Our Lips are Sealed

The House of Reinsdorf does not take kindly to leaks, which could mean White Sox great Frank Thomas is in a heap of trouble.  Possibly thinking he was a journalist instead of  belonging to a cult, aka the HofR, Thomas reported on TV the other day that he had a conversation with Sox GM Rick Hahn, who let slip that the team was leaning in the direction of not calling up top-prospect Luis Robert this September.

According to yesterday’s Sun-Times, the team went into spin mode Thursday and sent out an email “to reiterate” that, “No decisions have been made yet on September call-ups.”  The “brain trust,” and I used that term with a healthy dose of irony, is going to wait until the season ends for Triple-A Charlotte before finalizing call-ups.

Really?  What kind of major-league organization waits so long to decide?  None that I can think of.  But I can think of a major-league team that would rather lie about its intentions rather than let the media report on it first.  Can you?

On the Menu

This is how I know I’m getting old if not old school, my irritation over media coverage of the Bears’ new menu selections this season at Soldier Field.  I don’t care about the Hot Bob sandwich, Lake Shore Drive Hoagie or the plant-based burger.  Not...one…bit.

My father, along with my mother, paid for my education through college along with sundry medical bills the result of asthma and whatnot (think broken arm, for example).  So, it’s not like Ed Bukowski was cheap.  He simply didn’t believe you go to a sporting event to eat.  Neither do I.  You go to a sporting event to watch the game at hand.  Eating comes later, if at all.

I’m grateful for each and every White Sox game my dad took me to.  I can still recall a lot of them, enough to say with certainty I didn’t eat anything beyond a box of popcorn.  After the game, my father invariably found a hot dog stand for us to go to; he seemed to know all the hot dog stands in the city of Chicago.  And then we ate, like South Side royalty.

Not long ago, a journalism student interviewed me about Comiskey Park; I’m pretty good at conveying reasons the park shouldn’t have been torn down.  After we were done, he related to me how cool it was that at one new stadium fans could place their food order at the concession stand via text, and I couldn’t have cared less.  Did I mention how old I’m getting?   

A Show of Character

Colts’ quarterback Andrew Luck announced his retirement at age 29 during the Colts-Bears’ exhibition game on Saturday.  When it went public, boos could be heard directed Luck’s way from fans at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.  Talk about class.

I’d like to think baseball fans are different and don’t operate on the belief athletes should disregard issues of health so as to further public amusement.  Maybe baseball fans are better than that, maybe not; Phillies’ and Yankees’ fans do give one pause.  In any case, a pox on Indianapolis.   

More Gibber From on High

White Sox general manager Rick Hahn has a problem on his hands, how to keep top-prospect Luis Robert in the minor leagues now that he’s hit 30 homeruns over three levels of competition this season.  But, hey, they don’t pay Hahn the big bucks to make impatient fans happy.

As quoted in Monday’s Tribune, Hahan said in something approximating conversational English that Robert’s stats “are showing you that they’re equal to and correlate with [!!!] what he’s capable of doing physically.  [But] There’s still going to be things he has to work on.” 

While admitting there are some players who make an easy jump from the minors to the majors, Hahn  took pains to point out how “there are some great ones here at the major-league level right now that have come to the big leagues and actually been sent back down, some of the greatest players in the game.  I speak of [Mike] Trout, for example, who was up and got sent back done and came back up” to become the player he now is.

Hahn’s verbiage probably left any and all sportswriters in the room too groggy to seize on the opening Mr. Gibber offered, that the Angels brought up a player without worrying about starting the service-time clock.  Trout came up at the age of 19 in 2011 to hit .220 in 123 at-bats.  But he learned something that more seasoning in the minors likely wouldn’t have given him.

Robert is three years older.  If Mike Trout was allowed to flounder a bit, why not the Sox prized prospect, Rick?  And, please, give us an answer in plain English.

Commissioner, We Have a Problem

The White Sox topped the Rangers 2-0 Sunday afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Whatever behind five hitless innings from starter Reynaldo Lopez.  Yea!  Now, someone tell me why the game took 2:57 to play.

I mean, Texas got its lone hit in the sixth inning.  Add four walks and two errors to come up with a total of seven baserunners for the visitors, minus one for the double play.  On the other side of the ledger, the Sox managed a mere five hits to go with four walks and one baserunner courtesy of an error, minus one baserunner for the double play.  Why, oh why, then does a game that featured all of fourteen baserunners take just under three hours to complete?

It’s reached a point where up is officially down on baseball broadcasts.  Commercials on some games run on a split screen during a short, under a minute, lull in the action.  This does nothing to speed things up; it’s simply another commercial on top of too many others.  Instead, why not run those split-screen ads between innings?  Show players trotting out to their positions and pitchers warming up.  After sixty seconds, start the action, and keep the split screen until all the silly ads have run.

That’s how you shorten the length of a game.  And, while you’re at it, Commissioner Manfred, tell the umpires to crack down on hitters stepping out of the box to play with their batting gloves.  No more imitating Mike Hargrove, the Human Rain Delay.

