A Rock and a Hard Place

Bulls’ front-office honcho Arturas Karnisovas has constructed himself a team that keeps beating the best while losing to the worst in the NBA. No easy feat that. Consider that the Bulls have two victories apiece against the Bucks, Celtics and Heat, the three conference leaders in the East. But let the Houston Rockets come to town, like they did Monday night, and it’s a case of how low can they go? Unfortunately, there are more bad teams than good ones in the NBA, which could explain the Bulls’ 15-19 record. They added their latest victory on Wednesday against the visiting Bucks. As he has since arriving here as a sign-and-trade last season, DeMar DeRozan donned his Superman cape, scoring 42 points in a 119-113 overtime win against Giannis Antetokuonmpo and Grayson “What a Punk” Allen. Enter the rock and the hard place. The Bulls are not a particularly young team or good team. At age 33, DeRozan stands out by far as the best player (shame on you, Zach LaVine). DeRozan was taken with the ninth pick in the 2009 draft. Oh, if only the Bulls had traded up to get him, rather than be satisfied with the likes of James Johnson with the number sixteen pick. Better late than never, I guess. Here's the thing. Take away DeRozan, and what do the Bulls have? LaVine? Nikola Vucevic? Trust me, no team will be beating a path to Karnisovas’ door at the trading deadline for either of those two. But how much would a contending team be willing to offer for a 33-year old forward? Right now, the Bulls are better off winning with DeRozan than going the draft-pick(s) route. Rock and a hard place, for sure.

SOP

My daughter the baseball snoop called last night to ask, “Did you hear about White Sox tickets for next season?” This not being the central focus of my existence, I answered in the negative. According to Clare, it looks as if the lower-bowl seats we like will be going up in price, not because of a general price hike—after a 81-81 season, I would hope not—but on account of a new grouping of various sections. Sound confusing? I thought so. Apparently, people on social media are passing around a map with the new groupings. For argument’s sake, let’s say the Sox have no intention of a general price hike. Fine, then it would behoove them to address rumors to the contrary. Only what do we get on the team website? Stuff about fan predictions (nothing on ticket pricing) and inbox answers from the team reporter (again, nothing ticket related). This is standard operating procedure for the team—absolute silence until they decide otherwise, fallout be damned. I’d say something about cutting off a nose to spite a face, but, knowing SOP, I don’t have to.

Gifts

I received not one but two White Sox team autographed balls for Christmas, 1970 and 1980. Talk about happy. Anytime I can collect a Walt Williams’ autograph is cause for celebration. Mission accomplished, 1970. Throw in Luke Appling (coach) with Luis Aparicio and Bart Johnson, well, it’s a very merry Christmas. Did I mention John Matias? I’m looking to mark my life, at least in part, with autographed baseballs this way. In this case, high school graduation and marriage. I can hear the wedding bells ring by reading off the names of Mike Proly; Leo Sutherland; Ed Farmer; and Todd Cruz. We’re living in the apartment again, and… I’m also toying with the idea of doing a family tree with autographed balls, starting with my parents marriage in 1939 (Think Appling and Ted Lyons). My sisters Barb and Betty were born in 1942 and ’46, respectively, so that means more Appling and Lyons, with maybe Dario Lodgiani and Hal Trosky. Clare will mean Frank Thomas and….

Calling Dr. Boras, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine

Well, this is interesting. Scott Boras is having problems bluffing his way into a big contract for client Carlos Correa with the Mets after they became the second team to balk at formalizing a deal over worries about Correa’s health. And here I thought the problem concerned his back. But, No, what first caught the Giants’ attention and now the Mets’ is a right fibula that required surgery back in 2014. Me, that would be two reasons to walk away. Correa played 136 games last season, down from 148 in 2021. That’s in addition to the 109 games he played in 2017; 110 games in 2018; and 75 in 2019. My sense is that most of those games lost involve Correa’s back. Caveat emptor. Last week, Boras said, “There is no medical issue with Carlos,” as in “none.” He would know. Right?

Relevance

As the parent of an athlete, I was always struck by the casual cruelty embedded in sports. Teammates and opponents mocked, players humiliated by coaches blind to their own considerable imperfections. So, the notion of “Mr. Irrelevant” in football doesn’t exactly surprise me. The term refers to the last player taken in the NFL draft. This year, the title fell on quarterback Brock Purdy, drafted by the 49ers out of Iowa State. (What are undrafted free agents who get signed called? Lucky, I guess.) At best, Purdy was expected to be a third-string quarterback. Instead, injuries have forced him onto the field, and a good thing for the 49ers. In his last four games, three of them starts, Purdy has thrown eight touchdown passes against two interceptions. San Francisco has won all four of those games, the second half of an eight-game winning streak. Some teams can fall out of bed and find a quarterback. Then, there are the Bears. Go, Brock, go. If you ever need a walkup song, consider “Cruel to be Kind.”

Not Interested

I can’t seem to stop talking about the Mets. Now, they’ve scooped up Danny Mendick to go with Justin Verlander and Carlos Correa. Good for them. Stupid, as usual, for the White Sox. A team rooted in the South Side takes pride, or should, in its blue collar heritage. Sox fans prefer grind to flash, hustle to pimping. Mendick fit the bill perfectly. Naturally, he’s gone. Dollars to donuts that at some pint next season he rates a story in the NYT focusing on his style of play and noting how he’s come back from an ACL injury. Mets fans will love him just as much as Sox fans did. The Mets’ front office will value him where Rick Hahn didn’t.

Caveat Emptor

A few years from now, the San Francisco Giants will either be padding themselves on the back or kicking themselves elsewhere for nixing a thirteen-year, $350 million deal with shortstop Carlos Correa. I’m available, guys. The Giants were scared off by an unspecified medical issue that came up during Correa’s physical. Agent Scott Boras claims his client is fine; really, the Soviets could’ve used Boras’ power of spin back in the days of Andropov and Chernenko. Nothing to see, comrades, move along. The Mets, though, look to be buying, at a year and $35 million less than the Giants, provided Correa can pass a physical, to be conducted by Dr. Boras, no doubt. If Correa signs with New York, Mets’ owner Steve Cohen would have himself a team payroll in the neighborhood of $394 million, plus another $120 million for the baseball luxury tax, according to the Associated Press. It’s always nice to have a little spending money on hand, isn’t it? Again, the temptation is to call for a salary cap, and, again, the question becomes, to whose benefit? Cohen is sticking it to his fellow owners, none of whom needs a tag day. If Cohen really wants to set the sporting world on its collective head, he could underwrite ticket and concession prices at Citi Field. Winning baseball within reach of the average fan—the horror. It's Christmas. I can dream.

And Now For Some Discouraging Words

With a record of 12-18, the Bulls basically suck, and star guard Zach LaVine says it has nothing to do with his signing a $215 million contract in the offseason. Yes, it does. Reports are that LaVine’s lack of defensive effort this season led to a locker room incident Sunday at halftime of the Bulls’150-126 loss to the Timberwolves; nothing like giving up seventy-one points in the first half to get tempers flaring. Basically, the problem has taken on Gertrude Stein proportions—there is no there to LaVine’s defense. This is who he is and always was. The blame lies with the front office for thinking a big contract would somehow transform LaVine into a latter-day Norm Van Lier. Alas, Stormin’ Norman has left this mortal plane, but anyone who saw him play could tell you Zach Lavine is no Norm Van Lier. Shame on Arturas Karnisovas and his staff for deluding themselves otherwise. Have Karnisovas and Kenny Williams ever been spotted in the same room together? I wonder, because the current Bulls’ front office sure operates like the old White Sox front office under Williams did—here a trade, there a free-agent signing (though never of a true star), a general disdain for young players. You pray for lightning in a bottle—2005—while enduring all the other years. Karnisovas getting DeMar DeRozan is Williams signing Jermaine Dye, the stopped clock getting it right for once. Getting Nikola Vucevic is more along the lines of Adam Dunn. Lonzo Ball? Jeff Peavey with a different body part injured. To make things worse, Karnisovas and team gm Marc Eversley have borrowed a page out of Ryan Pace’s playbook. They don’t do media. Great, another team in Chicago that treats its fans as 21st century peasants. I could be wrong, but the unwashed seem to be getting plenty tired of it.

A Few Kind Words

The last Chicago Bears’ player to impress me as much as quarterback Justin Fields? Alex Brown and Charles “Peanut” Tillman, maybe, for being thoughtful and willing to address the media, no matter the final score of the game that day. But Brown and Tillman were defenders, willing to inflict pain on the opponents in order to stop them. I’m at that point in life where squirrels refer to me as “The Human Who Slows Down to Give Us a Chance to Cross the Street.” Giving or receiving pain is something I want to avoid whenever possible. Which brings me back to Fields. Oh, he can dish out the pain, but it’s more in the form of embarrassment and humiliation at escaping capture. Think Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, only Fields is Bugs with a considerably bigger vocabulary, Doc. Like Brown and Tillman, he faces the media, regardless. Unfortunately, these days it’s almost always after a loss. I liked Fields from the moment he skipped out on celebrating being drafted so he could start familiarizing himself with the Bears’ playbook. Granted, it hasn’t changed since being copied off that cave wall in France, but Fields showed he was serious about success. See Cade McNown for the total opposite. The Bears stink right now, losing seven in a row and counting, but their quarterback has been a revelation with his arm a well as his feet. The Bears’ Way is to treat the forward pass as heresy against George Halas, so to see Fields with fifteen touchdown passes is impressive, doubly so given that he has no wide receivers to speak of. And the running. A thousand yards with eight touchdowns. The man jukes, he slithers, he sidesteps, whatever it takes to gain yardage. I keep thinking Fran Tarkenton, only Tarkenton never rushed for more than 376 yards in a season. But the comparison holds in that Tarkenton, like Fields is now, played for some awful Minnesota teams early in his career. In time, the Vikings and Giants and then the Vikings again learned how to protect their most valuable asset. With luck, lots and lots of luck because we’re talking the McCaskeys here, the Bears will start doing the same, and fast. Because, once they do, Sunday afternoons in autumn could get really interesting around here.

What’s Next? Who?

The White Sox signed Andrew Benintendi on Friday, the Cubs turn around and sign free-agent shortstop Dansby Swanson yesterday. My point? Benintendi represents the biggest free-agent contract in Sox history, at $75 million and five years while the Cubs inked Swanson for $177 million at seven years. Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? Two teams in the same city, both with deep-pocketed owners, but only one ever shells out the big bucks. Who knows, maybe you can take it with you. If not, I’ll just note here that the team playing in the 100-year-old-plus ballpark, not the ball-mall, is the one willing to go big. But, if you’re a Sox fan, you accept that your team operates from a belief in scarcity economics and move on. Which brings us to the next question: Who’s on second? Right now, we’re just this side of Lou Costello saying, “What,” to which Bud Abbott and the rest of us would be tempted to respond, “I don’t know.” Here’s my guess. Gavin Sheets and/or Jake Burger goes to San Diego in return for either Jake Croneworth or Ha-Seong Kim. I want to think Romy Gonzalez or Lenyn Sosa could step up. Only I don’t know. Who?

