Not Today, Thank You

It’s a good thing Jesus didn’t plan on making His return trip yesterday. Bears’ fans got their savior, thank you very much, in the person of Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields. I heard that Fields is “one of those generational talents” and read that he has “franchise-changing potential.” I also remember Johnny Morris nearly hyperventilating on-air when the Bears traded for running back Carl Garrett back in 1973. At least that was a bad trade that led to them drafting Walter Payton. If Mitch Trubisky is Garrett, things might work out. But if Fields is Trubisky 2.0? Not my problem. It was nice of the sports’ outlets to get around to reporting on the White Sox sweep of the Tigers, 3-1 and 11-0, behind the combined efforts of Carlos Rodon and Dylan Cease, who pitched his first-ever shutout. Ordinarily, Cease’s performance would qualify as “stop the presses” news, but it was the NFL Draft, and this is Chicago. Oh, well.

And Now for Something Completely Different

The world, or that part of it that has anything to do with the Chicago Bears, holds its collective breath in anticipation of what GM Ryan Pace will do during the NFL draft today to address the team’s quarterback situation, a disaster of Pace’s own persistent making. I was watching the news on Tuesday when the sportscaster opened by saying the Bears are the one local team to unite all Chicagoans. Sorry, pal, no way. The Bears’ decade-to-decade ineptitude on so many fronts disqualifies them for that honor. To the victor goes the glory, or should. Here's an idea: How about for once the media all but ignore what the Bears do on draft day? Bury news of their first-round pick behind the soccer scores or minor-league hockey. That would tick off the McCaskeys, I’ll bet. They might even get mad enough to fire Pace for denying them the free publicity they thrive on and so thoroughly don’t deserve I mean, it couldn’t hurt.

Half-right

Well, I was right to predict homeruns last night, what with the wind blowing out at Guaranteed Rate Whatever. I just didn’t figure the Tigers would be the ones going long, three times in all. Add it up, and you come away with a 5-3 White Sox loss to the second-worst team in baseball. There are any number of things get irritated over, like letting a team that committed five, as in five, errors beat you. Or leaving 26, as in 26, runners on base. Or going 0-13 with runners in scoring position. Or hitting into four, as in four, double plays. Yasmani Grandal tallied two of those dp’s, and I’m wondering if it’s too early to start worrying about him and his .122 BA (oh, but can he frame those pitches). If anyone can make Sox fans wax nostalgic over Adam Dunn, it could be Grandal. As for Jose Abreu and Yoan Moncada, the one looks like he’s lost, the other like he can’t be bothered. Which brings us to the manager. Tony La Russa left starter Lucas Giolito in even though it looked to the rest of the world he’d run out of gas in the top of the seventh with one out and one on and a 2-1 lead. Giolito went on to throw 114 pitches before La Russa came out to lift him on the short end of a 4-2 score. In the postgame news conference, La Russa explained, “I was confident he’d get the third out,” as to why he left Giolito in. If only that were the case. As The Atlantic noted (but not the Sox website), Giolito had one out and counting, not two. I know people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, but, senior moment? Or is this just another example of the Sox reflecting the style and approach of their manager? Poke in the eye or punch to the gut? It hurts either way.

Wind Shift

Eight days ago, it was so cold a steady Monday rain nearly turned to snow. Today, the temperature is expected to top eighty degrees. Such is April in Chicago. The Cubs got stuck with the crappy weather. After a decent weekend weatherwise against Texas, the Sox welcome Detroit to town. The wind should be blowing out, which brings along all sorts of memories for me. The Tigers were another of my early Strat-O-Matic teams. How I loved their power, all 162 homeruns worth, second in the AL only to…the Red Sox, of course. Gates Brown was on that ’65 Tigers’ team, and he would prove to be one of the best hitters I ever “managed.” I had the good fortune to interview him once, long after his career had ended. Mostly, we talked hitting and what it was like to go up against those pitching-rich White Sox teams. I didn’t mention Strat-O-Matic. How exactly do you bring that up in conversation? Hey, I have a friend who absolutely hates it when I bat you and Ike Brown [no relation] back-to-back. I doubt he would have understood. Yermin Mercedes is built along the lines of Gates Brown, who stood 5’11” and weighed 220 pounds; Mercedes measures as tall with an extra 25 pounds. Maybe the added weight will help him launch a few balls tonight.

