Genius

Buddy Ryan, defensive coordinator for the Bears’ Superbowl XX team, died the other day at age 85.  It appears that he was a genius.

Ryan’s claim to fame was the 46 defense, named for the jersey number of Bears’ safety Doug Plank.  What Ryan’s defensive scheme did basically was have eight players up front or eight in back, and it worked perfectly.  Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that the ’85 Bears had future HOFers Richard Dent and Dave Hampton on the line with Mike Singletary, another HOFer, at middle linebacker, and they were surrounded by a bunch of B+ talent.  That team could have played any defense it wanted, including the double tiddlywinks, and still won.  It’s the same with Phil Jackson and his triangle offense.  Whatever it was, it worked with the Bulls, largely because two gods from Olympus, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, ran it, then on to LA with Kobe Bryant.  Either of those teams had the personnel to play man-on-man, fast break, pick-and-roll…

So, what exactly is the value of coaching in professional sports?  Good question.  A coach or manager has to recognize talent and then fashion an attack around it.  But, no matter how good the coach, no talent no attack no wins.  I think coaches have the biggest impact when they come into new situations where the old regime royally screwed things up.  Provided there’s talent on the roster, the coach can plug it in and sit back; the results will show up soon enough in the box scores.

On a lesser level, a coach can get individual players to believe in themselves and thereby “discover” otherwise “lost” talent.  That’s why baseball has hitting and pitching coaches, to uncover the inner HOFer.  But coaching by itself doesn’t create talent, as owners learn time and again to their disappointment after hiring a franchise savior.  Just look at Ryan’s career post-Chicago—he was a .500 coach with the Eagles and Cardinals—or Jackson as president of the Knicks, 49-115 in two years.  The schemes matter a lot less than the players who implement them.   

Regrets

Parents are full of regrets, not all of which they relate to their children.  With Clare, I don’t mind that we passed on having her join a swim club or play basketball.  Tennis is another story.

All through high school, I tried to make myself into a tennis player.  My friend Bob and I would walk or bike the mile-and-a-half to Marquette Park and wait out the Lithuanian emigres who tried to monopolize the courts.  Then we proceeded to stink the place up.  If either of us could have hit a baseball as far as we hit tennis balls, we would have had ourselves nice little careers in professional baseball.  As it was, Bob and I eventually turned more to academics.

My pretty-bad experience no doubt influenced my reaction to Clare wanting to learn to play.  For two summers in grade school, she went to the camp the high school ran; the coach encouraged her to play.  Clare had the power and the one-step quickness to do well.  But nothing’s cheap in life, and we had to pick what we thought was her best sport.  She ended up still hitting a ball, only with a bat instead of a racket.

The Wimbledon finals coincide with the Fourth of July holiday; Michele and Clare will root for Serena Williams, as they always do.  And I’ll try not to feel guilty about a decision made years ago.   

Endurance

I try to do 40-plus miles any time I go biking, the better to keep old age at bay.  The closer my birthday gets, the more I try to do 60.  Yesterday, four weeks and change from that always-sobering event, I managed a mere 45 miles on the 606.  Wait for the humble-brag here—I was lucky to do that much.

The temperature was 90+ degrees, the skies were blue and the path offered nary a bit of shade.  A steady west wind of 15-20 mph made peddling a joy in one direction, murder in the other.  Usually, biking allows me to meditate.  I can rewrite a sentence in my head—provided I keep a lookout for pedestrians who think the yellow line is meant for crossing over—for hours on end or try to name as many members of the 1965 White Sox as a four-hour ride will allow me.  All I could do yesterday was focus on the task at hand and try to ignore how the heat insisted on radiating up from the concrete path like that.

I wonder if elite athletes face anything remotely like this, or does training kick in to get them through the event, without a thought or fear ever crossing their mind?  I kept thinking that I needed enough energy when it was over to lift the bike onto the carrier, or else somebody in Humboldt Park was going to ride away with a free Schwinn Varsity.  Really, doing stuff on the count of three works.  Then, I had to decide the best route home, expressway or boulevard.  Which one would minimize braking, too much of which could lead to sudden cramping in the legs?  My God, what if the air conditioning in the car breaks down?

Somehow, just 25 minutes after getting off the bike, I was back home, finding a way to lift my trusty Schwinn off the carrier and get it back into the basement.  After that, I made like a camel that had wandered into an oasis from out of the desert.  I drank till my hump was full.

Passing Time

For eight years with Clare, from freshman-year high school through the end of college, I didn’t have to bother much with baseball.  Between travel and varsity, Clare was busy—and I was busy with her—a full eleven months out of the year.  (In case you’re wondering, we got August off).  If the Sox were bad or mediocre, which they mostly were, I had the luxury of concentrating on my daughter’s career instead.  