A Cup of Misdirection, with a Pinch of “In Your Face”

Oh, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn must be ever so proud of himself; I’m sure the entire organization feels the same. Just weeks after Hahn said the Sox most likely would try to improve themselves via trade rather than free agency, he signs Andrew Benintendi to the biggest contract in team history. The twenty-eight year old left-handed hitting Benintendi will be patrolling left field on the South Side for the next five years at a cost of $75 million. Caveat #1: There’s the threat of damaged goods here. Benintendi suffered a broken hamate bone in his right hand when playing for the Yankees in September. If lightning doesn’t strike twice, forget about what short-circuited Gordon Beckham’s career. Otherwise, keep that in mind come spring training. Caveat #2: Benintendi may or may not be vaccinated for COVID. The best I can find is that he wasn’t, as of August 7th. So, expect questions come spring training. From what I gather, Canada is no longer requiring visitors be vaccinated, which means the question is moot, sort of. It’ll be interesting, though, to see how Benintendi handles the media when they come a-calling. Keeping the caveats in mind, this looks to be a good signing. In essence, the Sox trade A.J. Pollock for Benintendi, who’s close to seven years younger. Pollock has 1010 career hits to Benintendi’s 778. Provided Benintendi’s not injured or a jerk, I approve. But one last thought here—why do the White Sox insist on operating in secrecy? Since when did fans and sportswriters become the enemy, to be kept in the dark about things for as long as possible? Oh, right, sometime after Bill Veeck sold the team.

Second Thoughts?

The free-agent contracts going to pitchers this offseason would drive any decent, rational baseball owner in the direction of a hard salary cap. Too bad owners are anything but decent or rational. Examples of the former I’ll leave to your imagination. As to the latter, you gotta be nuts to sign Jacob deGrom to a five-year, $185 million deal ($37 million a year) or Carlos Rodon to six years at $162 million ($27 million a year). But the Rangers and Yankees, respectively, look to be nuts. Consider that deGrom, who’ll turn thirty-five next June, is eighteen games short of a hundred career wins. Or that the now thirty-year old Rodon is forty-four games short of the century mark. Paying them to be like Justin Verlander won’t turn them into Verlander, who at least can claim the $86.6 he’ll be earning over the next two years ($43.3 million a season) is an accurate reflection of the 244 career wins he has under his belt. So, a salary cap a la football or basketball? If you could argue that it’d benefit fans, I might be interested. But the NBA has a cap, and ticket prices are even worse than baseball’s. I doubt the cost of a beer or a hot dog costs less at the United Center than at Guaranteed Rate Whatever. Would the cost of my cable bill go down with a hard cap? Or would the Marquee Network continue to be the leech on my wallet it has been over the past three years or so? The only thing a cap would accomplish would be to put more money in the owners’ pockets. As I like to say, if no cap on an owner’s profits, then no cap on a player’s salary. But, Yes, danger lurks down the path baseball is headed. At some point, the cost of a brat and a beer, along with a ticket, will cause a sport to collapse, and it may not even be baseball first. According to fatherly.com, the average cost of attending a game for a family of four—back in 2016, mind you—was $502.84 for the NFL, $339.02 for the NBA and $219.53 for MLB. How much do you think those figures have gone up over the past six years? Hard salary cap or soft luxury tax, fans are going to pay to follow their favorite team(s). They just don’t need to be as dumb as the Rangers and Yankees going about it.

No Place for Old Men

Move over, Luke Appling. You’re going to have company as an old man/shortstop. At least you will if the trio of free-agent shortstops make it to age forty playing that most demanding of positions. Trea Turner, now of the Phillies, will be forty when his contract reaches its final year while new-Padre Xander Bogaerts will be forty-one. Carlos Correa will be forty or forty-one, depending if his new team the Giants are in the playoffs, when his thirteen-year contract ends in 2035. Bryce Harper will be thirty-eight at the end of his deal with the Phillies, thirty-nine if they reach the playoffs. What are the odds of him playing the field past the age of thirty-five or thirty-six? What happens if Turner declines quicker? Who’ll DH? Just imagine Harper in the outfield at age thirty-eight with Turner, eight months younger, manning short. Gosh, I wonder if either one could end up at first base. Luis Aparicio won a Gold Glove at age thirty-six, Ozzie Smith at age thirty-seven. Will Bogaerts, Correa or Turner come close? We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. Aaron Judge’s contract with the Yankees pays him through age thirty-nine. My, but the All-Star Game is likely to have a lot of highly paid DHs towards the end of the next decade. Good to know I won’t be the only geezer around, if we’re all lucky.

On a Gray Day

On a December day given over to cold and drizzle, I’m tempted to think the internet would’ve altered the fate of Comiskey Park. As it is, there are numerous tweets of photos and video clips showing the park at is boisterous best. Just the other day, I read an online interview with organist Nancy Faust. Na Na Hey Hey. I imagine a social media campaign that could’ve overwhelmed the kneejerk desire for a ball mall. Tweet followed by TikTok followed by petition followed by whatever a good imagination could come up with. And all of it to be repeated, day after day until the powers that be wilted. On a December day given over to cold and drizzle, I tend to dream. Behind me on the wall are a group of pictures I took during the 1990 season—Carlton Fisk crouching behind the plate, Fisk and Ivan Calderon trying to dig in against Randy Johnson. In some ways, my favorite is the one showing four steps off the main concourse; nothing more separated the fan from a glimpse of the field up close. I want to say it took something in the neighborhood of twenty paces to go from the entrance to that top step. From 35th Street to a green cathedral. On a December day so wrapped in cold and drizzle, I find myself mixing memories with dreams of what might have been.

A Reckoning, Someday

Today, Trib columnist Paul Sullivan put the Mets’ payroll at $349 million, plus a luxury tax of $70 million. This led me to wonder, what would (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) Hegel think or do? Why, he’d employ the Hegelian dialectic, which holds that thesis meeting antithesis leads to synthesis. Put another way, the Mets spend all that money, something’s got to give in the world of baseball. All those owners who will not or cannot spend like the Mets’ Steve Cohen are going to react. There will be a new normal in baseball. Only it won’t be as simple as A+B=C. Better to expect the unexpected. Cohen is placing a $400-million-plus bet that he can win a World Series or two or three. His spending on free agents drives up the price tag on other free agents. In some indirect way I can grasp, kind of, what Justin Verlander and Trea Turner pull down will affect arbitration awards for younger players. Again, the price of stadium hot dogs will go up. But for how long and how much? And what if the economy tanks? A new version of Jerry Reinsdorf, very hawkish when it comes to players, buys a team and rallies the owners or takes over from Rob Manfred? Some or all of these factors will change the economic landscape of the national pastime. As long as I can listen to games on the radio for free, that’s fine by me. Baseball will keep going. In exactly what form is a question I don’t have an answer for. I do know, though, it will all be very Hegelian.

Is This Anything?

With the winter meetings over, baseball news in these parts will disappear until the middle of next month, when the Cubs hold their fan convention. There’s also the possibility of a White Sox trade out of the blue, which is how Rick Hahn likes to do things. (Prediction here: Gavin Sheets to the Padres for a second baseman.) Otherwise, nothing. So, I now have time to consider the story of Olivia Pichardo, the first female baseball player to make an NCAA D-I team; Pichardo made the Brown University Brown Bears as a walk-on this fall. From what I saw, she has a nice left-handed stance. Clare probably stopped playing baseball around the time Pichardo was born. In all that time, no female baseball player has managed what Picardo’s done. To me, this means Clare would’ve face a whole lot of heartbreak trying to be Olivia Picardo. Too soon, my child, too soon. Knowing my daughter, I think she’ll be checking to see how Pichardo fares, come spring. As hard as walking on can be, getting playing time is harder still. A young mother watches a young ballplayer. Somehow, this will affect my grandson. Will Pichardo produce the first crack in baseball’s grass ceiling? Time, which moves both achingly slow and whiplash fast, will tell.

Broken Record

There goes Rick Morrissey of the Sun-Times, again, complaining about how the White Sox and Cubs don’t spend the necessary big bucks. I have to start clipping these columns to see if they ever change. Here’s Morrissey in his column today: “Neither team has ever committed to spending big money year after year, the way the Yankees and Dodgers have. That’s a sin, given that Chicago is the third-largest city in the country and given what the Cubs and Sox have put their fans through historically.” Last time I checked, sloth is a sin, too. Morrissey is too lazy to say how the big bucks could be spent, intelligently. Because that’s not something the Yankees are known for. The Dodgers are a different story. Here’s how you can tell. Name a young Yankees’ player you’d want. I can’t. Now, how about a young Dodger or two? Let’s see. Id’ go with starters Walker Buehler and Julio Urias; catcher Will Smith; and infielder Gavin Lux. Oh, and in August MLB.com ranked the Dodgers with the second-best minor-league system in baseball. The Yankees came in at twelfth, and that was probably with a lot of East Coast bias factored in. If Morrissey ever got off his lazy butt, maybe he could tell us what teams spend on player development and scouting. All I know is that the Dodgers develop players; develop prospects they trade (think Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong as part of the deal for Mookie Betts); and exhibit an uncanny ability to identify talented discards from other organizations—Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, Justin Turner. Then, they spend big money—intelligently, I might add—for the likes of Betts and Freddie Freeman. That’s what I want the White Sox to do. Maybe Rick Morrissey does, too, when he can rouse himself to write intelligently about it.

Money, Money, Money

Clare texted just as I were pulling out of the garage to drive Michele to the train: Judge staying with the Yankees. With nine years at a reported $360 million, I would, too. That comes out to $40 million a year, nice money if you can get it. Cody Bellinger, for one, can’t. The former Dodger signed a one-year deal with the Cubs worth $17.5 million, including mutual option and buyout. Back in the old days, we’d call this a “reclamation project.” Bellinger, who won the NL MVP in 2019, hit .165 in 2021 and .210 this season. What struck me about the deal is a comment Tribune beat reporter Meghan Montemurro made today, that the North Siders wouldn’t have signed Bellinger “if the front office and hitting infrastructure didn’t believe he was capable of applying swing and approach changes.” Hitting infrastructure? My God, analytics has trickled down to beat writers. Did the Cubs sign a player or a machine? It’s getting harder and harder to tell.

