Chaos

I can’t imagine what it would have been like not to watch Clare play softball either her senior year of high school or college.  I do know it would’ve driven my daughter up a wall, and rightfully so.  A sport becomes part of an athlete’s social DNA.  Now, fast-forward to life in the age of COVID-19.

 

The Illinois High School Association has just released guidelines for the upcoming year.  Football and other fall sports are getting moved to spring, softball and baseball to summer.  Among other things, this means that anyone playing football at a Chicago public school will be going two straight autumns without competing, first because of a teachers’ strike and now on account of COVID.  Yikes.

 

Things get even dicier with baseball and softball.  Coaches, parents and players will have to set priorities, which means whether to play varsity or travel or some combination of both.  The more serious the athlete, the harder the decision, trust me.  With football, there is no travel, so everyone will be on board for playing in March.

 

But why would graduating seniors with college commitments want to risk injury in order to play baseball or softball in June?  Why would highly-recruited juniors?  My God, what a mess.  I’m not sure high school sports can handle more than one year of this, and I hope there is no year-two to prove me right or wrong.    

We're No. 1

Last week, the White Sox cut their losses by releasing Carson Fulmer, their first-round pick in the 2015 draft.  Fulmer had more chances than a cat does lives to make the team but couldn’t.

 

Something about first-round draft picks doesn’t agree with the Sox, which is too bad given the draft is how an organization gets most of its talent.  For every Tim Anderson (2013), there’s a whole bunch of Courtney Hawkins (2012); Carlos Rodon (2014); Fulmer (2015); Zack Collins and Zack Burdi (2016); Jake Burger (2017); and Nick Madrigal (2018).

 

Granted, Madrigal is recent enough to still make it, and I hope he does.  But also realize the Sox could’ve had Lucas Giolito, taken after Hawkins; Kyle Schwarber, Aaron Nola, Michael Conforto or Trea Turner, all taken after Rodon; Gavin Lux, taken after Collins; and Dakota Hudson, taken after Burdi.  Wouldn’t the rebuild look different then?

 

So, we do have Giolito and look to be stopped-clock right (twice a day, don’t you know) about Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez.  But sustained success depends on a steady stream of talent.  Carson Fulmer and Reynaldo Lopez aren’t exactly proof of said stream.

Just a little over ten months to the next draft. 

Grumpy

The White Sox getting off to a 1-4 start definitely makes me grumpy.  For this I’ve tried to stay healthy the past five months?

Take pitching (please, as the old joke goes).  Lucas Giolito gives up earned seven runs in 3.2 innings on 80 pitches; Reynaldo Lopez four earned runs in .2 innings and 31 pitches; Dylan Cease four earned runs in 2.1 innings and 64 pitches; and Carlos Rodon five earned runs in 3.2 innings and 71 pitches.  See a pattern emerging?  I do.  Sox starters throw too many damn’ pitches in outings that are too damn’ short.

 

Just for fun, keep in mind that the Cubs’ Kyle Hendricks threw a complete-game shutout on 103 pitches in his season-opening start against the Brewers last week; Giolito needed 80 just to reach two outs in the fourth.  OMG, as the kids like to say.  What gives?  I can’t say for sure, but I sure know what I’d like to go, I mean, who.  Don Cooper, there’s the door, and don’t let it hit you on the way out.

 

The pitching woes are magnified with the Sox facing the Indians.  Here’s a team with pitching like the South Side had in the 1960s, a bunch of anonymous types who keep throwing strikes.  Everybody in the Sox dugout—and at the plate—looked flummoxed by Cleveland pitchers pouring in first-pitch strikes.  Dear Sox pitchers, try it sometime; you’d be surprised how often hitters will take that pitch.  Dear Sox hitters, swing on the first pitch every once and a while, why don’t you?

Beats me.

Guilty Pleasures

My birthday is two days off, so I used the money from my mother-in-law—who went on doubleheader dates with her future husband to the upper deck in right field at Comiskey Park—to treat myself to a team autographed ball by the 1979 White Sox.  Mike Proly, you’re mine.

 

Lately, I’ve been thinking of constructing a family tree from team autographed balls—1939 for the year my parents married; 1942 for my sister Barbara and 1946 for my sister Betty; down to 1990 and 1991 for Chris and Clare, respectively.  Of course, grandchildren would get a ball, too, depending on year of birth.  Now, all I have to do is win the lottery to grow my tree, if you will.

