This Day in Your History

Time flies.  Fifty years ago to the day, the White Sox played the Red Sox in a day game at Fenway Park.  I watched in between getting dressed for graduation from St. Laurence High School.

 

Between the TV and the radio in the car (the ceremonies were at Medinah Temple on the Near North Side), I must’ve been aware of some of the ten hits Walt Williams and Luis Aparicio had between them at the top of the order, five apiece.  It’s even possible the game was still on when we got back in the car, what with a final score of 22-13 with 40 hits total.  What a graduation gift, as my Sox won.

 

The 400 or so young men of St. Laurence waited in line, the way they had been taught to do over the past four years.  In our white tuxedoes, we looked like an army of waiters ready for duty at the world’s biggest country club.  There was probably a shake of the hands for every waiter/graduate along with the unsaid hope none of us would die in Vietnam.

 

It would be a miserable summer both for me and my team, which would finish the season at 56-106.  I spent seven or eight weeks taking public transportation—two buses and the “L”—to get to a job close to the Indiana border by 7 in the morning.  Because I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, I actually got fired from a City of Chicago patronage job.  From there it was stocking shelves at Walgreens.  I would live and learn.

 

And the White Sox would grow interesting by season’s end with Chuck Tanner taking over in the dugout and Roland Hemond in the front office.  By September, I was off to college (more bus and “L” rides), a White Sox fan making his way on the faraway North Side of Chicago.   

Field of Dreams

According to today’s Sun-Times, work continues for an MLB game—Yankees and White Sox—at the “Field of Dreams” movie site in Dyersville, Iowa.  Build it, and maybe nobody will come, in which case, why bother?

 

A youth baseball organization runs the property now and has built eleven baseball and softball fields.  I can’t tell from the map on their website which one is from the movie, but I’m sure it’s there.  At least, I hope it is. 

 

I’ve now come to the point where I think certain places of cultural and/or natural importance should have restricted access, to be determined by a drawing.  Your name doesn’t get picked, sorry.  Try again next year.  If you think this is unfair, watch one of those monster cruise ships try to navigate the harbor at Venice.  The waves can’t be good for buildings that predate the Renaissance, and I doubt the constant flood of tourist helps, either.

 

I fear this is what’s happening in Dyersville.  It used to be a self-selective process; any crazy who wanted to navigate some backroads to get a look at a baseball field was welcome to try.  We did it three times.  I doubt if there was ever more than a hundred people walking about.  And nobody hurried me up to finish throwing BP to Clare.

 

I have a picture of the two of us standing in the outfield, the corn just behind us, my twelve-year old smiling from all the line drives she just hit.  It may be too late for an annual drawing to save that place of wonder and rolling landscape.  

Playing With Fire

Superagent Scott Boras wants his clients to stand firm in the face of MLB owner demands for more salary concessions.  The way Boras sees it, any owner in trouble for outstanding loans is of no concern to them.  And, he’s right, to a point.

 

Boras told clients in a recent memo that clubs borrow money all the time, and it goes for projects to benefit owners, not players.  As cited by Boras, the Cubs are a perfect example.  If and when the Ricketts family sells, do you think they’re going to share any of the profits from developing Wrigleyville?  Don’t hold your breath.  Then, why make concessions that will only benefit the Ricketts’ clan?

 

So, stand firm, yes, but also realize you’re playing with fire.  What if a team or two actually does go bankrupt, then what?  Trust me, fans won’t feel a thing, but players will.  Baseball’s financial structure could collapse, with no more billions for owners when they sell, no more tens of millions for players when they sign their free-agent deals.  If only the Ricketts were a little more appealing poster candidates.  Alright, a lot more appealing.

 

Here’s the thing.  In his column today, the Trib’s Paul Sullivan quotes an unnamed MLB official, who says paying players for games without fans would mean “significant” losses for all teams, and “we’d be better off not playing.”  No, you wouldn’t, because as Jayson Stark notes in today’s The Athletic, that would mean no baseball for a year and a half.

 

You think fans will wait, sheep-like, for both sides to make nice?  I don’t.

Say What?

Listening to Hawk Harrelson on the TV led me to embrace the mute button on the remote years ago.  It drives Michele nuts.  She’ll walk into the living room, and there I am watching a picture without sound.  I like it that way, although she may have a point that it doesn’t much sense with the news on.

 

Maybe it’s a bad habit, maybe not, but I doubt I’ll be breaking it either way if and when baseball comes back.  So, I won’t likely be hearing all those National League announcers try to come to terms with the advent of the DH in their league.  This seems to be the one change owners and players will agree on for 2020.  And I doubt players will want to give it back come 2021 and beyond.

 

So, adieu, Joe Maddon batting his pitchers in the eight-spot, and goodbye, all you starting pitchers imitating a statue in the batter’s box.  Did I say “goodbye”?  I meant “good riddance.” 

Cry Me a River

Hats off to MLB owners.  Ordinarily, I wouldn’t take the side of multimillionaires, but I’ll make an exception this one time.

 

The owners keep floating ideas for starting the 2020 season, and, how to put this, their chief concerns don’t appear to be health-related.  No, it’s money.  The owners want players to share their pain.  The players have already agreed to pro-rated salaries, but that’s not enough pain for the other side.

 

The owners want further concessions because in all likelihood games will be played without fans in attendance.  OK, I get that, but why keep throwing variations on a salary cap at the players?  That dog won’t hunt, guys.  Try a joint committee of representatives from ownership and the players’ association to hammer out an equitable agreement.  And keep in mind that owners will be able to deduct their losses come tax time. 

 

So spare me Tom Ricketts crying poor, as I saw him do on TV last night.  Here’s somebody whose family owns a team valued north of $3 billion.  Hey, Tom, if things are so tight for you and your siblings, use the team as collateral and get a loan.  Otherwise, stick a sock in it, and prove you want to get the season started.

