Joan Joyce

When I saw that today is actor William Daniels’ 95th birthday, I told Michele to text Clare with the news. For me, Daniels will always be John Adams; Mr. Braddock (father to Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate”); and Dr. Mark Craig. For our daughter, Daniels is now and forever will be Mr. Feeny of “Boy Meets World” fame. Any role you put it, happy ninety-fifth, William. But when I found out Joan Joyce died over the weekend, I kept that news to myself, in large part because I never told Clare about Joyce and her matchup against Ted Williams. Let’s just say it was the most humiliating batting practice-session the Splendid Splinter had in his life—he admitted as much—and leave it at that. But why not tell my baseball-playing daughter about this young woman who had possibly the greatest hitter ever swinging and missing at just about every pitch she threw windmill-style? In part, I wanted Clare to be her own role model. But, also, I’ve never known exactly what to make of Joyce and her accomplishments. She also struck out Hank Aaron another time, by the way. A woman athlete competing against a male, I had no problem with, but it always struck me as apples and oranges, the 20-year old Joyce throwing a softball from 40-feet away to the 42-year old Williams. Yes, the patriarchy crumbled, the illusion of male supremacy in everything shattered. But what if Williams were the same age or Joyce was throwing from 60-feet, six inches? Maybe in these slightly more enlightened times both athletes would have been made to perform outside their comfort zones. I don’t know. Joyce amassed pitching stats to make Cy Young blush—753 wins with 150 no-hitters (50 of them perfect games) and over 10,000 strikeouts. Joyce told mlb.com that she was “never gonna let anybody beat me at anything. I was so competitive.” Why didn’t that competitive nature lead her to try throwing a baseball? I know, it didn’t have to. But the barnstorming with Williams and Aaron has a separate-but-equal feel to it reminiscent of the Negro Leagues. Like I said, I just don’t know what to make of Joyce.

Poor, Poor Pitiful Trib

The NFL burped in Palm Beach this week, and sportswriters are there to cover it. In the world of print journalism, that means something has to go to make room. At the Chicago Tribune, that something is baseball and hockey. God forbid we miss any news coming out of the NFL owners’ meeting. Because a friend of Jerry Reinsdorf bought the Trib back in 2008 and wrecked it, a hedge fund now owns what’s left, and that includes a sports’ section that usually goes just six pages on most days. I counted three big stories Tuesday on our lovable Munsters, what with their new general manager and head coach. That in turn reduced the Cubs to seven paragraphs of coverage, this for a team once part of the Tribune empire. And that’s seven more paragraphs than the Blackhawks got. More of the same today, plus some, as in four Bears’ stories. The Cubs were granted more coverage, the Blackhawks the same, which is to say nothing. “Chicago’s best sports section, as judged by the Associated Press Sports Editors” runs the plug at the top of the first page. If this is the best, I’d hate to see the worst. Sports in the Sun-Times is totally different, basically, just like it was ten years ago. Oh, the section today is full of Bears’ crap, but there’s also a Blackhawks’ story. Not only is there a full story on the Bulls’ 107-94 win over the Wizards, it comes with an honest-to-goodness box score. There’s also a regular outdoors’ columnist, and today he did a story on smelt (it’s a Chicago/April thing/fish). This is both an astute and cynical move. If you want sports, you pick up the Sun-Times. If you’re looking for the latest out of Washington or Ukraine, you look elsewhere. What stories there are rate one small step above the Trib’s Blackhawks’ coverage, and they tend to get buried next to the obits.

New York New York

I could talk about the Bulls’ 109-104 loss last night to a woeful Knicks’ team (redundancy noted), or I could comment on news of a stadium deal for the Buffalo Bills. The need for sanity leads me to option #2. Erie County and the state of New York have agreed to contribute $800 million of the estimated $1.4 billion cost for a new 62,000-seat facility across the street from the Bills’ current home, Highmark Stadium; the NFL will kick in a $250 million loan, and the Bills will make up the rest. As ever, the devil is in the details, and sports’ reporters hate money details, unless it’s tied to a team’s salary cap. Is the NFL going to charge the Bills interest on the loan? None of the stories I saw could say. Where will the Bills get their share of the cost? Again, not a word written on that, as far as I know. What about the lease agreement, which is supposed to run thirty years? How will rent be figured? Do the Bills get to keep all concessions? Will there be a rent subsidy? Not a word. And why a 62,000-seat capacity? That’s about 10,000 seats less than Highmark? The team released a PR statement touting this “public-private partnership,” but, if I’m a Bills’ fan, I’d want to know why ownership is content with fewer fans around on a Sunday afternoon. If state legislators approve the deal, it would be more accurate to say public is getting the short end of a stadium deal, yet again.

Ouch

What is it about White Sox outfielders? They keep crashing and diving their way to injuries. Last spring, Eloy Jimenez and Adam Engle did the honors. Yesterday against the Dodgers, it was right fielder Andrew Vaughn diving to make a catch in the fourth inning, only Vaughn needed a cart to get off the field. Throw in third baseman Jake Burger hurting his ankle a little later, and the Sox look to be on a collision course—pun intended—with the IL. About the only advice I can offer is to sit everyone down and tell the story of the Dodgers’ Pete Reiser, who sacrificed Cooperstown-worthy talent chasing after flyballs; Reiser actually received the last rites during a game against the Pirates in 1947 after he slammed into the wall at Ebbets Field making a catch. Maybe a cautionary tale would induce our young ballhawks to take care out there.