 

Until then, I’ll just have to be happy with a ball autographed by Don Kessinger in his only season as a major-league manager.  

World of Make-believe

The White Sox put cut-outs of fans in a few rows of seats between first and third as a way to raise funds for their charity.  That’s OK.

 

FOX Sports superimposed fans in the stands during their Saturday broadcasts.  That’s creepy and dumb.

 

The Cubs have advertising signs all over the outfield bleachers where fans otherwise would be sitting.  That’s the Ricketts’ clan crying poor again.

 

The Cubs and Brewers actually heard what was coming out of the respective dugouts during games Friday and Saturday, so (according to Paul Sullivan in today’s Tribune) Commissioner Manfred ordered that the pretend fan noise be made louder so opposing players could see one another mouthing insults but not necessarily hear them.   

 

That’s a man who’s hoping nobody reads lips.

Night and Day

The White Sox opened the season Friday night against the Twins by losing 10-5.  Lucas Giolito gave up a homerun on the first pitch of the game/season, and you things were likely to  go south from there.  Yesterday afternoon, the Sox hit five homers to rout Minnesota 10-3 behind Dallas Keuchel and four relievers.  Go figure.

 

Two games does not a season make, but every game is worth a factor of 2.7, so here goes:  Luis Robert crushes the ball; Eloy continues to crush the ball; Yoan Moncada is on fire; Tim Anderson I’m not worried about; Yasmani Grandal and Leury Garcia, I am.

 

All night I hear from Steve Stone how Giolito was missing his spots, and I’m wondering what it takes to get him to find them.  I also wonder why Grandal can’t catch the ball, given that’s what catchers are supposed to do; he had one passed ball, with a wild pitch I would’ve scored as pb #2.  And Grandal couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield.

 

Word on the street is Giolito likes to throw to James McCann, who caught on Saturday and got three hits, including a homerun.  Again, two games but not two games.  Let’s see which catcher has the better record eleven games into the sprint.

 

Me, I don’t much care for Leury Garcia.  He versatile in an average sort of way.  He’s played six positions, he’s pitched, he switch-hits.  And on Friday he butchered nearly every ball that came his way at second base.  I wanted the Sox to keep Gold Glover Yolmer Sanchez, and what I saw Friday constituted plenty of proof.

 

Maybe I should note here that Garcia homered from both sides of the plate on Saturday and drove in four runs.  I’ll be quiet now, at least for a while.  

Thanks, But No Thanks

I woke up yesterday morning to find that 202 on my Comcast dial is now broadcasting the Marquee Network.  Funny, but nobody asked me.

 

Nobody asked me if I wanted Cubs’ baseball included on my monthly cable bill.  In an a-la-carte world, I wouldn’t be paying for something I didn’t want to watch.  But I don’t get to choose my cable channels, only my bundle of channels.  And that would be why, exactly?

 

My guess is that Comcast/Xfinity figures non-Cub fans like me will get all fatalistic and just shrug off the new bill as part of life with cable, a death-and-taxes kind of thing, while Cub fans will be ecstatic to see their boys in blue.  Enjoy it now, North Siders.

 

Then come back to me in November, December, January and February, after you’ve had your fill of sports-betting shows and Ryan Dempster.  Then tell me what a bargain Marquee is.

 

Nice Work if You Can Get It

The Dodgers reportedly signed outfielder Mookie Betts to a twelve-year extension worth $365 million.  The question immediately becomes, is he worth it?

 

Betts, who will turn 28 in October, has a career .301 batting average to go with 613 runs scored and 470 RBIs.  At 5’9”, he projects to score considerably more runs than he drives in.  I can only hope the Dodgers’ front office adjusted Betts’ stats for playing six seasons in Fenway Park.

 

Mike Trout is fourteen months older to the day than Betts.  Trout has a .305 career batting average to go with 903 runs scored and 752 RBIs.  Depending on weight gain and injury, Trout would seem to be a player who will both score runs and drive them in.  Is he worth the 12-year, $430-million contract he signed at the start of last season?  In absolute terms, who is?  In relation to Betts, you be the judge.

 

My only hope is that these two very rich young ballplayers will consent to an autograph or two on game days.   

Sweet Dreams

I come from a family of dreamers, literally.  My father and one of my sisters had dreams so vivid you could do some first-rate horror-movie film scripts off them.  I still remember my dad telling me about the one where his mother, never speaking, wanted to embrace him…to death.

