Outdated

The NYT recently updated its story about cheerleaders for the NFL Washington Redskins; the initial piece focused on a 2013 calendar shoot in Costa Rica.  There’s no NFL team based there, but that didn’t stop the cameras from clicking or certain entitled fans—all male, I’d bet—from tagging along and making a nuisance of themselves.  The team investigated and has instituted changes, among them slightly less revealing uniforms to be worn at games.

A few other teams have followed suit in having their cheerleaders show less skin this season, and two teams, the Rams and Saints, have added male cheerleaders.  I’m sure there was a real call for that from fans.  Guys, after all, are natural rams and saints.

Football is a game of action-fueled emotion; when the action turns violent, so can emotions, whether coming from players or fans.  Add women hardly dressed to copious amounts of alcohol, and you’ve got yourself a man cave for 60,000-100,000 people.

According to the Times’ story, the Jets have adopted an outfit reminiscent of the ones worn by high school cheerleaders.  And that would make a difference why, exactly?  Back in the Middle Ages at St. Laurence, our cheerleaders came from the girls’ Catholic high school across the street.  Those Jets-like uniforms they wore did not keep young Vikings from having unchaste thoughts.  If cheerleaders excited sexual fantasies then, they excite those very same fantasies now.  Either retire this antiquated routine, or substitute all men for women. 

Wouldn’t that be something?

Chablis Don't Cheer

A columnist for the Tribune criticized Cubs’ fans on Thursday for not being more excited about their team going to the postseason.  He implied a connection between a blasé attitude and “fans [who] were drinking wine on the patio of the boutique hotel across the street” from Wrigley Field.  Indeed, much of Wrigley Field and the surrounding blocks is pitched to the enjoyment of those the columnist called “fans with supersized wallets.”  Those folks are definitely in short supply at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, though you can bet your last dime White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf would welcome that crowd with open arms.

What this and other columnists largely ignore is the fact that professional sports in America has become an expensive proposition.  I’d say a good rule of thumb is that the more money fans make, the more education they’re likely to have.  People with law and/or graduate degrees learn polite behavior along the way that’s hard to let go of at the ballpark.  Put another way, do dot-com billionaires cheer during a game or hire people to do it for them?

Chicago may be different than other cities, I don’t know for sure.  Maybe blue-collar fans are willing to put down lots of money to see the Bears, Bulls, Hawks and Sox, alone or in some combination.  Or maybe those teams have well-educated fans who revert to their more uninhibited selves once they settle in for a game.  Chicagoans do tend to behave differently than folks in other towns, and my daughter recently worried I’d get into it at Guaranteed Rate Whatever with a Tigers’ fan.

Another thing to remember is that infectious cheering, at least for baseball, depends in part on the presence of kids; the more of them you’ve got at a game, the louder it likely will be.  Alas, for the Cubs the days of class trips to Wrigley Field are pretty much a thing of the past, if not altogether extinct.  That’s sad and may hurt the Cubs twenty years down the road, but right now the Ricketts are fine with relatively quiet wine connoisseurs filling their park.  In sports, you cater to the crowd you want.

The Oracle at 35th and Delphi

White Sox general manager Rick Hahn came down from Olympus to address the media before the team’s last home game on Wednesday, and guess what?  The Sox are closer to contention than they were.  Just don’t try and pin down Hahn as to a date, or anything else, for that matter.  By the time he’s done, you won’t know up from down.

Here’s Hahn on the subject of free agency:  “You can say in 2020 or 2021 we expect to be this [what, a team with a pulse?] and we’re going to need X [though not necessarily Xavier Cedeno].  You can’t look at the projected free agent and say that player will be available much less that player will be a White Sox when the time comes.”  Rick, life is short, and nobody needs to listen to a windbag.  Why not keep it short and just say either, “Yes. we’re ready to go out and sign some free agents,” or, “No, we’re still in rebuild mode”? 

If nothing else, you’d win points for honesty as well as brevity.

Till Death Do Us Part

Clare had a terrible time in high school with boys.  Basically, they were all afraid of her.  The image of a girl swinging a bat with authority kept all but the bravest away, and there weren’t any brave boys that I can recall, outside of one kid who asked for “privileges” he was denied.

Things started off pretty much the same at college, with one difference—male athletes were now interested in her.  First two guys proved to be duds, but the third, a football player, was the charm.  Part of the attraction was that each person understood the demands a sport in season makes on an athlete.  That and all the usual bells and whistles associated with true love.

I wonder if anybody has done a study on who professional athletes, both male and female, marry.  It doesn’t seem that baseball players are all that interested in someone with an athletic background, but what about women athletes?  Softball’s Jennie Finch married MLB pitcher Casey Daigle while Misty May-Treanor of beach volleyball fame is married to former catcher Matt Treanor.  From all accounts, these are two pretty successful marriages.

I suspect nothing and nobody would have helped Cubs’ shortstop Addison Russell, whose ex-wife has publicly accused him of cheating and physical abuse and who is subject to an ongoing investigation by MLB.  But for all those other athletes out there, wouldn’t they be better off with people who had some idea of exactly it was they were going through?

