Grrh!

When the Bears drafted Notre Dame tight end Cole Kmet in 2020, Chicago media went nuts. You couldn’t find anyone to say a bad thing about the kid, who also happened to hail from northwest suburban Lake Barrington. The consensus seemed to be that the Munsters had themselves a second Ditka, only more socially refined. So, I open up today’s Sun-Times to read, “Bears have to find out if Kmet is the answer at tight end.” Huh? So it goes on the Bears’ beat. Reporters fall in and out of love with players and coaches. It isn’t so much a honeymoon as a reprise of “Fatal Attraction.” If greatness means the ability to overcome coach Matt Nagy’s “offense,” then Kmet isn’t a great player, and who is? You really get a feeling Nagy wouldn’t know what to do with Walter Payton or Gayle Sayers, let alone Kmet. Too much was made of Kmet when he arrived last year and Justin Fields this season. The sports’ media needs to do their job and leave the cheering to fans. I won’t hold my breath.

Out of Sight...

If I were baseball commissioner (now, there’s a thought), everything would be different, at least until the owners fired me. There wouldn’t be any of this hiding in the shadow of football, that’s for sure. It’s times like these I think the game is owned and played by idiots. The owners have instigated a “defensive lockout,” thereby killing the hot-stove league. And, has anybody heard a peep out of the players lately? Have they taken to the airwaves and social media to explain their stand on issues? You must be kidding. No, both sides are content to play a game of chicken, out of the spotlight. Let college and pro football reign supreme, as if it didn’t already. No hot stove, no rumors, no fan conventions on account of COVID, no reason to think baseball. And when both sides finally do sit down for serious negotiations, do you think ticket and concession prices will be on the agenda, or the length of games? The chances of that, my friend, are slim and none. No, baseball will continue to slouch along the same path that it has for the past thirty years of so, one side vilifying the other, both sides oblivious of what fans think or where they’re turning their attention to. But, hey, out of sight out of mind. And, to these clowns, that’s a good thing.

John Madden

Former coach and NFL broadcaster John Madden died yesterday at the age of 85, and his passing has been met with an avalanche of praise. And yet. Madden was the Raiders’ coach in August of 1978 when safety Jack Tatum’s tackle of Patriots’ receiver Darryl Stingley broke two vertebrae in Stingley’s neck and damaged his spinal cord. Tatum made the tackle helmet-first. Accounts say that Madden was distraught by the injury that left Stingley paralyzed; visited Stingley regularly; helped with the logistics of his rehab; and was a regular presence in Stingley’s life from that point on. The injury may even have been the precipitating event that led Madden to quit coaching at the end of the season. And yet. And yet Madden never talked about it, as far as I know. In all his thirty years of doing games, I never heard talk about that injury or allude to it in any way during a broadcast. I never heard him call for cleaning the game up or protecting players from grievous injury, and I never heard him call out a player for a dirty hit. But he was always entertaining. It must be me.

Trying to Get There

Here’s a true confession—I never rooted for the Bulls during the 1990s. Jordan Rules, Last Dance, I always wanted them to lose. South Siders are known to hold a grudge. For me, it was Jerry Reinsdorf tearing down Comiskey Park and going on rich man’s welfare; God forbid he use his own money to build a mall. Yes, I also rooted against the White Sox in the 1993 playoffs against the Blue Jays, so credit me with consistency: one owner, two teams, one grudge. But having a child who loved baseball and Frank Thomas—not necessarily in that order—changed me over time. Only Clare never really cared about basketball, and that allowed me the futile pleasure of rooting against Superman and his supporting cast (Yes, I’m talking about you, Scottie). Old habits are hard to break. I laughed as Jerry Krause replaced a dynasty with a who’s who of dysfunction. I never warmed to Derrick Rose or Tom Thibodeau. For Jim Boylen, see Krause, above. But things change, or can, if you let them. I would now rather see the Bulls win than not. How good are they this season? At 21-10, they have the second-best record in the Eastern Conference, 2-1/2 games behind Brooklyn, and they own the fifth-best winning percentage in the league. So, there’s that. Billy Donovan looks like he knows how to coach and the new front office how to rework a roster. Anybody miss Lauri Markkanen? As ever, injuries could disrupt things, and age. Center Nikola Vucevic is 31, power forward DeMar DeRozan 32; bodies wear down over time, especially once they hit the age of 30 (don’t I know?). But shooting guard Zach LaVine—averaging 26.4 points per game—won’t be 27 until March; point guard Lonzo Ball is 24; and rookie Ayo Dosunmu has another month of being 20. So, there’s that, too. All in all, color me intrigued, slowly intrigued.