 

Naturally, I passed on this talent to my daughter, who usually dreams about people and situations, as in game-day.  Me, I mostly dream about places.  It could be New York City or walking under the Lake Street “L” tracks.  Last night, I dreamt about Comiskey Park.  It’s what I’d classify as a good dream, if a little strange.

 

You see, I found my seat in the centerfield bleachers.  Why is that strange?  Because never in my life did I sit there.  Other times, I dream about sitting in the upper deck, which I did maybe five times in twenty-eight years.  But there I was, five million feet away from home plate.

 

I wish I knew who was playing center field—Ken Berry, Adam Engel, Jim Landis?  Johnny Mostil?  Maybe I’ll save that for tonight.  Fingers crossed.  

More, Please

On Sunday, the White Sox hung a six-spot on Kyle Hendricks and his relief.  Yesterday, the Sox nicked Yu Darvish for five runs in the first, highlighted by an Eloy Jimenez grand slam.  This is definitely a step up from intrasquad games.  Now, the Sox are hitting homers off a real opposition.  I still wish it counted, though.

Again, something looks off with the North Siders.  Darvish has spoken about his unease over COVID-19, and I have to wonder if he didn’t take those concerns to the mound with him.  Technically, he didn’t get out of the first; they just called the inning after the Cubs’ righty had thrown 29 pitches.  Something like that sure would’ve extended James Shields’ career.

 

The final score was 5-3, good guys, and it wasn’t as close as the numbers might suggest, given how the Cubs’ runs were all unearned.  Ten hits in two games—it’s a good thing the season hasn’t started yet.

 

Unless, of course, you’ve just taken two from your crosstown rivals.

 

 

Better than Nothing

I guess the Sox-Cubs’ game qualifies as a continuation of spring training.  How else to explain Adam Engel listed with twelve RBIs in the box score after connecting off of Kyle Hendricks?

 

No fans in the stands at Wrigley, and still it was better than nothing.  In other words, the White Sox scored six runs in the fifth on their way to a 7-3 win.  Luis Robert got two more hits and should be interesting once the season starts on Friday.  The last time the Sox had two young outfielders like Robert and Eloy Jimenez was Maglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee.  You could say it’s been a while.

 

Pitching wise, Carson Fulmer was in midseason form, three walks to go with two strikeouts.  For the Cubs, Hendricks seemed to lose it all at once in the fifth, and I have to assume rookie manager David Ross won’t make the same kind of pitching decision in a real game.  The guy he brought in for Hendricks basically spent an inning pitching batting practice before he figured it out.  But that’s not my problem.

 

Rookie Andrew Vaughn pinch ran for Jose Abreu in the fifth and scored from second base on a hit.  Definite shades of Wile E. Coyote on the base paths.  Clare called to ask if I saw Vaughn run, and I told her, “He reminded me of you.” 

Such a dad.

More Dumb

Well, it looks like Jerry Reinsdorf’s loyalty and generosity has reached its limit.  Reports are the White Sox will cut back in the scouting department by season’s end.  Talk about stupid.

 

The Sox front office apparently has convinced itself that analytics makes this all possible, that you don’t need guys—alas, the South Side employs no female scouts—going to Podunk in search of the next Mickey Mantle as long as you have the right analytics in place.  Sorry, but if COVID-19 is going to muck up drafts for the next year or two, you’re going to need your “bird dogs” more than ever.

 

Hey, here’s an idea that could save money while doing scouting in a new way—watch as many games as possible on cable or streaming, be it college or minors or majors.  Put your scouts in a suite of rooms at the ballpark, and let them do their thing.  The money saved on travel there could then be used to scout high school the old-fashioned way.

 

Reinsdorf told Bob Nightengale of USA Today that, between the Sox and Bulls and United Center, he’s looking at losses “in the nine figures,” to which I say, Boo-hoo.  Reinsdorf should either take out a loan or sell one or both of his teams.  That, and suck it up like everyone else these days.  

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

Professional athletes trying to play with COVID-19 all about is one thing, college athletes for all intents and purposes being made to quite another.  As ever, give me the pros.

 

Baseball players have negotiated a health protocol that, knock on wood, seems to be working; football players are trying to do the same, and it looks like hockey and basketball will get there soon enough.  Then I read about the University of Illinois laying out new rules for football.  Heaven help us.

 

No tailgating, no big crowds (never a problem at Champaign-Urbana), everybody in the stands wears a mask.  And that will do what, exactly?  Fans won’t get together off-site to party before a game?  Right.  Students and players won’t get together the night after a game to party?  Right again.