Color Me Skeptical

Something about free-agent contracts brings out the skeptic in me. If I were king (or an owner), I’d pay young players for performance—the way the Braves, and, to a lesser extent, the White Sox, do—and try to keep them under control for as long as possible. In other words, cash now for performance now, along with a shot at keeping players a season or two beyond arbitration. But I’m not king Justin Verlander for two years at $86.6 million? The Mets know they signed someone who turns forty in February, right? Oh, and Max Scherzer will be thirty-nine come late July. No whistling past the pitchers’ graveyard, there. Or consider Trea Turner, signed to an eleven-year, $300-million deal by the Phillies. Turner turns thirty in June. Will he still be playing shortstop in seven years? How about five? If I remember my Sox history correctly, Luke Appling turned into a statue at short. Between the ages of thirty-nine to forty-two, Appling never hit lower than .301, and management still couldn’t wait get rid of him. I wonder why? Age on the back end of these contracts is going to come back to bite more than a few big-spending teams. When that happens, I want to see the reaction. Right now, Mets’ fans are probably over the moon and couldn’t care less what ticket prices will be over the next decade or so; ditto Phillies’ fans. Guys, you may end up with some very expensive DHs, and that’s if you’re lucky. Either way, people will be paying an arm and a leg to watch these teams. In August, the New York Post calculated what it would cost to keep the current team together. Substitute Verlander for Jacob deGrom, and the projections remain pretty valid, in the neighborhood of $345 million. I want to see the price of a hot dog at Citi Field come Opening Day. Again, I’d pay players for actual performance from day one, but I wouldn’t be shoveling money their way for what they might do come age thirty-five, or thirty-nine or…

Caveat Emptor

Any semblance of sanity in major league baseball has left the room between now and Thursday, the duration of this year’s winter meetings in San Diego. The Rangers want to sign thirty-four year old Jacob deGrom to a five-year, $185 million deal? MLB.com is all a-giggle. Forget that deGrom has only started twenty-six games over the last two seasons or that he’s eighteen games short of hitting 100 career wins. The Rangers are serious, man. Ditto the news on Aaron Judge, that he’s likely to land a nine-year gig, which would make him forty when the deal ended. And where will Judge play in his twilight years, you may ask? It doesn’t matter. [Fill in team’s name here] are serious, man. Lucky for us White Sox fans our team doesn’t go in for this kind of nuttiness. No, we prefer to go searching for Rembrandts at the thrift store. The next Jermaine Dye is just around the corner, opposite Johnny Cueto and…

It Happens, I Know

The Illinois High School Authority (IHSA), the governing body for high school sports in the state, is considering a rule to tighten up on transfers and associated coaching hires. It seems some basketball teams are the product of such transfers. Who knew? We saw as much in softball during Clare’s playing days. One D-I bound pitcher changed schools, not that it bothered my daughter; she hit that pitcher like she owned her. And, then, after Clare graduated and was playing for a travel team for one of her new college coaches, the head coach for the softball powerhouse in our conference came up to her and said, “You should’ve transferred to our district.” Clare underwent baptism by fire as a freshman starter. Was that a good thing? I don’t know, but I doubt she would’ve played as much for that other team as an underclassman. And I doubt she would’ve had the experience necessary to hit that team as well as she did (two doubles and a homerun in one game I remember in particular) as an upperclassman. In other words, I’m happy—and I think Clare was, too—that she spent all four years as a Morton Mustang. But these are different times, my friend, different times.

The Classes Over the Masses

There was a small story, five paragraphs long, in yesterday’s Sun-Times: “Sox to build new outdoor bar at ballpark.” The times we live in. Too bad the story didn’t mention who’s going to pick up the estimated $284,500 tab because it’s doubtful the Sox will. They’re mere renters. Landlords do that sort of stuff in the everyday world, and I’m betting the public stadium authority will be doing the same here. But, unlike the real world, I wouldn’t expect any rent increases. Why, the team might move. What the story did note was the removal of eight rows of seats. The Sox, like most every other team in baseball, doesn’t much care about how many fans come into their park, as long as they’re the right kind, demographically speaking. The deeper pockets, the better. Comiskey Park could hold as many as 52,000 fans; Guaranteed Rate Whatever comes in at 40,615, minus however many seats those lost eight rows will come out to. Ticket prices rise while ballpark capacities shrink. Not how I’d run a team, but nobody’s asking.

Freudian Slip?

Well, this is just what I wanted to hear. New White Sox manager Pedro Grifol has finished picking his coaching staff. Daryl Boston at first base doesn’t count. Boston knows where the organizational skeletons are buried and/or is such a good pal of team v.p. Kenny Williams that he has a job for life. Comiskey Park should’ve had Boston’s clout. What struck me was Grifol referring to the hitting-coach situation as “almost probably a two-and-a-half-headed monster.” By that he means new hitting coach Jose Castro plus assistant hitting coach Chris Johnson plus major-league field coordinator Mike Tosar, who Grifol thinks knows something about hitting. Only Johnson made it to the majors, hitting .275 with 773 hits and 339 RBIs over an eight-year career. How exactly does a 2-1/2 headed monster work? I have my doubts, though Castro was an assistant hitting coach the past eight seasons in Atlanta, and the Braves seem to know how to hit. Maybe he’ll prove to be the exception to the Bukowski Rule that you don’t hire minor leaguers to coach major leaguers to hit or pitch. I hope so.

Now What?

I just finished reading Keith Law in The Athletic If I understand Law correctly, he dislikes Astros’ owner Jim Crane, along with Jose Abreu; Andrew Vaughn; Gavin Sheets; and the White Sox. Really, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. The Astros’ signing of Abreu to a three-year deal seems to have set Law off. If he were a Sox fan, I’d get it, but I have a sneaking suspicion Law couldn’t find 35th and Shields with GPS or Google Maps, even if you paid him. Leave the outrage to the fans involved, Keith. That said, Sox fans may be wondering what’s next. They probably see the logic of letting go of the soon-to-be thirty-six year-old Abreu. If this clears the way for Vaughn and/or Sheets, there shouldn’t be too many complaints. Both players are pretty popular, and fans want to see them do well. Ditto Jake Burger. How many of these three will be on the team after winter meetings next week? We’ll see. The problem is that Sox management has a tendency to do dumb stuff. Pull the plug on the 1994 season when the team is in first place in its division? Make up for that by signing Albert Belle. Let Mark Buehrle walk? Pivot to John Danks and Jake Peavy. Oops. Sign Adam Dunn. Trade for James Shields. Maybe the Sox did light the fire. So, now we wait for what’s next. Why do I feel like Santa put me on his naughty list through no fault of my own?

Same Old Same Old

Reports are the White Sox are about to sign righthander Mike Clevinger to a one-year deal worth somewhere between $8-$12 million. Order your World Series tickets now, folks. Or not. The Sox don’t look to be interested in getting the band back together by signing ex-Sox lefty Carlos Rodon. No, that would mean dealing with agent Scott Boras, and Jerry Reinsdorf can’t bring himself to do that. Better to shop in the bargain basement. If Clevinger has a comeback season after going 7-7 with a 4.33 ERA for San Diego this season, great. If he’s a bust, no big bucks lost, so, great again. This is how the Kansas Citys of the world operate, and the Sox just signed a Royals’ coach to be their next manager. Not necessarily a blueprint for success, but how the Sox do business way too often.

Strategy

I’ve taken to collecting White Sox team autographed baseballs. In fact, I’m toying with the idea of constructing a family tree, with marriages or births marked with a team ball from that particular year. God and lottery willing—1939 will be the starting date—I might just be able to pull this off. I also want a run of balls, 1960-1980, teams from after Comiskey ownership and before Jerry Reinsdorf. This period marks the time from when I first became aware of the game to the peak of my fandom. Marriage and parenthood helped temper things. Anyway, I just got a ball on eBay from 1970, and I’m ecstatic. It’s hard to explain why, exactly. I mean, this is a team that went 56-106, with the third-worst winning percentage (.346) in franchise history. Not worst, mind you, but third-worst. This gives you an idea what it means to be a Sox fan. And, still, I loved this team, enough to want the autograph of someone like Bobby Knoop more than fifty years after the fact. I recently got outbid for a ball from 1991, the year of Clare’s birth, so I went into serious bidding mode. What, exactly, was the most I was willing to spend? An almost surefire way to win an eBay auction is to bet a huge amount on an item. That way, if someone comes in at literally the last second, you won’t get underbid. I’ve never spent more than $500 for an item, and there’ve been plenty of times when I’ve lost out at the last second, like on that 1991 ball. If I’d bid $1000 for something that wasn’t going to sell for close to that, what could possibly go wrong? Going up against someone with the same strategy, that’s what, but only a dollar cheaper. Somebody bids $999 for an item worth $200 and I bid a dollar more, you have yourself one happy seller and one severely burned buyer. No, thank you. So, I set an absolute top price I’d pay, waited for ten seconds left in the auction and bid it. Up until the last minute, only five people had bid on the baseball. I was one of three bidders in the last twenty-eight seconds. Two people guessed low, I won high. Let me note here that my high bid isn’t what shows; the winning price was merely a dollar over what the other guy bid, which was way below as high as I was willing to go. But second place comes away thinking, “I was outbid by a measly buck.” Better them than me. Buddy Bradford and Jerry Janeski, come to Poppa.

Thanksgiving

We used to go to my in-laws for Thanksgiving, then they started coming to us. As of yesterday, we started going to Clare’s. You go with the changes, or get left behind by them. My daughter was pretty much a whirling dervish, so I tried not to get in the way. Her son, on the other hand, insisted on his right to get in everyone’s way, which made for pint-sized chaos this room and that. It wasn’t until dinner and dessert had been served that I asked, “Did you hear about the girl who made the baseball team at Brown?” “Yeah. I just don’t know what to think about it yet.” Olivia Pichardo made the team as a fall walk-on to become the first female baseball player on a Division-I team. I can’t find many stats on her. The hitting and pitching clips I saw are the kind players send to college coaches, which is understandable. But it helps to see the outs and bad pitches to get a full picture of the talent. At one point, Clare and Pichardo were both thirteen-year olds with a choice to make, softball or baseball. Clare chose one, Pichardo the other. Eighteen years ago, there were fewer opportunities for girls in baseball. That now seems to have changed. The child I coached has aged out and finds herself involved in new activities, like getting her fifteen-month old son to throw a ball straight. If Leo picks up a bat, I’m sure his mother will be showing him what to do with it. And, if everything lines up just so, my grandson could know how to hit the ball because the girl I taught taught him.

Silly Season

Forget about Thanksgiving and Christmas, “the holidays,” if you will. Between now and the end of the winter meetings early next month, we’re officially in the silly season of baseball. Allow me these examples: free-agent shortstop Xander Bogaerts to the White Sox (mlb.com); the White Sox signing infielder Jean Segura (ditto); the Sox trading Liam Hendriks, Gavin Sheets, minor-leaguer Yoelqui Cespedes and $10 million to the Blue Jays for catcher Alejandro Kirk (The Athletic). Where do I even start? How about the Sox would never pay what Bogaerts wants? How about all the heavy lifting needed to switch Tim Anderson to second base? How about asking what makes Segura so special? How about respectfully wondering about Kirk’s weight (265 pounds on a 5’8” frame) and arm (a career caught-stealing rate of twenty-two percent)? But, like I said, this is the silly season, so silly in fact that the sage considering the Kirk-to-the-Sox deal thought Toronto wouldn’t be getting enough in return. Happy, silly, holidays, everyone.