 

Baseball is lucky, sort of.  No one really cares what the NBA and NHL do.  Resume the season; jump right into an expanded playoff scheme.  Whatever.  Winter sports don’t carry much cache once the thermometer hits eighty and above.  What both sides in baseball need to keep in mind, though, is that football rules whatever the temperature.  The longer owners and players squabble, the sooner training camps open, with the attendant flood of coverage.

The clock is ticking, guys.  

More WAR

In the spirit of columnist Sidney J. Harris, I learned this looking up something else.  Did you know Bronson Arroyo has a higher career WAR than Jack Billingham?  I didn’t.

 

Not only does Arroyo have a higher WAR, he has an astronomically higher WAR, as in 23.4 vs 7.4 for Billingham.  Apparently, the proof is in the formula, not the stats.  Arroyo pitched sixteen seasons, amassing career totals of 148-137 with a 4.28 ERA.  In seven postseason series spanning 29.1 innings pitched, he went 1-0 with a 4.60 ERA.  That includes a 6.75 ERA in 2.2 innings for the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series.

 

And Billingham?  Let’s see, now.  He pitched thirteen years, with career totals of 145-113 and 3.83 ERA.  In five postseason series, he went 2-1 with a 1.93 ERA in 42 innings.  In three World Series, he faced the 1972 A’s; ’75 Red Sox; and the ’76 Yankees, going a total of 25.1 innings with a 2-0 record and a 0.36 ERA.

Now, will someone please tell me how the hell Bronson Arroyo has a WAR three times greater than Jack Billingham?  

 

 

Who Blue Collar?

I hesitate using the term “blue collar” with athletes for a couple of reasons, starting with salary.  Really, what professional athlete in America qualifies as “blue collar” in the true sense of the word?   I mean, outside of female professional athletes?  Yes, just about everyone in the WNBA qualifies.  But after that, not really.

 

The second reason is race.  “Blue-collar” invariably gets attached to white players.  I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a black athlete described that way.  Why, I haven’t a clue.  If that’s the case, let me be the first and say that Michael Jordan resembled Jerry Sloan on the basketball court in that they were both blue-collar type players.

 

Consider two remarks by Sloan.  “Be on time, work hard every day.”  When was Jordan ever late to practice, and when did he ever give less than maximum effort?  If Jordan wasn’t the first at practice and the last to leave, I’d like to know who was on those Bulls’ teams.

 

Sloan also said, “Why should a guy be rewarded for giving 100 percent at his job?  Everybody’s supposed to do that.”  What would Jordan change in that statement?  I can’t think of a thing.

 

“Blue collar” is lazy talk more than anything, meant to describe players whose drive makes up for holes in their game.  Sloan qualifies because his defense rated higher than his offense.  Maybe so, but if my entry into Heaven depended on what Jerry Sloan did with the ball his team down by a point with six seconds to go, I’d be at peace with the results.

 

It may be time to retire “blue collar” for a descriptive term more 21^st century.  I can’t think of anything offhand, so I’ll go with “full-out serious” in the interim.  I’m pretty sure Jerry Sloan and Michael Jordan wouldn’t be too offended.

Nearly Normal

Nearly Normal

 

Clare and Chris came over for dinner last night, hamburgers on the grill.  For a wedding gift, my parents bought us an oak dining-room table that comes with two leaves.  We used both leaves to maintain proper social distancing.  The meal was our act of courage in the age of coronavirus.

 

Later, we watched a rebroadcast of game one of the 2005 ALDS, White Sox vs. Red Sox.  My daughter was ecstatic.  “They’re going to win by something like 16-1.”  She was off a bit; the final score was good Sox 14, bad Sox 2.  I forgot how much I hate Chris Berman as an announcer.

 

What I do remember was game three, on a Friday afternoon at Fenway.  It being the end of the week, we were at the batting cages straight from school; Clare was in eighth grade at the time.  (Let me note here that we regularly went on Fridays, and at some point came to the attention of Clare’s future high school coaches.  One of them told me he could hear her hitting several cages down and literally prayed that she would come to his school, which she did.)  That’s the kind of dad I was, not altering our routine even with our team in the playoffs.

 

Paul Konerko hit a go-ahead, two-run homerun around the time we finished and were headed back to the car; that would mean we listened on the way home as Orlando Hernandez, “El Duque,” wiggled out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam, twice going to a full count on Boston batters.  You could say these were good memories on two different levels.

Our visitors left a little after nine.  I can only hope they come again, and bring more baseball with them.

Jerry Sloan

When I think of Jerry Sloan, who died yesterday at the age of 78, it’s mostly of the Bulls’ player and coach, as opposed to the coach who racked up 1127 career wins the Jazz.  Sloan was the first-ever Bull, taken in the 1966 expansion draft.  His career spanned my years in high school and as an undergraduate.

 

Sloan was real-life “Hoosiers,” the youngest of ten children born in downstate McLeansboro, though the family farm was located somewhere called Gobblers Knob (I’m serious).  Of course, there were farm chores to do before basketball practice.

 

If today we worry about global warming, in Sloan’s playing days the NBA season felt like it took place in the Ice Age.  As a fifteen- or sixteen-year old, following the Bulls kept me from freezing to death in the winter.  In time, to follow the Bulls meant identifying with Sloan, Norm Van Lier, Bob Love, Chet Walker, Tom Boerwinkle…In other words, I came to identify.

 

When I was at DePaul, the Bulls won anywhere from 51-57 games a season.  Twice they lost to the Lakers in seven games in what was then the Western Conference Semifinals.  This could be my imagination, but I seem to remember that second time I was watching the seventh game with the Bulls ahead with under three minutes to go, only to lose the TV signal.  When it came back, they were down and about to be eliminated.

 

Sloan played ten years with the Bulls before knee problems forced him to retire; in that regard, he joins the likes of Dick Butkus and Gayle Sayers.  But they didn’t get to coach the Bears.  Sloan did get a chance to coach the Bulls.  In two-plus seasons, he took them to the playoffs once before getting sacked in 1982.  I was married by then, and up to my waist in Ph.D. crap.