The Illinois athletic department promises aggressive testing of its athletes.  In that case, it won’t take long to see just how bad things are.    

Strange

Well, I watched my first-ever MLB intrasquad game last night, as the White Sox took on the visiting White Sox at Guranteed Rate Whatever.  Final score (I think), 6-3.

 

To Chicago baseball fans of a certain age, the absence of anyone in the stands is reminiscent of the 1960s, early in the decade for the Cubs, late for the Sox.  When Doug Clemens roamed the outfield at Wrigley Field and Buddy Bradford did likewise at Comiskey Park, fans were much noted by their absence.  Talk about unpleasant strolls down memory lane.

 

The thing about intrasquad games is that they tend to be good-news, bad-news affairs.  I saw Tim Anderson and Edwin Encarnacion hit homeruns, which was nice, but it also means I saw Carlos Rodon and Reynaldo Lopez serve up gopher balls, which was worrisome.  Oh, and Encarnacion does the “parrot walk” or “trot” circling the bases after going yard.  You, too, can see the imaginary bird on Edwin’s right forearm, if you focus hard enough.

 

That could get old real fast.  But, even if it does, it’ll be something to watch and comment on.   

Cry Me a River

Cry Me a River

 

I had the misfortune this morning of reading in the Sun-Times an interview Bob Nightengale of USA Today did with White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.  The Fiber One didn’t sit well on my stomach after I read how Reinsdorf was “concerned the union was maneuvering not to have a season.”  Right, which is why they wanted to play 110 games.  That’s just how I’d go about it.

 

Reinsdorf’s also concerned about the future.  “I’m very worried about next year.  There are just so many unknowns.”  Cry me a river, Jerry.  The strong and the fit survive, right?  Isn’t the rule of American business?

 

Then, to make matters worse, I read in today’s The Athletic that the Rangers, in their brand spanking new ballpark, are furloughing an estimated sixty employees.  This is a team that got the city of Arlington to pay $500 million of the new park’s $1.2 billion cost and a team that is now worth in the neighborhood of $1.75 billion, not to be confused with the net worth of the people who bought the club; trust me, there are no poor guys involved.  And they have to lay people off?

This is all God’s way of telling municipalities not to get suckered into building stadiums for professional sports’ teams.  That money never gets earned back.  And it’s never available to plug into budget shortfalls.  Why, the Rangers have themselves a lease that minimizes their tax exposure.  What a surprise.    

 

Searching for Clues

Go to the White Sox website, and you can see video of Tim Anderson flipping his bat after hitting a homerun in a intrasquad game yesterday or read how to win $100, 000  (just pick all the Opening Game winners).  But, try as you might, you won’t find anything more about pitcher Michael Kopech, who’s opted out of playing this season.

 

Oh, The Athletic has something about that, and, if they’re right, the Sox are handling the situation well.  But if you don’t subscribe to The Athletic?  SOL, my friend.  Whatever the Sox website’s about, it’s not about journalism or honest communication.  For that, you’ve got to pay.

 

But for bread and circuses, just go to MLB.com and click on your favorite team.

He Gone

Well, that came as a surprise.  Yesterday, it was announced that White Sox starter Michael Kopech has opted not to participate in the 2020 sprint of a season.  How come?  No reasons were given either by Kopech or the Sox.

 

It’s absolutely OK for players to opt out; they know their particular situations better than anyone else.  That said, the silence around the announcement was deafening.  Other players, e.g., Buster Posey and David Price, have at least alluded to reasons for their decision.  By saying nothing, Kopech puts more pressure on himself come spring.

 

When next May rolls around, Kopech will turn 25.  He’s going to have to be ready to address the media, which will come calling with all sorts of questions.  At SoxFest this past January, Kopech addressed the issue of anxiety, which he said he suffers from.  All those reporters, all those tape recorders and cameras, all those questions—Kopech will be facing some challenging times.  He and the Sox had better be prepared to face them head-on.  Otherwise, things will get ugly.

Reckonings

The Ivy League has cancelled all fall sports while the Big Ten just announced conference-only games for the fall.  Schools that depend on football and or basketball to carry its athletic departments are teetering over a very real, if metaphorical, abyss.

 

No money means no sports.  There’s an unstated connection between football and the likes of volleyball, and baseball, even.  If TV can’t show the big game on Saturday, the other sports don’t get the revenue for their seasons.  If football and basketball have to cancel their seasons, adios athletic department budgets.  Oh, the NFL and NBA drafts get thrown into chaos, too.