Waiting Game

White Sox starter Michael Kopech struck out ten Rangers yesterday in five innings of work in an 8-4 Sox win. White Sox starter Dylan Cease never strikes out ten batters in a game because he can’t get through five innings, not anymore. Cease is in his third year as a starter on the South Side. In 2019, twelve of his fourteen starts went 5-plus innings, of which six were 6-plus innings. In 2020, seven of his twelve starts went 5-plus innings, of which four were 6-plus innings. And this year? Well, three starts have gone 4.2 innings and one 3.1 innings. In thirty career starts, he’s struck out ten-plus batters once, that being eleven in a game against Cleveland in 2019. Cease is clearly regressing, so how long do you wait before making a change? Which brings us to Kopech, who has 27 strikeouts in 15.2 innings during the merry month of April. Take away his two starts, and the soon-to-be 25-year old right-hander still has thirteen punchouts in four games covering 7.2 innings as a reliever. As a starter, he has a 2.25 ERA vs. 1.17 in relief. Right now, the plan is for Kopech to work mostly in relief with some spot starts thrown in. Of course, Dylan Cease may have a say in this, if for all the wrong reasons. Stay tuned.

But It Worked the Other Time

I don’t much follow the world of soccer because, well, frankly, the game bores the hell out of me. Yeah, I know, people in glass houses and all that. Still, I’ll watch a 1-0 baseball game any day of the week. One-mill, was does that even mean? That said, I do know something interesting happened last week, when a group of very rich people tried to start a “super league” of European teams—townspeople took out the proverbial pitchforks, forcing the collapse of the enterprise, amidst many apologies from said rich people. Of particular interest is the possible baseball connection. It appears that one of the super-league backers was the principal owner of the Liverpool Football Club, none other than John Henry, owner of the Red Sox. Gosh, I wonder if Henry thought he could force this idea down people’s throats the way MLB ramrodded the reorganization of the minor leagues? Maybe two wrongs did turn into a right, after all. If only I were a soccer fan.

Silver Lining

The vaunted White Sox bullpen gave up five runs against the Rangers last night (four via the longball) while catcher Yasmani Grandal picked up his third passed ball to go with three catcher-interference errors on a season that has yet to exit April. Grandal also went 0-for-3, dipping his average to .140 on the season. Manager Tony La Russa must be a man of deep faith. Why else would he bat Grandal sixth? In the top of the first, center fielder Louis Robert added two bases onto a single he didn’t field cleanly and then failed to chase after. On the mound, starter Dylan Cease needed eighty pitches to go 4.1 innings while Aaron Bummer gave up two hits and heaved a groundball over the head of first baseman Jose Abreu, this in just a third of an inning of work. The Sox also left seventeen runners on base. I forgot to mention that they won, 9-7. Would it be fair to say this team reflects its manager? If it does, heaven help us all.

The End of the World as We Know It--and I'm not Fine

Last night, the Bulls improved to 25-34 on the season with a 108-91 win over the 28-30 Hornets. Doesn’t sound any too special, does it? So, why did NBC Chicago Sports broadcast the game on two outlets with two different sets of announcers? Because one broadcast was devoted to the betting aspects of the game, with at least one of the announcers doing the honors as seducer. The second they do this with a White Sox broadcast, the earth should open up and swallow MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. That, or Shoeless Joe Jackson goes straight into the Hall of Fame and Pete Rose, too, depending on the statutory rape allegation hanging over his head. The older I get, the more convinced I become that Carrie Nation was onto something. Somebody give me a hatchet and point me in the direction of the betting websites.

Start Spreading the News

I don’t say much about the Bulls because, one, they’re bad (24-34 after last night’s 121-105 loss to the otherwise-lowly Cavaliers), and, two, they’re likely to get worse. Former foundation pieces Lauri Markkanen and Coby White are ex-Bulls walking while current first-round pick forward Patrick Williams has spent the entire month of April trying to extricate himself from “the wall” nearly all NBA players hit at some point in their rookie season. The above problems leave me more than a little skeptical about new front-office head Arturas Karnisovas, but, hey, at least the Bulls aren’t the Knicks. The Big Apple has “Tibs,” and they’re welcome to him. Come to think of it, the city and the coach deserve each other. Self-regard attracts, you might say. Oh, the 33-27 Knicks are the surprise of the NBA right now, more or less. They have the longest winning streak in the league this season (eight games and counting), and the team clearly has bought into Thibodeau’s coaching philosophy, which is basically to play grinding defense as if offense doesn’t matter. It works great in February, but get back to me in late May, assuming the Knicks get that far. Until then, the New York-centric media is full of “lookee-here!” Knicks’ stories. The fans can eat it up while trying to ignore the uncomfortable fact that the same owner—James Dolan—who hired Isiah Thomas to run his team also hired Thibodeau to coach it. Karma will be visiting sooner than later. Start spreading the news.