I always wonder what would’ve happened had Sloan been able to hang on until Michael Jordan showed up in 1984.  That would’ve been an interesting pairing, the first Bull with the eventual greatest.  The NBA might never have been the same.  With Michael Jordan learning defense from Jerrry Sloan, opponents might never have broken 70 points a game.

I guess some things just aren't meant to be.  Our loss.

Giving the Devil His Due

According to a story in today’s The Athletic, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf will not be firing; furloughing; or cutting the salaries of fulltime team employees, through June.  You would think that would be the default position of all owners, in which case you’d be wrong.

 

In baseball, only seven teams—Cardinals, Orioles, Phillies, Rockies, Sox, Tigers and Twins—are stepping up to the plate, if you will.  The Cubs are cutting the salaries of employees while the Hawks have suddenly gone all Bill Wirtz, going with both pay cuts and furloughs.  It must be in the genes, which makes me wonder what the McCaskeys will do to protect the cash level in their money bin.

 

I dislike Reinsdorf for any number of reasons, his getting a free stadium first and foremost among them, that and tearing down a landmark to the clear the way for his mall.  But life is more complicated than we like to admit, and this is one of those times.  So, a tip of the hat to the Chairman for not making like other owners, and for doing the right thing.

 

Again, What Is It Good For?

MLB.com did a story last week, “These trades were stacked with WAR.”  After reading it, all I can say is the game is doomed if it doesn’t pry itself loose from the grip of analytics, and soon.

 

The trade that interested me most was the one that sent Joe Morgan and others from the Astros for Ley May and others after the 1971 season.  Not only did Cincinnati get Morgan but Cesar Geronimo, Denis Menke and Jack Billingham, too.  Apparently, Houston was content with May and Tommy Helms in exchange.  As for Jimmy Stewart and Ed Armbrister, I’ll let you figure out who went where.

Here’s the thing that gets me.  May has a career WAR of 27.2 vs. 28.1 for Menke.  (Morgan’s WAR of 100.5 isn’t in question.)  Over the course of eighteen seasons, May hit .267 with 2031 hits; 354 homeruns; and 1244 RBIs.  And Menke?  In thirteen seasons, he hit .250 with 1270 hits; 101 homers; and 606 RBIs.

 

How in heaven’s name, then, can Menke qualify as the better player?  Because he spent the bulk of his career at shortstop, along with time at second and third base?  First basemen-DHs with over 1200 RBIs are a dime a dozen?  That Menke’s .163 BA in the postseason matters more than May’s .263, or that somehow May’s .368 BA in two World Series—with 8 RBIs against the Orioles in 1970, by the way—shouldn’t be compared to Menke “raking” at a .163 clip in the postseason (and .083 in one World Series)?  Explain this to me.

 

And, while you’re at it, tell me how Jack Billingham, with career stats of 145-113 and a 3.83 ERA manages a career WAR of 7.4?  Oh, it must be Billingham’s crappy World Series stats—2-0 with a 0.36 ERA over 25.1 innings in seven games and three Series.  Would I trade Billingham for Morgan?  No.  For May?  No.  For Menke?  In a heartbeat.

 

WAR is a harmless enough stat to argue about over pizza.  Beyond that, though, I worry it’s going to be a bar to HOF entry for players from Minnie Minoso and Tommy John to Jim Kaat and Rusty Staub.  Not good.

 

WAR, what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.        

Can't Wait

Clare was upset last night because, months ago, she’d mark today on her calendar to spend with me.  The White Sox had a day game, and we intended to go.  Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and families.

 

The two of us both miss baseball a good damn’ bit, but what are you going to do?  It appears you can’t hurry love, or COVID-19.  It’ll peak when it peaks and not a second sooner.  To act otherwise is to risk your health and your life.  But that’s just my humble opinion.

 

I say that because I saw an item in the paper yesterday that an area hotshot high school quarterback is transferring to a school in Florida so he can play his senior year and be ready for what he must expect to be big times starting in 2022.  He’s committed to a certain school east of here that’s really, really big on the color blue.

 

Again, the best-laid plans.  Transferring must be OK with the future coaches, and it has to be OK with the parents.  Me, I’m not letting my kid out of my sight until this coronavirus thing clears up.  I just can’t imagine shipping Clare off to play somewhere else so she’d be ready to go in college.  Like Florida isn’t a cesspool of germs.

 

High school athletes and their parents play this college-focused game all the time.  There was a pitcher, two years older than Clare, who switched districts so she could be on a better team, have better stats and look that much better to her college coach.  As God is my witness, Clare owned this pitcher, and I was certainly sad to see her graduate.  Maybe the same will happen in Florida to our quarterback friend.

 

I don’t wish him injury, but it would be nice if he and/or his parents gained some perspective on what’s important in life.  That’s it, life’s important.  The dead can’t play sports. 

Jealous?

It appears documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is not a big fan of “The Last Dance.” Late last month, Burns told the Wall Street Journal Jason Hehir’s ten-part series didn’t constitute good journalism.  In addition, letting Jordan’s production company in on the project, as Hehir did, is “not the way you do good history, my business.”  Mine, too, Ken.

 

First, allow me to address his criticism of Hehir.  Since there was no attempt to hide the participation of a Jordan entity in the project, there’s no deception.  That simply makes the project the equivalent of an authorized biography, and those happen all the time, and they’re oftentimes quite good.  Maybe Burns needs to read more books.

 

Second, it’s always irritated me how documentarians rely on a technique that no trained historian would dare use.  (I’m more than happy to compare my Ph.D. to Burns’, if he wants.)  Watch his documentaries on WWII and Vietnam, then see if he doesn’t use stock footage.

 

What’s the problem with that?  To me, it would be the same as if I took a remark FDR made about Hitler and used it so that it appeared Roosevelt was talking about a Caribbean dictator, or vice versa.  Sorry, but if you’re saying the footage from one battle can be used to illustrate another, no, it can’t; it has to be site specific.  And to recycle that footage to illustrate multiple battles, well, in my book that’s not good history.  But it is an invitation to cut corners in pursuit of what is supposed to be the truth.

