Articles of Faith

America may have entered a post-Christian era, but that shouldn’t be confused with a loss of religion.  Americans just believe differently, in different stuff.

 

Growing up, I believed in angels that/who could fly; that belief is no less widespread, provided it’s a superhero or young wizards on a broom doing the flying.  “Aquaman” did close to $52 million in box office this weekend, and Aquaman flies.  Whether or not he watches over a kid in middle school may have to wait for the sequel.

 

The Tribune today had a page-one story on Bears fans congregating in their garages for the Bears-Vikings’ game.  The faithful, of course, have their favorite hymn, “Bear Down, Chicago Bears,” and the picture for the story showed garage walls plastered with the likenesses of all sorts of Chicago players.  Here are your saints, if not Saints.

 

I watched the game, too, though in the living room, and without such holy images that would adorn a believer’s garage wall.  Chicago gods proved mightier than Minnesota gods, who did not answer when an anointed fan blew into a monster horn that looked straight out of “Lord of the Rings.”  The Bears as the one true god?  No, these are polytheistic times with Eagles, Cubs, Red Sox….

 

Through adolescence, I followed the White Sox with a zeal that bordered on fanatic; but it wasn’t religious.  There was Comiskey Park and church, the sports’ pages and the New Testament.  I could also separate one from the other (except for the time I cursed God for not letting the 1967 Sox win the AL pennant).  Nowadays, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to.

 

May the Avengers watch over us, and the big bear in the sky, too.  Oh, and heaven help us.   

Filler

             I made the mistake of looking at mlb.com this morning with its Manny Machado update—Machado and his brother-in-law Yonder Alonso, now of the White Sox, were seen golfing together in Miami!  Be still my beating heart!!  The only thing keeping Machado from signing his name on the dotted line of a contract with the Sox is, oh, $400 million or thereabouts!!!

 

There are empty calories and mlb.com in December and January.  Can you tell the difference?  I can’t.

 

Saber Gibber

Did I just mention the 79-83 1971 Chicago White Sox?  Well, silly me to think that rookie Sox manager Chuck Tanner did a great job with a team that went 56-106 the year before.  Why?  Because baseballreference.com uses the Pythagorean metric to project that the Sox should have gone 83-79.

I can see Tanner looking at his team assembled in the dugout Opening Day.  Look, there’s Lee “Bee Bee” Richard, proof that you can’t steal first base no matter how fast you are.  And there’s Rich Morales, in his fifth season of an eight-year career that saw him bat all of .195.  Also on hand was Lee Maye, who stuck around for thirty-two games before ending his career at age 37 at Triple-A Hawaii the next year.

Tell me what kind of formula can accurately predict what the 1971 White Sox should have done given what Tanner had to work with in real time?  And by that I mean the likes of Steve Kealey and Chuck Brinkman.  What’s the exact formula again for pulling a rabbit out of a hat?

Yes, you could say I’m not a big fan of sabermetrics/analytics, however you want to call it; gibberish is gibberish regardless the spelling.  I found more of the same yesterday in The Athletic.  Apparently, there’s a new stat that shows Javier Baez of the Cubs isn’t as good as he’s cracked up to be.  That’s right, Deserved Runs Created Plus suggests a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to Baez.  Too bad we can’t trade Richard and Morales for him.

The author really loves this stat, though he admits that Baseball Prospectus, where it comes from, is not all that popular “simply because the site is so difficult to operate.”  Oh, I think there are other problems, my friend. Consider that DRC+ doesn’t like how Baez hits doubles.

That’s right, Baez (and Christian Yelich) hit their doubles in a way (don’t ask) different from the ideal DRC+ hitter; Baez also strikes out too much while not walking enough.  Wow, now you need a formula to show what a quick look at player stats once did.

 

Now, here’s the really good part.  The author of the piece argues for Baez, “who makes consistently hard contact and runs the bases with panache rarely seen, [and] would benefit by a decent margin if those aspects of the game were more strongly considered [by DRC+] .”   For his part, Mr. Critic says he’s open to feedback on the stat.

 

Huh, what?  The whole idea behind analytics is that they offer hard, objective measures of player value.  To talk about adjusting the stat is to admit that analytics is arbitrary to its very core.  But, hey, I’m just old school, the kind of guy impressed by what Chuck Tanner pulled off back when I was eighteen.

Dog Days

 Don’t talk to me about the dog days of August.  Baseball is baseball.  If you’re a fan, you root.  It used to be that your team was contending or out of the running; either way, you found something to focus on, like a young Bill Melton batting leadoff at the end of the 1971 season.  The White Sox would finish 79-83, with Melton winning the AL homerun crown.  Manager Chuck Tanner batted his third baseman leadoff the last two games of the year.  Melton responded with three homeruns, giving him 33 on the year, one better than Norm Cash and Reggie Jackson.

Now, of course, we get to console ourselves that our out-of-contention teams are at this stage—or that one—of their rebuild.  Whatever, it’s baseball, unlike now, when you look out the window onto a world of dirty, cold Chicago gray.  Golf on TV, anyone?  The rebuilding (and that’s being generous) Bulls?  My only real option is to hope the Bears make a deep run in the playoffs.  The closer they play until SoxFest at the end of January, the less I think about not having baseball to think about.

That was the nice thing about Clare and softball; it hardly ever stopped.  December, January, February: there was always winter practice.  Because Clare didn’t drive yet, I took her, and because practice was so far away, I stayed to watch.  On top of that were our weekly visits to the batting cages.  The softball season in high school and college started before spring training could even finish, so I was a happily occupied parent.