Perfection

I watch the Bears for two reasons: 1) it gives me something to fill up the time when I’m on the exercycle; and 2) it’s a way to get back at people I don’t like who root for other teams. Yesterday, the planets aligned, and both reasons came to pass in a Bears’ 25-24 win on the road in Seattle. I won’t reveal the names of those disagreeable Seahawks’ fans, but I will point out the irony of winning a game behind a quarterback who was so 2020. With the end of the 2021 season in sight, the Munsters gave Nick Foles his first start of the season. And this Sunday? Maybe they’ll pick a name out of a hat. But it won’t belong to Russell Wilson, whom the Bears’ “brain trust” wanted bad, only to be rebuffed and then going with rookie Justin Fields in the draft. Wilson turned 33 at the end of last month, and he looked every day of it on the field against the Bears. By beating the team with the quarterback they wanted with the quarterback they didn’t want anymore, the whizzes of Halas Hall pulled off matching 5-10 records for two struggling franchises. How quintessentially Bear. And let’s not forget soon-to-be ex-coach Matt Nagy, who in the postgame talked about “emptying the cup,” whether a “full cup” or “half cup,” because “when we all empty our cups,” there’s a “damn’ good chance” of winning. I’m going to miss Nagy gibber. Just kidding. He can exit stage left, cup in hand, anytime he wants.

More Minoso

Clare came through with two perfect Christmas gifts. It’s as it she read my mind. That, or I gave specific instructions to her on what to buy. I mean, an unused ticket from October 4, 1964, A’s vs. White Sox? I went with my dad that day, a Sunday, to see the Sox win their 98th game of the season, a 6-0, complete-game shutout by Bruce Howard in a game that took all of 1:45 minutes to play. I can still remember Tommy McCraw circling the bases after a walk, then a wild pitch, then two throwing errors, courtesy of Dave Duncan and Nelson Mathews, respectively. That made for nine wins in a row. Too bad the Yankees won one more game to clinch the pennant. The Sox signed Minnie Minoso that spring for his third tour with the team; they released him in July, on what would be my future wife’s ninth birthday. She was a Cubs’ North Side heathen and probably had no idea who Minoso was. Some forty years later, she knew enough to stop him on the street in the Loop to ask for an autograph. That picture will go with the one Clare gave me, a headshot of Minoso in 1960. I have this memory of a fathers-sons game, maybe Father’s Day 1964 or another day that season; it’s my first real memory of Minoso. Not so much him as his son, Orestes Jr., looking sharp in his White Sox uniform, all pinstripes and Old English SOX on a diagonal across his chest. We were the same age, but I didn’t go on to play minor-league ball with the Royals and Sox the way the younger Minoso did. If my dad bought me a hot dog that day, it cost 35 cents, or three dollars in today’s money, and, if he treated himself a Hamm’s, that sent him back 45 cents, or four dollars. How long has it been since beer was that cheap at the ballpark? The ticket Clare bought me is (was?) a lower deck box $3, or $26.90 today. All I can say is that, if you had box seats in the lower deck at Comiskey Park, you could pretty much touch the players, “obstructing” posts be damned. I already have two “phantom” tickets, printed in case the Sox did make the Series. Both, for upper deck boxes, were priced at $12, or $126.90 today. I’d have paid it in a heartbeat, and maybe my dad would have, too. Did I mention that I hate the Yankees?

Bear-ly Hilarious

This could only happen with the Munsters. Not only are they going to start their third-string quarterback tomorrow in Seattle, he’s a player the front office either could not or would not move at the beginning of the season. In McCaskey World, never rule out spite as a motivation. The Munsters acquired Foles in 2020 as a possible alternative to Mitch Trubisky (talk about a knack with quarterbacks), but, when Trubisky played himself out of the starter’s role, Foles wasn’t any better, going 2-5. Better yet, he and head coach Matt Nagy clashed to the point that Foles was practically begging to be traded during training camp this season. Now, he’s starting because Justin Fields and Andy Dalton are injured. One of two things is going to happen—Foles throws for 300+ yards with three touchdown, or he throws fifteen passes, completing eight for seventy-five yards. Odds are it’s going to be number two. Any takers?