 

One last thing—there’s no indication on the internet that Burns has seen even one episode of the series.  I’d advise him it pays to know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth about something.

Remember This...

Ownership is not leadership—there’s your takeaway from “The Last Dance,” that and Michael Jordan being a pretty good basketball player.

 

For reasons best known to himself, Bulls’ (and White Sox) owner Jerry Reinsdorf consented to be part of the ten-episode series; my guess is he thought enough time had passed that he could rehabilitate his image.  Lucky for viewers Reinsdorf forgot the adage, a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.  Maybe I should mention here Reinsdorf is a lawyer.

 

But it’s his decisions as an owner that stand out.  He tells Scottie Pippen he wouldn’t sign the contract the Bulls’ forward is about to, and forever regret.  He negotiates a one-on-one agreement with Horace Grant, thinks a handshake seals the deal, only to have Grant sign with Orlando.  And he tells Phil Jackson after the second three-peat he can come back, despite everything that GM Jerry Krause has said and done to denigrate Jackson.  My God, where to begin?

 

Let’s start with Pippin—treat your employees with respect, why don’t you?  Instead of taking advantage, negotiate a fair contract, one that skips the acrimony and sets the foundation for a full decade of dominance.  Only Reinsdorf needed to win every negotiation.

 

Which is what makes Grant stiffing him so delicious.  Reinsdorf is either deluded or lying if he thinks offering to negotiate without Krause or Grant’s agent in the room constitutes a level playing field.  Last time I checked, Grant didn’t have degrees in accounting, finance and/or law; that’s what agents are for.  But give the man credit; he knew what Reinsdorf was up to.  So, Grant leaves, and the acrimony grows.  Both Grant and his replacement, viz. Dennis Rodman, pull down the rebounds needed for a three-peat.  Which one would you rather have on your team?

 

And who waits to call a HOF coach who’s just won his sixth title to offer him the chance to return to a toxic work environment?  Either Reinsdorf knew Jackson would decline, or he’s a fool to think otherwise.  Twenty-two years after the fact, and this still rings as self-serving.

 

What Jerry Reinsdorf needed to do was take control of his front office.  He needed to tell Krause to change the way he treated people and fire Krause if nothing did change.  That needed to have happened by midway through the first three-peat.  To say Reinsdorf  bet on the wrong horse makes for one of the greatest understatements in all of sports.  At least the Red Sox got $100,000 for Babe Ruth.

 

All Reinsdorf needed to do was take a look at the Lakers.  Now, there’s your proof that organizations win championships.  Lakers’ GM Bill Sharman won two championships, eventually to be replaced by Jerry West.  West won three championships, eventually to be replaced by Mitch Kupchak, who won five.  Kupchak had the good sense to hire Phil Jackson as coach, by the way.

That, my dear friends, is an organization Jerry Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf could only dream about the Bulls emulating.       

 

Waiting in Line, the Radio On

Yesterday, we travelled from Berwyn to the North Side back to three places in the western suburbs in search of flowers at a reasonable price and a reasonable wait.  The place all the way north on Clark Street in the city had two lines—one for flowers, the other for vegetables—each of which snaked down Clark onto a side street.  No, thank you.

 

Then there was the place that was selling hanging plants for $50; they go for $14-$25 at Home Depot, which was place #4 we went to, after the Ace on 31^st Street.  You can save time by skipping one and two for three and four.

 

My job come growing season is to carry stuff around; install fences for Satan to jump over; water; and pull weeds.  The actual planting falls to someone else.  That work kept her busy for most of the afternoon, so I suggested we get hot dogs from Lucky Dog.  It was another line, but this one I put up with.

 

I had the radio on, and what should come on but “Panama” by Van Halen.  I always thought this would’ve been the perfect walkup song for the orcs attacking Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings.  Between Eddie Van Halen’s guitar and David Lee Roth’s vocals, it’s goodbye, Rohan.  Somebody tell the Tolkien estate to buy up the music rights.

 

As we inched along to the take-out window, I was reminded of Clare’s walkup music at  Elmhurst.  The first two years were god-awful country and western; how our little Polish princess developed a taste for Nashville remains a mystery.  Things changed junior year, when she went nuts over MC Hamer’s “You Can’t Touch This.” That killed my choice of “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing” by Duke Ellington.  Go with class, I always say.

 

But I could live with Hammer; I mean, he certainly caught a moment, didn’t he?  The problem was what lyrics to use.  Clare initially wanted “You can’t touched this,” until I pointed out that made more sense for a pitcher than a hitter.  Then, she switched to the more appropriate “Hammer time,” and the rest was history.

 

You can’t beat Chicago-style hot dogs and good walk-up music on a Saturday in May.  Hold the coronavirus.

Do as I Say

Not long ago, someone I’d gone to grade school and high school emailed.  We hadn’t spoken in fifty years, and that he wanted to talk to me was something of a surprise.  We existed in what you would call different social circles.

 

His was defined largely by sports.  He was the best athlete in eighth grade and good enough through high school to play football in the Big Ten; he was even drafted by the World Football League.  Then he had himself a nice professional career out of state.

 

For whatever reason, he’d been thinking a lot about our old neighborhood, which I’d written a book about and he’d read.  The wrong guy wrote the book.  On the phone, my former schoolmate was recalling enough details from second and third grade to put me to shame.  Sometime later, I advised him to go easy on the remembrance of so many things past.  The past will eat you up, if you let it.

 

Talk about do as I say, not as I do.  Today, I open up Facebook (one of the few good uses of which for me is checking on the reincarnation of Bloom County, a sublime comic strip if there ever was), and what do I see but a picture of me with Clare and Michele from four years ago?  If Mr. Zuckerberg has his dates right, this was the weekend that Valpo ran its conference tournament, held in Chicago at the UIC campus, to qualify for the NCAA D-I softball tournament.  Yup, there’s my daughter in her grad assistant attire while she should be in a cap and gown for graduation.  That was four years ago today, too.