Small Blessings

Clare called last night to tell me about a podcast she heard with White Sox rookie outfielder Daniel Palka.  “He didn’t sound dumb,” my daughter reported, relieved, I think, that Palka looks to be a goof but not an idiot.  Several times, she said, Palka was given a chance to dump on the Twins, the team that released last fall, to talk instead about the opportunity he has with the Sox.

By the time Clare called, I’d already stopped watching the game to read a book (please don’t snitch on me to the thought police).  Something about seeing James Shields give back a two-run lead gets old after a while.  I knew the game was 4-2 going into the bottom of the ninth and went to bed pretty certain the Sox had their 96^th loss in the bag.

Of course, the morning Tribune couldn’t be bothered with a box score, not for the Sox or the playoff-contending Cubs, both of whom are playing at home; that gurgling sound you hear is print journalism circling the drain.  Eventually, I went to the MLB website and slowly ran down the line scores.  I found the Sox game and scrolled down expecting to see a big zero for the bottom of the ninth.  Imagine my surprise to find a “3” instead.  Sox win, Six win, as Ed Farmer says (not nearly often enough).  And Mr. Palka had a two-run single for the walk-off in a 5-4 game.

Palka told reporters after the game, “I just try to keep it as simple as possible.  Luckily, it was my third AB [at-bat] off of him [Indians’ starter Carlos Carrasco in a relief role], so I saw everything he was getting me out with and was just kind of waiting on that [an 84-mph off-speed pitch outside and belt high].  

Palka has 66 RBIs in 401 at-bats for a team that ranks 24^th out of 30 in baseball for runs scored.  For comparison’s sake, consider that the lowest ranked team with a shot at the playoffs is Milwaukee, at 12^th.  This gives you an idea how few and far between RBI chances have been for Palka, who also leads MLB rookies with 27 homeruns.  My prediction is he finishes fourth for AL Rookie of the Year, behind Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres of the Yankees and Shohei Ohtani of the Angels.  But you’re #1 on the South Side, Daniel, #1 on the South Side.

 

Friday Night Lights

This being autumn, I often see Morton H.S. football players on my way to picking up Michele from the train.  Morton being Morton, I often think of what athletics did for my daughter, or maybe it was what Clare did for athletics.

Either way, my high school experience differed ever so slightly from Clare’s.  St. Laurence was one part POW camp, one part basic training; discipline of one sort or another followed you from class to class.  I can still remember a classmate getting detention for adjusting a window without asking permission.  Vikings don’t feel cold, son.

This went on for 3-1/2 years, until midway through senior year, at which point our teachers made like prison guards fleeing from the advancing Allied armies.  We had five months to act like big men on campus, after which we’d be drafted, punching a timeclock or off to college; the good brothers and lay teachers were all but done with us whatever our fate.  Perhaps I should mention here that in sophomore year I ran afoul of the dean of discipline, an encounter that left me with an invitation to try out for the football team.  I declined.

We had three sports at St. Laurence, a handful of clubs and that was it.  At the risk of sounding really old school, kids today just couldn’t handle that kind of environment, though truth be told, I don’t know how any of us did, especially the non-jocks and non-debaters.  Like I said, it was a grind for 3-1/2 long years.

I may have been recruited because the football team was short of tackling dummies, I can’t say for sure.  But I do know I left high school suspicious of athletes, which is weird in a way, given how much I root for the White Sox and once did for the Bulls.  Anyway, I didn’t expect to raise a jock for a child, but we did.

Now, as I look at those football players walking back to the locker room from practice, I have to admit how happy I am Clare had sports to organize her life around; in comparison, I had nothing but honors-track homework.  My daughter’s straight-ahead approach to life meshed perfectly with organized sports.  In third grade, Clare was good enough a swimmer to earn an invitation to try out for a swim club, and in high school, one of her softball coaches said he wished she could’ve played linebacker for him.  That would explain the former football player for a husband.

I would’ve liked to experience high school the way my daughter did.  Failing that, I’m just happy she didn’t go to a school like I did.  Doing four-count burpies for gym class in the school parking lot can leave a mark, even decades later.

Gone, Gone, Gone

The one thing I envy Cubs’ fans, other than their getting to watch home games in a real ballpark, is their ownership.  The Ricketts’ family, came, they saw, they bought, and they’ve done a lot of conquering these past few years.  And my White Sox?

Well, let’s see now.  This season, we’ve paired the highly orchestrated farewell tour of broadcaster Hawk Harrelson with the first full-season of what has been a problematic rebuild.  How do you say, “Yoan Moncada, 210 strikeouts?”  Oops.  I just did.

And then we have Carlos Rodon, purported ace of a rebuilt pitching staff, only Rodon hasn’t shown up for the month of September. According to The Athletic, Rodon had an ERA of 1.84 in July and August vs. 6.83 in September.  Yesterday, for the game that promises (please, oh please) to be Harrelson’s last broadcast, Rodon lasted 2.1 innings against the Cubs, coughing up six runs on nine hits.

After the game, Rodon told reporters, “I wish I could take all this back and do it over.  I went out there and did the best I could and just definitely came up a little short.”  A  little?  It might be time to look in the mirror, Carlos.  And, while you’re at it, tell your wife to stop tweeting that you’re not wild about pitching to Welington Castillo.  Oh, and don’t have a hissy fit when you walk off the mound after being yanked in the third inning of your start.

Yup, I’m feelin’ real good about our chances in 2019, real good.  Not.   