College was a little different.  I wasn’t a real part of the equation anymore other than to be on hand as a sympathetic ear once practice started in January.  Then, beginning with the spring trip to Florida, it was six of the most intense weeks you can imagine.  I needed that long, into June, just to recover.

But now I’m in my second year of having to care about the White Sox, the textbook definition of an average team at 38-38.  But Chris Sale is anything but average after beating Toronto 5-2 on Sunday to up his record to 13-2.  Sale needed all of 99 pitches to go eight innings.  Two solo shots in the eighth cost him a shot at a complete game.  Oh, well, you take the bad with the good.

Sale beat Marcus Stroman, who only lasted five innings.  My fan-crush on Stroman remains strong.  What I wouldn’t give to have him, all 5’8” of him, following Sale in the rotation.  But, hey, we have James Shields instead.  Be still, my beating heart, be still.

Unifrom Attire

Uniform Attire

I read somewhere once that the White Sox have one of the greatest number--or the most, pardon my memory--of different uniforms in MLB history.  You can date the fan by the uniform they most identify with.

For me, it’s the one from 1959, with pinstripes and SOX spelled in Old English script.  Even better were the caps, S-O-X- in block lettering on an interlocking diagonal, the letters white outlined in red.  The uniform the team has now is a black-and-white version, with the Old English script on the caps.  They’re OK.

The worst uniforms are a tossup between the 1976 clam diggers courtesy of Bill Veeck and the 1983 “candy wrapper,” as someone I know once described it: a white pullover jersey with red and blue horizontal banding, SOX in fat type.  I can still see Greg Luzinski running around in this monstrosity.  Thank God they changed uniforms in the late ‘80s.

So, of course the team uniform the past two years for Sunday home games has been the ’83 monstrosity.  And, of course, my daughter loves it.  “Throwback” is all in the eyes of the beholder, I guess.   

Venus and Mars

Clare splits her time between sending out résumés and working at a high school in Elmhurst.  She’s basically in charge of the baseball field the school is renting out for travel tournaments.  The other week she had to deal with this situation—a batter broke his leg on a swing.  Really, good times.

Yesterday, a kid of about 15 or so came out of the dugout and asked her for a date.  “I’m 25,” she told him, adding a year for effect.  The rest of the game Clare was a major subject of discussion on the bench.  Apparently, more than one underaged player wanted to try his luck because girls really do want to go through life as babysitters.  Trust me when I say somebody had to use extreme self-control to not march into the dugout, take a bat and start swinging at any and all pitches coming her way.

At least, I think my daughter exhibited self-control.  There haven’t been any police calls to the house, so far.        

Way Back in '27....

 If the White Sox had won yesterday at Fenway (which, of course, they didn’t), it would have been their first four-game sweep there since June of 1927.  I sort of remember.  Let me explain.

There was a time in my life when I had to go through 15-1/2 years of the Chicago Tribune—1915 to 1931—on microfilm.  Sitting in a dark corner of a library hunched over a machine with a flickering light bulb can be a lonely business, trust me, especially if it goes on for close to two years.  My relief was to scan the sports’ pages.

I followed the Black Sox scandal, the Dempsey-Tunney fight and the accession of the Sultan of Swat.  I paid attention to the 1927 season because Babe Ruth hit all those homeruns; it only seemed most of them were against the Sox.  In fact, Sox pitchers yielded six, or ten percent, of the total, with poor Tommy Thomas responsible for three of them.

And, when it was all over, I had a Ph.D. in American history.  Babe Ruth just had a lot of homers.    

Derrick Rose

He gone, as Hawk Harrelson would say.  Yesterday, the Bulls traded guard Derrick Rose to the Knicks in a five-player and draft-choice deal.  Call it a painful, if necessary, divorce.

Growing up, I looked at athletes as buffer versions of my father.  If Wayne Causey of the White Sox—I got Causey’s autograph at the Back of the Yards’ Free Fair in the summer of 1966—had told me to jump out a window, I probably would’ve done so without question.  Little did I know that Causey was a relative kid at 29-years old.  And how old is Rose?  He’ll be 28 in October.

Athletes have always been pampered; only recently have they been made insanely rich as well.  It’s hardly a combination that encourages maturity; just ask Patrick Kane.  Rose has had his share of celebrity misadventures, and it could get worse in the Big Apple, where people think modern basketball was invented.  (Note to Spike Lee and other Knicks’ fans—it wasn’t.)  Personally, I hope things go well for Rose.  God knows, a whole bunch of demons came along with that $94.3 million contract he signed in 2011.   