 

So, the memories come tumbling down like an avalanche, of the little girl playing baseball; switching to softball; meeting Frank Thomas on her 21^st birthday; and more.  The past will eat you up, if you’re not careful.  And the future can scare you to death, if you let it.

.      

Can't Cut It

I read an AP story today to make my blood boil.  It seems LSU is all ready to start football while the University of Akron is starting to toss varsity athletes overboard.  They will judge us by our actions in times like these.

 

At LSU, the athletic director Scott Woodward offered, “We have really top concern for our student athletes—their safety and welfare—and both in their academics and their physical pursuits.”   Woodward thinks football players will be better off quarantined at school rather than at home.  They’ll be exposed to fewer potential COVID-19 carriers and be under the supervision of coaches and staff “making sure their food is done together, making sure that the weight rooms are clean and immaculate.”

 

The level of concern here is touching.  I wonder if the classrooms and labs will be as immaculate, or the university library; oh, those dirty books.  Now, here’s a thought—if you can’t trust the general student body—except to show up lemming-like at home games, that is—just keep the LSU “student athletes” out of class; that shouldn’t be too hard.  It’s all about the kids, right?

 

No doubt, that’s why Akron announced it was dropping men’s cross-country and golf along with women’s tennis.  School AD Larry Williams called the decision to cut the sports “very difficult” yet  “important and necessary” given that the athletic department expects to take a 23 percent hit on its budget.

 

According to my son-in-law Chris (who’s coming off like a prophet on this), mid-level NCAA D-I schools are feeling the pressure with the anticipated loss of football revenue and, I’m sure, basketball.  You have to wonder how the teams to be cut were chosen.  Maybe by lot?

 

You also have to wonder if athletic departments should be the ones to decide.  Does the quintessential student on-campus experience with sports require a television camera be on-site?  What starts with tennis and cross-country doesn’t necessarily end there.  Left to their own devices, athletic directors along with compliant school presidents will play God, or Darwin.  The big sports will survive, the smaller ones not so much.

 

The AP story noted that a number of college conferences plan to do away with postseason tournaments.  When Clare was at Valpo, the team qualified for the NCAA softball tournament by winning its conference tournament.  Goodbye to that, and who knows what else?

COVID-19 is both a cause and effect here, with funding for college athletics more slap-dash than anyone cares to admit.  The virus will go away, but not the damage done to college sports, unless more enlightened people move to intervene.  Please.            

 

Spring Forward, Springs Past

If Satan the basset hound doesn’t get her second one-mile walk in, our evening tends to be a tad more challenging than we’d like.  Think pawing; jumping on bodies and furniture; running back and forth through the dining and living rooms, that sort of thing.  And Stan was getting antsy because the walk had to wait until after supper.

 

This made it just after seven o’clock.  Leaving through the back yard, I happened to see the boy three houses down.  The kid is very serious about his baseball, same for his dad.  The boy is maybe eighth grade, which means he’ll be missing both graduation and travel ball in the weeks ahead.  That didn’t stop him from setting up a net to hit balls off a tee.

 

Clare didn’t do much of that.  It doesn’t seem to have been as big a thing fifteen years ago as it is now.  She might’ve done it with her hitting coach, and I’m pretty sure she did it in college, but not in the yard by herself.  I guess this helps to develop muscle memory, as Hawk would say.

 

I always preferred throwing batting practice as much as possible, along with regular trips to the batting cages.  As far as I was concerned, the closer to game conditions the better.  A tee is for tee-ball, but then again I’m old school.  Things seemed to work out OK for the hitter God put me in charge of.

 

Satan goes for a twelve block walk, morning and evening.  If there was baseball going on, I’d probably be thinking about it, but right now all we have is owners and players doing some kind of COVID-19 dance.  Assuming both sides can agree on starting a season, fine, I’ll go back to thinking about baseball on our rambles.  Until then, I’ll be content to notice things I never have before, like the number of birdhouses people have out front.  Didn’t everyone get the message?  Tees are for tee ball and birdhouses for the backyard.  But then again, I’m old school.

 

You don’t rush bassets on a walk; it just doesn’t pay.  Try to go too fast, and all of a sudden you’ve got a boulder on a leash.  That means it takes us twenty-five minutes to do our twelve blocks.  The boy was still in his yard, hitting off the tee, when we got back.  

Slow Things Down, Will You?

MLB.com must be getting desperate, and/or stupid.  Yesterday, they ran a story, “He’s 19 years old...and he has a 105-mph fastball.”  The story concerns 6’8” Luke Little, a prospect in the upcoming draft who not too long ago reached the 105-mark in a bullpen session and has reached 102 mph in games (probably junior college).

 

Here’s the headscratcher—MLB.com ranks Little as the 167^th best prospect, which would put him in the fifth round if I’ve done the math right.  Why tout a fifth round prospect?  Because he throws hard, that’s why.

 

Never mind the message this sends, which to me is that you’ve got to start throwing hard, the sooner the better, if you want to reach 105 mph by your nineteenth birthday.  All this stuff we read about the importance of developing adolescent arms slowly and carefully goes right out the window as soon as you click on the video and see the readout.  Wow, 105.  I wonder if I can do that?

And I wonder if Little will be one of the lucky ones to get drafted this year; there’s only five rounds.  I also wonder if MLB.com will do a follow up on whether Little has learned to control that fastball.  I also wonder if they’ll do a story in case he ever needs Tommy John surgery.     

 

His Inner Williams

There have been a lot of stories generated by the latest two installments of “The Last Dance” that detail Michael Jordan the baseball player.  For example, The Athletic did a piece yesterday on how Jordan helped a Birmingham Barons’ teammate from the Dominican Republic learn English.

 

The stories are all of a piece, about how good a teammate the ex-Bull was.  He was humble—as much as a super-gifted and successful athlete can be—and pleasant in the clubhouse, and generous with his money as well as his time.  The Athletic story notes that Jordan handed out nearly $2500 in cash incentives to motivate his Barons’ teammate to learn English.