Trouble in the Twin Cities

Reports are ex-Bull Jimmy Butler wants off the Minnesota Timberwolves, despite the best efforts of coach Tom Thibodeau to convince him to stay.  It appears the ex-Bulls’ coach is working his magic just like he did in Chicago.

Butler joined a pair of 22-year old stars, forward Andrew Wiggins and center Karl-Anthony Towns, to form a nucleus that should have gone better than 47-35 with a first-round playoff exit in the spring.  By all accounts, Butler used to be a true believer in Thibodeau.  But Holy Gym Rat, things get old after a while.  How long until the T-wolves realize there’s more to coaching than having someone who knows his X’s and O’s? 

Philosophers in the Booth and Clubhouse

 For as long as I can remember, celebrities have dropped in the broadcast booth during baseball games, Cubs or White Sox.  Raise your hands if you can remember Jack Brickhouse shooting the breeze with “actor” Forrest Tucker between pitches.  No?  Well, how about Bill Murray subbing for Harry Caray?

Yesterday, it was James Lovell, who went into space four times during the Gemini and Apollo programs, including Apollo 13.  What a treat to listen to broadcasters Steve Stone and Hawk Harrelson try to interview one of the few human beings who has ever ventured beyond our home planet.  The best part was when Lovell described how he stuck his thumb out in front of him during one of the missions, and was able to block out the Earth and its billions of inhabitants.  At the age of 90, Lovell may have become something of a philosopher.

In his own way, at the age of 26, Daniel Palka of the White Sox is something of a thinker, too.  Palka hit his 27^th homerun—and team record fourth pinch-hit homer in the process—in yesterday’s 10-4 interleague-play win over the Cubs.  Told after the game by a Sun-Times’ reporter he had tied Zeke Bonura (1934) for third-most by a Sox rookie, Palka replied, “I saw that, and I thought it was weird that a guy in the ’30s had the name ‘Zeke.’”

 Not space-worthy, perhaps, but profound in its own way.    

Professional Courtesy

What an interesting way to start getting ready for the upcoming NBA season—Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has agreed to donate $10 million to various women’s causes.  Cuban is doing this either out of the goodness of his heart or to avoid an NBA fine of that or a greater amount.

It seems that people—males, specifically—in the Dallas front office have had a hard time distinguishing between sexual harassment and the pick-and-roll.  There’s been a shakeup, individuals hired and fired, along with promises the Mavericks will do better by women in the future.  Cuban, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, admits he should have been paying greater attention to what was going on with his team.

Yes, he should have, just as the media should revisit all the attention it’s showered on Cuban as an “outside the box” businessman and team owner.  Sportswriters could never get enough of the opinionated Cuban, who has been fined in excess of $2.2 million by the NBA for comments and actions the league has deemed detrimental to the game.  Let it be noted I think Cuban has a right to say what he wants about basketball and not be fined for it.  It’s not like he’s shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.

I also think the media—sports, news and entertainment combined—likes nothing so much as an oversized personality.  Donald Trump made reporters’ job easy as well as entertaining, at least in the beginning; the serious journalism kicked in later, too late, some would say.  It’s the same with Cuban, yet another dot-com billionaire who draws cameras and mics like bees to pollen.

Cuban threw money at his team, and they won a championship in 2011, so he’s a genius (whose teams have lost in the first round of the playoffs four times since).  He has ideas he’s not afraid to share about how making money, so he gets a spot on reality TV, Shark Tank, to be exact.  And he talked enough to be considered worth putting on either national ticket as vice president in 2016.  It’s reasonable to assume he would have approached national office the way he has the Mavericks, in which case, Heaven help us.

The San Antonio Spurs are zen to Cuban’s chaos.  They’re owned by an entertainment group headed up by a woman, Juliana Hawn Holt, and coached by Gregg Popovich, who has no problem employing a woman—former WNBA star Becky Hammon–as an assistant coach.  To the best of my knowledge, no one has complained about the Spurs’ front office the way they have the Mavericks.’

Why do you think that is?

On the Road Again

Last week, I challenged my aging body and my aging Schwinn to two trips.  The body held up better than the bike.

My ride on the 606 was going great.  I was making good time, felt pretty decent and had just finished thirty miles when my seat broke; two metal support bars cracked clean through and left me with a very uncomfortable ride back to the car.  The good thing was that I was able to drive to my bike shop and pick up a replacement seat.

Trip #2 was a little more eventful, and irritating.  The city of Chicago has decided to turn the lakefront trail into another Burma Road, and nobody thought to tell me.  Technically, the city is finishing its separation project, with dedicated cyclist-only and pedestrian-only lanes.  Unfortunately, at least for me, nobody bothered with detours around the work areas.  Long story short, riding on gravel for long stretches is not always a good thing for bike tires.  Eventually, you get a flat.  I did, and it was on the wrong, rear, tire.

Front tire, no problem.  You take the wheel off; swap out the punctured tube for a good one, work tube and tire back onto the rim, pump air into the tire; put tire back in place; and off you go.  The back tire, with that derailleur (French for “Give up all hope”), is another story entirely.  I simply can’t get the tire back in place in under a half hour.