I don’t particularly care about Derrick Rose the player; it’s the human being who matters.  I heard that Rose recently contacted family members of someone who was gunned down on the streets of Chicago (a phrase not nearly as romantic as “the streets of Laredo”).   That shows me something, that maybe an athlete can be the sort of person a 13-year old boy thought they were.

She Got That Right

 Clare and I have been talking a lot about the White Sox recently and their 14-game losing streak, or its equivalent.  A team that was once 13 games above .500 is now one game under.  Part of the reason is a front office that thought acquiring starting pitcher James Shields would be a good idea.  In three starts for the Sox totaling 8-2/3 innings, Shields has given up 21 earned runs on 24 hits and 9 walks.  That comes out to a 21.81 ERA, folks, and a WHIP of 3.81.  In other words, any team lucky enough to face Shields is all but guaranteed of generating a combination of four hits and walks an inning.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Clare said to me on Father’s Day, “you can’t blame that on any woman.”  No, but women are still deemed unqualified to be a big-league GM or player.  Go figure.   And, while you’re at it, explain to me the genesis of the idea that A.J. Pierzynski should replace Robin Ventura in the Sox dugout.

A.J. isn’t even done playing yet, so he has zero coaching experience.  On top of that is his personality.  It’s one thing to rub your manager and/or the opposition the wrong way, it’s another thing to rub your players the same.  I want somebody who knows when to do things in a game, when to change pitchers or pinch hit or hit-and-run.  Just because a guy lights up for the cameras doesn’t mean he knows how to manage.  Wait, maybe that’s it.  Chicago sports’ people want A.J. because he’d make their jobs so much easier.  Nothing like putting the needs of the few ahead of the needs of the many.

King James

LeBron James proved Sunday night that finesse and muscle will beat finesse alone, at least in June 2016.  So, the Cavaliers are the NBA champs, and a 62-year drought ends in Cleveland.  Good.

James has three championship rings now to Michael Jordan’s six.  Put a gun to my head and ask me who’s the better player, I’d probably say Jordan, though by less and less.  Ask me who the better person is and it’s James, hands down.  There’s a meanness to Jordan on and off the court that seems to have escaped James entirely.  If I’m trying to get into that lifeboat, Michael just might let the sharks decide first.  LeBron would offer me his hand, I think.

For an athlete, a super athlete formerly with entourage and bling and advisors, James has matured into a thoughtful 31-year old who has opinions he’s willing to expresses, and they concern the same things we all talk about around the dinner table.  My guess is James could run for public office once his playing career ends.  The only question is where does he start, mayor of Cleveland or governor of Ohio?  Either way, I wouldn’t want to be a Republican on the receiving end of that charge.

Two Chairs on the Green

 Saturday night, Michele and I sat on the green or common at Elmhurst College for the third time in our lives.  The first time was the day we dropped Clare off for school; the school served us lunch, which was the least they could do given how much we would be giving them in tuition, even after scholarships and grants. The second time was Clare’s graduation four years later, and the third time two years and two weeks after that, for a jazz concert by the school band.  We knew what chairs to bring, thanks to travel ball.

Chairs are important.  Without them, backs will seize up halfway through a Saturday spent sitting in bleachers.  If the chairs are too heavy, arms will seize up as you drag them from the parking lot to the most distant field in the tournament complex or, as happened to us in Toledo one weekend, your arms will seize up and your head will spin as you drag those chairs through 95-degree heat with 95-percent humidity.  Goldilocks knew what she was doing testing everything out first.

We finally came up with the right chairs, camping ones, midway through Clare’s second year of travel, a little after Toledo.  They’re lightweight and durable with a little table that slides off to the side when not in use; you can literally lift them with a finger.  And what those chairs have been witness to, the homeruns, the popup slides, the heartbreak of not winning every game or batting too low in the order or not playing at all.  I imagine that if they could talk both chairs would say they liked most of all the homeruns and Grammy-winner Patti Austin covering Ella Fitzgerald as a full moon rose over the green at Elmhurst College. 

The Olympics are Coming!

 You can tell the Olympics are getting closer by the number of related stories popping up on NBC Nightly News and the Today Show.  Ditto NBC Channel 5 in Chicago.  I have a sneaking suspicion that ABC and CBS don’t care nearly as much about Rio, except maybe to do stories about the Zika virus, crime in Rio and polluted waterways.  Gosh, I bet those won’t be peaking come late July.