Christmas Gifts for Deep Pockets

If a certain somebody comes through for her father, he’ll be getting a Minnie Minoso print off a negative he bought. The only thing better, maybe, would be the first print off the negative, and who’s to say it won’t be? Regardless, I like what it shows, Minoso in an unguarded moment. This is the kind of stuff I look for on eBay. Because I happen to root for a franchise steeped in mediocrity, memorabilia prices tend to be low, relatively speaking. There are exceptions, of course. Back in spring, I had my eye on a wire photo of Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium, 1956. The White Sox were in town, so Yankee management brought in people like Ted Lyons and…the spy, Moe Berg. My God, Berg in a Sox uniform. Why didn’t I just pay the $96? Otherwise, anything Berg will cost you, like $5,000 (or best offer) for a head shot. Berg and Babe Ruth in Seattle on their way to playing in Japan in 1934 (when Berg may have slipped away from teammates to do some spying for the U.S. government)? That, my friend, will set you back $3,500, unless you come up with a best offer the seller can live with. Someone is trying to sell two snapshots, one each of Ruth and Lou Gehrig, at Comiskey Park, probably 1927. Cost? $8,500, or best offer. The second most expensive Ruth photo now on eBay, is going at $30,000 obo. It also shows the Bambino at my ballpark. I wonder how the Babe would feel about his most expensive pic going for $50,000 while someone has priced a snapshot of a sixteen-year old Gehrig holding what looks to be the family dog at $499,999 obo and never mind the rip. Jackie Robinson? The man who integrated major-league baseball tops out on eBay at $8,500 obo. Make of the price differential with Ruth or Gehrig what you will, and know this—fans must’ve taken a ton of photos with and of Robinson on National League fields. My guess is those photos have been passed on from one generation to the next. Someday, that might change and there could be a bumper crop of Robinson pics available on eBay. Just don’t ask me the price. Willie Mays tops out at $15,000 from somebody who’s also trying to get $12,500 for a ticket stub from the 1926 World Series (good luck with that). Me, I’ll be happy to keep hunting for pics of White Sox players, more often anonymous than not, in a ballpark I can’t seem to forget. But I should’ve snapped up Moe Berg when I had the chance. He hit .287 for the South Siders in 1929, you know.

Nuance

The Bears’ beat writer for the Tribune did a letters’ column today in which he defended the organization. More evidence that we live in strange times. A letter writer dared to ask, “When will Bears fans get an organization that cares as much as we fans do?” The answer basically was, they already do. It’s more a question of the organization making wrong—and heartfelt—decisions. But wait, there’s more. Fans should know, “There are more nuanced ways to be critical of ownership and senior leadership at Halas Hall than saying they don’t care as much as you do.” Since when do the McCaskeys get nuance? The reporter didn’t say.

Measure of Futility

Both the White Sox and Bears won on October 10, the Sox over the Astros, the Munsters over the Raiders. The Sox season ended the next day, when Houston eliminated them in the ALDS. The Bears have kept playing, if only in the most technical sense of the word, and in all that time since have one more win. Only in Chicago. Back in January, the Bears’ brain trust, and there’s an oxymoron for the ages, talked about collaboration and being on the right track. Team president Ted Phillips gibbered on about how the “foundation is in place”; GM Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy were “both solution-oriented”; and said brain trust was “expecting improvement this year.” With a little bit of luck and effort, the Munsters can win half the games they did when Phillips put his foot in his mouth. Only in Chicago.

Send in the Clowns

The Bears are now 4-10 on the season after losing last night 17-9 to the Vikings at home. That puts them in Abe Gibron territory. And, just like those very bad Gibron teams, this one played good defense, with Minnesota quarterback Kirk Cousins sacked four times; Cousins netted a mere 87 yards on twelve completions. There’s some of the suffering you say Jesus promises, Kirk. But these are the Bears, who went out and hired Matt Nagy as an offensive guru, and what did the guru accomplish last night? At the 59:59 point of the game, three points, that’s what. That literal last-second touchdown the Munsters managed didn’t even rate an extra-point attempt. Gibron was fired forty-seven years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same. If and when Nagy gets let go, the deed will be done by the same family that thought hiring Abe Gibron made sense. That’s how circus people think, I guess.

Searching for Heroes

I may be asking for too much. Really, why should athletes be any different than fans? Ignorance, like misery, loves company. I saw in the paper today that Vikings’ quarterback Kirk Cousins is an anti-vaxxer. Sorry, had COVID, know its real. Also, too much education. I understand individual liberties do not trump (you decide if there’s a pun there) the public good. In other words, the two dolts I saw at the grocery this morning didn’t have the right, God- or Constitution-given, to walk down the aisles maskless because there is no right, God- or Constitution-given, to infect others. I keep waiting, but no sport seems to have generated a COVID equivalent of Bob Feller, who enlisted in the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor. Unlike Joe DiMaggio, Feller saw combat, and plenty of it, aboard the battleship USS Alabama serving for over two years as a gunnery captain. Feller didn’t complain about missing out on virtually four seasons during the prime of his career and most likely another 100 wins to add onto the 266 he totaled. “I have no regrets,” he once told a HOF publication of his decision to enlist. “The only win I wanted was to win World War II.” I’m not suggesting Feller was a saint; if he had been, he would have voiced early support for baseball breaking the color line. But he still did something important that affected his career and could have cost him his life. And Kirk Cousins? Well, he is risking his life.

