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.