And talk about bad luck.  NBC had to do a story Friday on the Russian track and field team being banned from participating.  It seems that members wanted to follow in the footsteps of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, only they got caught.  Well, I’m sure the good folks at NBC will put a good spin on it, maybe with Bob Costas getting all mock-serious when staring into the camera.  Yeah, I bet that’s what they’ll do. 

Sizing Things Up

I watch basketball or football, and I pretty much feel like an alien, or I’m watching aliens.  The players are big beyond belief and, in many instances, too big for their own good.

Not that baseball is immune.  Randy Johnson and Dave Winfield look to be what many organizations are looking for size-wise when they draft players.  Consider that the White Sox recently called up reliever Michael Ynoa, at 6’7” a very tall pitcher.  The only correlation between size and talent would appear to be power—he can throw it through a wall or hit it through one.  Throwing strikes consistently or hitting for average are another matter.  All of which makes last week’s draft selections by the Sox so interesting.

Six of the top twenty draft choices are six-foot on the head with another coming in at 5’11”; hey, that last one is ½” shorter than me even, and he was the #3 pick.  Fingers crossed, some of these guys may even make it to the bigs.

I certainly hope that #3 pick, outfielder Alex Call, does.  Call is from Wisconsin and a product of Ball State.  He ended up in Indiana because the state of Wisconsin has no D-1 baseball programs (U of W Madison dropped baseball after the 1991 season, a scandal that).  The switch in states also caused a switch in majors.  Call wanted to be an engineer, but Ball State doesn’t have an engineering program, so entrepreneurial management it is.  Wow, somebody I can actually relate to.  And he got his degree in three years, no less.

Can I also relate to new Sox shortstop Tim Anderson, recently called up from Charlotte?  Oh, most definitely, even though Anderson can go from home to third in less time it takes me to get up off the couch.  I mean, he’s not even two inches taller.  At 6’1” I’d be that fast, too.  Maybe.

Whose Pastime?

I went to the barber yesterday, very nice guy who happens to be from Albania.  He had the TV on to the European Championship in soccer, which means as much to me as the All-Star Game probably does to him.  As ever, words of wisdom were dispensed from behind the chair.

“You know why soccer is so popular?” he asked, scissors in hand.  “Because it’s cheap.”  On hearing that it cost $300 for a softball bat, he may have wanted to jack up the cost of my hair cut.  Luck for me, it’s not a clip joint.

How odd, and how sad.  Once upon a time, baseball or a variant like stickball was so affordable that immigrants and the working class flocked to it.  Watch the old movies for scenes of kids in the street hitting away or find the picture of Willie Mays playing stickball, not too far from the Polo Grounds, I’m sure.  Now, it’s travel ball and private lessons, and what kid with parents from afar wants to play that game with a bat, if they could afford a bat, to say nothing of a glove that will set the family budget back $150?  I bet you can get a good soccer ball for the cost of a haircut, with enough left over for socks.  Yes, very sad.

The "Genius"

For all you fans keeping score out there, Cubs’ manager Joe “Genius” Maddon spent all of last year batting his pitchers eighth.  This season, he’s walked Bryce Harper thirteen times in a four-game series, used a five-man infield defense and, this week, spit into the wind, twice.  And he came out of it with a dry face.

In Monday’s game against the Nationals, Maddon twice instructed his pitcher to walk a batter with runners on first and second.  That’s right, the Cubs’ skipper went with a strategy that put a second runner in scoring position.  And he got away with it.  Part of me wishes he hadn’t while a bigger part of me is glad he did.  Here’s why.

As the season starts to have games that count, Mr. Maddon will be tempted to show how smart he is, again and again.  If it works in September, he’ll keep doing it in October.  Everybody plays hunches, I get that, although Maddon will probably say his moves are more stat-driven than not.  I beg to differ.  You never, ever, put two runners in scoring position via the intentional walk unless the other team is batting a corpse, and even then your pitcher could hit him, or it, with a pitch.

Of course, I could be wrong.  There was a time I wished Maddon were on the South Side.  I don’t necessarily want to stick with Robin, but not all geniuses are what they’re cracked up to be.  Right, Joe?  

Summer Breeze

Armed with a master’s degree in sports’ administration, my daughter is trying to take the job world by storm.  She checks websites daily—when exactly did the want ads disappear?—and sends out her résumé into the ether world, waiting, waiting for a response.  In the meantime, we go hitting.  If only those bird-dog scouts of legend hung out around Stella’s in the beautiful suburb of Lyons.  They’d see something then.