Black Hole

The Bears constitute a black hole for Chicago sports’ media—venture too close, and you get sucked in. Pretty much everyone ventures too close. Our gaffe-prone Munsters generate multiple TV shows; no sportscast dares ignore them the way it would mediocrity from other Chicago sports’ teams. The local PBS station includes a weekly in-season segment during which former Bears’ offensive lineman James “Big Cat” Williams breaks down every game, no matter how bad it might have been. Today, the Tribune ran “Disorder. Dysfunction. Disappointment,” an in-depth look at McCaskey World. What do I mean by “in-depth”? The story jumped from the front page to three—count them, three—full inside pages, each one with four columns of print and relatively few pictures. Nothing, not Donald Trump or climate change or the latest city-hall crisis, gets that kind of coverage. But at what cost? The Sunday sports’ section runs only eight pages, with the Bears basically sucking up nearly half the available space. Print journalism is in a zero-sum hell these days. If something gets in the paper, something gets left out. You wouldn’t know looking at the Trib there are high school sports going on. The Bulls and Hawks were made to share one page with Illinois and De Paul basketball. If Christ came back the same day the Bears played, it wouldn’t make the Trib. And you wouldn’t be able to read about it online.

Back to the Future

And what were my daughter and son-in-law doing last night? Why, finding a way to watch North Central College go for back-to-back NCAA D-III football championships, of course. Somehow, I doubt Clare minded that North Central lost to Mary Hardin-Baylor, 57-24. Old grudges die hard. Michele asked me last week how North Central stays good in sports, and I told her, “They work at it.” Every athletic program starts off as a broken clock, bound to get it right at some point, if just for one season. The difference between North Central and Clare’s (and her husband’s) alma mater of Elmhurst is that one school built on its initial success and the other didn’t. It’s a choice. During Clare’s four years, her Blue Jays always played the Cardinals tough, even though they lost more than they won. We were eight-deep playing a program probably double that. You should see North Central’s athletic facilities. Elmhurst shares its home field with the local park district. In comparison, North Central is Yankee Stadium, and the Rams’ new home . North Central had a number of fifth-year seniors, courtesy of COVID; they came back for a chance to repeat. Now, they face life like Clare and Chris had to. My son-in-law went from graduate assistant at North Central (!), then Syracuse, to assistant coach at Elmhurst to high school social studies’ teacher/o-line coach; Clare walked on, if you will, at Northwestern University, where she’s doing quite well in administration at the Kellogg School of Management. Ask them, and they’ll likely tell you their stint as college athletes prepared them for what comes after graduation. If they’re lucky, the same will hold true for the kids at North Central.

There But for the Grace of God

If things had gone differently, the Bulls might have drafted power forward Zion Williamson. But luck was with them, and Williamson went to New Orleans in 2019. In his first two seasons, Williamson suffered knee and thumb injuries that took him out of the Pelicans’ lineup for some to much time, and that was before he broke his right foot this summer. He was ramping up for his season debut only to feel soreness in the foot. Now comes news Williamson received a “biologic injection” in the fracture area that will, fingers crossed, promote healing. Then it’s four to six weeks of wait-and-see, which is not the same as four to six weeks until he can play. I must be the only person in the world who looked at Williamson and saw all sorts of problems where everyone saw a ton of talent, if you’ll pardon the pun. I see that he’s no longer listed at 6’7”. An inch shorter matters because he’s carrying at least 284 pounds on an even smaller frame. Read about the 21-year old, and you read about conditioning issues. Those I knew about, but not Williamson’s rumored frustration with the state of the team around him. I’m guessing management is pretty frustrated, too. I think college athletes in basketball and football are best served staying in school a minimum of three years; this way their bodies and skills have a chance to grow under controlled circumstances. (Drafting high school baseball players makes no sense to me whatsoever.) I read where the Pelicans’ front office has complained to the NBA about the beating their star player has taken since he’s stepped onto the pro court. And they thought he could avoid that why, exactly? The best the NBA can do is its one-and-done rule. I doubt anything else would survive a court challenge, and I’m surprised one-and-done has lasted this long. To paraphrase my father, people six times three (as in years) are adults and can do what they will. But it comes with consequences.