I hated the drama that came with being the parent of an athlete.  (I’m pretty sure this had little or nothing to do with gender; vying for a starting position brings out the extreme in people male or female.) But how I loved the way it filled the time.

Out of Sync

It’s college-football bowl time, so naturally my thoughts turn to baseball, with visions of Albie Pearson and Charlie Smith against a backdrop of arches that run from left field to right into eternity.

My one regret with raising Clare is that she was born too late to see a White Sox game at Comiskey Park, the Baseball Palace of the World as Sox owner Charles Comiskey made sure it would be known as.  The field—the deepest ballpark green I’ve ever seen—was never far from the seats, and how could it be, given that there was but one upper deck, posts carrying it where cantilevers dare never go?  And circling the environs a wall of brick, except where it gave way to those arches that allowed the park to breathe, as it were.

The best I could offer my daughter was the second-ever Cubs-Sox game in 1997, won by the right side at home, of course.  But the five-year old couldn’t experience what the nine-year old did on June 15, 1962.  My father had loge seats, upper deck between home and third, a few rows from the railing.  I mostly sat slack-jawed, having never seen a green so green or arches so grand or light towers so tall.  Did I mention Albie Pearson or Charley Smith?

Pearson, all 5’5” inches of him, batted leadoff for the Angels that pleasant evening (which my mother made sure to provide me a jacket for, just in case, because we would be so “close to the lake”); that notion I had of women being able to play major-league baseball probably dates to seeing the diminutive Pearson.  As for Smith, he hit a homerun for the Sox in the second inning.  How fitting that a journeyman should provide the power; talk about prophetic.  And let’s not forget the bottom of the ninth, when Floyd Robinson tripled in two runs for the 7-6 win.  I have Robinson’s baseball card on my office wall.

Memories need context, for context is an anchor.  Sever action from the place it occurred, and what are you left with?  One anonymous stadium after another, “guaranteed” to mean little if anything.  Damn’ Red Sox, damn’ Cubs.

Ruffling Feathers

I tweet, which at my age makes about as much sense as skateboarding.  The other week I said something about Bryce Harper and Daniel Palka, to the effect that Harper wants a boatload of money to play on the South Side while Palka is head over heels happy to be a member of the White Sox.  Either I overestimated the number of Palka fans out there or underestimated the number of people willing to have the Sox win at all costs.

In tweet-land, you don’t say, “I disagree, my dear fellow.”  It’s more along the lines of “You’re a f****n’ moron so stupid it’s a wonder you don’t choke on your own spit.”  My daughter tells me it doesn’t matter what people say, so long as they’re reading me at all.  If only it felt that way.

But I stick by the essence of my tweet—Harper, and for that matter fellow free agent Manny Machado have no intention of coming to the Sox, unless Jerry Reinsdorf is the only owner willing to empty out his money bin, and even then they might take one-year deals to try their luck again next year.  There’s nothing wrong with that, other than emphasizing what a business baseball is.

Palka, on the other hand, is all about the joy of playing the game.  Clare follows him on Twitter (alas, he does not appear to be among my followers), and I just took a quick look at some of his tweets, including a shoutout to Poland on its 100^th birthday; a retweet of Pope Francis on the need for mercy; and a picture of him with Sister Mary Jo Sobieck, the nun who threw an opening-pitch strike from the rubber, this after bouncing the ball off her bicep. 

And how much would a free agent have to be paid to provide that kind of twitter account?

No Conditional Necessary

LeBron James has created a brand to go with the persona, of the athlete-king, and by that I mean an identity fit for Greek myth.  Only the brand took a hit over the weekend.

James posted some favorite lyrics on Instagram, as is his custom.  “We been getting that Jewish money, Everything is kosher,” comes from 21 Savage, who will never be confused with Rogers and Hammerstein.  James’ apology proceeded to make things worse, at least for me.

“Apologies for sure, if I offended anyone,” James told ESPN on Sunday.  If James were being totally honest, he would have dropped the “if.”  What he said was offensive, regardless the intent, speaking of which, you have to scratch your head, because he wasn’t done.

You see, he saw the lyrics as a testament to the “strength of the Jewish business community.”  Warning, Will Robinson!  Danger!  Danger!!  Somebody who wants to be a public figure and perhaps run for office once his playing career is over should first address the prejudices he carries around with him.  That is, if thinks he has something of value to offer the American public.       

Portents

For you fans out there keeping score, the results from yesterday’s game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara was ex-Bears’ kicker Robbie Gould three field goals in three attempts and current Bears’ kicker Cody Parkey zero field goals in one attempt.  For the season, Gould is 33 for 34 and Parkey 22 for 29.

The good news is, the Bears beat the 49ers by a score of 14-9; last year, they would’ve lost 9-7 (and in fact lost to San Francisco at home 15-14 on five Gould field goals).  The bad news is a couple of things.

Quarterback Mitch Trubisky lateraled to Tariq Cohen on looked to be another trick play gone awry; that would be three in the last two games.  My motto for the Bears’ offense:  Don’t be clever, be good.  Alas, head coach Matt Nagy wants to be both and looks intent on trying until he gets it right, or the season ends, whichever comes first in the playoffs.

The second bit of bad news is…(wait for it) the kicking game.  You don’t want your shot at the Super Bowl riding on Cody Parkey’s leg from fifty yards out.  Didn’t Richard III say something about his kingdom for a horse?  Bears’ GM Ryan Pace may be repeating that line by season’s end.

Fingers Crossed

It’s the day before the night before Christmas, and all through the house run memories of the Bears and 49ers. Remember Wrigley Field and Kezar Stadium, anonymous and John Brodie (know what I mean)?  Chicago ventures into Lotus Land today to improve its postseason seed, hoping for #2 instead of 3.