 

If I’m a school president or AD, I follow the news every day to see how the war on COVID-19 is going.  Out of a rooting interest and for other reasons, I’m also following baseball very closely.  Strange times, indeed.

Dive, Dive

MLB.com must be getting desperate for material.  I mean, they actually did a story on a submarine pitcher.

 

That would be the Giants’ Tyler Rogers, who had a nice cup of coffee with SF last September (17.2 innings pitched, 1.02 ERA and 2-0 record).  This being a puff piece, everybody quoted only had the nicest things to say about the 29-year old right-hander and his style of delivery, which has his pitching arm coming pretty close to scraping the mound.  Now, if this were serious baseball, the writer might have posed a question along the lines of: What would happen if a team paired a submariner with a knuckleball pitcher?

 

Imagine Ted Abernathy and Hoyt Wilhelm coming in out of the pen today.  Aaron Judge and company would literally swing themselves out of their shoes.  That’s how I’d put together a pitching staff once I bought a team.  Analytics-bound front offices would go nuts trying to figure out how to counter pitches that float or come from down under.

 

Most likely, they’d instruct coaches to tell hitters to swing harder; plate discipline is so yesterday.  That would be the approach for three-four years, at least.  Of course, both submariners and knuckleballers are easy to steal off of; one has a time-consuming windup, the other throws a slow pitch with a nasty habit of bouncing in the dirt.  But guess what?

 

Analytics doesn’t believe in stealing bases.  So, you go, Tyler Rogers.  The powers that be have no clue how to stop the likes of you.     

Lessons

Baseball teaches lessons all the time, even when it’s not trying to or wants to teach something else entirely.  That was clear on the news last night.

 

The TV reporter wanted us to be all excited that baseball—with fans in the stands!—was coming back.  Only it was minor-league baseball, and independent minor-league baseball at that.  Still, be excited, or so the story advised.  Why, the team owner even talked about the algorithm his people were using to ensure social distancing when fans purchased tickets.  He didn’t say anything about his players, though.

 

And the TV reporter didn’t talk to any players.  Do they feel safe?  Kris Bryant doesn’t, but he’s a major leaguer.  That sure seems to be the lesson here.

Clueless or Worse

MLB under the purported leadership of Commissioner Rob Manfred wanted a deal with players and wanted it done immediately, if not sooner, as one of my eighth grade teachers liked to put it.  Waiting for the players to give in, Manfred busied himself negotiating at least one big television contract.  And now?

 

Well, according to the Cubs’ Kris Bryant, players are waiting to be tested per the COVID-19 protocol.  Bryant said yesterday that teammates have gone seven to eight days without being tested; it’s supposed to be every other day or so.  And owners wonder why players distrust them.

 

I don’t.

Rate This

Not only does absence make the heart grow fonder, it must affect judgment, too.  Today, The Athletic released results from its MLB stadium survey, and the #1 ballpark fans won’t be going to this summer is...Oracle Park in San Francisco.  Excuse me?

 

Among other areas, the survey considered sight lines, and one respondent said, “The view from the upper deck behind home plate [at Oracle] is the best view in baseball.”  Again, excuse me?  How exactly is it better than Wrigley Field, in inches and feet, please?  Last time we were at Wrigley, it was in the upper deck between home and first.  I had everything in front of me—batter; action; ivy; scoreboard; city skyline.  Did I mention that Wrigley Field was rated tenth?  That old bugaboo of obstructed views got cited as a problem.

 

And Fenway Park?  It came in at 21^st, one ahead of Guaranteed Rate Whatever.  I guess it’s a good thing I’m not king.  Either Comiskey Park would still be standing, or, if a replacement was in fact needed (which it wasn’t folks), the replacement would look like Zachary Taylor Davis had come back from beyond to do an updated design.

 

Bigger concourses, better bathrooms and an upper deck that almost touches the field of play—that’s the ticket in my book.

An Abundance of Riches

I’ve seen more of my daughter in the past week than I did in the three months previous, not that I’m complaining.  On Sunday, it was Father’s Day; Wednesday we went hitting; and yesterday was what I declared an Australian Fourth.  That’s the Fourth of July a day early for uninitiated.

 

We hadn’t gone hitting since February at least.  I expected a lot of Mighty Casey at the bat and was pleasantly surprised to find otherwise.  “I’ve still got it,” said a certain somebody as we walked back to the car.  “Did you see that father bring his little boy over to watch?”  Yes, child, I did.