Motivation

On Friday, Bulls’ coach Billy Donovan pulled star guard Zach LaVine with 3:43 left in the fourth quarter against the visiting Magic. Why? LaVine shooting 1-for-14 on the night may have had something to do with it. The Bulls being the Bulls, they went on to lose 108-107 on a three-pointer by Jalen Suggs with 4.1 seconds left. Too bad Donovan didn’t sit center Nikola Vucevic while he was at it. That way, Vucevic wouldn’t have been around to miss two free throws ahead of Suggs’ game-winning shot. Vucevic does what he’s supposed to, his team wins and maybe LaVine wouldn’t be so upset. After the game, he made it clear to reporters he wanted to be out there. Last night, against the Eastern-Conference leading Celtics, who were on a nine-game winning streak, he was. LaVine scored twenty-two points with five rebounds and five assists in a Bulls’ 121-107 victory. Advantage…? You tell me. Donovan wants his best players to produce. Game in and game out, he can depend on forward DeMar DdRozan, Vucevic and LaVine not so much. How better to motivate a player than by sending a message? By my count, a certain center needs one, too.

Justin Fields, The Natural

Pardon me for mixing my sports, but Bears’ second-year quarterback Justin Fields keeps reminding me of Robert Redford/Roy Hobbs in “The Natural.” The kid on the football field is like the old guy in the movie in that they both possess a ton of talent. What gets me is all the forces arrayed against Fields’ success, just like in the movie. Yesterday in Atlanta, Bears’ offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and head coach Matt Eberflus both did spot-on imitations of Harriet Bird. Or was it Max Mercy, or the Judge, or Gus Sands (somebody explain to me again why Darren McGavin went uncredited for what has to be the best role of his life)? Any or all of them desperately want Hobbs out of commission, if not dead. Getsy and Eberflus would be different how, exactly? They are literally running their young star into the ground. Preparing for the Falcons’ game, Fields said his legs were feeling heavy. No matter. He ran the ball eighteen times, one more than running back David Montgomery. Was calling a run with 1:38 left in the game and the Munsters down by three just dumb, or were Getsy and Eberflus doing their best Gus Sands? I can see one or more of the McCaskey clan conniving a la The Judge (thank you, Robert Prosky, for personifying oleaginous evil, happiest in dark places). They don’t want Fields dead. No, they just want to monetize him for the benefit of the family fortune, holy be the name of Halas. The Judge knew enough baseball to understand talent along with its limits. If only the McCaskeys were near as smart. They and their coaching staff seem to think they can run their best player again and again, game after game, without consequences. But life ain’t Hollywood. There’ll be no happy endings here if the Munsters don’t figure out—and fast—the best way to use Justin Fields.

Dollars and Sense

Clare called last night to say, “I have bad news for you.” And what, pray tell, would that be? “The White Sox non-tendered Adam Engel and Danny Mendick.” Clare is at that point in her life where she’s the same age as certain players. That would include Engel (she’s three weeks older) and Mendick, sort of (two years and two months older). For me, it was Brian Downing and Jim Morrison. Maybe it’s a family thing. General manager Rick Hahn released a statement in which he reiterated how “a lot of consideration and analysis” goes into the decision to forego the arbitration process with a player. But, hey, they could come back because Hahn plans to “stay in contact with all three players [also non-tendered was outfielder Mark Payton] and evaluate their ongoing fit with our club as we move forward through this offseason.” Spoken like a true flannel mouth. I root for the underdog. As a White Sox fan, how could I not? Engel came out of nowhere in 2017 to make a name for himself with his glove. If only he were half as talented with his bat. Do the Sox need a lifetime .224 hitter as a fourth or fifth outfielder? No, but it’s a bad look to cut ties with a player who, for six years, has hustled and delighted fans by stealing homeruns from the opposition. Last time I checked, Engel was the one who took the blame for running into that outfield triple play against the Twins in July. Nice way to reward a team player. Ditto Mendick, who embodies the grinder ethic that those of us on the South Side adhere to. Last time I checked, Mendick tore his ACL trying to make a great catch and keep Lucas Giolito in a game. Nice way to reward effort, especially when Hahn mentioned Mendick as part of the mix at second base for next season. Here’s a thought. Maybe if Hahn didn’t throw money after the likes of Dallas Keuchel and Yasmani Grandal, there’d be something left over for players who deserve better. Waste not, want not, Rick.

Reading Between the Lines

Wow. A White Sox story in today’s Tribune, which just happens to draw on the same material as the pice on the team website. Long story short, Royals’ catcher Salvador Perez pretty much loves new Sox manager Pedro Grifol. In the Trib story, Perez mentioned Grifol’s ability to “communicate” while pitcher Dylan Cease said Grifol told him “we were going to be having a lot of communication and building relationships.” Hmm. What about twice ex-manager Tony La Russa? Did he communicate and build relationships with his players? Or did he expect his players to know all the unwritten rules of baseball and intuit their roles based on his facial expressions? I go with door no. 2.

Apples and Oranges, or Not

Dylan Cease of the White Sox finished second in AL Cy Young voting, with Justin Verlander picking up his third award. Good for Cease. Maybe someday he’ll put up stats equal to the Sox pitchers of my youth. On the other hand, he may already have done that, if you believe baseball-reference.com. Cease went 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA; 227 strikeouts vs.78 walks; and a WHIP of 1.109 in 184 innings on the season. Plug those numbers into the magic algorithm, and he comes out with a WAR of 6.4, tops for qualifying starters in the American League. Still, I wonder. Gary Peters went 20-8 with a 2.50 ERA in 273.2 innings for the ’64 Sox, yet the magic algorithm gives him a mere 4.2 WAR. Joel Horlen went 19-7 with a 2.06 ERA in 258 innings for the Hitless Wonders of 1967, one of those wins being a no-hitter against the Tigers. But Horlen merits only a 5.5 WAR. Who was the better pitcher? You tell me. I’ll use WAR to hope Cease can top what Wilbur Wood accomplished in 1971—a won-loss record of 22-13 with a 1.91 ERA in 334 (!) innings. That all comes out to an 11.8 WAR. Hit that mark, Dylan, and the Sox are the going to the World Series.

All Over the Place

First, my daughter called yesterday to say she’d scored Taylor Swift tickets at Soldier Field next June, not to be confused with her scoring a seat in the audience to see Michelle Obama on the Today Show in NYC. Unfortunately, Daddy called dibs on the family jet for Monday, and Clare will have to wait until next month to see the former First Lady, when she comes to the Chicago Theater on her book tour. But I mustn’t be too much the ogre-dad. Clare called a second time—when I was on the phone talking with someone about the upcoming Rule 5 draft—to tell me that ex-White Sox reliever Bobby Jenks was named manager of the year in the Pioneer League. Good for Bobby. There were actually two Rule-5 draft stories in the Trib today, one for each Chicago team. As a baseball fan, I feel blessed. After reading those, I drove out to Half Price Books, the best and worst of places at the same time. I doubt if I got pennies on the dollar for two boxes full of books. The Progressive historian Charles Beard must be worth a lot less than I figured. But I nearly made enough to pay for the Mickey Mantle biography and the account of Jackie Robinson’s 1947 season. I actually know one of the authors. Won’t he be happy to find out his one book is selling, no royalties accrued?

A Sunday in November

I TIVO’d through the Bears’ game yesterday while riding the exercycle. Say this about Justin Fields—he keeps things interesting, as in 147 yards rushing with two touchdowns and another two touchdowns to tight end Cole Kmet. Maybe next time the Munsters won’t lose to Detroit. When you go up by two touchdowns in the third quarter, you’re not supposed to lose, 31-30. Later, we drove to my mother-in-law’s to celebrate her ninety-first birthday; the stories she could tell, though none of them unrelated to her husband involve football. My father-in-law played high school football before playing infantryman on the icy-cold hills of the Korean peninsula. The stories he could tell about either. I was able to handle Ed O’Bradovich and Dan Hampton on the radio for about ten minutes before I had to turn them off. O’Bradovich never changes; he basically wants to shoot anyone not named Ditka. Hampton, at least, thinks Fields is a keeper. Danimal was particularly impressed that, an hour after the game, Fields still hadn’t gotten out of his uniform, he was so upset at losing. Hampton also thinks the best defense is a ball-control offense. Score points while taking your time doing it. How O’Bradovich keeps from having a stroke is beyond me. It’s only a game, Ed. Let me introduce you to a woman who has seen it all in her ninety-one years. She knows what matters in life. What happens on a Sunday afternoon at Soldier Field might not qualify.

Embers in a Hot Stove

I’m a baseball fan, mostly. I don’t expect much from the papers this time of year. If they maintain even a flicker of interest in the hot-stove league, I’m happy. The Sunday Tribune sports made me anything but. It’s not like I’m asking for a page-one story on the Arizona Fall League, but devoting virtually all of page one and four full inside pages to Jon Scheyer defies logic, unless the point is to maximize profit for Trib corporate parent Alden Global Capital. Colonel McCormick spins in his grave. Who is Jon Scheyer? The 35-year old successor to Coach Mike Krzyzewski at Duke by way of Glenbrook North High School. Odds are Scheyer will have no more to do with the Chicago area than Coach K, the pride of St. Helen’s Grade School in Ukrainian Village, did once he established himself at Duke. Unless the Duke basketball program intends to relocate here. Otherwise, a whole lot of trees died for the Tribune sports’ department to save a few bucks by focusing limited resources on one big, blah story. My hot stove grows cold in the process.

Wages

Clare called me yesterday afternoon. “It sounds like you’re in a tunnel,” I said. “I’m on the bus,” she explained. Those days she’s not working from home, my daughter either has to drive or take the train, plus a bus back and forth to the Gold Coast through lower Wacker Drive. See the action movie of choice to get an idea as to what the route is like. She wanted to talk about the Astros parting ways with James Click, their general manager. “Has this ever happened before?” she wanted to know of a team dumping its GM after winning a World Series. The answer is, Yes, at least once, with the Yankees last doing it in 1947, when they axed Larry MacPhail for George Weiss. This is the kind of stuff a father is expected to know. It looks like Clare is drawing on baseball in the same I have on occasion. Thinking baseball will help her get through a twelve-hour day at work today. “These are the wages of family,” I advised, noting that her job makes possible husband, child and home. Baseball is the sugar that makes the medicine go down in a palatable, if not entirely delightful, way. In the fall of 1980, I was six-months married and between careers, out of journalism and into graduate school. Michele was finishing her master’s and unsure of what she should do next. This gives you an idea as to how much times have changed—neither of us had a job, but we weren’t worried (yet) about making the rent. We even had money to go to two ballgames. I remember that the White Sox beat the Mariners in early September and they played the A’s at the beginning of October. I can still recall Mike Davis, a rookie outfielder for Oakland who looked like a god. I was certain he was destined for greatness, more than the 778 hits he amassed over a ten-year career. I remember other games, at the ballpark or elsewhere. I remember catching the last inning of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game in 2009 in a Maryland hotel room, my daughter woozy from a bad baserunning accident at first base; for a second, we thought she might’ve broken a vertebra. Dewayne Wise makes the catch! Six months later, we watched a replay of that game on the day we buried my sister Betty, who instilled a love of country-and-western in her niece. Dewayne Wise makes the catch! Something like that could be echoing through Clare’s mind at the end of a long Saturday. I hope so.