The 49ers are a mere 4-10, yet I wonder.  Their kicker is one Robbie Gould, a mere 80 of 83 field goal attempts since the Bears cut him in training camp of 2016.  Gould claims no hard feelings, yet I wonder.  Chicago had better pour it on unless it wants to fall victim to a kick or two or….

Your MLB Update

I was inching through traffic last night after picking up Michele at the Metra station in Oak Park.  It was cold, dark and four days from Christmas, the perfect time for a little baseball

My daughter accommodated by texting Michele, Tell Dad the Dodgers traded [outfielder Yasiel] Puig.  Hmm, I thought, my latent road rage tamped down by the news.  Whatever could that be about?  Back home in the shower [one bathroom, family peace maintained for over three decades by my showering late afternoon or early evening], I had the rest of the trade relayed to me:  Puig, outfielder Matt Kemp and pitcher Alex Wood for starter Homer Bailey and two prospects; sprinkle money as needed to facilitate transaction.  The Dodgers sent along a reported $7 million.

And why should any of the above be of interest to a White Sox fan?  Why, the Dodgers could be clearing salary and opening a position for free agent Bryce Harper.  And, if they’re not, who cares?  On the shortest day of the year, the hot stove league brings relief from winter’s icy touch.  Works for me.

A League of Their Own

The movie director Penny Marshall died this week.  For me as well as my daughter, Marshall’s best-known work is “A League of Their Own,” which was released in 1992.

Clare has probably watched the movie often enough to have memorized entire passages of dialogue, as she has with “Mean Girls.”  Tom Hanks’ line of “There’s no crying in baseball” resonated with my fifth grader when she played on a baseball team that didn’t want her.

She got called a “Bitch” and was forced to platoon at second base with a boy who had a prosthetic leg; the coach thought he was doing the right thing when he awarded her a game ball for being such a good sport about not getting to play all the time.  I’m still amazed Clare didn’t quit on the spot and look for a soccer team to join.  But she did make me check into softball, a game where girls are welcomed.

Inclusion is the intended message of “A League of Their Own.”  Women athletes playing the national pastime—what fifth grade girl wouldn’t be impressed?  Of course, you could make a counterargument that the movie advocates a Negro-Leagues approach to professional baseball, with one league for men and the other for women.  Let’s split the difference and say Marshall wanted to show what women could do given the opportunity.

Now there’s a message that still resonates.

Oops

A website got hold of and leaked a whole bunch of emails belonging to the Ricketts clan.  Lo and behold, some family members come off like typical rich jerks.

Keep in mind that, before they took the plunge and used their own money to renovate Wrigley Field, the Ricketts tried to do it on Chicago’s dime.  When Mayor Rahm Emanuel refused, Todd Ricketts emailed his father Joe, “I think we should contemplate moving” or reconsider owning the team.  In another email, Todd Ricketts vented, “I just hate the thought of [brother] Tom having to grovel to this guy to put money into a building we already own.”  Huh?  What?  Is this part of a Saturday Night Live skit featuring the Trump Brothers?

And let’s not forget papa Joe Ricketts, a man so mean he pulled the plug on two internet news sites he owned because the employees dared vote to unionize.  According to the Sun-Times, the elder Ricketts (think Alec Baldwin here as Donald Trump), wrote back to his son, “Yes, Todd, it makes me sad, it hurts my feelings to see Tom treated this way.  He is way superior to the Mayor in every way.  I have been brought up to deplore the type of value system adopted by the Mayor of Chicago.”

And what value system would that be, Joe, the one that doesn’t have elected officials genuflecting before obscenely rich people and offering to foot the bill for the family business?  Art Linkletter thought that kids say the darndest things.  He mustn’t have met the Ricketts.

Gym Rat

When we last saw the plucky Clare, she was doing physical therapy on her right shoulder after surgery for a torn labrum.  That was late August, and here it’s almost Christmas.  My child has progressed to being let back into the gym.  Ho, ho, ho.

Next to a ball field, this may be her favorite place in all the world.  I know my gym rat is back in her element because she tweeted a picture showing off her “Palkamania” tee-shirt.  Lest anyone get the wrong impression, my daughter is happily married and not making a declaration of illicit love.  No, the girl and the old man just like the hulking outfielder with a throwback personality and a knack for late-inning homeruns.

The White Sox already are pushing SoxFest, coming up late next month.  To gauge fan sentiment, they’re asking people who they most want to see; you know who Clare said.  How she said it caught the attention of Mr. Palka, who indicated he liked her tweet.  If things go really well, Clare could win two passes to SoxFest for her answer.  Who knows, maybe she’d take me with.

If that happened, I’d be sorely tempted to let GM Rick Hahn know the difference between Bryce Harper and Daniel Palka—the one has to be paid to play on the South Side, the other is happy to be there already.

Fans

Chicagoans like to think of themselves as so sophisticated, so hip, that they can go to restaurants and eat tiny meals off of square plates.  (Personally, I find this next to impossible to do.)  But show me a hipster who doesn’t go crazy over one of the four major Chicago sports’ teams, and I’ll show you someone who’s just passing through.

I’m not saying Hawks’ fans are more rabid than their Penguin counterparts or Bears’ fans can outcheer, outeat, outdrink Steelers’ fans, but Chicagoans by and large aren’t satisfied following just one team heart and soul.  The population of Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to have enough left over to give much to the Pirates or attract a professional basketball team.