As I Was Saying

White Sox manager Tony La Russa is in possession of a mind greater than mine, or else why would he be in the Hall of Fame? (Bud Selig and Kenesaw Mountain Landis are inductees best left for another time.) Me, I never would’ve signed Yasmani Grandal, not if I had James McCann around, and I certainly would’ve thought twice about taking over a team that was committed to Grandal behind the plate for the next two seasons. In other words, Grandal caught Carlos Rodon last night, and Johnny Vander Meer again stands alone, as he has since 1938, in the back-to-back no-hitters’ department. Hats off to Rodon, though. He made it through five innings with Grandal catching him and even got the win in Cleveland, 8-5. Luckily, the Sox decided to hit. Why, Grandal even went one-for four with a two-run home run, raising his average eleven whole points, to .150! If only all his hits left the premises. That would help make up for the passed ball and two—that’s right, folks, two—catcher interference errors, giving him three of those every special miscues on the young season. James Fegan in The Athletic today tried to rationalize Grandal’s problems by noting he’s employing a new, one-knee-on-the-ground catching stance; Fegan pointed out that McCann did the same thing last year and went through a similar oops! process, with three interference calls against him. So, it could be that. Or Grandal isn’t that good a catcher.

Circus, with Elephants in Room

Lucas Giolito was lifted yesterday in Boston before he could record an out in the second inning. Good thing for me it was Patriots’ Day, and I had stuff to do which kept me away from watching anything with a 10:10 AM Central starting time. Fast-forwarding through Giolito’s eight runs on eight hits and two walks was bad enough. Heaven help any White Sox fan who suffered through that performance in real time. Now, a few questions, if I may, starting with, Do you think Giolito had/has a problem throwing to Yasmani Grandal? There must be a reason Grandal is on the team, I mean, other than his .139 BA and penchant for getting called on catcher’s interference. Zack Collins caught Carlos Rodon’s no-hitter last week. I wonder, will he catch him again tonight? While we’re at it, can someone please tell me why the Sox carry thirteen pitchers? To me, that’s more than enough, but manager Tony La Russa felt the need to bring in Yermin Mercedes and Danny Mendick to pitch an inning apiece in an 11-4 loss. However did teams manage with only ten or eleven pitchers? I was hoping for a bounce after the Good Sox swept the Bad Sox in a doubleheader on Sunday, but no, but we were treated to this garbage instead. Was 2020 just a 60-game fluke, or does this season’s slow start have something to do with the new/old manager? You tell me.

Fenway

I love Fenway in the way I used to love Comiskey—it’s where baseball is supposed to be played. Like Moses, I have yet to step foot into this holy land, though once I was able to stand outside and beneath the Green Monster. When the White Sox visit Boston, I think of 1965, the first year I played Strat-O-Matic Baseball; the Red Sox, along with the Braves, were my White Sox alter-egos as teams with power. I used a lineup that featured Lenny Green; Felix Mantilla; Rico Petrocelli; Tony Conigliaro; Carl Yastrzemski; Lee Thomas; Bob Tillman; and Frank Malzone. I tried to work in Jim Gosger and Dalton Jones whenever possible. The pitching was terrible, as befitting a team that went 62-100, but it was a great matchup against the 72-90 Cubs. Homeruns flew with just about every roll of the dice. Green; Conigliaro; Tillman; and Malzone are all gone now, along with Chuck Schilling, Earl Wilson and Bill Monbouquette. I probably could find others, if I wanted. The White Sox swept their hosts yesterday by scores of 3-2 and 5-1. Yermin Mercedes hit a ball that may be making its way through the New England air. And I am very young again.