We Don't Want Nobody from Around Here

Nicky Lopez is a 24-year old rookie middle infielder with the Royals.  Nick Solak is a 24-year old middle infielder with the Rangers.  Lopez attended Naperville Central, about a 45-minute drive from us, while Solak went to Naperville North, roughly the same distance.  Gosh, do you think it was too hard for the Sox and Cubs to send scouts out to DuPage County to look at these two?

According to Baseball Almanac, Illinois has the fourth-most number of native-born players who’ve appeared in the major leagues this year, behind only California, Texas and Georgia.  Yet only two, Charlie Tilson and Ben Zobrist, are what you might call hometown heroes.  Curtis Granderson and Jason Kipnis?  Both played high school locally, and Granderson even attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, for heaven’s sakes.  But it was other teams that drafted them.  Don’t even get me started on Kirby Puckett.

If I were to wake up one morning and find myself owning the White Sox, I’d have my scouts combing the Midwest for talent; I think the heartland has a ton of players with major-league talent.  Next, I’d move all my minor league affiliates to the Midwest.  This way you’d have youngsters growing up playing baseball and dreaming (somewhat) realistic dreams of playing for their home teams, and you’d have fans who could make day trips to check on the farm teams, where some of those local kids could be playing.

But what do I know?  It’s Jerry’s team and Rick’s rebuild.

What a Waste

Turning 30 next month, center fielder Billy Hamilton is at that point in his career where he goes places, as in from team to team.  Hamilton is on his third team since the start of last season.  To these eyes at least, his is a career heavy on what might have been.

Hamilton is a career .242 hitter whose game has been built on speed.  He once stole an incredible 155 bases for two teams in a minor-league season and has 297 career swipes in the majors.  He’s also been thrown out 68 times, a figure the analytics’ crowd probably doesn’t like.

They’re more impressed by Hamilton’s defense.  I was going to cite some advanced stats here, if only I could understand them.  Suffice it to say you don’t want to hit the ball anywhere in the neighborhood because Hamilton might just catch the ball, against all odds.  In that, he reminds me of Adam Engel of the White Sox.

I can’t help but wonder why Hamilton and Engel haven’t become perennial All-Stars; speed and defense go a long way in making a career.  Then again, so does hitting, and neither of these ball hawks has exactly set the world on fire with their batting averages; at .208, Engel is closer to the Mendoza Line than Hamilton even.  Is it a matter of bad coaching, stubbornness, or simply a lack of offensive talent?  All I know is I would’ve tried to make these guys bunt twice a game day in and day out just to get their gloves in the lineup.

What a waste and what better candidates to be late bloomers?

On the Road Again

Walk a mile in the other fellow’s shoes, or drive a mile, that’s my philosophy.  Behind the wheel, I try to cut pedestrians and cyclists a break.  Walking or riding, I try to act smart so as not to find myself in the middle of the street with a car barreling down on me.  I can only hope I don’t act like the people I see.

A month ago, walking the dog, I saw a car blow through not one or two but three stop signs.  There but for the grace of God—and a basset hound that refused to be rushed—was a nasty accident involving yours truly.  Then, this week, said dog and I were on the corner ready to cross when a car decided the stop sign was more a suggestion than the law.  I complimented the driver for not bothering with such niceties.

On Thursday, I took to my bike for a ride along Lake Michigan up the North Shore.  People mostly left me alone, I’m happy to say.  No pedestrian exhibited a sudden death wish, and no car tried to force me off the road.  I was left to my thoughts and the open road until I got a few miles from home.  Then it was, Hey, lady, I don’t make a pancake out of me, for chrissake!

I was driving down a Chicago street half-way between busy and residential, not big enough for a bike lane but with enough traffic to have stop signs every few blocks.  The problem with the stop signs is they back up traffic come mid-afternoon, which is what time it was.  Basically, in a situation like this you hug the curb whenever you can so as not to be a target.  But if there’s a line of parked cars, then you hug them and pray no one opens a traffic-side door.

So, I’m riding and scanning for any sign of potential door openers when a women pulls alongside me.  Traffic is so slow because of the stop signs that we’re pretty much moving parallel to one another.  She felt a little close, but that might’ve been my imagination.  I couldn’t help but notice, though, that she wasn’t looking up.  No, she was too busy driving while checking her cellphone.  This is how people get rear-ended, or pancaked, though I think “crushed” would be a more accurate term.

One eye checking for car doors popping open and one eye locked on to the oblivious driver, it left me one eye short to scan the road ahead.  The good news is I got home OK.  Now, I’m hoping that Darwin was right about natural selection.  Cyclists are going to have to come up with that third eye if they want to survive as a species.  Talk about new-look sunglasses.

A Tale of Two Pitchers

This is a tale of two 25-year old starters for the White Sox, Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito.  They both had three-run leads going into the bottom of the third inning against the Twins this week.  Gioltio held his, Lopez didn’t.