And I’m not just talking numbers here.  Chicago isn’t even half the size of New York, but Chicago fans exude more energy than the followers of any New York team, except maybe for the Yankees, and even there I wonder.  Take away the Bronx snark, and what are you left with?  Not much, I’d argue.

It could be the weather extremes combined with Second-City syndrome or something else; the shores of Lake Michigan may be home to a frustration that infects us all.  Yes, that’s it!  Frustration enters through the water, building up in our tissue so that we wouldn’t know happiness if it bit us on the butt.  Except when our sports’ teams win, that is.

We’re different in Chicago by how we root—do the Rangers, Knicks and Mets even have real fan bases?—and how we laugh.  I mean, Americans get much of their humor from “Saturday Night Live,” and that program would be nothing without the contributions of performers and writers who learned their craft here.  Cheeseburga-cheeseburga, Da Bears, enough said.

Along those lines, the TV cameras caught a Bears’ fan wearing the quintessential hat during the Green Bay game Sunday; it had an oversized cheese grater on top.  You have to be from around here to appreciate that.

Basic Instinct

My latent loyalty to the Bears kicked in yesterday against the Packers.  For someone who abhors the threat of concussions, I kept wanting to see Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers get bounced off the turf the way I saw Dick Butkus do it to Bart Starr that game I attended at Wrigley Field in December of 1970.  I’ll take the five sacks, though, in a 24-17 win that gave the Monsters their first NFC North title in eight years.

One thing bothers me, though—head coach Matt Nagy, or Inspector Gadget, as he’s sometimes called.  Bears’ fans are understandably giddy to have a coach unafraid to throw downfield or try to score with a minute left in the first half.  But the trick plays are too clever by half.

Yesterday, two of them—a direct snap to running back Tarik Cohen and a fake punt—both failed, with one of them leading to a Green Bay touchdown.  Even when they do work, you have to wonder, like in the Giants’ game two weeks ago when defensive end Akiem Hicks scored a rushing touchdown.  Great, but what if Hicks had gotten injured?  I mean, he was nursing a hamstring all that week.

Then there’s Nagy using both his quarterbacks on a play or inserting safety Eddie Jackson in the flanker position.  Imagine if God were in a particularly foul mood and decided it would be fun to have not one, but two, quarterbacks hurt on the same play.  To avoid any such run of bad luck, I’d dial it back on the trickery.

Nagy’s stated refusal to do so leaves some cause for concern over the long haul; keep daring stuff to happen, and eventually it will.  But I leave that for another day.  The Bears won their division and ended the Packers’ playoff hopes.  Christmas has come early to Chicago.    

Falling Star

The soap opera that is the Chicago Bulls touched on Jabari Parker this week.  New coach Jim Boylen has decided the 6’8” Parker doesn’t match up well against other forwards, so it’s the bench for the 23-year old Chicago native until hell freezes over or he impresses people at practice.  Fat chance that.

The Parker story is just plain weird.  Going back to high school, Parker seemed to have a can’t-miss future.  Where other players change schools looking for a program that meets their skill set, Parker stayed put for four years, and then he chose Duke.  Maybe staying just one year in college was a mistake.

Regardless, Parker entered the 2014 NBA draft and was picked second overall by the Bucks.  Four years later, he came to the Bulls as a free agent with a reputation for community involvement.  What could possibly go wrong?  Only something did. 

  I thought the two ACL injuries might have had something to do with Milwaukee’s decision cut ties with Parker until I saw him on the court; let’s just say he has a physique by Pillsbury.  Then I noticed that Parker is what you might call a one-dimensional player.   The two-time Illinois Mr. Basketball doesn’t bother with defense any more other than to wave at opposing players as they drive past him.  You gotta try, my friend.  

Another disappointment was Parker’s treatment of the media.  He didn’t exactly shine in interviews, or he shined as much as two and three word answers allowed.  He said more concerning his demotion this week, only it was like he forgot to use logic to connect his sentences.  “I’m a basketball player.  Everybody knows.  I especially know for myself.  I just have to stay ready,” Parker told reporters Thursday, as quoted by the Trib’s K.C. Johnson in his story on Saturday.

He went on to say, “Everybody is telling me the truth, and that’s just to stay ready.  They’re not telling me things I want to hear.  They’re no pointing fingers.  And personally, I know I’ve done my job to embrace Jim [Boylen] as the head coach.  I’ve been nothing but welcoming of him.  And that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”

If all the above wasn’t confusing enough, Parker offered more:  “I do my thing to work hard and I do what’s expected of me.  And I’ll continue to do that. That’s what keeps me satisfied.  This shouldn’t dictate the way I work.  It’s bigger than just playing at this moment.”  I honestly have no idea what any of this means.

Did the knee injuries turn Parker into an embittered bench player, or did everyone—Parker included—overestimate his talent and his personality?  I can’t say, beyond noting what a strange season this has been for the Chicago Bulls.

Of Opportunites and Glass Ceilings

 I would never tell my daughter she has a good head on her shoulders for fear it might explode.  Better she thinks the old man thinks she’s a dope.  Too bad a Chicago sports’ team felt the same way.

This week, Clare had a phone interview with one of the local big four franchises.  (Sorry, Chicago Fire, but soccer doesn’t count).  Of course, it would be too much to hope for this to be a position that involves player development and/or acquisition; I’m pretty sure those jobs don’t get advertised.  But the team in question did want a bright young person to hire.  I’d like to think my daughter qualifies.

Here’s the thing—they offered her $20,000 less than she’s already making.  Then they told her she could probably earn another $10,000 with overtime; imagine how many hours that would come out to.  I wouldn’t bet on Clare changing jobs just yet.