Happy Birthday, Drop Dead

What do I find in this morning’s Tribune but a story on the 30th anniversary of the opening of the place the White Sox now call home? What stuck out in particular was this sentence: “Even die-hard White Sox fans had to know Comiskey [Park, nicknamed Baseball Place of the World for a reason] was past its prime and that despite its historic moments—including four World Series, three All-Star Games [including the first-ever] and the East-West Negro League All-Star Game from 1933-60 [and Joe Louis winning his heavyweight title and the Beatles performing and…]—an upgrade was needed.” I guess that makes me something less than a die-hard fan because I fought for the renovation of the park. But that’s all water under the bridge. Happy birthday, mall. Congratulations, Jerry Reinsdorf, on getting just what you wanted and for listening to your pal, then-Gov. Jim Thompson, who advised you to threaten to move in order to get public funding for your “upgrade.” As soon as the COVID restrictions end, let’s have a parade! Oh, and let’s not forget the score of the first-ever game played at the mall, a 16-0 shellacking by the Tigers. A metaphor for the past thirty years, if there ever was one.

Same Old Same Old

A story in the Tribune this week about girls’ baseball in Chicago got me thinking about Clare, when she was twelve and in her second year of Bronco Ball. One night she hit a walk-off homerun into the parking lot, the next afternoon she finished fifth out of 25 in a homerun-hitting contest. In my two years of managing Bronco and Pony teams, she was the only player I saw leave the yard. In that homerun contest, she was the only girl, and going up against a lot of travel-team boys. I wonder what the four boys who finished ahead of her said about the twenty who came in behind her. Ideally, this would’ve been when Clare switched over to all-girls’ baseball, only there was no such thing. According to the Trib story, there are only ten girls’ teams nationwide that play a full schedule. The Humboldt Park Gators, a 12u team from what I could tell, would be one of them. I can only wish them luck, which they’ll need, and hope that this is a wave of the future, though I doubt it. Softball is such an entrenched institution that it won’t go quietly if and when challenged. Maybe girls’ baseball can mount something of a grass-roots’ challenge. Or it could come from a softball player willing to take a risk on baseball after her college career ends. I think the necessary talented players are out there, waiting to be asked. So, what’s keeping baseball from doing just that? I can only imagine.

Dickens

With these White Sox, it’s the best of times and the worst of times. They follow an 8-0 no-hitter with a 4-2 loss, where “dead” hardly describes the middle of the lineup. It’s a good thing Madame Defarge isn’t around to rile up Sox fans. After the game, Jose Abreu is batting .184, with 21 strikeouts in 49 at-bats; Yoan Moncada .191, 17k/47 AB; Yasmani Grandal .133, 7k/30 AB; and Andrew Vaughn .136, 9k/ 22 AB. The only thing I can say here is I wish Grandal were striking out more. He seems determined to hit into the shift each and every at-bat. Except for the strikeouts, he looks to be jut about there. The team batting average stands at .233, which, amazingly, puts the Sox at eighth in the AL; Cleveland is last at an astounding .198. So why do the Indians have a better record at 7-5 to 6-7 for the South Siders? I mean, we’re actually second in the AL with a team ERA of 3.12. But wait. Guess who leads the league at 2.91? Yup, Cleveland. Which then leads us to consider the folks managing their respective teams, Terry Francona and Tony La Russa. It’s early, right, too early to panic? I hope so.

Heroes

Really, what can you say? One day after looking totally inept (and is there any other way?), the White Sox no-hit the Indians last night 8-0 behind Carlos Rodon, he of 42.1 innings pitched the last two seasons before this. Rodon doesn’t project warm and fuzzy the way Eloy Jimenez or even Adam Engel might. He’s always struck me as intense, businesslike, which may be why he has Scott Boras for an agent. Early on, I assumed Rodon would be gone come free agency, unless the Sox ponied up whatever price Boras concocted from that magic formula he employs for clients. Since the Sox aren’t in the habit of ponying up diddly for Scott Boras, I didn’t invest a lot of emotion on Carlos Rodon. On top of that were the injuries, including Tommy John and shoulder surgeries, that seemed to hound Rodon following his rookie season in 2015. Each year, Rodon seemed to lose a little more on the mound. And ex-Sox manager Rick Renteria hardly helped last season inserting Rodon in two relief outings, to disastrous results (think Cleveland and Oakland). So, the Sox released him, and I didn’t give it much thought. Then they brought him back in the preseason on a one-year contract, and I didn’t give it much thought. Either Rodon pitched himself into the rotation, or he didn’t. That’s baseball. But, more than other sports, baseball is also a business that affords a player multiple chances. At age 28, Rodon looks to have put his latest one to very good use. He’s now 2-0 in two starts in 2021 after going 3-4 the two previous seasons combined. As for last night’s no-hitter, it was a perfect game with one out in the top of the ninth and an 0-2 count on catcher Roberto Perez; a big, breaking slider clipped Perez on the toe. Maybe a more agile batter would’ve tried to jump out of the way. Maybe not. Rodon could go on to win 15+ games this season and be gone from the South Side the next. That’s the business of baseball. But, just for a second last night, I thought I spied the smile of a nine-year flash across that bearded face. And I thought of David Bowie, of all people: “We can beat them just for one day/We can be heroes just for one day.” Yes, we can.