Last Thursday, somebody saw me struggling and offered to help.  After about twenty minutes, we were able to work the tire back in place.  I thanked this Good Samaritan and got back on the trail, my hands covered in bicycle-chain grease.  It was only another seven miles to the car and then an hour drive back home in rush-hour traffic.  A towel got some of the grease off, and so did the steering wheel.

Maybe Dylan Thomas was wrong about not going gentle into the good night.  Or maybe he meant “greasy.”  

Oops!

On Sunday, Willson Contreras of the Cubs pinch hit what he thought was a game-tying, two-run homer against the Reds at Wrigley Field.  Contreras stood in the batter’s box to admire his blast, only it hit off the top of the wall, forcing Contreras to hightail it to second base.  The Cubs would go on to lose, 2-1.

After the game, manager Joe Maddon addressed Contreras’ behavior in the batter’s box:  “Horrible [said Maddon of his pinch hitter’s standing there with a ball in play].  I didn’t like that at all, not at all.  That will be addressed.  The whole team didn’t like that.”

To his credit, Contreras faced the media and apologized.  “Thank God I was able to run hard and make it to second base because what I did was not good for baseball, and a lot of people were watching me.”  Contreras added that he was “embarrassed with myself.”  The question is why, exactly?

Why was Maddon upset and his player embarrassed?  Was it for the pose or misreading the hit?  Would Maddon have called out Contreras for showboating had it been a homerun?  Would Contreras be embarrassed if Reds’ pitcher Jose Castillo called him out or hit one of his teammates in retaliation?  Personally, I’d like to know.

One thing’s for certain, though.  The Cubs’ skipper is lucky to be working in Chicago, where our second-city syndrome keeps fans happy just to have a team in a playoff race.  In the course of a week, Maddon made a decision to bat a top reliever, resulting in injury, and another of his players couldn’t tell the difference between a homerun and a double.  In New York, that would be enough to have the masses calling for Maddon’s artfully-dyed scalp.

Joe Maddon is one cool cat, with seven lives to go.

Happy Birthday

OK, this was weird.  For absolutely no good reason yesterday, I got to thinking about long-ago White Sox pitcher Cisco Carlos.  I went on baseball-lreference.com to find I was visiting on Carlos’ 78^th birthday.  All I can say to that is, And many more.

The right hander pitched in four major-league seasons, 1967-1970.  I happened to catch his debut on August 25, 1967, the second game of a twilight doubleheader against the Red Sox.  We missed the first game, a 7-1 Boston win, because my dad couldn’t get out of work early.  But we were there at Comiskey Park along with 34, 578 other fans to see Carlos keep the Red Sox hitless until two out in the fifth inning. Carlos left with one out in the seventh and the White Sox leading 1-0 on a Ken Berry homerun.

One run really could have been enough in any given game that season; the White Sox had already won 1-0 six times in ’67; that’s what an MLB-best team ERA of 2.45 will do for you.  But Bob Locker gave up a run in relief, setting up Ken Berry to deliver a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth.  The split left both Sox tied in the standings, one-half game out of first place.

Cisco would go 2-0 for the rest of the season, with a ridiculous .86 ERA over 41.2 innings; he never came close duplicating those numbers over the next three years.  His big-league career was over by 1971.  Oh, but that warm Friday night in August at the Baseball Palace of the World on the great South Side of Chicago.  To a fifteen-year old fan with his father, Cisco Carlos was as near to perfect as an unheralded rookie could ever be.

And that’s why I’m a baseball fan, even if the game is clueless on the matter of female on-field talent.   

Stark Reminder

Yesterday being a Sunday in mid-September and Saturday being all about college football and the White Sox being a very baseball team, I didn’t expect to see them get much coverage despite a 2-0 win over the Orioles in Baltimore.  I wasn’t disappointed.  The Tribune allotted nine paragraphs from the Associated Press on the Sox (plus box score).  This must be what most female pro athletes go through on a regular basis.

Today being a Monday in mid-September and yesterday being all about the NFL and the Sox being a very bad baseball team, I didn’t expect them getting much coverage.  Imagine my surprise to see the Trib dole out fourteen short AP paragraphs on a 8-4 Sox loss.  Old habits must die hard for a paper that was once part of a corporation that also owned the Cubs.  Media conspiracy to ignore the White Sox?  What conspiracy?

Give me those fourteen paragraphs, and twelve of them would have been devoted to Daniel Palka, who hit two more homeruns, giving him 24 on the year.  That the first one came down at all should have been national news.

Genius Gone Awry

In the top of the tenth inning during Thursday’s Cubs-Nationals’ game, Cubs manager Joe Maddon had pitcher Pedro Strop hit for himself with the bases loaded, one out and one run in during what turned out to be a 4-3 Cubs’ win.  Not only did Strop hit into a 5-2-3 double play, he hurt his left hamstring running out the ball.  He’s been ruled out for the remainder of the regular season.

Consider that Maddon had Tommy LaStella, who already has a team-record 21 pinch hits on the year, available to hit and that Strop had already thrown 1.2 innings.  All of a sudden, Match-Up Maddon wants a reliever to throw two-plus innings?  Joe, Joe, Joe.

Up to that point, Strop had batted all of three times in his big-league career.  If it was so important for him to start the bottom of the tenth, Maddon should have told him to stand there like a statue, until he walked or was called out on strikes.  Now, the Cubs face going into the last three weeks of the season without their most capable pitcher in the absence of closer Brandon Morrow, out since mid-July with a sore arm.