Of course, if it did involve a real front-office opportunity, no matter how junior, I wonder.  My kid knows more than one sport, and she knows talent when she sees it.  But front offices are the last refuge of old boys, including wunderkinds with degrees from Harvard.  You can see them at work on the other side of the glass.  

One More Thing

I promise to stop writing about Harold Baines’ selection to the HOF after this.  Maybe.

What riled me up this time was a piece in The Athletic by Cliff Corcoran, another true believer in JAWS, oh, and conspiracies, too.  Corcoran thinks veterans’ committee members Jerry Reinsdorf and Tony LaRussa—one signed Baines’ checks with the White Sox, the other wrote his name on the lineup card—threw their weight around to win support for Baines.  According to Corcoran, the veterans’ committee has been susceptible to this kind of pressure numerous times.

Another problem, apparently, is that too many geezers have a say in who gets into Cooperstown, those “players favored by proponents of advanced analysis” being “the ones most likely to fall off the ballot while the likes of Jack Morris and Omar Vizquel endure.”  Words fail me here.

Still, I can quote Corcoran on his concern “whether Baines’ induction will open the floodgates for the large swath of players whose qualifications for the Hall fall between his and the established standard,” whatever that is.  Corcoran wonders, “If Baines is in, why not Rusty Staub” and others, like Bob Allison and Carl Furillo.  To which I say, by all means Rusty Staub.

And while we’re at it: Tommy John, Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso and Billy Pierce.  There, I’m done.  Maybe.

Best-laid Plans

I happened to turn to the MLB Network yesterday just in time to see the panel of talking heads interview that renowned comedian, Carrot Top.  What better way to say, “The general managers’ meeting this December has been a bust”?

For weeks, all things MLB have been building up these past four days in Las Vegas.  Where will Bryce Harper go, and Manny Machado?  How about this for a blockbuster deal (insert speculation here)?  What team will win the winter meetings?  (Observation:  Winning December is no guarantee of winning October/November.  Just ask the White Sox.)

There’ve been a few deals, but nothing earth-shattering as MLB all but promised.  Manny Machado may have cost himself a couple hundred million dollars with his “Johnny Hustle” comment, and I get the feeling Scott Boras isn’t happy with the money being offered client Bryce Harper.  My guess is that bad teams, e.g. the Phillies and White Sox, have been offering more money than the good teams.  Think Yankees here.  All things being equal, Boras wants Harper going to a winning team.

How else to explain Boras’ tortured hospital metaphor?  The agent told reporters yesterday that, when a nurse goes to take a patient’s temperature, “the issue is not what the thermometer says that day.  The issue is, what’s the health of the patient when they’re ready to leave the hospital?  And [the Yankees] are not ready to leave the hospital yet.” 

Thank you, Doctor Boras.  The patient does seem to be suffering from an acute case of not-wanting-to-break-the-bank.   

It's What They Don't Say that Counts

 From some of the criticism I’ve read, you’d think that a Nazi had been elected to the Hall of Fame instead of ex-White Sox Harold Baines.  Why the outrage?

Part of the answer I think is Baines never played for New York or Boston, and the writers who cover those teams have come to think of themselves as keepers of the Cooperstown gate.  I suspect these writers by and large also hate Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf for his hardline stance in the 1994 strike and his efforts to flatten player salaries over much of his tenure on the South Side; sportswriters like to root for the little guy, even when they’re millionaires.  Well, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and so is Reinsdorf in championing Baines for induction.

I read an online article by some guy who went after Baines with JAWS, a variation on WAR.  Give me a break.  Instead of making up measurements, look at the cold, hard stats before you.  The following HOFers have fewer career RBIs than Harold Baines: Chipper Jones; George Brett; Mike Schmidt; Andre Dawson; Rogers Hornsby; Harmon Killebrew; Al Kaline; Willie McCovey; Willie Stargell; Billy Williams; Eddie Mathews; Ron Santo; Eddie Mathews; and Jim Rice.  While we're at it, let’s not forget Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.

Mr. Jaws argued that letting in Baines means opening up the Hall to the likes of Mickey Rivers and Chris Hoiles.  I say keeping Baines out means we need to reevaluate the careers of those players mentioned above.  If they belong, so does Harold Baines.  They do, and so does he.

Mutiny, I Say

New Bulls’ coach Jim Boylen promised a full workout for the day following Saturday’s franchise-worst 133-77 loss to the Celtics.  His players were not amused and considered a boycott.  [Note: Mandated wind sprints never happened, though it’s unclear Boylen really intended them; backed down; or just wanted to get his players’ attention.]

According to today’s Tribune, some Bulls’ players even contacted the NBA players’ association to complain about Boylen.  How close the players came to not showing up is debatable, unlike their reaction to certain elements of the regime.  Zach LaVine, for instance, on Sunday let it be known “players’ toughness should[n]ever be questioned” while guard Ryan Arcidiacono was quoted in The Athletic saying of a Boylen practice, “I can’t emphasize enough.  We’re doing a lot of running.”

And Boylen?  The Trib quotes him saying, “So it’s going to be a little raw for a while, it’s going to be a little rough for a while,” after which it may get better.  If it doesn’t, Boylen may want to check out Mutiny on the Bounty.  I hope he knows how to row a boat in the open seas.

About Time

I ascribe it to my sister Barb already working her magic in heaven.  When we got home from her wake last night, Clare called to tell me that both Lee Smith and Harold Baines had been voted into Cooperstown.  Thank you, members of the Today’s Era Committee (and big sister).

I know Smith has 478 career saves because he wrote it on the ball he autographed to my daughter when she was a high school senior. “To Clare: You can’t hit me never.”  The two of them had met at a suburban memorabilia store and got into a classic hitter-pitcher argument—yes, I can; no, you can’t.  If only I’d recorded it for YouTube.