 

The question, then, becomes where’s the Michael Jordan who punched teammates Will Perdue and Steve Kerr during practice?  If Jordan invented slights when necessary to motivate himself to an extraordinary performance, where were the slights in Birmingham?  Or, put another way, where was Jordan’s inner Ted Williams?

 

If anyone in baseball ever shared Jordan’s basketball mentality, it was Williams.  Jim Bouton includes an example of motivation, Ted Williams’ style in Ball Four:  “Jesus H. Christ Himself couldn’t get me out,” Williams might say, along with “Here comes Jim Bunning, Jim f*****g Bunning and that little s**t slider of his.”  Bunning couldn’t “really think he’s gonna get me out with that s**t.”  Why?  Because “I’m Ted f*****g Williams.”       

 

Change a name and switch from a pitcher to a defender and you have classic Michael Jordan.  Maybe I’m wrong about Jordan failing on account of Walt Hriniak’s top-hand-fly influence.  Maybe Jordan needed to bring his Teddy Ballgame persona from basketball and apply it to baseball, punches and all.

 

 

The Wrong Coach at the Wrong Time

The second I saw Michael Jordan swinging a bat in last night’s installment of the “The Last Dance,” I knew it.  And then I saw the coach in question.  Bulls’ fans, you can thank former White Sox hitting coach Walt Hriniak for making Jordan’s return to basketball possible.

 

Of course, it’s possible that Jordan always hit like that, with his top hand coming off the bat in the follow-through of his swing after making contact.  In that case, he was a twelve-year old Hriniak disciple without even knowing it.  But I doubt it.

 

It’s a lot more likely Jordan went with the then-current program on the South Side, and that was pure Hriniak.  (This is where I could note that Hriniak anticipated the current, tech-fueled search for the “perfect” swing, but let’s save that for another day.)  I can’t help but wonder if Jordan didn’t possess hitting talent that was being forced to fit into the Hriniak mold.

 

A former star basketball player shows up on my doorstep looking for batting tips, the first thing I’d do is encourage Michael to be Michael.  The man stands 6’6” and at the time probably didn’t weigh much over 200 pounds, and all of it muscle.  I’d encourage him to bunt all day and then swing for the fences all night.  Out of that would’ve come the “natural” Michael Jordan.  (This is also where I could note that no one in the documentary or commenting on the episode in question picked up on Hriniak’s imprint on Jordan’s mechanics.  I guess that’s why they pay me the big bucks.) 

 

Only the player can know what his/her strengths are.  That will never happen by becoming a disciple first.  Michael Jordan needed to succeed and fail more on his own, after which he could’ve sought out the necessary coaching help.  You must find your own path, young grasshopper.  Seriously.

 

The odds are there was no way for Jordan to make the transition at the advanced age of 31.  Two-sport athletes are rare to nonexistent for the simple fact they’re inevitably better at one or the other.  Whether or not he knew it, Michael Jordan probably picked the right sport to spend most of his career playing.  If he didn’t, that’s too bad.  Ditto for having Walt Hriniak as his hitting coach.     

Right in Front of You

According to various reports, Mt. Carmel High School shortstop Ed Howard could very well be a first-round draft pick in the upcoming MLB draft.  I’m not holding my breath for either Chicago team to go after him, though.

 

If Howard does in fact get picked, he’ll be second Mt. Carmel player selected in the past three years; the Diamondbacks took Caravan—now, there’s a team name for you—outfielder Alek Thomas in the second round of the 2018 draft.  Both the Cubs and White Sox took a pass on Thomas, which is standard operating procedure in these parts.  If they’re local, they can’t be good.

 

Here’s the thing—the Sox didn’t even have to scout Thomas because they knew all about him.  His father is the team’s strength and conditioning director.  No, we took outfielder Steele Walker instead, and, as Hawk Harrelson would say, he gone, traded in the offseason to the Rangers for Nomar Mazara. 

 

Mazara is considered something of a reclamation project, a power hitter who needs to make more contact.  Thomas, on the other hand, is the #2 prospect for Arizona according to MLB.com, and he’s just starting his third season of pro ball.  But, hey, Walker and Mazara.

 

Which brings us back to Thomas’s former teammate, who also has a White Sox connection, as a member of the team’s ACE (Amateur City Elite) Program for young, Chicago-area minority ballplayers.  Oh, and he’s trained with current Sox shortstop Tim Anderson.  But who does MLB.com project taking Howard?  That’s right, the Diamondbacks.

 

Go, Caravan.  

Words Fail

MLB.com would be better off crashing than to print the story I just read, “1998 was amazing, don’t let anyone say otherwise,” by Will Leitch.  The piece alternates between fiction and fantasy.

 

Most of the story concerns recent college-grad Leitch swept up in the faux pursuit of Roger Maris by juicers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  “There is no disputing that 1998 was an excellent year,” writes Leitch,” and people did things like” actually watch a regular season baseball game.

 

Leitch called his father on seeing McGwire hit his 62^nd PEDS-infused homerun of the season.  He did it because it was a “moment everyone knew they’d remember forever, and that’s a time you want to call your dad.”  I’ll get back to that in a second.

 

First, consider Leitch’s take on the taint that hangs over 1998:  “There is now a sense that this moment…isn’t supposed to mean as much.  That we are supposed to feel duped, that all the good feeling that moment, that season, engendered wasn’t real, that it didn’t happen.

 

“But it did happen.  Whatever your thoughts about it now—and those thoughts are themselves complicated—all that happened in 1998,” the McGwire/Sosa pursuit of Maris first and foremost, “was thrilling, and exhilarating, and uniting, and glorious.  It was wonderful.”  Note:  That last sentence wasn’t printed in bold on MLB.com, but in blue.  Potato, potahto.