We visited Stella’s yesterday afternoon.  My daughter is a knight reincarnated.  The armor goes on to protect the head and gloves to do the same for her hands.  (You should’ve seen the blister at the base of one of her thumbs.)  Then, instead of a lance or sword, she picks up her bat, steps into the cage and does battle against a machine that cares not at all how bad it makes anyone look.  I am the page, handing out tokens and advice if the brave knight wants to hear it.

Stella’s is built like a big semicircle, with a cone roof supported by two metal posts that rise forty or more feet off the floor; hitting one of those posts is like ringing a bell, and it is one of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard.  The outer wall is a series of garage doors, pulled shut in winter and now open to let in the summer breeze.  With the sun and the breeze and the balls ringing off those posts, this is how June is supposed to be.  I imagine heaven has an endless supply of tokens.  It better.     

Lakefront Ghosts

Sometimes, I joke that the secret of life is to keep the memories in check until old age can start spiriting them away, one at a time.  But I don’t always practice what I preach.

Yesterday, I rode along the Chicago lakefront on a bicycle that was a combination high school graduation/18^th birthday gift.  I rode by the 57^th Street Beach, where my sister Betty took me a couple of times after we’d visited the Museum of Science and Industry, before it required a loan to purchase admission.  Later I made my way through the crowds going to Navy Pier, where my sister Barb attended school back when the pier was a two-year campus for the U of I.  The pier was also a great cheap date once upon a time.  I took Michele in the late ’70s; there was a catwalk atop the two freight sheds that once occupied much of the pier.  What a view.  But we never did go to the fish shack that used to be in front of the pier.

North Avenue Beach reminds me of Rainbow Beach, off of 75^th Street.  That was our beach, the steel mills to the south, a big concession stand to the north, by the bus turnaround.  My mother and I would often take the bus, or, if I was good—or my parents made them—my sisters would let me tag along with them.  Then white people wouldn’t share with black people, and things got ugly; by the time I was twelve, we stopped going.  The one time my sisters took me to North Avenue Beach they put a dent in the family Chevrolet while parking.  I can’t quite remember what excuse they used to get out of trouble.  It was just as likely my father let it go.  He could be that way on occasion.

I passed Lincoln Park and thought of both my parents; the park would be a special Sunday drive for us from the South Side.  We’d go to the zoo and the rookery and get back home in time for Ed Sullivan on the TV.  Or we’d take Lake Shore Drive all the way up into the North Shore.  I do the same now on the bike, left knee permitting.

One or two times in college, I rode my bike from home to DePaul University in Lincoln Park.  All along Archer Avenue, I pretended to be a truck, which gave me the element of surprise, until I reached downtown and switched to the lake path.  I remember the waves actually brushing up to the bike tires.  Now, I keep a healthy distance.

On the way back, at 51^st Street, I remembered being four or five and walking along the breakwater there; it was a way to beat the summer heat in that time before air conditioning.  But I don’t remember my parents being with me.  The forgetting must have started.   

Walk, Don't Run

I tried jogging in my twenties and didn’t like it.  I always wanted to go faster than my body allowed, which left me with two alternatives, biking and driving.  Foot-wise, I always found walking to be more enjoyable.

My one brother-in-law, a podiatrist, would’ve tied me to a chair to keep me from jogging; ditto for his niece, Clare.  There are all sorts of knee and foot problems he’s more than happy to tell you about.  Another brother-in-law is a testament to his warnings, all sorts of knee and hip problems.  What nobody talks about is how addictive the whole thing is, how runners know the toll being taken on their bodies and doing it anyhow.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Over the years, I’ve hiked and walked for distance.  I did 30 miles one day in the Rockies and close to that another time on the streets of Chicago.  So, my addiction must kick in at a slower pace.  I guess it’s a tortoise-and-hare thing.  Really, what did the rabbit see trying to power ahead?  Are marathoners aware of anything beyond what’s three feet ahead of them?  I doubt it.  I go slow.  I don’t even look for a race to finish.  But I get there.        

The NFL: 24/7, 365 and Counting

 I opened the Tribune sports’ section this morning expecting to read about another pathetic showing by the White Sox offense (five hits, one run, 13 punch-outs) vs. no-name lefty Danny Duffy and the Royals’ bullpen.  Oh, the story was there, alright, and lucky to make page four.  Ordinarily, you’d expect the story to start on page one, this being June and baseball, but it was more important to run some sort of photo spread of “BEARS VETERAN MINICAMP” running Tuesday through Thursday, don’t you know.

Wait, there’s more, as in a story on the team’s receivers’ coach; it spread over two pages and would’ve made two complete pages if not for the lame column about the NFL going to Las Vegas.  The Bears were a 6-10 team last season, with a shot at 9-7 and, if everything falls into place, 10-6.  I can only imagine the coverage the Broncos are getting in Denver.  No doubt, Colorado Rockies’ fans know what I mean.