As to Baines, I remember an extra-inning Sox game against the Angels sometime in the mid-1980s.  With the winning run on second base, I saw the catcher move way inside against Baines; California manager Gene Mauch must’ve wanted to brush Harold back.  The pitcher did that, and then some, sending him sprawling on the ground.  The next pitch, Baines drove in the winning run.  There may be a message somewhere in that on why Mauch never took a team to the World Series.

Apparently, both selections have upset critics nationally, especially the analytics’ crowd with Baines.  How 1,628 homeruns on only 384 home runs with a lifetime .289 BA doesn’t qualify for the Hall of Fame is beyond me.  So, Baines gets into the HOF ahead of Edgar Martinez.  We have a saying on the South Side:  That’s too damn’ bad.

Never Mind

Less than twenty-four hours after their upset of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Bulls took to the floor of the United Center and promptly laid an egg against the Celtics.  Pardon any mixing of metaphors and clichés here, but consider that it was the worst-ever beat-down in franchise history, a 133-77 shellacking before a booing home-crowd.

And now there are whispers over whether or not coach Jim Boylen has lost the respect of players six days into his tenure.  Why?  Because after the starters let Boston jump ahead 13-0, Boylen raided his bench to bring in a new five, who allowed another four points before finding the basket.  Advantage, Boston.

Apparently, there’s an unwritten rule in basketball that say every coach gets one free mass substitution.  After that, it gets dicey, and Boylen pushed the envelope—again, apologies for the cliché—by yanking his starters for the rest of the game with just under three minutes left in the third quarter.  That may or may not have shown up Zach LaVine and company.

For my money, guys don’t act like professionals, they don’t deserve to get treated that way.  I have reservations about LaVine in particular; offense he understands, defense not so much.  But more than any one player, I think the organization has grown stale to the point of rot.  Along with the story, the Tribune printed a list of the nine worst losses in Bulls’ history.  Eight of them have happened during Jerry Reinsdorf’s “stewardship,” and all of them after he dismantled his championship core of Michael Jordan and coach Phil Jackson.

Jackson lost out in a power struggle with general manager Jerry Krause, who once declared that, “Players and coaches alone don’t win championships, organizations win championships.”  It’s something Krause never achieved after Jordan moved on and something Reinsdorf  doesn’t look capable of ever doing again.

The Trib may want to keep that list around.  I have a feeling it won’t be too long before we get another update.

Perchance to Dream

The Bulls ended a seven-game losing streak and notched their first win of the Jim Boylen Era last night by beating the Thunder, of all teams, 114-112 at the United Center.  Big man Lauri Markkanen scored the winning basket with 4.9 seconds remaining.  Better yet, injured youngsters Kris Dunn and Bobby Portis are expected back any day, tonight even against the visiting Celtics.

And now for a little cold water to snap us all back to reality.  It comes in the form of conditioning, or the lack thereof.  New coach Boylen thinks his team is out of shape, which is strange given that this is a mostly young group of players who haven’t had a chance to pack on the weight yet (think Charles Barkley or Michael Jordan even at the end of their careers).  And they’re in the business of playing basketball.  How can anyone be out of shape playing a game based on near-perpetual motion?

Well, Coach Boylen thinks so, and that’s all that counts.  “If you’re mentally tougher, if you’re in better shape, I think maybe your will [to win] can last a little longer,” Fred Hoiberg’s replacement was quoted in today’s Sun-Times.  That would pretty much explain the 2-1/2 hour practices, not to be confused with the 90-minute shootaround.

You have to wonder, though.  What was Hoiberg (not) doing, and why was the Bulls’ front office letting him (not) do it?  I mean, a bunch of out-of-shape twentysomethings is not the way to win.  Is it?  

Caveat Emptor

With all due respect to the people out there who don’t believe in curses, Cubs’ president Theo Epstein must be wondering if somebody didn’t put one on him.  Epstein announced yesterday that team closer Brandon Morrow had arthroscopic elbow surgery and won’t be available for the start of the 2019 season.  Either the Cubs are dealing with Billy Goat II, or Epstein made a series of disastrous pitching signings last offseason.   

Consider the $185 million given to Morrow (two years) starters Yu Darvish (six) and Tyler Chatwood (three).  The starters were good for all of five wins.  In comparison, Morrow was pure gold, for half a season.  He saved 22 games with a 1.47 ERA before going down for the season in mid-July with some sort of bone bruise.  Like I said, it’s a curse or Epstein knows bupkis about pitching.

Ironically, Morrow’s injury may benefit manager Joe Maddon, or at least his reputation.  The Cubs’ front office let it be known they weren’t happy with Maddon’s use of Morrow; why, he once had his closer pitch in three straight games!  Only it’s doubtful that Morrow’s surgery to fix damaged cartilage and remove bone chips had anything to do with those three games.  In the first eleven years of his career, the 34-year old right hander recorded eighteen saves total.  And all of a sudden he’s going to be a closer good for thirty or forty or more saves a season?  Talk about wishful thinking.

The Cubs have definite pitching problems going into the winter meetings next week that signing Bryce Harper or Manny Machado will do nothing to solve.  Unless those needs are addressed before the start of spring training, I know of at least two White Sox fans, father and daughter, who will start dreaming about the South Side team winning more games than the North Side team next season.

How Do You Spell "Extortion"?

How Do You Spell “Extortion”?

The Los Angeles Rams have settled a class-action lawsuit filed by St. Louis football fans.  The team will pay $24 million to holders of personal seat licenses from when the team played in St. Louis.  The Rams moved back to LA following the 2015 season after playing 21 years in St. Louis.