Cautionary Tale

Because the Bears’ news cycle must be forever fed, sportswriters are noting just how difficult a team rebuild will be on account of the salary cap. GM Ryan Pace can’t seem to help himself. First, he drafts the wrong players. Then, when they fail to develop, he tries to fix the problem with free agents, often overpaying for them. Anyone seen Danny Trevathan lately? The result is a roster filled with expensive mediocrities, which is not exactly the formula for winning football, assuming the McCaskeys care about such a thing. Today, I read in The Athletic how both sides in the baseball lockout aren’t expected to meet again until after the holidays. I imagine the owners are dreaming of ways to sneak a salary cap into any final agreement. Consider what that would mean for fans. They could either watch their team screw up like the Bears or listen to their owner site the salary cap for not pursuing any free agent or keeping a player from going that route. Owners in all sports should be made to face the consequences of their actions and not lean on players for protection against their own stupidity. Unfortunately, that’s the case with the Bears and all of the NFL. Shame on the players for allowing it to happen. Baseball’s soft cap is bad enough. Anything more and the players’ association will have committed a major blunder at the bargaining table.

The Bears' Way

The Bears went into this season intent on improving their offensive line, which explains their pick in the second round of the 2021 draft. Only their pick had back problems in college and missed training camp because he needed surgery. Wait, there’s more. He saw his first meaningful action of the season Sunday night in Green Bay. How did the rookie do? Not so good, judging by the four penalties called against him. I’m not naming names because that would be cruel and unnecessary. No athlete wants health issues, and the health issues explain the poor performance, at least in part. What matters here is this is how the Bears operate. They target players other teams hold back on, and get burned in the process. Think Mitch Trubisky, Kevin White… And now the media, trained to devote attention to the Munsters 24/7-365, are finally getting around to quoting head coach Matt Nagy at length. How to put this? With Nagy, less is always better. Four seasons in, and all he does is talk rah-rah. What to do? The first inclination is to say blow the whole thing up, but do you trust the McCaskeys to know how to light the fuse, let alone buy the right dynamite? I don’t.

Roland Hemond

In all probability, the White Sox can still call Chicago home because of the work of two of its general managers, Frank Lane (1949-1955) and Roland Hemond (1970-1985). Lane engineered the Go-Go Sox, Hemond helped keep the Sox from going to Milwaukee or Seattle. According to his SABR biography Lane moved some 690 players in just over 400 deals. For the Sox, he acquired Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox, Minnie Minoso, Billy Pierce and Sherm Lollar. That’s three HOFers, if you’re counting, and one HOFer in waiting. Lane fueled a first-division resurgence for the Sox that stretched from 1951-1967. One of his successors, Ed Short, drafted a bunch of players Hemond would put to good use. That group included Bucky Dent, Brian Downing, Terry Forster and Goose Gossage. Hemond traded for Dick Allen, a move that revied the franchise for several seasons in the early ’70s. By the time Bill Veeck reacquired the team in 1976, the Sox were operating on a frayed shoestring Veeck did little if anything to improve upon. So, Hemond was forced to trade away young talent rather than lose it via free agency. The thing of it is, with the exception of shipping off Forster and Gossage to the Pirates for Richie Zisk, Hemond got young talent in return. Bucky Dent netted LaMarr Hoyt as well as Oscar Gamble (who teamed with Zisk to form the foundation of the South Side Hitmen of 1977 fame) while Brian Downing brought Richard Dotson in return. After Jerry Reinsdorf led a group that bought the team from Veeck in 1981, Hemond had money to work with. This allowed him to buy Greg Luzinski from the Phillies and sign Carlton Fisk as a free agent; Luzinski and Fisk would form the heart and soul of the 1983 division winners. Hemond also had a way of identifying players undervalued by other teams. Think Scott Fletcher, Rudy Law and Vance Law, among others. In addition, Hemond also had a knack for finding value in the scrap heap. He signed Eric Soderholm (later traded for Ed Farmer) and Ron Kittle as free agents, as in nobody else wanted them, while acquiring the likes of Jim Kaat and Tom Seaver. Did I mention that Hemond hired Tony LaRussa in 1979 to manage the Sox? Jerry Reinsdorf is on record as saying his biggest mistake was firing LaRussa. No, it wasn’t. His biggest mistake (outside of razing Comiskey Park) was firing Hemond, only to replace him with Hawk Harrelson as general manager. Talk about your classic brain cramp. Hemond died Sunday at age 92. I wasn’t even a glimmer in my parents’ eyes when Frank Lane was hired, an incoming college freshman when Hemond and Chuck Tanner both went to work on the South Side. Time flies. How I wish it didn’t.