Sailing

My wife works in downtown Chicago, literally above the clouds.  Yesterday, she could see the boats practicing on Lake Michigan for the America’s Cup sailboat race, which is going freshwater this year.

Despite my fear of water, I’m fascinated by the things that float on it.  I’ve been on the USS Constitution and within a stone’s throw of the USS Texas, older even than the Arizona.  A few years ago, we went on vacation to Lake Geneva, where the rich folk like to show off their vintage motorboats.  Step in one, and you become the Great Gatsby.

There’s a sensuality to sailboat design, or at least there used to be.  Everything was curved—the hull, the sails, the wheel.  Now, the boats aren’t so much designed as engineered.  The ones I saw on the news last night looked like floating garbage disposal units—functional, perhaps, but hardly appealing to the eye.  The same goes for materials.  Various hardwoods once went into vessel construction; now, it’s a matter of composites, like the latest jets and softball bats.

Composites will be the end of us all, I tell you, and function as design.  

Draft Day

MLB is intent on turning its annual player draft into an NFL-like extravaganza, broadcast live, players and their new bosses shaking hands for the camera.  All that’s lacking is a good slogan, something like—They Lose Often So They Can Draft High.  Oh, wait, that might upset some fans.

I heard a story about Rick Renteria, the ex-Cubs’ manager now the bench coach for the White Sox.  When Renteria was a first-round draft choice for the Pirates in 1980, somebody had to go get him out of his high school math class and send him home so he could take the phone call.  Oh, for those simple days again.  That, or recognition that #1 picks don’t always work out, regardless the televised hoopla.  Carson Fulmer’s, the Sox #1 pick last June, has a 3-7 record for Double-A Birmingham, with a 5.37 ERA and 37 walks in 58.2 innings.  Here’s hoping Fulmer can turn it around.  Otherwise, he becomes bad trivia.

In the meantime, it always pays to remember Mark Buehrle, a 38^th (!) draft choice by the Sox in 1998.  Three years later, Buehrle was in the bigs on his way to a 214-160 record.  The man is so unassuming no one knows if he’s even retired officially.  And he can’t finish his career on the South Side why, exactly?

Speaking of connections, the Sox actually took a local product in the second round, pitcher Zack Burdi of Louisville. Burdi played for Downers Grove South High School, in the same conference as Clare.  They may even have crossed paths when Morton softball visited DGS.  Had he asked, Clare could’ve given him some good batting tips.  She was all-conference.  

Connections

Maybe I look for baseball connections, maybe they exist for everyone.  The Cubs just finished playing the Phillies, and I remember my connection to Philadelphia manager Pete Mackanin; he is the perpetual eighth grader in my seventh-grade universe.  Mackanin is a baseball lifer who played for four teams over nine seasons before winding his way through various coaching and interim managerial jobs to land in the Philadelphia dugout, which is more of a hot seat.  Good luck, Pete.  I also went to high school with Jim Dwyer, who had himself a very nice 18-year career as a left-handed bat off the bench, but with Dwyer it was more a matter of trying to be out of sight and out of mind.  At St. Laurence, upper classmen might beat on us “bennies” and sophomores if we upset them.  I didn’t want anybody taking out an 0-for-4 day on me, which required some very serious blending into the walls (not to be confused with being smeared across them).

Clare has even better connections.  Her one classmate from Morton is a year older, and he was drafted by the Angels her freshman year at Elmhurst.  Long story short, high-A ball proved to be his ceiling.  She also knows the brother of a former teammate, and he’s pitching in AA; his ceiling has yet to be determined.  Years from now, these two will be her Pete Mackanin and Jim Dwyer. 

On the Fine Art of Heckling

 I imagine there were hecklers at the first Olympics, sideline warriors certain they could do it faster, higher, stronger than the guys on the field.  Such is human nature.

Which is why I hesitate to say heckling is a bigger problem today than in the past.  I’ve read too many accounts of baseball in the 19^th and 20^th centuries where players and umpires alike feared for their lives; after reading that, you would think bottles were invented for the sole purpose of tossing at athletic events.  Sorry, but no one gets to be judge, jury and executioner, half-tanked or not.  That we’re still doing this kind of stuff three centuries into the national pastime only goes to show humans don’t evolve all that fast.

Over the weekend, somebody tossed a bottle at the Phillies’ Ryan Howard, he of the 5-year, $125 million contract and batting average in the vicinity of .153.  Apparently, blasting a player on social media isn’t enough; in Philadelphia, they still have to do it old school.  This isn’t progress, folks.  Lord knows, there were times in Clare’s softball career I was tempted to go at it with umpires, but I didn’t.  I tossed brickbats, not composite bats. 

