellar performance yesterday. “We had a bigger priority today [than apparently getting batters out].  We got to take revised mechanics out.  We got to work on certain pitches, and it was a good day.”  Sorry to differ, but, No, it wasn’t.  You got rocked, again.  The White Sox will likely run you out every fifth day because of your contract and their unwillingness to admit to a mistake.  “We accomplished what we hoped to accomplish, and we’re going to get on the mound again in a few days and continue to iron things out.”

May I suggest you spend a little time on your pronouns while you’re at it?  Who’s this “we” you keep referring to?  Last time I checked, the only person on the mound delivering the ball is the pitcher.  Maybe he means his bad angel, which would explain the bad advice.

Like Father Like Daughter, Not

 Clare graduates with a master’s degree in another eight weeks.  Seven days after that, she plans to run her first half-marathon, and I intend to be there, if only to cheer her on.

My daughter runs, I bike.  She listens to country and western, I don’t (with the exception of banjo virtuoso Earl Scruggs).  She’ll always try a craft beer, I’m more interested in what might be called craft sodas.  She loves hot yoga, I’d rather do sit-ups and push-ups.  She hated grade school, I loved it.  She loved high school and is a proud alum of Elmhurst College.  I hated high school and consider myself a couldn’t-care-less DePaul University graduate.  Yet we both live and die with the Chicago White Sox.

In the end, that’s more than enough.

A Man Has Got to Know His Limitations

 If only Derrick Rose came with a mute button.  That way, his next contract might not be so small.  It would also help if he played more.

Thursday against San Antonio, Rose suffered some sort of groin injury, supposedly severe enough to keep him out of the following day’s game at home with Miami.  The Chicago native said he wasn’t frustrated by his injury situation.  No, “I’m controlling all I can control, try my hardest to be out there.  But the reality of it is that stuff like this happens.  Nobody knows my body but me.  I’m just trying to listen to it.”

I just hope his body isn’t telling him to spend a lot of money on anything because, no matter what Rose says or thinks, his salad days will soon be over.  

Laying Down the F'n Law

 My, my, my.  HOF reliever Goose Gossage certainly got up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday.  During an interview with ESPN, Gossage called bat-flipping Jose Bautista a “disgrace” and said the national pastime was being ruined by “nerds” in the front office.  Actually, he said fornicating “disgrace” and “nerds.”

Gossage is proudly old school, except when it comes to free agency; he was more than happy to enter a brave new world there.  Anyway, he doesn’t like hitters showing up pitchers, and he despises sabermetrics.  I went to ESPN to see if the ex-White Sox said anything about closers making fools of themselves as well, but der Gooser was quiet on that score.

Making things even more interesting was Bryce Harper, also talking to ESPN, in his comment that “baseball is a tired sport because you can’t express yourself.”  And Mr. Harper has how many World Series rings?  Oops, I’ve just outed myself as old school.  Fine, then.  I want my pitchers to act like Bob Gibson and Mariano Rivera, either all fire or ice, and I want my hitters to be like those old Yankee teams.  Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle—they were assassins in pinstripes, killing your team without the barest hint of emotion as they ran the bases, or trotted after a three-run homer.

That’s how you play the game.  Oh, and try not to come off as a potty mouth when explaining yourself.    

Different Games

Last summer, the Black Hawks’ Patrick Kane did something stupid of a sexual nature.  A woman accused him of sexual assault at his suburban Buffalo mansion, but local authorities found the facts did not warrant prosecution.  Yesterday, the NHL declared the matter closed and did not punish Kane for said behavior.

Compare the Kane case to that of Yankees’ reliever Aroldis Chapman, who last autumn reportedly choked his girlfriend and then unloaded his gun into a garage wall.  Again, local authorities chose not to prosecute, though in this case they had little choice given that the alleged victim refused to testify against her boyfriend.  But that didn’t stop Commissioner Rob Manfred last week from slapping Chapman with a 30-game suspension once the season starts.

I just have to wonder.  What would Manfred have done with Kane?  Sooner or later, a similar situation will come up with a major-league ballplayer, and we’ll see.

Buy the Book, By the Numbers

There I was, the oldest guy at the magazine rack, not looking at girlie magazines.  I picked up a Who’s Who in Baseball, underwhelmed as ever.  Why or why did The Baseball Register stop printing?  Who’s Who is like the NYT, deciding what’s fit to print.  E.g., nothing on White Sox outfielder J.B. Shuck, even though he batted .266 in 143 at-bats.  The Register included people with one at-bat, one inning pitched and less.  You could find a lot of minor leaguers in TBR, too.  Oh, well.