What’s a personal seat license, you may ask?  It’s the right to buy season’s tickets.  PSLs typically are used with the opening of a new NFL stadium (though a handful of MLB parks have used them, too).  Take Atlanta, for example.  According to the Journal-Constitution, the Falcons raised $233 million from the sale of PSLs as of May 2017; how fitting the Falcons’ new home is named Mercedes-Benz Stadium.  And what happens after you buy the PSL?  Why, then you get to buy season’s tickets.  You see, the PSL is merely a one-time charge. 

Or, in the case of St. Louis, a one-time charge over the course of what was projected to be a 30-year lease between the city and the Rams, which the team managed to break anyhow.  That left fans with nine years’ worth of PSLs good for nothing.  Hence the lawsuit, hence the settlement.  Good for them, I say.

The Rams and Chargers will be sharing a stadium built in considerable part PSLs.  The Los Angeles Times reported in March that one set of seats for the Rams will have a PSL price tag in the $15,000-$35,000 range, not to be confused with a VIP section costing a cool $80,000 a seat.  Remember, that’s the right to buy season’s tickets, separate from the tickets themselves.    

Teams allow fans to sell PSLs to whomever they want, and why not?  Owners get their cut upfront.  It would be wrong not to leave the little guys a few crumbs.

A Fly on the Wall

Clare called yesterday to tell me that ex-slugger and HOFer Jim Thome, who works in the White Sox front office, travelled to Las Vegas last month (maybe by tractor, as befitting the pride of downstate Peoria) to sell the Sox to free-agent Bryce Harper.  Oh, to be privy to their conversation.  Do you think they debated the best place in Chicago for designer bib overalls?  Somehow, I don’t see the crew-cut Thome discussing mousse with Samson-locks’ Harper.

Seriously, though, what could they have talked about?  How Jerry Reinsdorf used to—as in past tense—hate Scott Boras, Harper’s agent?  How Harper would be expected to help the Sox move up a fiddle from second-fiddle in a two-team market?  How he would be coming to a rebuilding team, which is not the same as a contending team?  How he and phenom Eloy Jimenez would be counted on to play nice together?    How a paycheck in excess of $30 million a year comes with the greatest of expectations?

Inquiring minds want to know.

He Gone

He Gone

Yesterday, the Bulls decided they’d had enough of coach Fred Hoiberg, firing him in this his fourth season with the team.  John Paxson, vice president of basketball operations, explained that the decision was based on “what we were seeing internally and the vibe and the [lack of] energy that was” showing.  Paxson also said “we just felt that we’re not playing the style [of game] with the force that we want our group to play with.”  By those standards, Hoiberg could’ve been fired any time after the midway point of his first season at the helm.

College coaches (Hoiberg was hired away from Iowa State) are notorious control freaks; Hoiberg was anything but.  His laid-back style seemed better suited for a veteran team, not the mishmash that was the Bulls in 2015.  And when they went all in on a rebuild, he was an even worse choice.  Jimmy Butler questioned his coaching credentials three years ago, and rookie Wendell Carter Jr. did basically the same thing a few weeks ago.  What Paxson and general manager Gar Forman saw in Hoiberg in the first place will go down as one of Chicago’s bigger sports’ mysteries.

Paxson refuses to admit that rebuilds embrace two contradictions, losing and effort.  Style, force, vibe—they’re all nice, especially if you want to fill seats, but losing will inevitably chase them away  .  The secret to a rebuild is a mix of great drafts and pickups, be they trades, big free agents and/or million-to-one shots who come through.  Each year the rebuild drags on, the harder it gets to find success.

And one other thing—coaches/managers who start rebuilds shouldn’t expect to finish them.  Ask Bo Porter, Rick Renteria and Fred Hoiberg.  

The Sport of the One Percent

For the fifth time in the last thirteen years or so, the A’s have announced plans for a new stadium, this one to be privately-financed along the shores of Oakland proper.  Did I mention it will be privately financed?

Well, put an asterisk on that because the A’s have to buy the 55-acre site from the Oakland Port Authority and are also interested in buying the site of the Oakland Coliseum, their publicly owned home since 1968, in order to redevelop it.  If past is prelude, the public bodies involved can be expected to accept ridiculous, low-ball figures for their land.  In my book, that would constitute a public subsidy.

As to the design, I’d call it a high-Lego concept, with a huge terraced V-shaped structure down the far end of each of the lines and what looks to be some recycled cranes from the port authority.  But, hey, it ain’t my money, and it ain’t my team.

If I were an A’s fan, though, I wouldn’t exactly be feeling the love here.  How else to explain the projected 34,000-seat capacity if not as a slap in the face of those eccentric, blue-collar denizens of the Coliseum, which seats just over 47,000 for baseball?  Talk about wanting to leave the old neighborhood behind.

Baseball likes to bill itself as the national pastime, and maybe it was back in the days of New York’s old Yankee Stadium (with a peak capacity of 82,000) and Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium (79,000), but that was long ago.  If the A’s figure they can make money drawing only 34,000 fans, that means they consider the various other revenue streams—from cable contracts to merchandizing—to be the real money makers.  Fans like the Oakland diehards represent little more than chump change.   

  If and when this design goes up, baseball may as well call itself the sport of the one percent.

Ignorance is Bliss

The Kansas City Chiefs released running back Kareem Hunt after video surfaced of an incident in February that showed Hunt pushing a woman down and kicking her.  Better to act late than never, I suppose.