Appearances

Ditching his visor for a watch cap, Matt Nagy sure looked like a football coach on the sidelines for the Bears in Green Bay, just like the Munsters looked like a team, for half a game, at least. Amazing, though, how a 27-21 lead at halftime turned into a 45-30 loss. How Bears. And Nagy, who went into high gibber mode after the game. “That first half, when you coach and you play that first half the way we did, that’s what it’s all about. That’s why we do what we do.” Need more? OK, try, “When these guys play like that, that’s why we do it.” (Nagy quoted in today’s The Athletic) Like when like that, Coach? The first half or the second half? I’m just a casual fan, but it seems to me that a coaching staff is dedicated to winning games, not half a game.

Buzz Before the Slaughter

The Bears’ record presently stands at 4-8, which comes out to a .333 winning percentage for all you math whizzes out there. If the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs or White Sox played seventy percent of their season winning at a .333 clip, you’d need an electron microscope to locate the coverage. In the bizarro world of Chicago sports, with the Munsters, it’s wins be damned, full coverage ahead. Yesterday, the Sun-Times devoted 12-1/2 pages of its expanded “Sports Saturday” section to the likely beatdown the Bears will likely receive from Aaron Rodgers and the Packers tonight in Green Bay, on national television, no less. Meanwhile, the Tribune devoted two full pages today to a “Matt Nagy Timeline” in today’s paper. Can’t read? Well, turn on the TV or radio for you share of Bears’ coverage. Gluttons for punishment welcome. I heard rookie quarterback Justin Fields say he likes being the underdog, in which case he’s definitely playing for the right team. My guess is the first play from scrimmage for the visitors will be a bubble-screen right, and it’ll all go down from there. Of course, Fields, Nagy and company could prove me wrong and do that “band of brothers” thing Nagy is always alluding to. But I doubt it.

GIfts

The Princess, aka my daughter, says she can’t wear wool because it irritates her delicate skin. So, off we went to the mall this morning to exchange all the wool and shop for other things. I liked it better when I ran otu to Sports Authority and picked up some batting gloves for her. Speaking of gifts, I was probably lucky to buy that negative of Minnie Minoso when I did back in November; now, everything Minoso comes with a HOF surcharge attached. I gave the negative to said Princess, who will have it developed into an 8”x”10” for me. It’s a head shot of Minoso striking for its introspection. This is the ballplayer caught in an unguarded moment. I have a baseball with Minoso’s autograph on it, right next to one from Luke Appling, with Walt Williams’ and Billy Pierce’s to the left of “Luke.” Hoyt Wilhelm, Luis Aparicio and Moose Skowron all share a panel of their own; as ever Bill Veeck is off by himself. I need to get Paul Konerko’s someday. What a gift that would be.

Context

Sometimes, the ballpark made the player. Think Babe Ruth and Yankee Stadium or Wally Moon and the Coliseum. Other times, the ballpark provided context signaling city, team and player. Think anyone at Wrigley Field. Think anyone at Comiskey Park, but, most of all, think Minnie Minoso. The connection between player and ballpark was made obvious again this week with all those clips showing what made Minoso a fan favorite on the South Side. With No. 9 in home pinstripes, he could only be hitting, running, sliding in the confines of the Baseball Palace of the World. The arches, church-window like in form, showed the world that here was a green cathedral, as Philip Lowry would have it. This week, somebody on eBay sold a snapshot of Ruth batting at Comiskey Park in July of 1925. You can tell it’s Ruth from the silhouette, the ballpark from the arches in the background. According to the seller, Ruth was about to hit a homerun. He did it often enough in Chicago that Charles Comiskey expanded the park for the 1927 season by extending the upper deck around the entire perimeter. If Comiskey couldn’t assemble a Murderers’ Row of his own, he could let Sox fans watch the Bronx version when it came to town. Two weeks ago, the Sox assembled a kind of memorial to Minoso—in the parking lot the site of Minoso’s ballpark. There were no arches to provide a familiar backdrop, just plenty of asphalt.