This might be a good time for Maddon to review his Maddon-isms, especially “Try Not to Suck.”  As far as Pedro Strop is concerned, it’s too late.

Palka, not Charboneau

The Athletic had a story this week on White Sox rookie outfielder Daniel Palka, whose popularity is taking on cult-like dimensions.  As one fan put it, Palka is like a ringer at a sixteen-inch softball game who has even brought along beer.

Palka thinks “it’s kinda funny how much I kind of fit in on the South Side as opposed to any other big league city, you know?”  Yes, I do, Daniel.  I played just enough softball to recognize your silhouette and smart mouth.  Crack wise and hit, that’s all any Sox fan could ask for.  Oh, and do both against the Cubs.          

My daughter, living far from her father’s baneful influence, has fallen for what’s being called “Palkamania,” all on her own.  As Clare sees it, “He’s insane,” which she means as the highest of compliments.  The girl has a soft spot for anyone who can hit the ball as hard as she did.

The danger is that Palka turns into another Joe Charboneau, a one-year wonder for the Indians in the early ’80s.  It could happen, though I have my fingers crossed it won’t.  Palka is 26 and on his third organization; a trade and a release may have humbled him while giving him a sizable chip on his shoulder.  The smart mouth has something to prove, and that’s good.  

Unicorns in the Bullpen

In two games last week at Wrigley Field, Brewers’ reliever Josh Hader faced ten batters; he struck out nine while yielding a harmless single.  Lest I laugh too much, Hader did something similar against the White Sox.

At 24, the lefty has what they call “electric stuff,” pitches that move and move fast.  Some of what Hader throws could be classified as sliders, the rest as “slurves,” and hard ones at that.  Going into this weekend’s action, Hader has a 6-1 record with a 2.05 ERA, to say nothing of 130 (!) strikeouts in 74.2 innings pitched.  Add in a WHIP of .75, and you’ve got yourself one heck of a reliever.

The same goes for Blake Treinen of the As.  The righty has a 6-2 record, along with a ridiculously miniscule ERA of 0.87; Treinen has 94 punchouts in 72.1 innings and a .87 WHIP.  I think only 90 of the strikeouts were against the Sox this season.

Hader and Treinen are what teams dream of, lockdown relievers, as in no groundouts and no flyouts, thank you very much. (For you fans of the rebuild, the Sox have their own version of the above in lefty Jace Fry.  Just ignore the 4.24 ERA to concentrate on the 66 strikeouts in 46.2 innings.)  The question, of course, is, can Hader, Treinen and their like keep it up?  In a way, it doesn’t matter.

Having once found a unicorn, teams will do whatever it takes to acquire another, no matter how many arms get cast aside in the process.

The Devil Inside

My daughter would go to war for Serena Williams.  In fact, nothing would give Clare greater pleasure than to share a foxhole with Williams.  I can only imagine the lobs sent across enemy lines.

All of which is to say Clare is taking Williams’ side in the controversial US Opens’ final match last weekend.  Twenty-year old Naomi Osaka gave the 36-year old Williams more than she could handle, which could explain why Serena lost her temper; as to why the chair umpire felt the need to issue three code violations costing Williams first a point and then a game, only he knows for sure.  Williams demanded to know why she was being penalized for acting the same as male players, who escape penalty for their behavior.  Regardless the sport, umpires do not need to explain themselves.

I like the perspective Martina Navratilova offered to the contretemps.  Writing an op-ed in the NYT, Navratilova said the real question should be, “What is the right way to behave to honor our sport and to respect our opponents?”  The four-time US Open champion admitted there were many times when she “wanted to break my racquet into a thousand pieces.  [Williams was assesed a point for breaking her racquet while playing Osaka.]  Then I thought about the kids watching,” and she kept on playing.

Williams has always had a temper; it comes with the territory of being an athlete.  I remember one time a certain college freshman was seething after a game in which she just missed a homerun in her first at-bat [settling for a double off the wall in dead centerfield at a stadium once used by the Chicago Bandits] and pressed the rest of the game.  When her father told her to relax, she poked him in the ribs with her bat and told him to go away.  She wouldn’t do that now, I think.

And Williams, to her everlasting credit, accepted the role of gracious loser at the end.  A decidedly pro-Serena crowd had started booing the results.  Serena told them it was time to give credit where it was due and “let’s not boo anymore.”  She also put her arm around Osaka.  That’s how an athlete triumphs over defeat.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

In a zombie game between two zombie teams last night, the Royals held a 6-1 lead over the White Sox in the top of the ninth, nobody on and one out.  That’s when Royals’ manager Ned Yost decided he needed the lefty-lefty matchup and changed pitchers.  Sox manager Rick Renteria followed suit and put in a right-handed pinch hitter for Daniel Palka.  Throw in yet another pitching change, and the Royals held on for a 6-3 win, after Yolmer Sanchez flied out with the bases loaded.

The win puts Kansas City at 49-95 for the season, with eighteen games to go.  Yost certainly deserves to guide his team to 100 losses.  Here’s hoping he does, and then some.