 

Yesterday was hot dogs and talk, about Michael Kopech not showing up in White Sox camp on account of an excused absence; Nike dropping Washington Redskins’ gear from its website; the odds of any kind of sport being played in the months ahead.  We also had coffee cake in the shape of an American flag for dessert.  I think my father would’ve approved.

 

We can’t go back to the past, at least not in the way Napoleon Dynamite’s uncle so desperately wants to (and thank you, Clare, for wanting to see that movie ever so long ago), and we have to realize that today is all about the “new normal,” however unwanted that is.  But as that geriatric Englishman likes to say, you can’t always get what you, but if you try, sometimes well…

 

He’s right.

Shut Up and Play

As a sports fan, I hope to see the MLB and NFL in action this summer and fall.  It would be good for me and good for the country, something to take people’s minds off their troubles, which is pretty much how FDR framed it when he gave baseball the thumbs-up to keep playing during WW II.  I also like that the players, at least in baseball, have a safety protocol in place along with the right to opt out of playing if they so choose.  No one should be forced to do something they fear will make them sick, perhaps fatally so.

 

And then we have the college scene, where schools are pressuring athletes to sign COVID-19 waivers.  The message here is clear:  You play, and it’s on you if you get sick, even fatally so.  I saw in today’s Trib U of I linebacker Milo Eifler expressing his concerns about playing under current conditions.  He was all very respectful and thoughtful, which still got him a meeting with the AD and coach Lovie Smith.  They obviously weren’t expecting Eifler to have an opinion.  Hey, Coach, aren’t you the one always talking about football—as you coach it, of course—molding players into adults?  In that case, Eifler’s your proof.

 

And then we have Notre Dame, which is pretty much pretending there is no COVID.  Oops.  Forget about the athletes.  Faculty is expressing concerns about returning to campus to teach in the fall.  School administration is thinking photo ops and pretty recruiting videos; other people are thinking in terms of life and death.  C’mon, guys.  The flock doesn’t have to pray, pay and obey as you decide anymore.

 

Really, why can’t college be more like the pros?

Build It and...Never Mind

The idea was for the Yankees to play the White Sox next month in a nationally televised game from the “Field of Dreams” in Dyersville, Iowa.  That was before COVID-19.  Now comes news that the game is still on, but with the Cardinals in place of the Yankees.  Less travel and possible exposure to the coronavirus, you know.

 

And what about those temporary stands meant for 8,000 lucky spectators?  Apparently, they’ve been built or are in the process of being built, but no word on how many, if any, fans will be allowed to watch in person.  I get a feeling there are a lot of hotels; motels; bed-and-breakfasts; and restaurants in eastern Iowa that aren’t too happy right about now.  Sorry, guys.  This is what can happen when you partner with the national pastime.

 

Allow me to offer a few suggestions, to help the ratings if not the local economy.  Why not bring in a bunch of mediums, you know, the people who say they can talk to the dead?  Have them contact members of the Black Sox and invite them to watch along.  If Shoeless Joe and company jump into the mediums’ bodies, have everyone all dressed up in 1919 uniforms.

 

Better yet, beseech the Black Sox to come as their incorporeal selves and walk through the stands; that would be neat.  No, wait.  Have them come in through the corn!  Luis Robert, meet Happy Felsch.  Happy, this is Luis.  Any tips for the young man, Mr. Felsch?

Post-haste

Baseball MVP winners Barry Larking, Terry Pendleton and Mike Schmidt want the name of Kenesaw Mountain Landis taken off their awards.  As Schmidt put it, “If you’re looking to expose individuals in baseball’s history who promoted racism by continuing to close baseball’s doors to men of color, Kenesaw  Landis would be a candidate.”  Amen.  Alas, there’s ever so much more.

 

Landis threw the book at the so-called Black Sox yet looked the other way when Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were implicated in a cheating incident.  He voided the minor-league contract of pitcher Jackie Mitchell because baseball was “too strenuous” for women.  Among the players he suspended—not to be confused with banning for life a la the Black Sox—was Sox pitcher Dickie Kerr, one of the “clean” Sox who had the audacity to challenge the reserve clause. 

 

With a record like this, you have to wonder how Landis ended in the Hall of Fame.  It might be time to reconsider his membership along with that of fellow commissioner, Bud “I don’t see no PEDs” Selig.