The Fickle and the Level-headed

A month ago, Bears’ quarterback Justin Fields couldn’t show his face for fear of being booed off the streets, let alone the playing field. Now, after a string of solid performances, everybody wants to be his friend and advocate. Just turn on the TV; pick up a paper; or hit the appropriate site to see what I mean. So, don’t blame Fields if he’s a little tentative around the media. The ting of it is, he really hasn’t been. When he stinks, he says he stinks, and, when the talking heads on ESPN speak their Valentines, which they did this week, he appears unphased. All twenty-three-year olds should act as mature. One thing, though. Fields can’t afford to have a bad game Sunday against the visiting Lions. In his line of work, Valentines can turn into brickbats as quick as it takes to throw a pick-six.

Herd Mentality

The Cubs have a new hitting coach, again. Greg Brown is out, Dustin Kelly is in. Haven’t heard of either? Don’t worry, you’re not supposed to. The days of the successful ex-MLB player as hitting coach are mostly over. Consider that before Kelly and Brown, there was Anthony Iapoce. Before those three, Chili Davis, the kind of coach I’d hire. Why? Because he had 2380 hits during a nineteen-year career that saw him go to three World Series, that’s why. Assuming, of course, that he could explain the philosophy that allowed him to amass those stats. Kelly will be joined by four assistants. Funny, the last time I checked, there was only one hitter at a time in the batter’s box. According to the story in today’s Tribune, there’ll be a coach responsible for “game planning” along with another taking care of “data development and process.” Team president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer thinks it’s important to “have experts in different areas and not feel like they have to be the final arbiter or the best coach, the best game planner or the best mental guy. That’s really important in becoming more collaborative.” Screw collaboration. Players and teams should want the best coaches in place, period. What the Cubs (and probably the White Sox, as soon as they hire a new hitting coach) are doing is following the trend in baseball to specialization. The hitting specialist will be no different than a medical specialist in that neither had to play baseball to get their job. The only possible silver lining here is that, if playing experience is not necessary for coaching, then women will have a real shot at becoming head and/or assistant hitting coaches. Women who didn’t play baseball telling guys how to hit a baseball, and guys listening? I won’t hold my breath. Neither would Bill Robinson or Chili Davis, I’m sure.

Election Night

This is how election night went at our house, Michele in the living room watching results on CNN, me in the kitchen doing Strat-O-Matic team rosters. Extra bench player or reliever? Clare called right around the time I started work on the 2018 Mariners’ pitching rotation. “Carlos Rodon declined his option with the Giants. What would you do?” Try to sign him, but not for six years. “I thought you’d say that. And did you hear about A.J. Pollock?” Do tell. “He turned down his option for next year,” and I all but shouted, Hurray! Pollock disappointed in his only season on the South Side, hitting .245 with fourteen homeruns and fifty-six RBIs. On top of that, he turns thirty-five in under a month, which suggests he’s running out of gas. Pollock gets a $5 million buyout in exchange for passing on a $13 million salary next year. Good luck trying to top that. Of course, it’s entirely possible Pollock didn’t like the atmosphere in the clubhouse and doubted it would improve much next season. In which case, I can’t say that I blame him. Whatever the reason for his departure, this really is addition through subtraction. The leading candidate to take over for Pollock in the outfield is twenty-four year old rookie Oscar Colas, who bats lefthanded. It looks like Eloy Jimenez will primarily DH while Andrew Vaughn will play first in place of free-agent Jose Abreu, who does not look to be coming back. That in turn opens up another spot in the outfield, for Gavin Sheets or someone else. All this good news comes with a qualifier, however. Rick Hahn traded two young players—reliever Codi Heuer and infielder Nick Madrigal—to the Cubs at the 2021 trade deadline in exchange for closer Craig Kimbrell, who couldn’t dislodge Liam Hendriks as closer and certainly couldn’t transition into a setup role. Hahn then traded Kimbrell to the Dodgers for Pollock at the start of this past season. That leaves us with bupkis. Way to go, Rick.

Not Enough

The NBA thinks voting is so important there are no games scheduled today. The message is, clearly, Get out and vote. The message with Nets’ star Kyrie Irving? There doesn’t seem to be one. Irving, who sort of questions the shape of planet Earth and the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccination, also questions how anyone could think he was an antisemite. In Irving’s flat-earth take on reality, it’s OK to tweet a link to an antisemitic “documentary,” as he did last month. Called out for his action, he sort of apologized, along the lines of “if anyone was offended,” which he can’t see how they would be. Irving released a statement last week stating, “"I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain, and I apologize. I initially reacted out of emotion to being unjustly labeled Anti-Semitic, instead of focusing on the healing process of my Jewish Brothers and Sisters that were hurt from the hateful remarks made in the documentary." Talk about heartfelt. The Nets have suspended Irving while the NBA dithers. According to a story in Sunday’s NYT, LeBron James said that he loves Irving but also believes “what Kyrie did caused some harm to a lot of people.” Ya think? As tepid as James’s remarks were, they were better than those of Irving’s teammate Kevin Durant, who initially told reporters, “I felt like we could have just kept playing basketball and kept quiet as an organization. I just don’t like none of it.” The mind boggles. I watched some of the Bulls-Nets game on Thursday and caught Reggie Miller go after the players for their refusal to speak up and criticize Irving. Miller gets it, as do Charles Barkley, Shaquill O’Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Then again, they all probably believe the Earth is round, too.

That's Entertainment

Entertaining: When was the last time you associated that word with the Bears, in a positive way? Well, the Munsters—quarterback Justin Fields most of all—were downright entertaining in yesterday’s 35-32 loss to the visiting Dolphins. In a regular season game, no NFL quarterback has run more than the 178 yards Fields gained against the Miami defense. He also threw for three touchdowns, two to tight end Cole Kmet. That got me to thinking of a game at Soldier Field on another Sunday afternoon in November a very, very long time ago, when Bobby Douglass connected with Jim Seymour for two touchdowns against the Bills. The Bears scored thirty-one points that game, but won. They could have yesterday, too, if the refs were consistent with their pass-interference calls. Instead, they turned into soup Nazis, giving the call to the Dolphins but not the home team late in the fourth quarter. Bad teams don’t usually get the call. Next week, the Lions come to town. If Fields plays like he did against Miami, the Bears will be the good team. For a change.

Nope

With the Astros beating the Phillies 4-1 last night to clinch the World Series, some people are wondering if this title is clean or it will lead to forgiveness or redemption. Speaking for myself, I can answer a hearty No! on all counts. The 2017 Astros cheated without consequences. If MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred didn’t know what was going on at the time, he should’ve stripped the team of its title once he found out. Instead, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman were allowed to spout gibber that was supposed to pass for an admission of guilt. I’m still waiting for those two to come clean. Ditto Dusty Baker, who finally gets himself a fancy Series’ ring after twenty-five years of trying. Baker wasn’t involved in the 2017 fiasco. No, his claim to notoriety stems from managing Barry Bonds for ten years in San Francisco. PEDs? What PEDs? Dude, do you mean Pez? Can’t wait for the induction speech at Cooperstown.

Reading the Tea Leaves

Clare texted me a video of new White Sox manager Pedro Grifol Facetiming Eloy Jimenez. The conversation was conducted in Spanish, and I’m pretty sure Eloy dropped a few “Sirs” on his part. Talk about an astute move by the Sox. During the two years in his return as manager, Tony La Russa was never recorded speaking to anybody in Spanish, yet here was Grifol on day one doing that with Jimenez, who’s going to have to live up to his potential for the Sox to contend next year. If thjs was just marketing, it was pretty effective. If it was intended to show that team and manager are serious about reaching their players, how sad nobody felt that way the previous two seasons. Yesterday, Grifol was filmed picking up the tab at a local hot dog stand and visiting a grade school, which I assume was also in the neighborhood of 35th and Shields. South Siders take their cuisine pretty seriously, so this was another astute move by the marketing department—look, the new skipper wants a dog with fries (and was probably instructed NOT to ask for ketchup on the dog). I can’t imagine La Russa sharing a hot dog with fans or visiting a school; it wasn’t his style, and, as he pointed out on at least one occasion, he was a HOFer, which conferred special status, or so he hoped. So, the Sox have rediscovered their marketing legs. Have they also found a good manager? Time will tell.

At What Cost?

The White Sox introduced their new manager yesterday, and Pedro Grifol alluded to all the things that have been missing the past two years—playing with passion and energy; being fundamentally sound; and being held accountable. No doubt, White Sox fans—“long suffering” comes with the territory, making that modifier totally unnecessary—couldn’t believe their ears. Here's the thing—every promise Grifol made constituted a rebuke of Tony La Russa and, by extension, the man who hired La Russa. That would be Jerry Reinsdorf, who is not known to be fond of criticism. So, if Grifol was able to say what he did at the news conference yesterday, what did it cost him? How much of his soul or self-respect did he hand over to the team owner? Because, if you want to manage this team, it comes at a cost.

Then and Now

I was too young to know or care about baseball’s first World Series no-hitter, Don Larsen’s perfect game against the Dodgers in 1956. Now, I’m probably too old to care about the second, which happened last night in Philadelphia. The Astros’ Cristian Javier and three relievers shut down the Phillies on no hits and three walks in a 5-0 win. All of Houston’s runs came in the fifth, while I was driving home from a visit with Michele’s mom. We went out to eat, but the restaurant didn’t even bother to put the game on its multiple TVs. I still think Jessica Mendoza would make a good play-by-play announcer. We got home, changed and watched the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions; I didn’t put the game back on until two out in the bottom of the ninth. It was pretty close to 10:30, when people my age are thinking of going to bed. If there were any middle-school baseball fans who watched, I’ll bet they’re dragging today. Don Larsen needed 2:06 to achieve perfection against a lineup that included five future HOFers. Javier et al took 3:25 to complete Fall Classic no-hitter no. 2. I wonder if they faced anyone bound for Cooperstown.