Figures and Figurers

Jayson Stark argued in Monday’s The Athletic that Dick Allen belongs in the Hall of Fame (Golden Days Era committee members thought otherwise) because, well, because Edgar Martinez got in with stats that Stark believes in. And what are those? Why, OPS+ and wRC+, of course. For you dinosaurs out there, that’s on-base and slugging percentages adjusted to the player’s home ballpark along with weighted runs created adjusted for important (and who gets to decide what’s important?) external factors. So, Martinez, so good a third baseman he spent most of his career DHing, got into Cooperstown not on account of World Series Rings (zero), 3,000 hits (2247) or 500 homeruns (309). No, he was a career .312 hitter with great OPS+ and wRC+ numbers. Stark is fine with that. I’m not. Oh, and you have to look at Allen’s most productive years, that being the period from 1964 to 1974. If you do that, he has a better OPS+ than Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey and Frank Robinson, and a better wRC+ than those three. And who would you rather have on your team? According to baseball-reference.com, Allen also has a higher OPS+ than Joe DiMaggio. How interesting. Allen managed 100-plus RBIs only three times in his career; DiMaggio did it nine times. But shame on me for not using the “modern metrics” Stark cites to show what a “historically special force” Allen was. Yeah, right. I keep thinking of a comment made about Ginger Rogers, how she did everything her dance partner Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. To me, that’s Minnie Minoso paired with Jackie Robinson, breaking a barrier without the benefit of his own culture or language. Now, compare Minoso’s “old” stats to Allen’s. That’s a Hall of Famer. For my money, so are Maury Wills and Billy Pierce, both passed over by the Golden Days Era Committee. But not Dick Allen.

Gibber

I had a teaching assistant who came up to me after class one day and said, “You shouldn’t use weasel words.” She was right. We should all say what we mean and mean what we say. That’s impossible with Bears’ coach Matt Nagy, unless he means the gibberish that pours out of his mouth. I think he does, which is bad enough. I also think it was the very quality of his gibber that attracted the McCaskeys in the first place, and that’s so much worse. Nagy spouts nonsense virtually every time he steps to the podium. Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals was no different. Here’s Nagy in yesterday’s Sun-Times on his quarterback throwing four interceptions: “There’s no stat in the NFL for interceptions that occur that aren’t on the quarterback, but there probably should be.” Why “probably”? There should be or there shouldn’t. And let’s say there was. Then you’re merely shifting blame to ham-handed receivers. Either way, it’s your team that’s screwing up, Coach. Or how about this gem (also in the Times): “Four turnovers are going to hurt. Our guys know that, and they care.” Where do you even start? Lastly, this “Knute Rockne minus the winning” declaration, as reported in yesterday’s Tribune: “The only thing we can do is keep fighting and sticking together. I know it can sound old. I know it can sound monotonous. I gotcha. But when you’re in these moments, when you’re in that locker room together and you’re fighting together…we’re always going to give it everything that we’ve got. That’s all we can do, no matter who we’re playing.” And if giving it everything you’ve got leads to four interceptions, then what? Nagy wants fans to believe a band of brothers inhabits the Bears’ locker room. He’s incapable of seeing it’s more like a band of Stooges.

Scenes from a Rainy Sunday in Early December

Mass was at eleven, with baptism to follow. Six minutes after kickoff, the Bears were down a touchdown to the visiting Cardinals; the game started at noon. Several stories would note fans at Soldier Field were too wet and miserable to get behind chants of “Fire Nagy!” A little before Leo’s welcome into the faith, I asked a friend to check on the Hall of Fame vote; nothing till night, he answered. I was betting on Minnie Minoso if for no other reason the New York Times had done a story on him not long ago. Clare booked a room in Forest Park for a post-christening brunch. The Bears kept falling further and further behind; four interceptions from your quarterback will do that. The food was good, and dessert, too. As ever, my daughter insisted on taking a picture of the cake before allowing it to be cut. Her son will learn this is a thing with his mother. We got home, I read the papers. Around seven, Clare texted that Minoso had gotten in. So did Jim Kaat. Miracles never cease.