This Rookie, That Rookie

Last night in Kansas City, White Sox outfielder Daniel Palka hit his 22^nd homerun of the season; it was yet another line drive in a rush to leave the premises.  Palka has now tied Pete Ward for most homeruns by a Sox left-handed hitting rookie.

Ward was one of the Sox stars of my childhood, coming over from Baltimore in the Luis Aparicio deal.  He had two good seasons, 1963 and 1964, and then something happened.  I can still remember a story I read about a car accident; Ward was hurt along with Sox outfielder Floyd Robinson, who at 5’9” once managed to drive in 109 runs with a mere eleven homers (please mull that over, Daniel).  Anyway, Ward and Robinson both experienced a serious drop-off in production after the ’64 season.

I also remember seeing Ward at the last fan fest we attended; Clare wanted to see Aaron Rowand, I was happy to hear Ward talk about hitting a homerun for the Yankees in an exhibition game against the Mets in 1970.  He looked a lot older.

Then again, I did, too, that day.

With Apologies to Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood

 This is how my Sunday went: morning at the Art Institute; afternoon on the exercycle with the White Sox game on the TV; evening on the couch, to watch the Bears-Packers’ game.  It’s what you might call the good, the bad and the ugly.

Because culture is too important to leave to snobs, I put on my San Francisco Seals’ jacket and made my way downtown to the Art Institute; Michele and I didn’t want to miss the John Singer Sargent show that’s closing in a few weeks.  How to put this?  Sargent painted portraits the way some people are said to be able to look into other people’s souls.  Paint, pigment and brushstrokes were all means to an end for Sargent.  He put everything into the face of his subjects, whether innocence or arrogance or some quality in between.  I only wonder what Sargent could have done with Jerry Reinsdorf sitting for him.

We were home in plenty of time for me to watch the Sox lose their fifth straight, 1-0 to the Angels.  The loss of Michael Kopech seems to have “Ricky’s boys” way down.  I’d say, “Wait till next year,” but I’m not sure next year will be much better.  These are the times that…

And then we have the Bears, ahead 17-0 at halftime up in Green Bay.  Mitch Trubisky looked like an NFL quarterback; new coach Matt Nagy did a nice Bill Walsh imitation; and linebacker Khalil Mack was a revelation with a forced fumble, a fumble recovery and a pick-six.  Then something happened.  Either the Bears brought back John Fox or Aaron Rodgers returned from an injury that sidelined him in the second quarter.  After a little Rodgers’ magic, the Packers won, 24-23.

Oh, well.  I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Sargent.

What Goes Around....

The probability of Tommy John surgery for his top pitching prospect certainly wiped the smug off of Rick Hahn’s face.  When the White Sox GM told reporters on Friday that surgery loomed in the next couple of weeks for Michael Kopech, it was a different Hahn, not at all like the one seen bloviating earlier in the week on the status of Eloy Jimenez.  This Hahn seemed to be operating with a little less wind in his sails.

The 22-year old Kopech lasted all of four starts with the Sox.  The righty said something felt off when he was warming up for his most recent game, against the Tigers.  What he thought was routine soreness turned out to be a torn ulner collateral ligament in his right elbow.  Surgery means Kopech likely won’t throw his next major-league pitch until the 2020 season (unless Hahn gets worried about the issue of service time, in which case, who knows?).   That suggests a possible marketing slogan for next season:  Hey, fans, don’t die for another two years, if you can help it.

One interesting fact I read in the Tribune’s story on Kopech—five right-handed pitchers among the top 100 prospects going into the 2018 season have suffered surgery-worthy elbow injuries.  Had I known that Friday night, when Michele asked me how such an injury could happen to someone so young, I would’ve had some numbers to back up my answer.  (Let me also note here my daughter was reluctant to call me with the news on Friday, thinking I’d be really mad.  Oh, cricket, Zen has filled me with inner peace.)

What I said was kids throw as hard as they can from the moment they get serious about pitching.  Yes, 15-year olds always threw hard, but I doubt it was with the same velocity motivated by thoughts of a college scholarship and/or signing bonus after being drafted by a major-league team.  I’m sure those sugar-plum visions have added a few miles of giddyup to every pitch thrown by adolescents across America and all the other sources of baseball talent.  Pitching maybe more than any other athletic activity is subject to the laws of Charles Darwin.  Only the strong survive, and trying to reach 100 mph in high school is a little like asking for a fight with that really big lion.

Michael Kopech once was clocked throwing a baseball at 108 mph.  Little did he know that constituted an invitation to Mr. Lion. 

So Much for Bambino II

 Word out is that two-way player Shohei Ohtani of the Angels will need Tommy John surgery on his injured right elbow if he wants to keep pitching.  I feel bad for the player but not his team or MLB.

The Angels knew that Ohtani had an elbow problem when they signed him in the offseason.  They gambled, and now they’re going to have to decide—along with the injured player—what’s the next best course of action.  Does he get the surgery in order to continue his quest to be the best two-way player since Babe Ruth?  Does a team commit to a player who’s logged all of 51.2 innings at the major-league level?  Can Ohtani continue to hit without surgery?  Is a 24-year old who hit .287 in 251 at-bats with 19 homeruns and 50 RBIs—the last homer and three RBIs courtesy of my ever-generous White Sox—spend the rest of his career as a dh?  Like I said, decisions will have to be made.