It keeps you out of jail, which is where that Phillie bottle tosser is most likely headed—and belongs.

Two Couch Potatoes

Clare is back home, graduated from Valpo and returned with her boyfriend from Syracuse.  Chris won’t return to the Orange for a second season because he’s been hired as the new offensive line coach at Elmhurst College.  Did I mention that?

Anyway, Clare and I watched game one of the college NCAA D-I softball finals, Auburn vs. Oklahoma.  If you can’t watch your daughter play, the two of you can always watch other peoples’ daughters, I say.  We mostly talked batting stances and strategy.  A lot of players seemed to be holding the bat way back behind their heads, which translates into time wasted getting it into the hitting zone, and the Auburn coach seemed to be channeling his inner Robin Ventura.  Who pinch hits a lefty to face a lefty with the tying run on third and one out?  Well, Robin probably would, and the Auburn coach sure did.  Final score, Oklahoma 3 Auburn  2.

There were nearly 8200 fans in the stands for the game.  Pro softball would kill for that kind of attendance.  The Chicago Bandits’ games I went to when Clare interned with the team didn’t draw anything close to a quarter of that, and they’re supposed to be one of the stronger franchises in the league.  What gives?

I’ll forgo the lecture on the inevitability of women playing baseball to suggest that they have to put teams where the fans are.  Right now, there are all of six teams in the league, when there should be upwards to thirty.  From what I can tell—it’s not like the websites want you to know too much—two teams are located in Texas; one in metro Chicago; one in Akron, Ohio; one in suburban Pittsburgh; and one in Kissimmee, Florida.  Considering how many of the top players come from the South and Southwest, that’s where I’d put new teams; hello, Oklahoma City and Orlando.  After that, I’d invoke Horace Greeley and go west.  California would seem to be a logical area to saturate.  But what do I know?  I’m just a couch potato.   

Things I've Seen

Watch baseball enough, and you’ll see practically everything.  As I just mentioned to someone that I recall Charlie “Paw-Paw” Maxwell playing for the White Sox (and that last happened in 1964), I’ve done a lot of watching. 

There was the time in 1967 at Comiskey Park I saw umpire Emmett Ashford go at it with Frank Robinson; “bait” Robinson would be more accurate, because Ashford seemed to goad Robinson with every at-bat until he finally tossed him.  I have never seen a ballplayer madder than Robinson was that afternoon or an umpire closer to bodily harm.

In August 1974, just as I was ready to start law school, I watched Bart Johnson shut out the Red Sox of Evans and Yastrzemski and Petrocelli and Tiant (his mound opponent that afternoon) on four hits. Johnson bested Luis Tiant, already a 20-game winner, giving up just four hits and two walks.  That boy had great talent but a crappy shoulder.  It was the most effortless pitching performance I’ve ever seen, Mark Buerhle’s perfect game included.

I saw Sal Bando and Ron Kittle hit the ball over the roof in left field; I even heard Bando’s ball hit the roof as it skipped along.  Now, all homeruns at the Cell are by design one-deck jobs, and none has yet to make it out of the mall.  Maybe someday, when we sign Paul Bunyan.

And this year, I’ve seen the Sox turn two triple plays, one around-the-horn and the other a rather unique 9-3-2-6-2-5.  They would’ve had a second around-the-horn, but the umpire refused to call interference even after the baserunner held onto Brett Lawrie’s foot as he tried to make the throw to first.  We will see electronic umpiring, mark my words, but that’s a story for some other time.

Yesterday was another first for me, even as the Sox were swept for the second of three series on this road trip.  Twice in an inning a ball was hit to the back edge of the infield, and shortstop Tyler Saladino both times got the force at third.  In all my years, I’ve never seen that.

But I have seen great starts to the season give way to mediocrity and worse.  A team that once stood thirteen games above .500 is now one game above.  But everyone says what a great clubhouse it is, so it’ll work out, I’m sure.  Or not.

Let's Take a Swim

Before softball, before baseball, my daughter was a swimmer.  From the way she took to water, you would’ve thought the girl was working on a remake of “Splash”; move over, Daryl Hannah.  By the time Clare was eight, someone wanted us to have her join a swim club.  Too expensive, we thought, not knowing what lay ahead with softball.

The bat thing came from me, the fish thing from her mom.  Michele always loved swimming and so decided early on to have her daughter take lessons at the Y.  One class led to another, until we got that club invitation.  The slightest whiff of chlorine sends me into PTSD.