Picking Sides

So, MLB owners have engaged in what Commissioner Rob Manfred calls a “defensive lockout” of players because people “need pressure sometimes to get to an agreement.” Didn’t Marlon Brando say something along those lines in “The Godfather”? A few random observations, if you will, starting with MLB.com—good to know the site is a conduit for ownership and nothing more. It posts a letter to fans from Manfred but none from the other side. Did anybody think to ask? And the FAQ on negotiations starts with, “Simply put, we believe that an offseason lockout is the best mechanism to protect the 2022 Championship Season.” Using the first person pretty much destroys the illusion of objectivity, guys. And I don’t want either side invoking “the fans.” As if the two of you care. Nobody in baseball called to check on me when I came down with COVID-19 last December or had a colonoscopy in June. I’m pretty sure that if there isn’t a “Make A Wish” photo opportunity, neither teams nor players can be bothered to give a damn’. Hey, guys, when, if ever, will the cost of a game be on the agenda? But neutrality is a tricky business, as Woodrow Wilson learned long ago. Manfred says he’s concerned about maintaining competitive balance; yes, it would be a bad thing if the small- and medium-market teams vanished. But do the owners really think the players want that to happen? Really, really believe it? In that case, they’ll have little choice but to continue the lockout until they break the players’ union. Good luck with that. Here's my thing. Jerry Reinsdorf led a group that bought the White Sox for $20 million in 1981. Today, Forbes puts the value of the team at $1.68 billion, not bad for a team that’s won all of one World Series in forty years under current ownership. What exactly has Reinsdorf done to increase his team’s value? Sign Carlton Fisk? But didn’t he also collude to keep Fisk’s salary down? The owners want a salary cap by whatever means possible using whatever euphemisms they can get away with. The players should counter by demanding a cap on capitals gains for when teams are sold. Anything over a set amount could go to maintain “competitive balance” just like the owners and their mouthpiece want.

Silly Silly

The looming lockout by MLB owners has led to all sorts of silliness in these parts. For example, I saw the suggestion somewhere that the White Sox move Time Anderson to second base and sign Javy Baez to play short; I’d love to listen in on the conversation between Anderson and whoever got stuck giving him the bad news. And that’s not to be confused with the story pushing for Anderson to be traded to the Yankees. Yup, it was a New York fan site. A lot of people also want the Sox to go after Nick Castellanos, because of all those World Series rings, I guess. And what about the guy I saw on Twitter having second thoughts about shipping off Nick Madrigal to the Cubs? Like I said, it’s silly season out there. Oh, how it pains me to agree with the course of (in)action taken so far by GM Rick Hahn. Barring surprises (and how Hahn loves to pull those on the media), the Sox will either trade for a second baseman and/or right fielder or promote from within. Yes, yes, a million times for option number two. Andrew Vaughn and Gavin Sheets showed great promise as rookies this year. I’d rather see what they can do next season than tie myself to a big contract with Castellanos. Ditto at second base. Danny Mendick is sound defensively, along with the recently resigned Leury Garcia, and there’s a ton of middle infield talent in the minors. You draft players to develop them, right? I’d rather see Hahn gamble on what he’s developed vs. what he could get in a trade, especially if it means losing Vaughn or Sheets. Everyone else in the twitter-verse wants to spend other people’s money, me, I want to hold onto it. Oh, the time will come to spend. But spend the money sewing up Lucas Gioilito and Michael Kopech, not Matt Scherzer or Clayton Kershaw. Develop your own talent, then reward success, that’s my motto. Still got money burning a hole in your pocket? Then overpay Carlos Rodon for two years. Problem(s) solved.

Sowing and Reaping

The chants of “Fire Nagy!” just won’t quit: Bears’ games; Bulls’ games; Blackhawks’ games; and, unfortunately, a suburban high school football game where Nagy’s sons are on the team. Never have the peasants been so aroused to anger. And the Bears’ Eddie Jackson doesn’t like it. The veteran safety has complained “fans have got to understand” booing doesn’t help anything. If only Jackson understood, and I don’t mean fans’ frustration. It’s more than that. The situation in Chicago is the byproduct of pro football being lord of the land, a 24/7 enterprise pretty much in-season and out-. I honestly don’t know how this came to be; I’m a baseball guy, always have been, always will be. But the national pastime got caught and lapped by a 1920s’ upstart. The NFL has fostered an environment where “the team” is everything. If the commercials are to be believed, wearing the team’s merchandise is an act of faith, and I do mean faith. As strange as that may be to someone like me, it’s no weirder than televising the annual NFL combine or the draft. Maybe other teams invite fans down to the field during training camp, aka Family Fest; whether or not they do, it’s taken on a meaning akin to that kid sharing his Coke with Mean Joe Greene. The very fact that people still remember an ad over thirty years old speaks volumes and kind of explains it all. No other Chicago team has engendered the passion the Munsters have since at least Super Bowl XX in 1986, and maybe long before that; I didn’t always pay attention to that sort of thing. I do now, just like Bears’ fans finally care about performance over promise. At the beginning of the season, McDonald’s was running commercials featuring Nagy delivering a pep talk to employees. Other seasons, and this was par for the course. This year, finally, things have changed. The ad’s disappeared, and fans aren’t putting up with Halas Hall crap anymore. That’s what Eddie Jackson and the other Bears’ players need to understand