 

Where to begin?  How about this—lies don’t unite.  See George W. Bush and weapons of mass destruction.  Lies ultimately don’t thrill or exhilarate, either; they disappoint and lead to cynicism that can grow corrosive.  If thoughts about someone’s dishonest behavior can be complicated (and some examples would’ve been nice here), they sure aren’t for me about Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

 

Unlike Leitch, I didn’t need a phone to be in touch with my 85-year old father.  If memory serves, I was in a hospital room with him, as he began a physical decline that would take him from us in December of 2000.  The television in his room had the game on, though he was probably asleep.  If I happened to look up and see McGwire connect, I was witness to a lie.  My father taught me the value of honesty, as learned by a Bridgeport boy raised by his mother.

 

When I think of the so-called homerun pursuit of McGwire and Sosa, I think of two athletes in the prime of their lives, thanks in part to chemical enhancement.  I also think of a man made weak in old age, but only of body.  In mind and spirit, he was more than Mark McGwire of Sammy Sosa could ever hope to be.  That I’ll remember always.

Making Do

COVID-19 has hit New York pretty hard, so I should cut them some slack.  Pre-COVID, the story I read in today’s NYT on the glory that was the Knicks would’ve caused me to pass out from laughing.  I mean, who writes that two Knicks’ championships in 1970 and ’73”brought the very best of basketball to the bright lights of Broadway, illuminating the possibility of one day electrifying the world” with a straight face?

 

Granted, these are tough times, especially for those of us used to drawing a bit of daily sustenance from sports.  Unless you’re the kind to get excited by the NFL announcing its schedule for the upcoming season, there’s not a whole lot going on (and my thoughts and prayers to all those in danger of becoming NFL zombies).  For what it’s worth, here’s something I do usually once a day.

 

I go onto baseball-reference.com and look at the twelve player pictures they post, which seem to change and very few minutes.  So far, my record for connecting names to faces stands at five.  Art Nehf and Red Ames I’m never going to get, but I just nailed Luis Tiant; Hank Bauer; Billy Butler; and Geo Conzalez, all in a row.  It would’ve been five if I’d just guessed Rich Dauer.  And, yes, I know who Curtis Granderson is, but you put a Marlins’ cap on Babe Ruth and he’d look anonymous, too.

 

Like I said, it beats reading about who and when the Bears play.

Groundhog Day, Your Chicago Bears

Make it go away, please.  I can’t stand the resurgence of Bears’ news along with everything else football.  For heaven’s sake, we’re all of seven days into May.

 

The dearth of real sports’ news has local sportswriters reverting to their worst habits, above all rah-rah coverage of our Munsters of the Midway.  All is forgiven, Ryan Pace, at least until Mitch Trubisky is recorded throwing his next errant pass.  No, for a team that had no picks in the first round of the draft, you did great.  Oh, and those free agent signings!

 

Let’s see, there’s soon-to-be 30-year old safety Tashaun Gipson, who says he came here in part due to the recruiting job done by ex- and now current teammate Buster Skrine.  Well, that has to be on a par with D-Wade enticing LeBron to Miami, now doesn’t it?  And let’s not forget 35-year old wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr., who’s certainly getting the benefit of the doubt from reporters.  Me, I’m connecting the dots between Ginn and that other recent addition, 33-year old tight end Jimmy Graham.  How old can you go?  The Munsters’ newest offensive weapons may depend on walkers.

 

What all this Bears’ hoopla proves is the Munsters’ are the default setting for Chicago sports, with anything else football as spackle where needed.  It’s May, we should be wrapped in baseball, but, No, we get breathless coverage of mediocre free-agent signings by a mediocre football team.  Not only that, we get to listen to Roger Goodell and whatever football blowhard who happens by a camera try to buffalo COVID-19.

 

The NFL commissioner intends to play a full schedule, and he sure would like fans to be there.  The athletic director at Notre Dame is all but refusing to play unless Notre Dame Stadium is filled to the rafters with fans, coronavirus be damned.  Be careful, guys.

With all that huffing and puffing, you could come down with something.

Boomerang Back Here, Please

One of the pleasures of baseball is getting to follow a player on his journey, in the majors and elsewhere.  With Ted Williams or Hank Aaron, you always knew where to look, but what about Tyler Saladino?

 

The ex-White Sox infielder was let go by the Brewers last December and signed by the Samsung Lions in the Korean Baseball Organization on Christmas Eve.  If either the release or signing made it to the Transactions section, I must’ve missed it.

 

And I wouldn’t have been any of the wiser but for a baseball clip on the local news the other day.  Look, it’s baseball!  Look, it’s Tyler Saladino batting!  Luckily, I did look, and there he was, a player so decent he tweeted out his thanks to Sox fans when he was sold to Milwaukee during the 2018 season.  You judge a person by the small things as much as anything.

 

So, the now 30-year old Saladino is taking his show—and Fu Manchu—on the road halfway around the world.  Maybe ex-Milwaukee teammate Eric Thames talked Tyler into going.  When Thames’ own major league career had stalled, three years in Korea led to three years (and 72 homeruns) with the Brewers.  It could happen like that for Saladino.

 

If not, I can only hope he enjoys the experience, the way he seemed to last season when he hit grand slams in back-to-back games for the Brewers.  You go, Tyler. 

Uniform Thought

Last week, The Athletic did a story ranking the uniforms of MLB’s sixteen oldest franchises.  Lo and behold, the White Sox came in first, which I guess is a good thing.

 

The current uniform, featuring black pinstripes and “Sox” spelled out on a diagonal in Old English lettering, dates to 1991, the same year Clare was born.  So, she’s never known another uniform.  Lucky child.

 

I came of age with the current uniform’s ancestor, Old English “Sox” and numbers on the back outlined in red, the hat “SOX” spelled out with interlocking block letters on a diagonal, also getting the red outline treatment; call it South Side sublime.  They started playing around with the hat in 1964 and the uniform in 1968.  From 1968-90, the team went through five uniform styles.  Talk about confusing.

 

Oh, and depressing.  It’s a tie for worst, between the clam diggers of Bill Veeck and the “candy wrapper” of the Greg Luzinski era.  For the past few seasons, the candy wrapper has come out of the vault as a Sunday throwback uniform.  Clare loves it, I hate it.