See Above

Help, please, someone, help! I’m caught in a Tony La Russa time loop. Now, I’m just a fan, but it seems to me a good manager has to know which of his relievers can come in with runners on base and which ones need to come in with everything “clean,” or nobody on. Off of what he did (and didn’t do) Sunday, White Sox rookie Garrett Crochet would seem to fall into the latter category. Oh, my bad. La Russa brought Crochett in for the second straight time with a runner on base to start extra innings. Check that, La Russa’s bad. That, or he’s insane to think the same action would yield different results, because they didn’t. Crochet—who, by the way, doesn’t look to be throwing nearly as hard as he did last September—gave up what proved to be the winning run. Unlike Sunday, he couldn’t even get through the entire inning. Not good, to my untrained eyes. But fear not, for Captain Jibber-Jabber is here to make it all right. “Who didn’t struggle tonight on our side?” La Russa was quoted in today’s The Athletic. The Captain felt a particular need to defend left fielder Nick Williams, a journeyman playing in place of promising rookie Andrew Vaughn; Williams struck out three times against in four at-bats on the night. “Everybody struggled,” Captain continued. “I felt good. He’s [Williams] an aggressive hitter, and they fed off that a couple of times. They got him to chase a couple of times.” Hmm, an aggressive hitter the other side knew to exploit? What did La Russa say last week about the “lousy job of managing” he did in a game against the Mariners? Williams, who strikes me as being a really decent guy, is hitless in ten at-bats, with a walk. Vaughn is only hitting .143, with two hits in fourteen at-bats, yet he has a .400 OBP. Why? Because he’s been able to control his rookie nerves to walk five times. And that’s what the Sox needed in a game where they didn’t score a run in ten innings while managing all of four baserunners last night, or five, if you count the extra-inning freebie. If La Russa wants to talk about his hitters, I suggest he start with third baseman Yoan Moncada, he of the .179 BA, with fifteen strikeouts and two RBIs in 39 at-bats. I can’t wait to hear the jibberish those stats might unleash.

Don't Say That

My father grew up tough on the streets of a Chicago neighborhood once known as “Hardscrabble.” Time wore away the edges of that toughness, but not all of it. Sometimes, if he didn’t like what I was saying, he’d answer back with, “Don’t talk like a busted a*****e.” I hear Tony La Russa and think the same thing. On Sunday, new White Sox closer Liam Hendriks came in to protect a one-run lead in the ninth against the Royals, only to give up a game-tying home run to Carlos Santana (Hint: Never, ever, leave the ball down against a left-handed batter). The Sox then lost the game in the tenth when Garrett Crochet fielded a bunt on the suicide squeeze which he proceeded to throw into the ground. You don’t get runners out at the plate that way, or win the game. Final score, Royals 4 Sox 3. And there was La Russa after the game telling the Tribune, “Just because the guy for the other side hit a fastball out of the park, that’s all they got off of Hendriks.” And here I thought they were paying Hendriks $54 million to keep the ball in the park. Ah, but it gets better. Well, no, worse. La Russa also felt the need to defend Crochet’s fielding. You see, “The bunt hopped up on him. If it had stayed down, you practice underhanding it, but it came up, so he had to go over the top. So, it was a tough play for him, but he got out of it. That was just one run, and he did a great job to stop it right there.” Except for the part about giving up the winning run. My father hated BS. So do I.