Lopez is where Giolito was last year, a pitcher both talented and oftentimes lost.  Giolito spent the offseason reinventing himself, in part with the help of something called “neural training.”  Call it the southern California approach to major-league pitching.  Only everyone isn’t from southern California.  So, how does Lopez get to where Giolito is, if he can?

The answer has to include a Spanish-speaking pitching coach.  Sorry, but Welington Castillo doesn’t count.  A pitcher needs to talk mechanics and psyche with his coach.  A good catcher knows what his pitcher has working and not, but he doesn’t know why, and he can’t advise him on grips and other subtleties of the craft.

With the White Sox, it’s pitching coach Don Cooper or the highway.  Good luck with that moving forward in the rebuild, guys.  

Apologies

On Tuesday, Bears’ offensive lineman Kyle Long apologized for a fight he got into at practice last week with rookie defensive end Jalen Dalton.  If only life imitated sports like this all the time.

“Obviously, what I did was absolutely unacceptable,” Long told reporters after practice.  “As a human being, as a teammate, without question what I did was uncalled for and absolutely so far over the line that it was on me to handle that internally and speak to the people that I needed to speak to.  I’ve done that.”  In case anyone was wondering, Long also said, “It was wrong what I did.”  That’s what you call owning up.

The Long story went in the back of the Sun-Times.  On the front page was news of a different sort, of a just-released report on the conduct of Tim Mapes, longtime chief of staff for Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.  The report found that, “The number of independently verified instances of Mr. Mapes’ derogatory behavior was overwhelming.”  The report also noted a belief—justified, I’d say—that “Mapes attempted to motivate workers through fear and that a few other supervisors emulated this practice” and a second belief—again, justified in my book—that Mapes could “make or break” careers in Springfield.

And how did Mr. Mapes’ respond?  “I had many responsibilities that I took on in order to make the speaker’s office more efficient and effective.  If my demeanor or approach to my job did not instill trust and a healthy work environment, I apologize.”  That “if” makes it a non-apology.

At 6’6” and 335 pounds, Kyle Long is a giant of a human being.  Tim Mapes comes across more as someone who would struggle under the weight of a pocket protector.  The big man acted big and the little man small, no “if’s” about it. 

Like a Broken Record

According to today’s The Athletic, White Sox manager Rick Renteria and his boss GM Rick Hahn are both feeling a little cranky on account of all the questions surrounding the Sox rebuild.  Well, in that case allow me to pile on.

How can you feel good about the rebuild after last night’s 14-4 loss to the Twins?  How can you feel good about starter Reynaldo Lopez, who was staked to a three-run lead in the third inning?  Lopez promised at the All-Star break that he was going to do better, and he did, for six starts.  But the last two have been terrible.  With two out and nobody on in the fifth and the socre already tied, Lopez proceeded to give up four runs.  Granted, if Welington Castillo knew how to throw a ball or Jose Abreu catch one, he would’ve been out of the inning with no damage done.  But hitting the next batter and then giving up a bases-loaded double is not exactly what you call pitching over the error.  Calling Don Cooper, if only he’d answer.

The game was relatively close, 7-4 Twins, going into the bottom of the eighth, when Renteria trotted out the bottom of the bullpen.  Kelvin Herrera was tagged for five runs in .2 of an inning while Hector Santiago gave up another two runs in his third of an inning.  Herrera has stunk all year, which makes you wonder what Hahn saw in the free agent that other teams didn’t.  And Santiago, a genuinely nice guy, is no longer a major-league talent.  Why is he on the roster?  Calling Mr. Hahn.

That’s the kind of stuff to get Sox fans riled up, along with the fact that Luis Robert, Nick Madrigal and some guy name Daniel Palka are tearing up Triple-A pitching.  Robert and Madrigal have both moved from high-A to Double-A to Triple-A.  Altogether, Madrigal is hitting .305 on the season with a .372 OBP while Robert is at .336 with 29 homeruns, thirteen at Triple-A Charlotte.  As for my pal Palka, he’s swatted 26 homers and 23 doubles to go with a .388 OBP at Charlotte.

Granted, none of these guys can pitch, but why nor see what they can do on the field and at bat?  The peasants are restless, gentlemen, and Leury Garcia misjudging another fly ball isn’t going to fix things.

The Devil His Due

The Devil His Due

Would I keep Rick Renteria as White Sox manager?  That’s a definite “maybe.”  On the one hand, I hate how he falls into gibber-speak with reporters.  GM Rick Hahn does it too, but I think it’s on purpose to confuse people.  With Renteria, it’s more a very mild case of Stengelese, though the party line always stands out.

Now, on the other hand, Renteria does things that point to him being a pretty savvy dude in the dugout.  No, I don’t mean who he tabs as his number-five starter or whatever he has Welington Castillo do; those are decisions dictated by the roster makeup, which falls on a certain general manager.  Rick Hahn, along with a questionable coaching staff, does not allow his manager to pull many rabbits out of his hat.