Reasons Why

In spite of Jerry Reinsdorf, I really do want the White Sox to win, and win consistently; it makes my daughter happy, and it could rub off on her son. That said, I have reasons to question the apparent hiring of Pedro Grifol to take Tony La Russa’s place in the dugout. The positive spin on Grifol is that he’s one of those highly regarded baseball people we so often hear about. But, like I said yesterday, if he’s so highly regarded, why didn’t the Royals hire him to replace Mike Matheny? Instead, he comes to the Sox as a first-time manager at the age of fifty-two. In my opinion, the best two managers to work in this town since, oh, say, 1970, were Chuck Tanner and Ozzie Guillen. They both started their managerial careers on the South Side, Tanner at age forty-one and Guillen age forty. If Grifol is as good as those two, what took him so long to get a managing job? Grifol spent two years as one of the Royals’ hitting coaches. What exactly does a career .226 hitter in nine minor-league seasons tell major-league ballplayers? Sorry, but in my book hitting and pitching coaches need career stats to back up their ideas. Anything else is…Walt Hriniak and Don Cooper. Here’s hoping the next Sox hitting coach had a big-league career of some note. I’m also supposed to be impressed that Grifol was a catching coach and Salvador Perez swears by him. That’s nice, but how do we measure Grifol’s influence on him? It’s not as if Perez came out of nowhere and all of a sudden blossomed because of this one coach. I will admit to being impressed by one stat attached to the new Sox skipper—he had a career forty-four percent caught-stealing rate. Perez is at thirty-six percent, so maybe that reflects Grifol’s influence. Lord knows Yasmani Grandal could use some pointers in how to get the ball to second base ahead of the next Ice Age. We’ll see.

Please, No

This is what at least some White Sox fans are reduced to—hoping that the latest rumor for next Sox manager gets tossed with all the other rumors. I mean, Pedro Grifol, Royals’ bench coach for the past three seasons? If he’s so good, why didn’t Kansas City hire him after firing Mike Matheny? Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweeted that Grifol “blew away” his interviewer(s) and was the “consensus choice among Jerry Reinsdorf, Ken Williams and Rick Hahn.” In other words, Shemp blew away the Three Stooges. Good to know.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Lo and behold, the Tribune did some honest-to-goodness reporting over the weekend with a story on the Cubs’ Marquee Network. It seems that ratings have plummeted fifty-six percent since network’s debut in 2020. Now, this is where it gets interesting—the Cubs are taking in $90 million-plus in yearly TV rights from the venture, better than the $60 million they were pulling down when the team was part of a joint venture with the Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox. How do they do it, you might ask? People like me make it possible. If I want a cable package with sports, I have to pay for Marquee, never mind I don’t want to watch the North Siders unless they’ve lost at least fifteen in a row. Now, consider that every MLB team gets in the ballpark of $100 million each year in revenue sharing. In other words, no matter how bad the Cubs might be, they start the season with $190 million, give or take, in the bank. That should be a problem for Cubs’ fans to deal with. It should not be a problem that I contribute to by paying my monthly cable bill.

Dusty Baker

“The leaves are falling like raindrops,” commented my wife on our hike today along a trail at Morton Arboretum, west of the city. She was right. In fact, not only could you see the leaves fall, you could hear them, too. I wonder if the ten-year old walking past us in his Astros’ tee-shirt noticed. Off of last night’s 6-5 ten-inning loss to the Phillies in game one of the World Series, a whole bunch of Astros’ fans may have been distracted today. Their team blew a five-run lead. The last time that happened was twenty years ago, when the Giants did it in the 2002 World Series. What do the Astros and that Giants’ team have in common? Dusty Baker as manager. I don’t get the affection thrown Baker’s way. His teams—Giants, Cubs, Reds, Nationals, Astros—have all lost in the postseason. So far, Baker hasn’t won a World Series for the life of him. Then again, this is a man who made a habit of doing his Sergeant Schutlz imitation when it came to Barry Bonds and PEDs. Baker knew nothing, nothing, about that. Whether or not the Astros rebound to win the Series, people will keep pushing to get Baker into Cooperstown. In which case, put his plaque next to Tony La Russa’s and Bud Selig’s. Sergeant Schultz, each and every one.

Pathetic, with a Capital P

This being Friday, the once-mighty Chicago Tribune ran its now-customary six-page sports’ section, all the news that fits, I guess. But if I went to the e-edition, I could “check out a 4-page digital-only World Series preview.” They shouldn’t have bothered. Page one consisted of photos, the World Series trophy most of all. Page two featured a story on Dusty Baker pulled from the Sacramento Bee. Page three was a Philadelphia Inquirer story on the Phillies, which left page four for an AP piece on Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. Obviously, not worth the paper it could’ve been printed on. In some ways, this is karma. The Tribune under the longtime auspices of Colonel Robert R. McCormick was a reactionary powerhouse the envy of Rupert Murdoch. How the mighty of fallen. A paper that all but created the All-Star Game on its own is now reduced to cut-and-paste on the internet for its World Series preview. There was a decent story in the sports’ section proper on the Series, but there should’ve been a whole lot more. Regrettably, those days are long gone, like the Colonel.

Agonistes, South Side

As I’ve said, if the Second Coming coincides with a Bears’ game, the Chicago media will cover the Munsters first, Jesus second, space permitting. That’s just the way it is in these parts. Baseball, basketball and hockey fans can either accept that reality or go nuts, their choice. The 2-4 Bears played the 3-3 Patriots Monday night, and I got to read about the Munsters’ 33-14 upset win in the morning papers. I swear there were times this year when the Sox or Cubs have played on the East Coast, the game was over at nine, and there’d be no hardcopy story the next morning. And I’ve started checking online, too. Again, I swear there’ve been times… Who doesn’t want to beat Bill Belichick? I sure didn’t want the Munsters to lose. And they play the Cowboys next. America’s team, Jerry Jones? I think not. Another upset, please. But if that wish is answered, it comes at a cost to Jesus and a whole lot of football agnostics. Such is life for a South Sider these days.

Compare and Contrast

If my daughter were Rob Manfred, the World Series would start tomorrow, with at least some chance of finishing in October. Somehow, November does not easily lend itself to the idea of a “Fall Classic.” If only Manfred’s ways were Clare’s. Speaking of and with my daughter the other day, I mentioned how similar—and yet so very different—her buddy Kyle Schwarber is to possibly her least favorite White Sox player of all time, that being Adam Dunn. As for the similar part, baseball-reference.com used career figures to project Dunn at thirty-seven homeruns and ninety-five RBIs with a .237 BA over a 162-game season. With Schwarber, its’s thirty-nine/eighty-eight/.233. But figures don’t begin to tell the story here. Dunn never went to the postseason in fourteen seasons; in contrast, Schwarber has played in the postseason in all but one of his eight years in the majors. Some of that is luck, and some of it is reputation. Bat .412 in a seven-game World Series the way Schwarber did in 2016 (accumulating more at-bats than he did in the regular season that year), and teams take notice. Which is why the Red Sox and Phillies both have wanted him. Schwarber has that “it” factor that enlivens a dugout and clubhouse. When Dunn hit a homerun, he trotted around the bases, took his high-fives and sat down. Schwarber connects, and his teammates all join in the party. Dunn was a downer, Schwarber is a scintillator. And those are the guys who, barring injury, can play forever.

On the One Hand/On the Other

First and foremost, the Yankees won’t be going to the World Series. I’ll leave it to Chris Russo to add the dagger, “again.” I wonder if it’s a day of mourning throughout the state of New Jersey? My notion of a well-built baseball roster definitely would not be the Yankees, not with all the thirty-year old players they have. Then again, I wouldn’t pick the Phillies, either. Bryce Harper has always struck me as nice, but overrated and overpaid, talent. The same goes for J.T. Realmuto while Nick Castellanos is just overrated. But not this year. This is the kind of team Kenny Williams always tried to put together, if on the cheap. Take a gamble; spend the money; and it works. Once in a while, at least. If I were the Yankees, I’d want to know what paying Gerrit Cole $324 million got me. Calling Scott Boras. And I see that baseball-reference.com gives Mr. Castellanos a --0.1 WAR on the regular season. What would his agent say to that? Then again, Castellanos hit well against Atlanta in the NLDS. Go figure. Then sit back and enjoy a World Series that promises to stretch into November. Brrr.

Can't Bear to Look

Some people can’t bear to look in the mirror for fear of what they might see. SoxFest is that mirror for Jerry Reinsdorf and loyal underlings. Yesterday, the White Sox announced there’d be no fan convention next year “due to several factors.” Funny, I just looked but couldn’t find the announcement posted on the team website. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the motivation for cancelling was fear of peasants showing up with pitchforks, proverbial and otherwise. What a gutless bunch. This move leads me to suspect that a hot rumor making the rounds currently, that the Sox will interview Ozzie Guillen next week, is more hope than fact. If the Sox were going to hire Guillen, why cancel SoxFest? It would make Woodstock look like a wardens’ convention.

Who Knew?

We were driving home from a trip to Nordstrom’s and the Container Store (and how we got out of there in under a day is a miracle), when Clare called. Michele put her on speaker for me to hear, “I’m glad for Kyle Schwarber.” Who knew? Keep in mind this is a girl who wore an A.J. Pierzynski jersey to her bachelorette party, held in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. This is also the person I once advised to keep her anti-Cub views bottled up for an upcoming White Sox-Cubs’ game at Wrigley lest her future husband pay the price for his beloved’s smart mouth. Still, I could understand. My daughter was known for her bat throughout high school and college. In college, she was moved from second base to the outfield. And she had a little bit of Rodney Dangerfield about her, respect-wise. In an intersquad game at the start of her sophomore year, Clare went 5-for-6, with a homerun and two doubles. Afterwards, the coach said if someone like Clare could perform like that, they all could. Ouch. During his time with the Cubs, Schwarber moved between the outfield and first base, with a handful of games at catcher, his natural position. Clare has always been irritated that Schwarber tore his ACL at the start of the 2016 season, a catcher or first baseman forced to play the outfield. Call it professional empathy, if only girls could play baseball at the major-league level. Schwarber is still playing more outfield than DH, but I’m pretty sure that’s where he’ll end up fulltime before long; he turns thirty next year. As for his new team, the Phillies, what can you say? I mean Schwarber is batting leadoff, his forty-six homeruns accounting for only ninety-four RBIs, though he did score 100 runs. The Phillies shouldn’t work, but they do this year. It’s entirely possible eighty-seven wins in the regular season could lead to a World Series’ crown. And at least one South Sider rooting for the Phillies’ leadoff hitter.

What If?