Professional Hitter

LaMond Pope of the Tribune did an interesting piece Sunday on White Sox phenom Yermin Mercedes, from a scouting and development perspective. Senior director of baseball operations Dan Fabian said “it’s a nice organizational win to see him producing at the big-league level.” The rest of the story concerned how the Sox tracked and developed Mercedes, picked by the team in the Rule 5 draft back in 2017. When Fabian said, “Hats off to the guys in our scouting department,” it got me to thinking. Fabian all but called Mercedes a professional hitter, something a stranger once said of my daughter watching her hit for the first time as a high school junior. But maybe he was just being nice. OK, then answer me this. How can the Sox—or any major-league organization, for that matter—spend so much time and effort on a player pretty much buried in the lower minor leagues and not see one, one, female ballplayer of equal talent? I just don’t get it. This isn’t on Mercedes; may he have a late-starting career as good as Bill Robinson’s. But I just want to know why organizational wins in baseball only refer to one gender. Someone, please explain it to me.

Our Lips Are Sealed

The Sun-Times did a puff piece on Hawk Harrelson yesterday because…I haven’t a clue, to be honest with you. Harrelson is a person best left unseen and unheard. The man bloweth hard. Harrelson will be going into the broadcast wing at Cooperstown because…I haven’t a clue to be honest with you. My idea of a broadcaster pretty much starts and ends with Ed Farmer, and the Hawk ain’t Farmio. If the Hall of Fame wants to make use of Harrelson, they should stick him in front of a wind turbine, so he could be of some use for a change. Anyway, Harrelson referenced his firing of Tony La Russa back in 1986, when White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf thought that a yes-man would make a good GM. After close to 35 years later, Harrelson was moved to say, “I didn’t fire him because he was a bad manager. I fired him for some other reason that I’ll take to my grave, and Tony will take to his grave. I’m not going to say [why he did it].” Hawk Harrelson, always talking, except if it matters.

Why Bother?

Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic combined for 75 points against the Hawks last night in a game that saw Chicago ahead by thirteen at the half, but the Bulls still managed to lose, 120-108. Talk about putting the “offensive” in “foul.” Oh, our boys were offensively foul in their own way with thirteen turnovers to Atlanta’s nine. Really, why bother? Lauri Markkanen, a onetime franchise cornerstone now relegated to the second unit, managed five points to go with five rebounds. Markkanen is gone, whether or not he knows it. Coby White, a onetime franchise cornerstone now relegated to the second unit, totaled eleven points and four assists in 29 minutes. White is gone for the right price, which could be next to nothing. This is how bad John Paxson and Gar Forman were as talent evaluators, and I wouldn’t necessarily exclude LaVine here, either. LaVine ranks seventh in the league in turnovers with 3.7 a game, which ties him with LeBron James. Who would you rather have? And at 26, his defense shouldn’t still be “a work in progress,” as some folks like to say. Well, Jerry Reinsdorf is the master rebuilder. At least he does it enough with his Bulls and White Sox that you’d think he’d be good at it. We’ll see.

Mercedes

I haven’t said much about the early success of White Sox dh Yermin Mercedes for the simple fact that it’s early, and I keep hearing Harry Caray whispering in that disagreeable beery voice of his. I definitely want the 28-year Mercedes to keep hitting; the closer he can keep on the pace he’s at—15/27 with two home runs and seven RBIs—the better. But only time will tell. In yesterday’s home opener at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, Mercedes clubbed the third-longest homer in that sorry mall’s history, at 485 feet to left center in the bottom of the first inning in a 6-0 win against the Royals. And the longest? That belongs to Joe Borchard, at 504 feet. Heaven knows what Caray would’ve done to Borchard, a career .205 hitter over six seasons. I do know what Caray did to Harry Chappas, a young shortstop who played for the Sox in the late ’70s. Chappas had the misfortune of going on hot streaks early in the season, which meant that he had no bigger fan than Harry Caray, who was ready to carry him on his back all the way to Cooperstown. When, inevitably, Chappas cooled off, there was Caray ripping him for being a 5’7” player with “warning-track power.” Chappas’ major-league career ended at the age of 22. So, fingers crossed on Mercedes. He may have waited a long time to get here, but better late than Harry Chappas, or Harry Caray.