But what he can control, Renteria tries to control.  He won’t tolerate a player dogging it, and he’s not afraid to make moves, of which two stood out in last night’s win over the Twins at Target Field.  First, Renteria let starter Ivan Nova find his rhythm while weaker sorts might have been looking for a hook; three hitters into the game and Nova was all Dylan Covey, down by a score of 2-0.  In the olden days, we would’ve referred to Nova’s performance as pure “escape artist,” as evidenced by his allowing just those two runs on ten hits and a walk in 5.1 innings.  Then, with two runners on and one out in the sixth, Renteria went to his bullpen.  Yes, all managers go to their pens, but Renteria seems to have a good sense of when the time is right.

He also likes to bunt, much to the irritation of the analytics’ crowd, but not me.  Players bunt enough, they learn how to do it right, as evidenced by Yolmer Sanchez in the seventh inning.  Yolmer pulled off a two-strike squeeze to perfection.  Take that, Bill James.  According to the Sox/Pravda story, Sanchez has nine successful sacrifices this year, leading all MLB position players.  And the Sox got their first win in Minnesota in over a year by a 6-4 score.

I should also mention here that Jose Abreu hit a three-run homer in the third inning that in olden times we would have called “mammoth.” Apparently, the homer had an xBA of .970.  I have absolutely no idea what that means.  That Renteria is the skipper of the future?  Maybe.  

Hahn Time

According to today’s Tribune, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn took on his critics during a podcast last week.  For all the naysayers out there, and Hahn may have some idea as to our growing number, “the fact is whether it’s next year or the year after or whenever this run begins and we start getting closer to having parades around here, all that [naysaying] will be forgotten.”  Alright, class, let’s analyze.

First, did you notice the interest in parades?  Maybe Hahn can drive one of the clown cars.  And did you notice the general manager say the rebuild may not take off “next year or the year after or whenever”?  I did.

Talk about the basement of purgatory.  “Whenever” implies yet more burying of top prospects in the minor leagues (first Dylan Cease, now Luis Robert) while filling the 25-man roster with retreads.  Hahn apparently thinks Sox fans—the loyal, authentic ones who don’t question his judgment—are possessed of infinite patience, the kind that doesn’t question why 31-year old Ryan Goins is playing third base instead of top-30 prospect Danny Mendick or why pitcher Ross Detwiler gets to accumulate pension time on the Sox’s dime.

Yes, the rebuild is definitely Hahn time, if you will.

Family Reprise

Clare had to work a Saturday, per the requirements of her fancy job at NU.  With her husband the college football coach in season, she would have gone home to an empty apartment.  Instead, she spent the evening with her parents.

Talk about old times.  I helped her scrape two decals off her car, and she helped me fix the lawnmower.  I’d always wanted a classic car but balked out of fear I lacked what it takes to be a real gearhead.  So, instead I own a classic flip-handle mower, bought a month after the PT Cruiser in the spring of 2002.  After seventeen years, stuff starts to break.  I’ll replace just about everything short of the motor.  A replacement goes for $260.

After shop was dinner, and after dinner Italian ice at Gina’s on Roosevelt Road.  Of course, we talked baseball, Daniel Palka and Bill Walton, AJ Reed even; the White Sox took Reed off the 40-man roster.  After Gina’s was the Sox game, with “The Good Place” creator Michael Schur taking the place of Walton alongside Jason Benetti in the broadcast booth.  For anyone keeping count, a nerdy baseball fan joins an ex-NBA star as better-suited announcers than any female in the land.

Clare left long before the Sox coughed up a three-run lead to lose, 6-5.  But it’s good to know your grown-up kid will still spend time with you.  We must have done something right.      

Late Night

Unlike me, Clare watched enough of the White Sox game last night in Anaheim to get her fill of Bill Walton as “color” man; Walton was the giant in the booth wearing a tie-dye tee-shirt.  My daughter’s reward for subjecting herself to all the hippie-dippie allusions was to see Sox catcher James McCann hit his second grand slam in three days, good for a Sox 7-2 win over the Angels.

I didn’t run across any negative reviews of Walton’s performance, just as I didn’t run across anyone considering what my daughter texted during the game:  If a man who knows nothing about baseball can be in the broadcast booth, so should any woman who knows the game.

What a strange, strange road it’s been.   

Peekaboo

So, the White Sox are on the West Coast, and I didn’t stay up for the game.  The papers don’t carry late—to say nothing of not-so-late—scores, and I didn’t feel like listening to the sports on radio.  So, I went on MLB.com and slowly scrolled down the line scores.

Wow, the Sox scored five runs in the last three innings!  But then I scroll down just a little more to find out they lose to the Angels, 8-7.  So much for good Reynaldo Lopez, at least for a night, and I’m still waiting for any semblance of good from reliever Josh Osich.  Nothing like three two-out hits capped by a Justin Upton homerun to keep your team in the game.  How do you say Mike Pelfrey, Chris Volstad, Ronald Belisario, Michael Ynoa…

And I doubt if I’ll listen much to the game tonight.  Steve Stone is on vacation (and this might be a good time for him to consider retirement), so Jason Benetti has invited Bill Walton to join him in the broadcast booth.  Yes, that Bill Walton, who is to baseball what Stone is to the NBA.  Why such a pairing?  Because nothing counts in a rebuild, that’s why.  