A story in today’s Sun-Times indicates Chicago-area voters aren’t keen on the idea of subsidizing a Bears’ stadium in Arlington Heights, not that the Munsters have asked, not yet anyway. How times have changed. The White Sox got a free stadium in 1991—they pay rent, though no one seems to know exactly how much—by threatening to move to Florida; before that, they thought they could get a nice subsidy because, as a team brochure from the time put it, “This is an economic reality of baseball today!” today being 1986. I bet you the Bears wish it was still 1986. Fresh off a Super Bowl win, they could’ve had the facility of their dreams. And if the Sox had gotten their way and built in west-suburban Cook County? My guess, based off the god-awful concept drawing in that brochure showing a series of exterior ramps straight out of a parking garage, is they would’ve been hollering for a new stadium by now. And they would’ve wanted back into the city, and they would’ve taken a stadium on the land that once housed Comiskey Park. The more things change…

On the Radio Dial

Visits to the hospital have been replaced with visits to the rehab center. Getting there from here takes two tollways and a state highway. Ever since Ed Farmer died, the White Sox on the radio are a hard listen for me. Len Kasper is fine, I just get so wrapped up in games I become a hazard on the road; e-6 could lead to road rage. Same thing with the Cubs’ duo of Pat Huges and Ron Coomer. Them I can‘t stand, a sentiment that manifests itself by constant screaming. Passengers and fellow motorists are not amused. Football, though, I can listen to, if only as a way to pass the time on the way to a destination that holds little, if any, enjoyment. Sunday, we listened to the Jets-Packers’ game, made especially pleasurable by Aaron Rodgers losing performance; I’m that much of a Bears’ fan. The play-by-play got me to thinking of two voices long passed. If you never heard Jack Brickhouse call a game with gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet at his side providing color, you missed one of the greatest comedy teams of all time. No Munsters’ miscue, regardless how monumentally bad, could stop Brickhouse and his buddy “Kup” from pouring on the whitewash. Take the second quarter, and we’re in this game. It’s a short pass on fourth down, No, wait, the [fill in the blank for the opponent] blocked Bobby Joe Green’s punt! It just wasn’t the Bears’ day, Kup. That’s right, Jack. If the people at the front desk wondered why I was smiling so, it was memories of Martin and Lewis behind the microphone going through their signature routine. The emperor has wonderful new clothes, George Halas a good football team.

If Just for a Day, or Two

Well, this just got interesting. The sabermetrics’ crowd must be pulling at their collective hair after the Yankees outhomered the Guardians last night 3-0, only to lose the game 6-5 on five ninth-inning Cleveland singles, the last one by Oscar Gonzalez (who sure looks like Frank Thomas, circa 1990) on a 1-2 pitch with two out, two runs scoring. Oh, the horror. Wait, there’s more. Over in San Diego, the Padres overcame a 3-0 seventh-inning deficit against the Dodgers, scoring five runs on four singles, a double and a walk. The winningest team in all of baseball had no answer. Instead, LA batters went six-up, six-down, to lose the deciding NLDS game, 5-3. Better yet, the last four Dodgers all struck out. Dare I hope the Guardians manage one more win tonight or tomorrow to deny baseball a big-market World Series? Try and stop me.

Just for a Day

No doubt, the powers that be in baseball are hoping for a Yankees-Dodgers’ World Series. Guardians-Padres, not so much. But it was fun to see those two teams win yesterday while employing lots of small-ball and old-school baseball. In New York (and God help us if aliens ever judge humanity’s fate on the behavior of Yankees’ fans), the long ball was nowhere to be seen when it counted most, that being the tenth inning of a 2-2 game. Jose Ramirez blooped a ball to left and immediately thought two bases, forcing a hurried throw to second from Josh Donaldson. Donaldson’s throw sailed into the outfield, and Ramirez made third base. Somewhere, Tim Anderson is smiling. Oscar Gonzalez followed with a bloop of his own to score Ramirez. That brought up Josh Naylor, who must’ve thought he was in Chicago the way he doubled over the head of center fielder Harrison Bader; Gonzalez scored from first on Naylor’s double. That gave Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase a 4-2 lead going into his second inning of work. And, guess what? Not a Yankee reached the fences in the bottom of the tenth, not even with a runner on and one out. Nope. In fact, the Bronx Bombers fanned fifteen times while collecting just one homerun. All of which makes today’s game in Cleveland all the more interesting. As to the Padres-Dodgers, San Diego held Los Angeles to one run on six hits. The mighty Dodgers struck out twelve times in a 2-1 game, including twice in the ninth inning. Wait for the long ball, die by the long ball. Of course, everything could change today. Aaron Judge may stop striking out (seven times in eight at-bats against Guardians’ pitching), and the Dodgers could return to their hammering ways. But I hope not.

McCaskey, Barnum and Bailey

With a few more games like last night’s 12-7 loss to the Washington Commanders, the Bears’ Justin Fields may go down as the second, right-handed, coming of Bobby Douglass. Where will the pass go, how many yards will he run for in a loss? This is all so fittingly McCaskey. When the White Sox looked to sidle up to the public trough for a new stadium, they made it seem like a good deal because they had so many talented young players, starting with Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura and Jack McDowell. Sox fans could be forgiven to think a necessary deal had been made with the devil, a classic ballpark in exchange for a boatload of talent that would win for a decade or more. They know better now a la Joni Mitchell. And the Bears have what? Right, a young quarterback who doesn’t seem to be improving. But, hey, the McCaskeys want to build a state-of-the-art sports-and-entertainment complex out in Arlington Park. And they say they’ll only ask for public money for the entertainment part. Maybe by the time they move into their new home, they’ll have that quarterback thing figured out. Just kidding. There’s an old Polish saying—not my circus, not my monkeys. Not my Bears.

Talking

Clare and I have been talking a lot since the season ended about who the White Sox should hire to replace Tony La Russa in the dugout. We’re both pretty much in agreement that Miguel Cairo showed enough in the interim role to get the nod. My daughter also asked me, sort of, if she was doing the right thing with her son, with the mom putting a foam baseball in his fourteen-month-old hands and the father opting for a football. Sounds good to me. From what I gather, some parents want to get their kids on a Harvard track, ASAP, while others are content to shove a screen in their hands as soon as they’re big enough to hold one. Clare and Chris, bless their parental hearts, don’t want their son getting addicted to cartoons and video games before he can even talk. As for Harvard, it can wait. Leo was over the other day and found a pair of my shoes under the bed; this proved an endless source of delight. He lifted one of them up; inspected it all around; stuck a hand inside; and touched the outside. Back went the shoes under the bed, back went the baby to play with the shoes. “Do you know what he was doing?” I asked after our latest breakdown of managerial candidates. “He was learning about color, texture, size and weight. Those are all valuable lessons.” Along with throwing the right ball, of course.

Echoes

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking of a time when I was in my twenties, driving out West. Either Dan or Jim was with me, the one dead now for sixteen years, the other someone I haven’t spoken to in a decade or more. We had no business driving at night on a road that snaked through the mountains, but this is what people do in their twenties. I have a sense I was behind the wheel—it was my father’s Ford Galaxie 500, and I felt responsible—while Dan or Jim played with the radio dial. The only light for miles around was generated by the Ford’s high beams and the dashboard, which was probably too weak to show the fear etched on our faces. Out of nowhere, which was just outside our windows, the radio started broadcasting an Oakland A’s game. The voices faded in and out, my co-pilot forever fiddling with the nob so that we could hear someone who had nothing to do with driving through the mountain darkness. That game kept our focus and may have saved two young lives. I was visiting in the hospital yesterday and put on the Phillies-Braves’ NLDS game. The patient didn’t particularly care for baseball but knew that I did. This is just one in a lifetime of examples of his all-around decency. We talked, watched the game, and then he was gone for tests. They brought him back just after Philadelphia had held on for a 7-6 win. “Is there another game on?” he wondered, but I had to go.

Both

Baseball is in equal parts beautiful and cruel. Anyone who ever stepped into Comiskey Park off of 35th Street can attest to the former; that lush green field practically jumped across the main concourse to greet fans. The Guardians’ fifteen-inning, walk-off win against the Rays on Saturday also qualifies. As for cruel, consider the Phillies’ the sweep of the Cardinals in their wild card series. If sentiment ruled in sports, the Cardinals would’ve taken two games in St. Louis, where the fans were hoping to see Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina stave off retirement until at least the NLDS. Instead, the Cards gave up six ninth-inning runs—all after one out and nobody on—to lose 6-3in game one before getting shut out 2-0 in game two. See you in…Cooperstown in five years, guys. The Mets losing to the Padres could qualify as either beautiful or cruel, depending on your perspective. Me, I see the team with the highest payroll in baseball ($282.7 million) lose two out of three, and it makes me think. Why do owners want a salary cap/luxury tax? Mets’ owner Steve Cohen didn’t care how much a winner cost. He bought and bought players until he thought he had enough talent for a World Series’ title. Nope. Between the humiliation and the cost of all those contracts, that’s true market discipline, folks. In my humble opinion, owners would be wise to drop the luxury tax for some kind of salary relief on arbitration. I have no problems with the most talented players getting the most they can, but the B players who cash in through arbitration? No, and if that makes me a mouthpiece for management, so be it. Of course, management wants no part of such a deal. That’s both stupid and sad.

Question and Answer

Is there anything less funny than a clown? Yes, a sportswriter acting like a clown. I can think of two, one in the Sun-Times, the other in The Athletic, both extolling the virtues of Joe Maddon as the next White Sox manager. Joe Maddon the innovator would interest me, but that version of Maddon disappeared when he relocated to the North Side. Maddon was lucky to be in the right place at the right time in 2016, but the South Side in 2023 would count as wrong on both counts. Any clown should be able to see that.

Six Months and a World Away

You couldn’t ask for a prettier end to the season, all sunny with a temperature in the mid-seventies. Once upon a time, I would’ve leaned on my daughter to go to the game with me, but she’s all grown up now, with a family and career to tend to. But that didn’t stop Clare from calling on her way home from work, “to complain,” as she put it. “It’s the last game of the year, and they’re getting their butts kicked. Great. Now we have to wait until next year. But who knows what will happen by April?” She could’ve inserted any number of examples here, some good, many not. I tried to counsel her that White Sox baseball will be unfolding all through November and December, so she won’t need to wait for spring training in that regard. But you would like something to wash away the taste of a 10-1 shellacking by the Twins. On a beautiful day that won’t be often repeated until the leaves come back to remind us to look for baseball.

It All Depends

Elvis Andrus hit a three-run homer last night in the White Sox 8-3 win over the Twins. Since coming over from Oakland, Andrus has 25 runs scored and 28 RBIs in 177 at-bats. Tim Anderson, whose injury brought Andrus here, has 28 runs scored and 25 RBIs in 332 at-bats. Talk about production. That said, I wouldn’t sign the recently-turned thirty-four year old for next year. Then again, the Sox could trade Anderson, in which case signing Andrus to play short until rookie Colson Montgomery is ready would make sense. It all depends what direction the Sox choose to go. One thing I know for sure is they can’t keep Jose Abreu, Gavin Sheets and Greg Vaughn. Abreu has been great for nine seasons, but he turns thirty-six in January. And let’s not forget Eloy Jimenez. That’s four players best suited for first base or DH. As much as it pains me to say, I’d let Abreu walk. Of course, if Rick Hahn could pull off a great deal centered on Sheets or Vaughn, then it would make sense to keep Abreu. Too bad I don’t trust Hahn to channel his inner Roland Hemond. Whether Hahn steps up or pulls another James Shields, he’s going to have to do something. At least two of the ostensible core should go, either to shake things up or improve team speed and defense. Along those lines, Luis Robert would be the most likely to stay. But the Sox really need a second baseman. I was hoping Romy Gonzalez would seize the chance, but he’s struck out thirty-eight times in 101 at-bats. Move Yoan Moncada back to second and give Jake Burger a shot at third? Package Robert for middle-infield talent? It all depends.