The Trials of Job (and Tony La Russa)

This is April, when the bees in Clare’s bat would go straight for her wrists in cold weather. The bees are still coming even with my daughter pregnant. I do not understand the female body. But know this about my child: No matter the pregnancy-related malady, she still knows her baseball. Yesterday afternoon, she called to give me a head’s-up on our friend Danny Mendick getting an RBI single while subbing for the injured Tim Anderson. We both like Mendick, and Clare probably knew I was picking up her mom from the train, which meant I hadn’t seen Mendick get his first hit of the season. “The pitchers are going to have a meltdown,” she warned me in advance of my catching up on the game courtesy of TiVo. Talk about your understatements. In two starts, Dallas Keuchel has looked like Gio Gonzalez light. Oh, he had a 4-1 lead against the Mariners in the top of the sixth alright, but only because Seattle was generous to a fault; the score could’ve just as easily been reversed, and soon would be. Keuchel gave up two hits and yielded to Matt Foster. Lord knows I want to be wrong about this, but Foster sure looks like a one-year wonder, and 2021 isn’t the year. The right hander threw 34 pitches over what felt like the course of an hour before White Sox manager Tony La Russa finally, mercifully, lifted him for Jose Ruiz. Foster’s line included five earned runs on five hits and a walk. Bad pitching? Not so, said La Russa after the 8-4 loss. “I did a really lousy job of managing that inning and it really hurt our chances of winning,” La Russa informed reporters. “[Foster] faced too many hitters. That’s lousy managing. Matt’s a gamer. I pushed him too far. Just stupid. Lousy.” [La Russa quoted in today’s Tribune, with variations of the above appearing across local media.] So, now Sox fans are left to wonder if La Russa suffered a senior moment, with more to come. In truth, he didn’t. Foster gets a groundball double play along with a strikeout and the game goes an entirely different way. Back in October, Rick Renteria went through relievers a mile a minute, and what did that get him? Unemployed. No, the problem is that the players aren’t performing at the level we’ve been told to expect, not yet at least. La Russa’s job is to get them to that point. Until then, we fans suffer as Job, one and all.

Time Enough to Sleep

I went to bed early again last night. Oh, I saw Lucas Giolito cough up a three-run lead to the Mariners and Louis Robert get the lead back again with a two-run shot. But Jose Abreu’s second grand slam of the season had to wait until morning. Thank goodness for video clips. Yes, I’m happy the White Sox won, 10-4, and, yes, it’s impressive the pitching staff racked up another fifteen strikeouts. But I’m also happy beyond belief I didn’t stay up to watch the full 3:45 it took for my heroes to win. Time is precious, especially at my age. Baseball feels differently about that, I’m afraid. Over on the North Side last night, the Cubs and Brewers combined for a total of six hits in a 4-0 Milwaukee win, three of those runs coming on a first-inning home run. Was it the combined ten walks that pushed the game to 3:06; the combined 22 strikeouts; or both? All I know is I can’t sit and watch this kind of stuff anymore. The Brewers managed two homers, so you could say the quest for the long ball worked for them. But for fans of the national pastime? Something’s got to give, folks, or something’s gonna go, just like the dinosaurs. Instead of bones, our descendants will try to make sense out of bits of leather and wood.

Sleep

Here’s another sign of my advanced middle age. After watching the White Sox play four games on the West Coast, I felt like a zombie all day Monday and made sure to be in bed before eleven. With Carlos Rodon on the mound against the Mariners, you just never know. Lo and behold, I get up this morning and what do I find? Rodon went five shutout innings, with Michael Kopech and Jose Ruiz chipping in with another four in a 6-0 win. Now, I want to see if Rodon makes his next scheduled start. He’s been injured so often in his six-plus seasons with the Sox I can never tell if he’s waiting for the pain to subside between pitches or he’s just fidgety on the mound. Either way, the game took 3:23 to play. Ah, sleep. I’m rested enough to wonder how long baseball can keep going along this path. The Mariners got three hits and struck out fifteen times. Maybe it was the four walks they managed that dragged the game out so long, but I doubt it. Strikeouts are not merely collateral damage in pursuit of launch angle. They threaten to be the end of baseball as we know it. That said, I almost wish I’d stayed up long enough to see Kopech record five strikeouts in two innings. On the season, he has eight punchouts in four innings. Nice, but pastime threatening.