I also bought Lindy’s Sports Baseball for a second straight year, if for no other reason than to see what they would say about the Sox after predicting them to win the Central Division in 2015.  Answer—third place in ’16, with the comment “This is not a championship roster.”  Ouch.  At least they have the organizational arrow pointed in the up direction (seriously, and literally).

The things you learn these days.  Little did I know that Chris Sale led the Al last season with a 2.73 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), a metric that tries to strip away the effect of defensive play on pitching; the result is essence of ERA.   Of course, FIP should not be confused with ERA+, which compares the league to the pitcher, or ERA-, which compares the pitcher to the league.  Oh, did I mention BABIP yet?  That’s Batting Average on Balls in Play, something that Adam Dunn might have liked.  The funny thing here is I used a form of this stat years ago with Clare, when she was having a hard time adjusting to Bronco Ball.  This must be a case of great minds thinking alike.

I’m not a big metrics’ guy beyond WHIP, walks and hits per inning pitched.  That said, there’s enough old-time scouting stuff in Lindy’s to keep me reading.

A Match Made in Heaven

 Jenrry, meet Maria.  You two are made for each other

Yesterday, five-time Grand Slam tennis champion Maria Sharapova held a press conference during which she admitted testing positive in January for a banned substance.  For the past ten years, the 28-year has been taking a drug popular in eastern Europe as heart medication; apparently, her doctor thought it was some sort of miracle drug that would help fight off the flu and the onset of diabetes in his patient.  It’s a good thing Sharapova is so attractive, or reporters might have burst into laughter at her explanation.

This is where it gets really good.  The drug increases oxygen intake, which is great for people who have a hard time breathing.  Oh, wait, athletes have a hard time breathing deep into a game or match.  What a coincidence.  Sharapova was just trying to stay healthy, and here she is inadvertently taking a performance-enhancing drug.  Maybe I should mention here that you can’t get this drug in the U.S.  Either Sharapova sent away for it or somebody managed to supply her.  Wow, no warning bells went off for ten years.  Sharapova might want to get her hearing checked.  

And this is where it gets better yet—Sharapova received an email in December concerning newly banned substances, but she didn’t read it.  The highest paid female athlete in the world, whose image is worth millions and millions of dollars, didn’t read an email about drugs that could endanger her brand, to say nothing of her tennis career.  (Actually, she read it but didn’t click onto the link for the updated list of banned substances.)  Me, I get anything from the World Anti-Doping Agency, and I’m opening it.  But, hey, tennis stars may be too busy to worry about that kind of thing.  Too bad Sharapova’s management team didn’t know to be on the lookout for an update.  

According to today’s NYT, a 2015 study looked at the urine samples of 8300 athletes and found 182 of them using this drug; there must be a lot of flu and diabetes going around.  Wouldn’t it be fun to hear their excuses?  Or maybe the mighty Vladimir Putin could come to their aid by charging there’s a conspiracy by the West to frame Russian athletes.

I know one baseball player who’d believe it.

Play Catch

Where’s a kid when you need one?  I mean, 24 years of being a parent, taking her to school and practice and the doctor, listening, listening.  All I want is the slightest bit of reciprocity, to play catch with the old man.

All kidding aside, I’m pretty sure Clare would be more than happy to throw a ball around like when she was practicing to make the major leagues, only now she is in the bigs, NCAA D-I, that is.  Valpo spent the weekend playing in South Carolina and will be spending spring break in beautiful Las Vegas.  Clare has turned into what’s known in baseball as a team’s traveling secretary, responsible for everything off the field (travel, food, bed checks), with a personalized bonus of warming up pitchers.  This part of my daughter’s life ends when she graduates in May with a master’s in sports’ administration.

Then we play a little catch.

Anticipation

Back in high school, it took all my will to survive January and February.  The South Side of Chicago may not be on the tundra, but it sure felt that way.  Before Leonardo DiCaprio was even born, I learned how to survive in the wilderness.  For openers, I dressed in layers and never missed the charter bus that our high school.  Otherwise, it was two CTA buses plus a trek through the frozen wastes, at which point there was an afterschool detention waiting for us, followed by a trek and two CTA buses….

The trick was getting to March, at which point things slowly improved.  The snow melted, grudgingly; baseball returned on the radio; and we commenced our wait for The Package.  Friends would call and ask, Did it come?  On the weekend, they’d walk over to my house and help me wait for the mailman, or we’d go out looking for him.  Usually, he delivered it in the middle of the month, a big envelope all the way from Glen Head, New York, wherever in the world that was.  In my teenaged world, spring officially arrived with the new Strat-O-Matic baseball cards.