 

I’d like to nominate the 1940s’ uniform as a compromise. No pinstripes, SOX in red lettering with the O and X fitting in the curves of the S.  This is the uniform Ted Lyons and Luke Appling wore, and the uniform Jackie Robinson would have worn had the Sox signed him after a tryout in 1942. 

I can always hope, right?

Hair

It’s a good thing my father isn’t around to see me.  He’d be all “When are you getting a haircut?”, a line he’d repeat maybe twice before dropping the “when” and the question mark.  So, heaven—literally—knows what he’d say now.

 

The last time I waited this long for a haircut was over twenty years ago, when my barber suffered a heart attack.  He was out for close to four months.  I could’ve found someone else to go to, but real men don’t abandon their barbers.  Of course, it got a little dicey when we went over to visit my parents.  My father would shoot me a look that said, well, “When are you getting a haircut?”

 

Now, I can’t get one for the life of me.  I love my wife dearly, but not enough to hand her a pair of scissors and say, Cut Away!  Who knows what long-buried resentments could come out at the sight of my scalp?  Maybe I should try a man bun until the shelter-in-place order is lifted.  Then I can go visit family members at the cemetery and raise the dead with my bun.

 

That, or I can have my very own “Turn Back the Clock” promotion every day until further notice.  It’s the 1970s until further notice.  I could be Terry Forster, Goose Gossage, Bart Johnson, Steve Stone…

 

Somebody get me a barber.

Silver Lining

Here’s a silver lining to the cancellation of youth sports this summer: Jerk coaches won’t have a chance to assault players.

 

I just read a story in yesterday’s NYT about an Olympic gymnast whose coach growing up (the coach being female, if that matters) employed public humiliation, hair-pulling and stupidity—as in having an athlete perform despite suffering on separate occasions a broken growth plate and dislocated knee—to get her point across.  And the point would be what, exactly, if not that sports is the last refuge of abusers?

 

Most any parent of an athlete has had to deal with these situations, and they can start by looking in the mirror.  I have a smart mouth, much smarter than my I.Q., which I had to keep it in check with Clare.  No, wait.  On reading that above sentence, I have to strip away the euphemism—the mouth was more cruel than smart.

 

I’m not asking for forgiveness here, in large part because I kept my mouth shut.  The meanest thing I said—and I freely admit to repeating—was this:  “And if you hit that pitch, where exactly was it going to go?”  Clare had a fondness for sliders away that I made it my mission in life to break her of.  Going on fifteen years after the fact, our relationship appears good, and my daughter will take care of me in my old age.  I think.

 

Clare’s high school and college coaches definitely weren’t abusive.  Coach Euks at Morton loved her for her bat from the first day of the season in freshman year.  On top of that, I doubt Coach had/has a mean bone in his body.  But Coach had an assistant who, if his body were ever found stuffed in a locker, every player on the team would’ve been a suspect.  The man was Don Rickles without the filter, is that’s possible.  Lucky for everyone surgery took him out of the dugout for parts of two seasons.

 

In college, Clare had Coach Brown and Coach P.  Brown was old school, definitely not above yelling, which in itself signifies nothing beyond than a preference for getting a point across.  Coach expected her players to perform at a high level, and she held them to it.  Coach also placed her trust in veterans first.  Had she stayed for Clare’s junior year, I’m pretty sure Clare would’ve been the veteran she most would’ve leaned on.

 

As for Coach Brown’s replacement, Coach P., it was like he took notes from Coach Euks on how to treat Clare.  We were lucky that way.  And it helped make up for the travel coaches.  Some of those guys, OMG.

 

Clare’s first travel coach did a dead-on if unintended impression of R. Lee Ermey, the D.I. in “Full Metal Jacket,” right down to the crew cut.  Coach didn’t swear, but I saw him push two of his players into asthma attacks, including my daughter.  But we were fortunate, in a way.  Clare was an insurance policy for Coach as a 13-year old on a 16-u team.  He ended up not needing her, and she went to another team in the organization before ever playing in a game for him.

 

The next two years we had good coaches, to be followed by two idiots the third year.  The one coach in particular was a gem.  He felt the need to inform Clare she’d never hit in college, and, during one game, grabbed a player by her helmet cage the better to yell at her.  Really, good times.

Each sport is different, I think, attracting a unique set of abusers.  Women’s gymnastics seems to be the worse.  What we went through in softball was bad enough.  Is it too much to hope things change once play resumes?  It shouldn’t be.         

Sports by Any Other Name

I’ve always connected sports with exercise.  Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t say.  I guess I like the idea of competition with sweat involved.  Otherwise, all you’re doing is playing Monopoly or, conversely, doing jumping jacks.  Give me sweat-drenched victory.

 

By that definition, taking a walk with my daughter and son-in-law on the warmest day of a still-young year qualifies more as jumping jacks than baseball or football.  Wait, I tried to walk ahead of everyone else, so it kind of did fit my definition of sports.  On top of that, I got to see these two young people for the first time in five or six weeks.  You can’t beat that with a stick.

 

So, Michele and I drove out to where Clare and Chris live, which is right next to a pedestrian/biking path that goes clear out to Elgin or Aurora, take your pick.  Of course, we talked a lot about sports.  Chris is worried about a friend who works in the athletic department at a midsized university.  If they don’t have football in the fall and the revenue it generates, this person may be without a job.  Such are the times we live in.

 

The child seems to be going through a worse case of baseball withdrawal than her old man is.  “Why can’t they have ballgames with just 5,000 people in the stands?” she wanted to know.  “I could sit with people I know, and there’d be nobody in the row in front or behind us.”  Well, maybe we should bring that to the commissioner’s attention, dear.

 

We also discussed how much time players would need to be ready to go out and play.  Yesterday, Clare sent along a video of White Sox prospect Dane Dunning pitching after having Tommy John last year.  At least he looks ready.

 

Play ball.  And, if we can’t do that, find some loved ones to take a walk with.