Say Less, Show More

Back during spring training, White Sox reliever Aaron Bummer offered that, “I don’t expect [the team] to lose a game if we’re leading after the fifth inning.” Bummer lost the first game of the season just that way. Evan Marshall lost the third game by giving up a three-spot in the eighth, and Matt Foster capped off a 1-3 start to 2021after he grooved a pitch that Jared Walsh of the Angels turned into a three-run walk-off. After the game, Sox manager Tony La Russa said he told his players “this is one of the most impressive losses that I can remember being part of,” adding “I love the guts of this club and [how] we played courageously.” [as quoted in today’s The Athletic]. Some form of “courageous” is not what I would use in describing an offense that went 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position and failed to generate a single RBI among the four runs scored in a 7-4 loss. If the Angels had figured out a way not to throw the ball around so much they could’ve had themselves a shutout. Like Bummer, Sox shortstop Tim Anderson used spring training to alert the league, Minnesota in particular, just how good the South Siders are. Only the “whoopin’” Anderson talked about inflicting on the opposition was instead inflicted by an opponent. Anderson was batting .200 with an RBI in fifteen at-bats when he left last night’s game after tweaking a hamstring running out a groundball in the first inning. Perhaps a little down time to ponder the virtues of letting one’s actions do the speaking? Just saying.

Adieu, Street and Smith's

I drove over to the neighborhood corner newsstand on Thursday to buy my annual supply of baseball magazines. Athlon and Lindy’s were there but not Street and Smith’s. Maybe it was hiding behind the latest issue of Kink? I was too embarrassed to ask. Back home, I checked or Street and Smith’s on Amazon. Nope. I could get a 1966 edition autographed by Ron Swoboda but nothing from 2021. Next, I did a Google search for any stories on the demise of yet another baseball mainstay—think Baseball Register, Who’s Who in Baseball—but nothing. Something dating to my childhood just slipped away unremarked on and unmourned. Oh, well. On the bright side, both Athlon and Lindy’s pick the White Sox to win the Central Division, only for those damn’ Yankees to advance to the World Series. Now, that’s a piece of my childhood I could definitely do without.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Reports indicate that Loyola basketball coach Porter Moser has accepted the job at Oklahoma. How the North Side of Chicago by way of the western suburbs translates into a place called Norman is beyond me. All the media reports I’ve seen have been very supportive of Moser’s decision, a bigger challenge and all. But all I see is a bigger ego. Moser plays a brand of college basketball—team-oriented defense—that’s out-of-fashion most places, big schools most of all. Oklahoma in the Big 12 is a big school. I could be wrong, but the Sooners have been the kind of program that attracts players who see college and think NBA, ASAP. I’m not saying this as a put-down. The more NBA talents on a college roster, the better the chance to go deep in the March tournament and generate strong draft buzz. The challenge for a coach is to get his players to stay focused on where they are now, not where they want to be next November. Yes, getting players in a big program to think defense before offense—which is not how you become a first-round draft choice in the NBA, by the way—will be one heck of a challenge for Moser. But so would winning on a regular basis at a mid-major school. NCAA tourney bids don’t exactly reign down on Missouri Valley Conference runners-up. But that’s not Porter Moser’s worry anymore. He may wish it were before long.

First Impressions

Hats off to the Cubs, sort of. With a few more games like yesterday’s 5-3 loss to the Pirates at Wrigley Field, the North Siders could actually kill the national pastime. A four-hour game in 36-degree cold? Eleven walks for the visitors vs. thirteen strikeouts and two hits for the home team? Forget COVID. Pneumonia and hyperthermia will do in the faithful, along with heart attacks and strokes. The Pirates used seven pitchers, the Cubs eight. By my count, the Cubs changed pitchers in the course of an inning four times, slowing down the game even more. Over in Anaheim, the White Sox managed to choke up a lead and lose to the Angels 4-3 in a mere 2:51. And our pitchers only walked four batters and our hitters only struck out ten times. The thing is, though, you can’t have your second baseman throw away a potential bases-clearing double-play ball in the bottom of the eighth inning; do that, and bad things are bound to happen. They did. And I have growing concerns about Nick Madrigal’s skillset in the field. Danny Mendick, you may have more value to this team than you can imagine.

If I May

The NFL has decided to add a seventeenth game to the season. This is a little—No, a lot—like Catch-22, where the number of missions keeps getting raised before a crew can go home. Every extra tackle a player has to endure is another flak burst by any other name. So, a proposal in the name of safety, if I may. Commissioner Roger Goodell can show the players he cares about more than the bottom line with one simple rule, that every player who makes the Opening Day roster is allowed to appear in sixteen games, period. No first half here, second half there, or a skipped quarter over four games. Sixteen games and no more. And, there’d you have, being able for once to have your cake and eat it, too.