Hands Off

A city’s great parks are special, places where people can go to exercise and/or dream.  I was lucky enough to have parents who took me to many of the big parks that serve Chicago.  A threat to a place like Jackson Park is a threat both to my past and every Chicagoan’s birthright.

The nearly 552-acre park borders Lake Michigan to the east.  In the time before air conditioning, my parents would drive to the lakefront, and we’d walk along the shoreline; for a six-year old, scaling the breakwater was like tackling Mt. Everest.  Other times, my dad would just drive through the park, and we’d gawk at all the boats in the harbor.  Families used—and use—the park to picnic—and kids to play sports on a field, diamond or court.  Like I said, great parks are special, and this one was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who brought his A-game to the project. 

That’s why I’m not wild about the Obama Foundation wanting “only” nineteen acres of Jackson Park for the Obama Center; depending on the outcome of a federal lawsuit, the land will be used to construct an oversized version of the obelisk from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  No thanks.  But I understand if residents around the park see the center as a vehicle for desperately-needed economic development.  That said, I’d prefer that the land didn’t go to the foundation.

And I really, really don’t want Tiger Woods to drop in the way he has for the PGA tour now at Medinah to say how much he wants to develop the Jackson Park golf course into something worthy of a major PGA tournament.  Nope, golf courses don’t make for broad-based economic development.  If they did, Donald Trump wouldn’t have bothered building so many of them.

All a “super” course would do is take two golf courses—the other one being the adjacent South Shore course—and turn them into a facility for the well-heeled.  Right now, both courses are affordable and open to the public.  Make two into one at the cost pegged somewhere between $30-$60 million, and then what?  Duffers will need a loan to play the new course.

Leave Jackson Park be, folks.  It doesn’t need an obelisk and the PGA to do what it has always done best. 

Acronyms to Go

I was reading The Athletic this morning, stories about Ivan Nova of the White Sox and Anthony Rizzo of the Cubs, or trying to read stories about those two.  It was hard because I kept running across these acronyms: ISO, FIP, DRA, wRC+.  For all I knew, the Russians were sending messages in code.

But, No, the authors of both stories were writing in the gibber-speak peculiar to analytics.  ISO stands for “isolated power,” to get at a batter’s true power potential; FIP stands for “fielding independent pitching,” purportedly an improved version of ERA;  DRA is “deserved run average,” and how that differs from FIP is beyond me; and wRC+, wouldn’t you know, means “weighted runs plus,” not to be confused with your ordinary “weighted runs,” I guess.  This isn’t baseball just as it isn’t baseball journalism.

 From what I can tell, wRC+ relates to the total number of runs generated by a batter.  Trust me when I say the formula for wRC (the + being a refinement) would give Einstein pause.  And I wonder, is Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon running the formula through his head as he tries to understand the drop in Rizzo’s power numbers?  If so, Maddon is in a place I never want to be.

As a rule, I dislike people who use language to intimidate and confuse; think George Will or William F. Buckley Jr.  The same holds for baseball analytics.  People throw around numbers the way Buckley did adjectives.  For all those devotees of ISO, FIP etc., all I can say is this.

KISS.

New York New York

I’ve always said urban history is anything that happens in New York and local history is what happens everywhere else.  You could say the same about baseball.  It’s only “the national pastime” when played in certain boroughs.

I just finished a book, Electric October, about the 1947 World Series.  The subtitle reads, “Seven World Series Games/Six Lives/Five Minutes of Fame/That Lasted Forever.”  The title comes from the fact that this was the first televised Series.  But not really.

Everything about Electric October, from the title to the major publisher (Henry Holt) cries “New York” because this was the best kind of World Series, at least for certain people, those with power and a myopic view of life in America.  Put another way, the book got written because the ’47 Series featured the Yankees and Dodgers.  Not much traveling involved, which is just how New Yorkers like it.

Why not write about the 1945 Series, between the Cubs and Tigers?  I mean, it’s the first Series following World War II.  No, too local.  What about the ’68 Series, between the Tigers and Cardinals?  There’s a serious line of thought that the Tigers’ run unified Detroit and kept it from burning down.  Again, too local.  Don’t get me wrong.  These kinds of books get written, but not by the kind of writers who merit big advances from big publishers.

Long story short, Cookie Lavagetto and Al Gionfriddo are nobodies until they arrive in the Big Apple and do their thing in the World Series.  Joe DiMaggio, of course, is DiMaggio, and publishers can never get enough of the Yankee Clipper.  By playing in New York, the son of Italian immigrants became American.

God forbid DiMaggio played his whole career in Chicago.  That would be too local a story.   

The No. Five Who Got Away

Talent-wise, Chris Bassitt isn’t another Earl Battey, Johnnie Callison, Norm Cash or Denny McLain, all players once belonging to the White Sox who achieved success elsewhere.  But that doesn’t mean Bassitt has less than major-league talent.