MLB may also want to reconsider how it’s going to handle the next can’t-miss prospect who comes along.  Will he (I won’t hold my breath for any team taking a chance on a she) be treated as the second coming of a legend or a simply player to watch?  I’d say we’re all better off with the latter.   

Sound and Fury

By nature and upbringing, I am loath to join in on protests.  If you knew Monsignor J.D. Hishen or Ed and Mary Ann Bukowski, you’d have an idea how I got to be that way.  Still, I respect others who feel the need to protest what they see as injustice.  It’s all a matter of walking in other someone else’s shoes, if you will.

Which is why I respect the decision by [most likely ex-] NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to take a knee during the national anthem during the 2016-2017 season.  And if people want to protest Nike for making Kaepernick the center of an ad campaign, let them burn whatever Nike items they want.  I just wish Kaepernick and his critics would consider, really consider, the company in question.  Nike is nothing if not bald-faced—and part of what needs changing if we are ever going to address economic inequality in this country.

I suggest Kaepernick, his supporters and critics all stop what they’re doing long enough to go online and take a look at the interactive map Nike has so kindly provided.  It shows the company contracts with 46 factories employing 6000 workers in the U.S.; 11 factories employing 33,000 people in India; 123 factories employing 162,000 workers in China; and 39 factories employing 194,000 people in Indonesia (all employment figures rounded up to the nearest thousand).  Next, they should go to the company’s sustainability website.

I did and was struck by this line: “We believe in a fair, sustainable future—one where everyone thrives on a healthy planet and level playing field.”  Right, and the White Sox disregarded service time this week when they decided to keep Eloy Jimenez in the minors.

Nothing eats away at a person like poverty; nothing eats away at a society like poverty that stretches over generations.  If Nike cares so much about fairness and health, why does it avoid American-made goods and why do the workers in Asia who make goods that go to Nike earn so little, at least when compared to American wages?  Oh, and if Nike stuff costs so little to manufacture, why does it cost so much to buy?

But those websites sure are slick.

Catching a Glimpse

The weather at Monday’s ballgame was nothing short of threatening.  I have never seen black-gray clouds billowing so close overhead the way they were in the fifth inning on Labor Day.  Being three rows from the field at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, we opted for the shelter of the concourse.

The concourse is connected to a switchback ramp-way that goes from ground level to the upper deck.  There’s a landing leading to the concourse that I like to look out from; church domes and smokestacks outline the Bridgeport world of my father in his youth.  After a few minutes of this reverie, I gave my clipboard with scorecard attached to Michele so I could use the men’s room.  Alas, the trough urinals of Comiskey Park are no more.

I came back to find my wife and daughter were leaning over a railing of another section of the landing and looking down.  I walked over and glanced down to see the Tigers’ Victor Martinez hitting in the visitors’ batting cage.  Why or how there was an opening in the roof that let us watch I can’t explain, but it was definitely neat.

“Clare heard someone hitting and walked over to here,” Michele explained.  Of course.  Surgery was on my daughter’s shoulder, not her ears

Weasel Words

White Sox general manager Rick Hahn came out and stated the obvious before Monday’s game against the Tigers, that top prospect Eloy Jimenez won’t be among the September call-ups.  Hahn told reporters it didn’t make sense “for Eloy, at age 21, to make an appearance at a third level [of professional baseball] this season.”  Of course, “sense” is in the eyes of the beholder.

Hahn went on to say, “In our opinion, it’s in everyone’s best interest for him to continue to develop into a well-rounded impactful player we project him to be.”  With a talent so great, Hahn said he would rather err “on the side of patience.”  What a crock.

By waiting until the middle of next April, the Sox will get to keep their prized possession through 2025; bring Jimenez up now, and he could be gone after 2024.  Would Hahn be so patient if keeping Jimenez—who batted .355 in Triple-A vs. .317 in Double-A—meant losing him a year sooner?  I doubt it.  So, why not be a grown up and admit to your motivation instead of stringing everyone along for an entire season?  Notice that Hahn didn’t say that at one point in the season he was leaning in the direction of bringing Jimenez up.  That being the case, he spent the better part of a year talking gobbbledegook.   

Why not gamble that calling up Jimenez now would actually benefit his development?  Jimenez would have a month in the majors and something to carry with him through the offseason.  If he did great, he’d focus on doing more of the same come April 2019.  If he did so-so or worse, he’d have his offseason motivation.  But, no, the White Sox prefer to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

That’s the perfect epitaph for the reign of Reinsdorf.

Walk-off

The parents took the recuperating patient to a ballgame on Labor Day yesterday.  In other words, Clare (with her right arm in a sling), Michele and I went to Guaranteed Rate Whatever to see the White Sox top the Tigers, 4-2.

StubHub works great if you want to watch mediocre teams; we ended up three rows from the field, maybe sixty feet behind first base.  Four months ago, Clare and I saw Reynaldo Lopez throw seven flawless innings, only to have the White Sox bullpen turn victory into defeat.  Yesterday, Lopez left after seven innings in a 1-1 game.  But the bullpen was still working its “magic,” with Jace Fry grooving a pitch in the top of the ninth to a now-portly if still-ageless Victor Martinez for a 2-1 Detroit lead.