The Chiefs knew about the incident for some time but had apparently accepted Hunt’s version of events.  Talk about a less-than-aggressive approach to the issue of domestic violence.  The same goes for the NFL, which can’t seem to get a handle on domestic violence among its players.  Who can forget Ray Rice caught on video knocking his then-fiancée around?  Well, the Redskins must have earlier this week when they signed linebacker Reuben Foster despite his recent arrest for domestic violence.

For contrast, look at how baseball handles the issue.  By no means is the response perfect, just infinitely better than football’s.  Right now, Cubs’ shortstop Addison Russell is serving a suspension that goes into next season while undergoing treatment.  Granted, Russell released a statement on Friday that makes it sound as if he’d suffered an embarrassing injury while drunk, instead of admitting he abused his then-wife.    But compare how the situation is being handled to just about any accusation of domestic violence in the NFL.  Every action taken looks to be in the spirit of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s  initial response to Rice’s transgression—a two-game suspension.

After seeing the video, I have just one question:  Why weren’t charges filed?  This lack of legal action has to stop, now.     

Cutting Off and Possibly Spiting

The White Sox made a series of moves yesterday that were either very savvy or cause for worry.  Catcher Omar Narvaez went to the Mariners for reliever Alex Colome while outfielder Avisail Garcia and infielder Matt Davidson were not tendered contracts, making them both free agents.  Whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, it means more moves are on the way.  Since the end of the regular season, the Sox have turned over one-fifth of their 25-man roster.

I don’t care about pitcher James Shields, but the other players give me pause, especially in the clubhouse-presence department.  Narvaez was part of a catching tandem with the also-departed Kevan Smith, both in 2017 and last season when Welington Castillo was serving an 80-game PEDs suspension.  So, the gung-ho guys—both of whom could hit, if not for power—get the boot while the ex-doper stays.  Some message to the fans, that.

Garcia being let go I understand; salary arbitration put him in line for an $8 million pay day.  Plus you have the injuries, plus you have the yearly frustration of watching an obviously talented athlete unable to put it all together, 2017 excepted.  Still, Garcia never caused a problem in the clubhouse, and he offered the kind of textbook hustle out of the box that Manny Machado is sorely in need of.

Last but not least is Matt Davidson.  Have I ever liked a career .226 hitter more?  I doubt it.  Davidson was equal parts thoughtful (if a little esoteric), humble and funny, his barefoot cavorting around the field before games being an example of at least two out of three.  If only he could lay off the outside slider.  Maybe with his next team.

So, the Sox have plenty of roster spots to fill.  I can only hope they know what they’re doing.  Regardless, I’ll have plenty of ex-Sox players to follow in the box scores next year.

Uniform Standards

I literally just got off the phone with Clare, who was walking to her physical therapy appointment; another two months of grunts and groans on her right shoulder, and my daughter may be ready to step into the batting cages come spring training.  This gave me the chance to ask if she’d heard about Steph Curry and the nine-year old girl.  She had.

The girl in question, Riley Morrison, is a basketball player who wanted a pair of Curry shoes that Under Armour puts out, only there were none available on the UA website for a girl her size.  So, Riley wrote Curry to ask what was up, and the two-time MVP, a father of two girls, actually answered her.  It seems that the smaller sizes were mislabeled as “boys,” a problem since rectified.  But it gives you an idea what female athletes have to contend with.

For Clare, just getting dressed was a challenge.  Through eighth grade, whether she was playing baseball or softball, she had to buy what were in effect male hand-me-downs, from pants to sliding shorts.  “I don’t have a boy’s butt,” as my daughter put it ever so delicately.  She had the same problem finding cleats and gloves that could be used for her gender even though they were intended for another.  As for softball bats, they did exist twelve years ago, but only at a fraction of the number made for baseball.

Clare used to joke, “When I grow up, I’m going to open a sporting goods’ store for women.”  It looks like there’s still a real need for one.

Family Feud

So, Browns’ rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield doesn’t like ex-coach Hue Jackson, and he’s happy to tell the world what a “fake” Jackson is.  Wow, Mayfield could pass for a Chicago Bear back in the day.

Before I was out of grade school even, I was familiar with belly-achin’ Bears.  There was HOF defensive end Doug Atkins, who didn’t seem to care much for coach George Halas, and ditto some guy named Mike Ditka.  Even Dick Butkus, the heart and soul of the organization, felt compelled to sue the team for what he considered medical negligence in the treatment of a chronically injured knee.  And let’s not forget Virgil Carter, like Baker Mayfield, a quarterback with a voice.

Carter was a 23-year old rookie out of BYU in the fall of 1968 when he took over from an injured Jack Concanon and led the Bears to a 4-1 run.  But the Bears—at least until recently—have never taken a shine to rookie quarterbacks, and so Concanon was back at the helm for the last game of the season with first place in the NFL Central Division on the line.  Naturally, the Bears lost 28-27, naturally, to a below-.500 Packers’ team.

The next season didn’t go so well for the Monsters, not at 1-13.  Carter was pulled from one of those games and said it would be pretty “chicken shit” if he didn’t get to play again.  The Bears being the Bears, they traded him to Cincinnati.  And the world was never the same.

The Bengals’ quarterback coach was a young Bill Walsh, who devised his vaunted West Coast Offense as a way to capitalize on Carter’s short-pass accuracy and smarts; in Chicago, Carter had earned a master’s degree in mathematics, and he taught some statistics’ courses at Xavier while with the Bengals.  Carter even led the three-year old franchise to its first-ever postseason appearance, a loss against the Super-Bowl bound Baltimore Colts.

If past is prologue, things could get interesting should Baker Mayfield keep popping off.