Adieu

In what I’m guessing was his last start in a White Sox uniform, Johhny Cueto pitched seven innings for the win last night as the White Sox topped the Twins, 3-2. Unlike Tony La Russa, Cueto should be wearing a uniform, somewhere, next season. La Russa made it official in a press conference before the game, alluding to a second health problem that will keep him from managing next year. Along the way, he took a swipe at the media while talking about “love” and “family,” in all the wrong places, I might add. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Tony. Sox GM Rick Hahn dusted off his “was done by” voice to address the media as well. As quoted in today’s The Athletic, Hahn said, “If there ever got to the point where I felt like I wasn’t the right person in my role, I’d step aside.” Rick, we passed that point quite some time ago. Signing Dallas Keuchel, Yasmani Grandal and Joe Kelly while trading for A.J. Pollock and Jake Diekman would have gotten just about any general manager not employed by Jerry Reinsdorf fired. Lucky you. In all fairness to Hahn, he’s not a complete disaster. He can always point to trading for Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez and drafting Andrew Vaughn in his defense. Maybe he’ll outdo himself picking a new manager. If only we knew what Ozzie Guillen said behind closed doors to get himself blacklisted. Guillen is an actual Chicagoan, equal parts smart and profane, though I wish he lived south of Madison Street. But, as a player, he did reside in the same inner-ring suburb I call home. If Hahn were to rehire Ozzie, ticket sales would go through the roof. But, like I said, something happened behind closed doors. I don’t want Bruce Bochy; he’s too old and not a Spanish speaker. Miguel Cairo has done enough to deserve serious consideration. We’ll see. Hahn talked change through trades rather than free-agent signings. In which case, allow me to suggest….

Old School

Lance Lynn pitched seven innings of one-run ball in San Diego yesterday to pick up a 2-1 win. Elvis Andrus homered; Adam Engel singled in a run; and Jake Diekman didn’t pitch. Save no. thirty-six for Liam Hendriks. The White Sox used to win a lot of ballgames this way. Sox pitching recorded just eight strikeouts, so people actually had to catch the ball. Sox batters picked up just five hits, so they had to make them count. Somewhere, Billy Pierce and Nellie Fox are smiling. Tony La Russa is expected to announce his retirement today, which will kick off the search for a new manager. The only relevant question is, Will Jerry Reinsdorf leave well enough alone this time? You wonder what the over-and-under on that is.

Veeck as in Wreck

I could talk about how average Dylan Cease looked last night in a 5-2 loss to the Padres or how Elvis Andrus shouldn’t have been allowed back on the field after getting picked off of second base in the eighth inning, or how Jake Diekman gave up another run in relief, but why bother? It’s all been said before. Better to note the passing of Maryfrances Veeck last month at the age of 102. She was the wife of White Sox owner Bill Veeck and someone who was kind enough to do a blurb for the book I wrote on Comiskey Park. We stayed in touch for a while; Maryfrances liked smart people. Let’s just say she made me feel and act smart. Like her husband, Maryfrances never hid from people. After his death in 1986, she volunteered her time to several activities, often through her parish in Hyde Park. If you were on Maryfrances’s side, you knew you were on the right side. That knowledge kept me going to fight for the preservation of Comiskey Park. Maryfrances Veeck was right, the team her husband once owned so very wrong. I hope to live long enough to see that change someday. If only it happens by the time I reach 102.

Silver Linings

I keep reading how the White Sox have this competitive window and it’s closing. Buy into that, and you buy into the notion of compete/rebuild cycles. Why is it, then, that the Braves, Cardinals and Dodgers always seem to compete without ever needing to rebuild? A good part of the answer is that they draft well, no matter how low their draft position might be any particular year. Consider that the Braves chose third baseman Austin Riley with the last pick of the first round in 2015 while we took Carson Fulmer. Rookie sensation center fielder Michael Harris went in the third round in 2019, well after we’d picked pitcher Andrew Dalquist, who so far has a 5.73 ERA over three minor-league seasons. And, before I forget, we picked catcher Zack Collins in 2016 ahead of either Gavin Lux or Will Smith, both taken by the Dodgers in the first round. The Sox also had two picks that draft, the second being reliever Zack Burdi. You know what that means, right? We could’ve drafted both Lux and Smith. Not only did Collins and Burdi go bust, we missed out on a second baseman and catcher who’ve both looked very good in LA, Smith back of the plate in particular. So, it was nice to see rookie pitcher Davis Martin and second-year right fielder Gavin Sheets play major roles in last night’s 3-1 win over Yu Darvish and the Padres. Martin won his third game of the year by giving up one run on six hits over 5.2 innings, with eight strikeouts against zero walks. Martin finishes the season with a 3.65 ERA and 1.18 WHIP over 61.2 innings. Not bad for a fourteenth-round draft choice back in 2018. Sheets, meanwhile, chipped in with two hits, including his nineteenth double of the year and a run scored. Just as important was his fourth outfield assist of the season, which cut down Jurickson Profar at the plate in the bottom of the fifth inning with what would’ve been the tying run. Thank you very much. Sheets, a second-round pick in 2017, looked clueless at the plate back in May and June. He’s turned things around with fifteen homers and fifty-one RBIs in 364 at-bats, numbers to intrigue his current team or a possible new one if another general manager wants to acquire a left-handed bat connected to a 6’5” body. I’d rather he stays, but we’ll see. What counts is seeing players you’ve developed thrive. So, last night makes this season a little less of a disaster and gives me something to dream about come winter.

How to Win

The White Sox broke their eight-game losing streak yesterday because thirty-year old rookie Mark Payton hustled out of the box in the eighth inning after hitting a routine popup to second baseman Nick Gordon, who promptly dropped the ball. Yea! Steve Stone sounded like he was ready to leave the booth and personally award Payton a medal for hustle. Payton scored what proved to be the winning run on a Jose Abreu double. The best that can be said for Yasmani Grandal is he caused no irreparable harm during the game. I want to talk about both Payton and Grandal. Payton, who stands two inches taller than Clare, was born two weeks after my daughter. He attended St. Rita High School on the South Side, where eighteen Mustangs have gone on to play in organized ball, five making it to the majors. Payton joins pitchers Jim Clancy; Ed Farmer, blessed be his name; Lefty Sullivan; and Tony Zych as major-league ballplayers. I should also note one of Payton’s high school teammates, drafted by the Rangers, happened to be the brother of one of Clare’s high school teammates. Oh, and both teams were the Mustangs. I doubt Payton will be with the Sox next year; journeymen on the smallish side aren’t hard to come by. That said, he demonstrated how baseball is supposed to be played, full-out all the time. So, like a stopped clock twice a day, Stone got it right about a Sox player who actually hustled. I can’t wait for the next time. If and when it comes, I doubt it will have anything to do with catcher Yasmani Grandal, who gave up another three stolen bases. That’s forty-six successful steals out of fifty-four attempts for a fifteen percent caught-stealing rate. Wait, there’s more. Grandal has been catching eleven seasons. He has ninety-one passed balls to go with a twenty-five percent career caught-stealing rate. Once upon a time, the Sox had A.J. Pierzynski behind the plate. Over a sixteen-year career, Pierzynski accounted for only eleven more passed balls than Grandal has, and, remember, the season isn’t over yet. While Pierzynski was as bad as Grandal in throwing out baserunners (twenty-four percent vs. twenty-five), it’s worth noting that A.J. had 2043 hits total to 841 for Grandal. So, yes, I wish we had A.J. in his prime. I also wouldn’t mind a Sox catcher from the 1980s and ’90s. In twelve seasons on the South Side, Ron Karkovice was charged with fifty passed balls in 6972.2 innings behind the plate; compare that to Grandal’s ninety-one in 7707.2 innings. Wait, there’s more. Karkovice has a career forty-one percent caught-stealing rate. As MC Hammer might say, Grandal can’t touch that. Sox GM Rick Hahn likes to read the backs of baseball cards. Maybe he should start looking at baseball-reference.com every once in a while. He might learn something.

Oh, Well

Oh, well. Another game another loss for the White Sox, last night’s 8-4 drubbing by the Twins their eighth in a row. What more can you say? I could mention that Andrew Vaughn is hitting .218 over his last thirty games and .083 over his last seven, but what’s the point? Then I’d have to say Eloy Jimenez is hitting .185 over his last seven and Romy Gonzalez .167 over his last seven. Again, I could point out that Johnny Cueto, last night’s starter, has a 5.01 ERA over his last seven starts; Jake Diekman an 11.81 ERA over his last seven appearances; or Jose Ruiz a 6.43 ERA over his last seven. And the point would be? That they all pitched last night, I guess, along with Joe Kelly. At least Kelly didn’t see his shadow and hurt himself. Good news, White Sox style.

Did He Say Something?

This is how the White Sox responded to their (acting) manager calling them out after a sixth straight defeat—they went to Minnesota and lost a seventh time. They also struck out fourteen times while collecting two, that’s right, two, hits on the night. That 4-0 score wasn’t nearly as close as it looks. Lance Lynn pitched like he didn’t care while his teammates batted the same way. You’d think they’d never seen a slider before and that 27-year old Twins’ starter Bailey Ober was the second coming of Cy Young. Jose Abreu looked absolutely awful, with Andrew Vaughn right behind him. When those two quit, folks, we have a problem. If silver linings do in fact exist, at least this is happening to Jerry Reinsdorf. I can’t think of a more deserving owner.

How Low Can They Go?

Right now, the White Sox are like a bad accident that people can’t help but look at. Which explains why they keep getting end-of-season coverage, in the Tribune even. What I didn’t expect was who’d be bumped. The Cubs, yes, but Northwestern, too? The Wildcats lost to Miami of Ohio at home on Saturday. The game ended just before 10 o’clock, too late for the Tribune to print a story on Sunday. When the folks at Alden Global Capital got around to it on Monday, they went with a short AP story, buried on the back page of sports. Talk about callous. The same story ran in longer form on the web site, only it wasn’t identified as an AP piece. There were also stories on the Notre Dame and Northern Illinois games, both from the AP (I checked), both without AP attribution. Maybe the online Trib is too embarrassed to admit the paper can’t be bothered to send reporters to cover games. I know I’d be.