When he came up with the White Sox in 2014, I immediately noticed how he critiqued his outings, like Lucas Giolito minus the psychobabble.  With Bassitt, it was basically “throw strikes all the time and shame on me when I don’t.”  I also liked that Bassitt was from Toledo by way of the University of Akron and a 16^th round pick in the 2011 draft.  In other words, Sox scouts took the time to find a diamond in the rough.  Naturally, Bassitt got traded—along with Marcus Simien and Josh Phegley—to Oakland that off-season.

And now, finally, at the age of 30 with injuries seemingly behind him, Bassitt has blossomed into a dependable no. 5 starter.  Yesterday, he went eight scoreless innings to beat his former team 2-0 and go 8-5 on the year with a 3.56 ERA.  Compare that to anyone the Sox have trotted out at no. 5 in the rotation this season.  I could name names, but why speak ill of the modestly talented?

Bassitt definitely knew who he was facing.  “Every time I pitch against these guys for my career, I’m going to prove to them they made a mistake,” the 6’5” right-hander told reporters after the game.  “That’s the reality of it.  Anyone that says different is lying.  So, yeah, any time I pitch against these guys, they’re going to get my ‘A’ game.”

When he was Sox general manager, Kenny Williams was always on the lookout for grinders.  He drafted one in Bassitt, only to give him away for a season’s worth of Jeff Samardzija.  But that’s in the past, and now we’re in a rebuild.  Someday, after all the necessary boxes have been checked, we’re going to have enough talent on hand to beat the likes of Chris Bassitt—or at least score a run off of him.  

Two Steps Forward...

I’ve been hard on Tim Anderson, the Minister of Fun; blame it on my aversion to bat-flips.  But fair is fair.  The White Sox shortstop is a different player from seasons past.  Anderson is consistently hitting the ball to the opposite field, which helps explain his .325 BA.  And his base running, oh my.  Twice in the past week I’ve seen him score from first base.  Boys and girls, watch the man closely because that’s how you’re supposed to cut the bases.  

Then we have Sox starter Reynaldo Lopez, who threw 6.1 scoreless innings last night to pick up a win against the A’s.  Lopez has a 2.13 ERA in six post-All Star Game starts.  Given that he now has a 7-9 record with a 5.16 ERA, that gives you an idea just how bad Lopez was before that (and why a certain Sox fan wanted him sent back to the minors).

Lastly, we have rookie “left fielder” Eloy Jimenez, who hit his 19^th homerun of the season last night, and first in.  I heard an interview with Jose Abreu last week, and, if the interpreter was accurate, Abreu called Jimenez a “baby.”  That can be taken two ways.  Given Jimenez’s performance in the post-game interview last night, my take would be the more critical one.

Grow up, Eloy.  The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll hit better than .236 with 44 RBIs. 

Ducks in a Row

The White Sox need to do a better job of coordinating publicity for their “Field of Dreams” game next August.  Sox/Pravda has everyone agog—or should I say “atwitter”?—about the event, but a group interview of players during yesterday’s game against the A’s suggested otherwise.  Tim Anderson admitted he’d never seen the movie; Adam Engel claimed to have seen bits and pieces; and Dylan Cease said he’d seen it so long ago he couldn’t really remember.  Lucas Giolito saw it but likes “Bull Durham” better.

And while we’re on the subject, what do you think the talking points will be for the game?  At some point, the announcers are going to have to mention Shoeless Joe Jackson.  What exactly will they say, that he took a bribe to throw the 1919 World Series or that he tried to give the money back?  The movie “Field of Dreams” and the book it’s based on, “Shoeless Joe,” both touch on the subject of redemption, as well as second chances.  Will Commissioner Rob Manfred care to comment, let alone act on, the ban his predecessor Kenesaw Mountain Landis imposed on Jackson and seven teammates?

Then we have the matter of Buck Weaver, who by all accounts knew about the plot by his teammates but played the Series straight; Weaver’s sin was not to inform on the other Black Sox.  My guess is the announcers won’t even know who Weaver is, so that’ll be good for Manfred.

We wouldn’t want anything to spoil a magical baseball moment, now would we?

Making It Up as They Go Along

The story on MLB’s website said the ballpark that’s going up for the White Sox-Yankees game next August in Iowa will have design elements that “pay homage to Comiskey Park.”  And why, pray tell, is that, given how the Sox insisted certain design elements were the reason they wanted to tear down their classic ballpark in the first place? 

Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf should insist on the inclusion of sight-obstructing posts throughout the cornfield venue; Reinsdorf hated those at his ballpark the way head groundskeeper Roger Bossard must hate weeds.  Instead, Reinsdorf releases a statement about what an honor it is to be the “home team against the Yankees in a special setting that will capture everyone’s imagination, just like the movie [“Field of Dreams”] does.”

The posts, Jerry, the posts.  

Acorn and Tree

I wasn’t up for more than three minutes this morning, having made my way into the kitchen, when Clare texted Michele: Tell Dad that Tyler Flowers hit into a triple play.  The ex-Sox catcher is not one of my favorite players if for no other reason than he was one of Hawk Harrelson’s.  Year after year, the Hawk predicted great things of Flowers in the same way Herbert Hoover predicted a rebound for the economy in 1930, 1931, 1932….