There were five of us in a league, or leagues, as we usually had more than one during the spring and summer.  At one point or another, I would have the White Sox, Matt the Giants, Bob the Phillies and Frank the Cubs; I can’t remember who Dan picked.  But we all ended up in my basement or on the front porch, rolling dice, changing pitchers and holding onto our pinch hitters in that time before the DH.  Then we turned eighteen, and grownups don’t play games like this.  Actually, they did and do, only then it wasn’t cool to admit it.  We were afraid chicks wouldn’t dig dice and split cards.

This morning it’s gray, with a little snow on the ground.  I could really use the official start of spring about now.  There would be five of us again, not three, all fighting to win the $5 pot that would then be spent on pizza.  March, no less than April, is the cruelest month. 

Conspiracy

Players fall all the time.  It’s how they get up that matters.

Consider Tim Raines, for instance.  Raines was a gifted ballplayer, a kind of Maury Wills with gap power.  Early on in his career, Raines grew dependent on cocaine, to the point that he carried it in the pants’ pocket of his uniform rather than leave it in his locker.  Raines entered rehab on his own accord and retired with career stats that have him knocking on the door at Cooperstown.

There’s also Mickey Mantle.  The drug of choice for the Mick was alcohol, in the glass or by the bottle.  Liquor as much as anything killed Mantle, who died of cancer that spread from his liver.  “Don’t be like me,” Mantle advised at the end.

And now we have banned-from-baseball (sort of) Mets’ closer Jenrry Mejia, who claimed yesterday that he’s the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by MLB.  Mejia held a news conference in which he laid out the charge.  You see, he did take steroids, but just once.  The second positive test-result was inaccurate, and Mejia was warned that if he appealed, officials would “find a way to find a positive.”  In other words, “I felt there was a conspiracy against me.”

It may even extend to the players’ association, because it hasn’t sprung to Mejia’s defense.  “They should have found something to appeal for,” he said through an interpreter.  But wait, there’s more, as reported in today’s NYT.  The story ends with this bit of advice from Mejia:  “All you have to do is admit your guilt when you are guilty.  And stay positive when you’re not.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sure sounds like what we used to call a Freudian slip.

Bankrupt

Sports Authority has just declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Nearly a quarter of its 463 stores are expected to close or be sold off.  Among the reasons cited for the move is customers’ preference for online buying.

In our neck of the woods, Sports Authority used to be Sportmart, with an outlet all of five minutes from our house, by foot, no less.  We could’ve dropped Clare off there, had dinner and a movie, and come back to pick her up without worry she’d wander off.  Not as long as our daughter had bats and balls and other equipment to check out.  I think we bought her first glove there.  I know we bought her first real bats there.

I can’t imagine shopping online for sporting goods other than shoes, maybe.  Team jerseys and hats aren’t sporting goods; they’re merchandise.  Tennis racquets and bats and fishing rods are sporting goods, best bought in person.  As a kid, I always went to Sam Santo Sports; it smelled of leather and echoed with duck calls.  But now we buy online and lose the human touch that should be central to sports.  Quack.

Abuse

Clare called last night to tell me that MLB was suspending Yankees’ reliever Aroldis Chapman 30 games for an incident last fall.  According to a police report, Chapman put his hands around his girlfriend’s neck before walking into his garage and discharging eight shots into a wall from a firearm.  Nothing beats telling your daughter you think the punishment is wrong.

I don’t condone abuse.  You love your loved ones, you don’t hurt them.  That said, major league baseball should not take on the role of the judicial system.  Chapman was never charged in large part because his girlfriend refused to cooperate with authorities.  Nothing MLB has done protects her.  A way has to be found to prosecute cases like this whether or not the victim agrees.  At the very least, Chapman should be facing some sort of weapons’ charge.

The silver lining here is that Chapman may have to undergo counseling.  That’s good, because fans are going to be all over him once he returns.  Without remorse, Chapman may be tempted to act again, and no suspension will protect the next victim(s).      

Extremes

Derrick Rose acts as though his next injury could be lurking in the shadows.  Lindsey Vonn acts as if her next injury will be her first.  If only.

Vonn has suffered a broken leg to go with a torn ACL (twice) and MCL.  Over the weekend, she broke her kneecap skiing.  The next day she was back on the slopes competing.  The World Cup does not award sympathy points for injury.

Skiing is not a team sport, so comparing it to basketball—or football or baseball—risks apples to oranges.  Rose is one of five on the floor; Vonn is always alone on the slopes, though she does act as if something or somebody is chasing after her.  “Close” is good enough in the NBA, if not for a championship ring, then at least for a nice contract.  The skier, the golfer, the bowler do not have the benefit of a Scott Boras brokered deal.  They put up or get paid also-ran wages.

Bulls’ fans have to wonder, though, if they wouldn’t want somebody more like Vonn as their shooting guard.