When Martinez connected, a Tigers’ fan a few rows back of us started screaming like his team had just won the World Series.  Sorry, buddy, you visit my house, you show some manners.  I said as much in the parking lot before the game when two Tigers’ fans pulled alongside.  “I hope you had a long ride here and a longer ride back,” I smiled.  We South Siders are always polite.

Anyway, the phenomenon known as Daniel Palka led off the bottom of the ninth with an opposite-field homer to left to tie the score; I started hollering like my team had just won the World Series.  Two batters later, Matt Davidson connected for a two-run walk-off, and I hollered some more, a lot more, to tell you the truth.  Clare told me to stop looking in the direction of that Tigers’ fan.  I did, but kept on yelling.  My throat is still raw the day after.

In a postgame interview, Palka explained, “I’m a big proponent of the 1/9^th of the game” approach to hitting, where the idea is to take off “the first eight innings and then show the people what you got.”  In Palka’s case, that would be his 21^st homer, a major-league-leading six of which have come in the ninth inning.  We also got to watch Palka play right field.  Talk about footwork; it was Astaire-like, not.  But the young man does show off a nice trot around the bases.

Here’s hoping he can work on it another six or seven times before the season ends.

From the Heart

Yesterday was Hawk Harrelson Day at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, and the man of the hour did not disappoint in baring his heart for all things White Sox.  Afterwards, he broadcast the game with A.J. Pierzynski and kept speaking from the heart.  One comment in particular caught my attention.

At one point, the stream of consciousness touched on LeBron James.  Hawk used to watch the King, but no more.  If I heard correctly, Hawk thinks athletes should keep their nose out of politics.  The ex-athlete did not appear to appreciate the irony in his remark.

In the Shadow of Bears

It’s September in Chicago, and any baseball team that isn’t in contention had better face facts—it’s football time.  The White Sox will be lucky to get any coverage between now and the end of the season.  I’m amazed the box score from yesterday’s 6-1 loss to the Red Sox even made its way into both papers.

I’m doubly amazed because the Bears pulled off a big trade Saturday that brought them outside linebacker Khalil Mack from the Oakland-soon-to-be-Las-Vegas Raider.  If the papers are to be believed (and remember, it’s the Bears), GM Ryan Pace has pulled off a one heck of a steal.  He definitely put the spotlight on his team.

(Here’s a story that won’t get much coverage in these parts—how the trade affects the Raiders, their move to Las Vegas, to be exact.  All sorts of promises (and about $750 million in public funding) had to be made to lure the Raiders away from Oakland.  I’d be willing to bet—pardon the pun—advocates painted the Raiders as a young team on the rise; Mack, for example, is only 27.  But the Raiders couldn’t or wouldn’t sign their star defender to an extension, so they traded him.  That’s not exactly the kind of franchise I’d want to welcome to my town.)

Professional sports in Chicago is a little like a jungle, or maybe the Galapagos Islands because of where this metaphor is going.  The strong survive to eat up coverage, the weak fall to the back pages or get twenty seconds of air time.  I doubt Charles Darwin was much of a White Sox fan.  Heaven knows it’s hard.

He Could Pass for Another...

Something about the Cubs’ Joe Maddon has been bugging me for ages, but I could never put a finger on it till this week.  Here it is:  Maddon could pass for another Bill Veeck, or his younger brother or at worst first cousin.

Just like Maddon, the onetime owner of the Indians, Browns and White Sox was a man as decent as he was insecure.  (Non-decent people in baseball?  Start with George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, and don’t forget Milton Bradley.)  Maddon needs for everyone to know he’s the smartest guy in the room, Veeck wanted all the world to know how many books he read, and what kind.  Maddon presents himself as a kid from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a variation on Veeck’s common-man persona.  But at some point they both became millionaires putting on an act.

Maddon is renowned for his antics—the petting zoo; medicine man; themed road trips; slogans on tee-shirts; and, most recently, a foray into art as motivation.  Veeck was renowned for using a midget to pinch hit; belly dancers; elephants; exploding scoreboard; and disco demolition.  You either love this kind of stuff, or you don’t; remember it fondly, or don’t.  The more I think about Veeck, the more I’m struck by a thoroughly decent man with a penchant to screw up a good thing.

In his first go-around as owner of the Sox, Veeck traded away a boatload of young talent after the 1959 pennant season (Earl Battey, Johnny Callison, Norm Cash, Don Mincher, John Romano).  If the White Sox teams I grew up with in the 1960s lacked hitting, that was because Veeck traded it away for older guys (Gene Freese, Minnie Minoso, Roy Sievers).  Veeck  played for now at the expense of later.

Ill health forced Veeck to sell the team in 1961 while circumstances allowed him to reacquire it in 1976.  Running the franchise on a relative shoestring, Veeck again started trading young talent, the likes of Bucky Dent, Brian Downing and Goose Gossage.  Things went better with this round of trades because Veeck worked in tandem with general manager Roland Hemond, who was a master at detecting undervalued talent in other organizations.  Still, Veeck couldn’t win consistently, and he sold the team a second after the 1980 season.  The White Sox then looked a little like the Rays when Maddon left following the 2014 season.

Maddon is cut from the same cloth as Veeck, with this one difference—he knows more about the game on the field than “Barnum Bill” ever did.  By that, do I mean a lot?  Maybe, maybe not.  I guess it depends on how you think Maddon managed in the 2016 World Series.