Two hours later, my daughter called from work to ask, “Did you see what the White Sox are doing?”  Clare then filled me in on how the Sox and Yankees are going to play a regular-season game next August at the “Field of Dreams” movie site in Dyersville, Iowa.  How interesting.

I first saw the movie right after the Sox had successfully blackmailed the Illinois General Assembly into providing funding for a new stadium.  Kevin Costner helped take away the pain, if you will.  I don’t know how old Clare was when she first saw the movie, but she visited the field twice by the time she was twelve.  The second time she nearly took my head off when I pitched to her before lining a ball into the corn.

She reminded me of that on the phone.  The plans are for the stadium to seat 8,000 spectators.  My guess is that tickets will go for four figures; be available via lottery; and/or given away in contests.  The stadium is supposed to include design elements of Comiskey Park.

I can only hope the two of us will get a chance to see for ourselves come next summer.

Dig a Little

How a baseball autographed by members of the 1971 White Sox ended up in Arlee, Montana (Pop: 602) I couldn’t say.  But it’s back in the county of Cook, safe and sound.

Other people may not be interested in a ball autographed by the likes of Ed “The Creeper” Stroud (said to be so fast he used ankle weights to slow himself down a little) and Rich McKinney, to say nothing of Luke Appling and Chuck Tanner, but that’s their problem.  Me, I’ve got a crystal ball wrapped in cowhide, and I can see back forty-eight years.

When I look at an autographed ball, I wonder, when exactly was it signed?  You can take the historian out of the classroom; just don’t try to take the curiosity out of the historian.  The trick to getting a more accurate date is to find names that might contain a few clues.  Here, that would mean pitchers Jim Magnuson and Stan Perzanowski.

Magnuson appeared in fifteen games that season and Perzanowski in five.  Perzanowski pitched in two games in late June and three in September, so my guess is the ball dates to between June 20^th and the end of the month; the odds of getting a bunch of ballplayers to sign a ball the last week of the season can’t be that good.  Of course, it’s possible Perzanowski sat on a bench in the bullpen for months without pitching, but doubtful.  He went 18-4 in the minors that year, so it’s likely he was called up because of injury or for a look-see.

One name not on the ball belongs to pitcher Terry Forster’s.  He and I were both 19-year old rookies in 1971, the one a pitcher the other a college student.  I remember a game from early in the season, when Forster faced the up-and-coming Oakland A’s; he gave up two runs in 6.1 innings against a lineup that included Sal Bando, Bert Campanaris, Reggie Jackson and Joe Rudi.  It was one of those rare Sundays where I got the family car for my own devices.  All I ended up wanting to do was drive around and listen to the Sox game on the radio.

I thought Forster went up against Vida Blue that day, but I checked and it was Diego Segui.  If you’re going to have memories, best to keep them in order, I always say.

Get Used to It

Are baseball fans born or made?  With me, it was a little bit of both.  Well, a lot of one and some of the other, at least.

Baseball was the first sport that mattered to me, so that would probably be the “born” part.  Football followed baseball on the calendar and in my heart.  Gayle Sayers and Dick Butkus turned me into a Bears’ fan, but not on the same level as my rooting for J.C. Martin and Wayne Causey.  Equivalent talents?  In my heart, yes.

Now, as much as I would like to throttle White Sox ownership, I just can’t make myself jump on the Bears’ bandwagon.  If anything, all this preseason hype masquerading as coverage cements my baseball-first allegiance.  Just today, the Tribune poured another load of concrete in that direction.

Two of the three stories on the front page of today’s sports’ section were devoted to, wait for it, the Bears, as was all of the back page.  (I did not know and did not care that a two-way player who last played in 1934 is the 31st best player in team history.)  The page-one stories took up two full inside pages (ads excepted) while at least half of a third page was given over to coverage of other NFL teams.  Keep in mind the sports’ section is all of eight pages long.  Oh, and neither the Cubs’ nor Sox stories bothered with final scores, even though the Sox game in Detroit started at 6 PM our time.

The electronic version of the paper isn’t any better; the basic difference is reading the Bears’ stuff on a screen.  For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced Chicago is a Bears’ town to the exclusion of everything else, but the local media is another story.  It’s breathless coverage 24/7 when not carrying the McCaskeys’ water for what seems to be 364 days a year.

All of which helps make me a baseball fan first and foremost.

Pass on That

I was channel surfing yesterday afternoon when I came across a game on cable, a 16U fastpitch championship featuring a Chicago-area team.  I kept on going.

The team plays in a super elite circuit that Clare tells me didn’t exist when she was playing.  Thank heavens for that.  It would’ve been another thing we’d beat ourselves up over—I’m not good enough, we don’t have enough money…I almost feel sorry for the families involved.

I doubt the players have much of a life other than softball; ditto at least one of their parents.  And the tension must be brutal (to say nothing of the associated costs of team and travel).  The thought of college coaches being out there at any given time coupled with the possibility of not starting that day must make for one heck of a lot of upset stomachs, both adolescent and adult.