My own mother took me to the Y for swimming lessons because the doctor told her it would be good for my asthma.  By that, he must have meant it would be good for me to sit on the bottom of the pool looking up, for I had rock-like tendencies that no amount of classes could change.  Well, maybe they did, a little.  I do remember swimming out to a raft when we were on a family vacation in Wisconsin.  Talk about dogged, and lucky.

Now, if I were ever to go on a cruise (and that’s about as likely as me skydiving), you’d be able to point me out as the guy wearing the life jacket at breakfast, dinner and on the promenade.  In my case at least, fear of water really does lessen fear of flying.  Do I worry about snakes in a plane?  No, but a plane over the ocean would always be cause for concern.

Muhammad Ali

My father was born in 1913, the second son of Polish immigrant parents in the hardscrabble neighborhood of Bridgeport.  His father died before he was two, and that changed everything in his life.  His formal education stopped in the seventh grade, after which he was expected to contribute to the mortgage of the bungalow his mother his mother had purchased for the family on south Homan Avenue.  It was also the house I spent the first 28 years of my life in.

My father never served in WW II.  Instead, he left the assembly line at Ford on Torrance Avenue to become a Chicago fireman.  He ran into burning buildings from about 1943 until his retirement in 1978.  His one wartime-like experience, working during the April 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., he never talked about.

After retiring from the department, my father drove a delivery truck hauling chemicals to local plating businesses.  Backing into loading docks under the Lake Street ‘L’ tracks was something else he never talked about.  My father kept working until his body started breaking down.  That went on from the time he was 70 until his death 17 years later.

My father had his prejudices and it bothered anytime I dated someone who was Irish; the problem had something to do with his growing up in Richard J. Daley’s Bridgeport and being a member of Richard J. Daley’s fire department.  And he was not fond of Lithuanians for reasons that are a mystery to me.  When it came to blacks, he thought in bootstraps and leaving school in the seventh grade.

My father did not understand Muhammad Ali; I’m sure it would have been mutual had they known one another.  I would’ve liked to see the two of them at our kitchen table, arguing prejudice to prejudice.  Barring fisticuffs, that might have led to something of value.

Once in a Blue Moon

 The White Sox went into extra innings against the Mets Wednesday afternoon in New York, so when the 13^th inning rolled around, Sox reliever Matt Albers ambled to the plate.  One pitch, one called strike on the left-hand “hitting” Albers, who in another time would  be called “husky” on account of his 6’1”, 225-pound (and more, I’m sure) frame.  Another pitch, a second strike, all with Albers watching.  Then two balls, Albers still a statue.  And then on a 2-2 pitch, Albers suddenly came to life and lined a ball splitting the gap, with centerfielder Juan Lagares looking way out of place, though understandably shallow.

It was Albers’ first hit in nine years, now making him 3 for 35 lifetime.  Oh, and he really didn’t know how to slide, so he trundled into second base instead.  And trundled into third on a wild pitch.  And tagged up on a fly ball to centerfield.  And pitched the bottom of the 13^th for the win.

Now, Albers has something to tell the grandkids.  If it makes the Mets feel any better, I’d rather get beat by a DH any day than by a guy—and we all know girls couldn’t touch Albers’ hitting stats—with a lifetime batting average of .086.  

Trippin' with the Oracle at Dephil

 Cubs’ manager John Maddon in today’s Tribune, on getting starter Kyle Hendricks to realize he can pitch deep into a game:  “A mind once stretched has a difficult time going back to its original form.”  This makes perfect sense, if you can visualize one hand clapping. 

Curry Oranges to Jordan Apples

 The other week, a columnist in the Tribune said Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors were little more than the flavor of the week.  If they beat the Cavaliers, that will mean back-to-back championships, which will leave a strong flavor in some mouths.

When the Warriors won 73 games in the regular season, they broke the record set by the Bulls in 1995-96.  That led to questions about which team is better.  Would Curry and fellow guard Klay Thompson beat Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, or vice versa?  I tend to go with the hometown team, but not out of loyalty.  It’s just that the Bulls with Dennis Rodman would literally hack the opposition into pieces.

Curry and Thompson hit a record of 62 three-pointers in the seven-game win over Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals.  That means touch, finesse.  Rodman and company would simply bang away until Curry and Thompson couldn’t feel a thing.  Of course, if the refs actually called fouls (this is all hypothetical, anyhow), then it might be different.  Rodman would be gone by the end of the first quarter while Jordan and Pippen would be playing with three fouls apiece.  I’d go with Golden State in that case.  Time machine, anyone?