Remember this is 16U, with girls maybe as young as fourteen on a team.  I can’t imagine putting my daughter through three summers of that torture, using the twin carrots of a college scholarship and TV appearance to motivate her.  The good news for college coaches is that this is a perfect way to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Only the true lovers of softball will be on hand to watch.

That is, unless they just burned out.   

Collecting

A little before Clare was born, I bought two White Sox autographed team balls, from 1965 and ’66.  The ’names on the ‘65 ball have faded away, but Eddie Stanky and his boys are going strong.

Clare debuted, if you will, in 1991, so I’ll get a team ball from then, too, along with some others to denote the births of siblings, self and spouse, along with the wedding year of my parents, that being 1939.  First, though, I bought an autographed ball from the 1971 Sox.  I was eighteen going on nineteen that season, and I identified with that group of young overachievers, like Terry Forster and Carlos May and Bill Melton.

You can’t be eighteen again, and it’s dangerous to try.  But you can remember things from then, courtesy of a baseball filled with autographs from once-upon-a-time heroes.  I like to think of it as therapy on cowhide.  

Incompetence

I am now at that point in life where I can’t stand to watch bad baseball, and the White Sox have pretty much cornered the market in that regard since the All-Star break.  Oh, I’ll peak, but sit glued in front of the TV?  No, thanks.

So, the couple with five college degrees between them sat on the couch last night watching season two of “Endeavour.”  Apparently, everyone in Great Britain either is busy committing a murder, solving a murder or watching programs about people up to their neck in murder.  We fall into category #3, due to great character/acting and setting (suburban London, the 1960s).  Believe me, you don’t want to try to get away with murder on Detective Morse’s watch.

We watched two episodes and took a break after the first one; that’s how I saw recently recalled Matt Skole tie the score in the ninth inning against the Phillies.  I didn’t bother to check on the score after the second episode ended and in fact didn’t find out until 10 AM this morning that the visiting Sox won 4-3 in 15 innings.  How nice.  What a joke.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m glad the Sox won; just thirteen more in a row and we’re back to .500.  But this isn’t baseball I grew up with, at least on the Phillies’ part.  Manager Gabe Kapler ran out of pitchers, despite having a 12-man staff.  Better—or worse—yet, Kapler used a pitcher in left field and an outfielder on the mound for two innings.  Don’t be fooled by the video highlights.

“Outfielder” Vince Velasquez threw a runner (actually, it was Jose Abreu, who does more of a speed walk on the bases) out at the plate in the 14^th inning and nearly did it again in the 15^th.  Sorry, you don’t subject your pitchers to injury trying to get outfield assists.  Velasquez pitched five innings two days previous.  If Kapler was afraid to bring him in to relieve, then he should’ve done a better job managing his bullpen.  Remember what the philosopher Forrest Gump said—stupid is as stupid does.

Which brings us to the subject of pretty-boy Bryce Harper, the $330 million man.  After going 0 for 6 last night, Harper has a slash line of 18 homeruns/72 RBIs/.248 BA, compared to Jose Abreu’s 23/77/.264, and I thought Abreu was having a bad season.  I bet super-agent Scott Boras has an excuse ready for his client, though.

I can’t wait to hear it.

You Can Bet on It

The cable channel that carries Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox games will now carry a daily, four-hour sports’ betting show.  Words fail me, almost.

I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but I’d rather give my money to fund a government program purportedly for the public good than throw money down the rat hole of  sports’ gambling.  Instead of four hours, the program could be reduced to this crawler, to be run 24/7:  If the odds are against the house and in your favor so much, how come the house never goes broke?

A show like this needs a snappy title, something along the lines of Blackjack/Black Sox.  I’d be willing to bet they won’t go in that direction, though.  In that case, maybe they could have Pete Rose as a guest or, better yet, a host.  If baseball is going to turn a blind eye to gambling, Charlie Hustle deserves to be cut in on the action.    

Time to Grow Up

I freely admit to not being a easy-going, fun-loving type of guy.  At dinner yesterday, my dear daughter alluded to the way in which she was raised both as a child and an athlete; it seems that I could be rather demanding at times.  So be it, and I still think she’ll show for the funeral, schedule permitting.

That said, I wonder how long until 22-year old Eloy Jimenez grows up.  Jimenez looks to be more interested in playing class clown in the dugout than serving as rebuild foundation for the White Sox.  It would be nice if someone would point out the Sox already have a clown in Yolmer Sanchez, who is very good and creative in what he does.  But I’d argue a team needs only one player who’ll dump the Gatorade on himself when a teammate provides the walk-off hit.

And it would be nice if one of those Sox mentors I hear so much about would point out to Jimenez, who turns 23 at the end of November, what 20-year old Juan Soto is doing for the Nationals.  Last year as a teenager, Soto hit 22 homeruns with 70 RBIs and a .292 BA; this season he’s at 20/70/.289 with two months to go.  By contrast, Jimenez has a slash line of 17/39/.232.

Those are numbers more befitting a clown than a budding star.