Cranky

It’s a good thing this is only spring training, or else I’d be real cranky right about now, what with the White Sox losing four in a row while Jose Abreu and Yoan Moncada are hitting .243, combined. Did I mention that Vince “pure s**t” Velasquez gave up three homeruns yesterday in 2.1 innings of work? I wanted to read some words of wisdom from Velasquez (pitching grip, seeing-eye, something like that) or his pitching coach or manager, but the team website doesn’t like to dwell on bad news. Lose 12-3 to the Angels, and just show a clip of Abreu homering. Lose Pete Ward to eternity, and act like nothing happened. Check that. I am cranky.

Faces

On the wall in front of me is a potpourri of baseball memorabilia: pennants, scorecards and whatnot. You can never have enough whatnot to go around in life. There are some baseball cards with the likes of Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox and Sherm Lollar, Billy Pierce and Floyd Robinson. Perched atop a scorecard from 1941is my most recent addition the wall, a membership card for the Woodland Bards Clubroom at Comiskey Park. If you wrote about baseball back in the day, you wanted admission to the Woodland Bards/ A ticket to the last game of the 1964 season rests about a foot beneath a “phantom” ticket to the ’64 World Series; I’m sure the White Sox could’ve beaten the Cardinals. I doubt that would’ve saved Comiskey Park, but I do think ownership of the team would’ve gone differently. It’s March, I dream. There are also pictures: Jimmy Austin; Smead Jolley; Monty Stratton. These are mostly reproductions, unlike the shot of Carlton Fisk I took in 1990; #72 is standing at the plate, catcher’s mask perched atop a batting helmet turned around. The tools of ignorance become the wearer. Off to the left is a photo of Ted Lyons and Johnny Rigney, autographed by both, and to the right two snapshots of Zachary Taylor Davis, architect of two great Chicago ballparks. On a day like this, with snow flurries fouling the air and cold trying to dig inside me, I like looking at my wall. Do I spy Dom DiMaggio, and his brother Joe, Frankie Crosetti…

Florida

I first went to Florida as a 12-year old with my parents, not long after the Sunshine State had been cleared of dinosaurs. It was so long ago that the Yankees—as in Berra, Ford, Mantle, Maris—trained at Ft. Lauderdale, where we spent close to a week in the June heat. I didn’t go back until 2011, when Clare was playing college softball. March is definitely cooler than June (we also visited the Everglades, where I was nearly carried off by mosquitoes), and a lot more fun if your kid is hitting homeruns. I won’t be going back this month, but Clare is. She’s headed to Sarasota, where the White Sox held spring training, 1960-1997; the Orioles train there now. I’ll have to tell my daughter. Given how the O’s have played the last few years, baby Leo might be able to walk on.

With Apologies to Dale Carnegie

If White Sox fans think they have it tough, they should be happy they don’t play for the team. The powers that be aren’t in the habit of doing right by their employees, never have been and never will be, I guess. Ted Lyons pitched forever, went off to war, and came back to manage some terrible teams. He was fired three years before the Sox entered their Go-Go ascendency. Billy Pierce was judged unworthy of a World Series start in 1959, this after anchoring the starting rotation for eleven seasons. Pierce’s reward for thirteen years’ service on the South Side? He was traded to the Giants, who started the 35-year old lefty twice in the 1962 Series. Minnie Minoso, Pierce’s teammate on many of those teams from the ’50s, was traded or released by management in 1958, 1962 and 1964. Talk about love-hate. That’s the ancient history. Things haven’t been any better in more recent times. Consider Alex Fernandez; Ozzie Guillen; Jack McDowell; Magglio Ordonez; Frank Thomas; and Robin Ventura. They were all deemed expendable and sent on their way. My God, management figured it made more sense to go with John Danks over Mark Buehrle. Letting Buehrle walk probably cost one of the franchise’s best players thirty-forty wins that would put him in the conversation for induction into Cooperstown. So, am I surprised GM Rick Hahn is talking his special brand of gibber now that Lucas Giolito has expressed his frustration over the two sides going to arbitration? No. Where Hahn and company live, $50,000 saved is $50,000…I don’t know exactly, but it’s obviously money Hahn wants to keep in the team’s pocket. Maybe he’s starting a rainy-day fund for when Giolito walks after the 2023 season. And, am I surprised the Sox can announce five bobblehead giveaway dates while not saying a word about the passing of infielder Pete Ward, who played seven seasons on the South Side, 1963-1969? Not in the least.

Shades of Turner

Dallas Keuchel made his spring debut for the White Sox yesterday against the Brewers and immediately went into Jacob Turner mode—pitch poorly and try to talk it away. Keuchel gave up three runs on five hits and two walks, which would be pretty good over six innings, instead of 2-2/3. But, hey, ya gotta look at the bright side, the way Turner always did after a shelling. Keuchel told the Sun-Times “there were a lot of positives” to his outing, though he “should have been trying to corral that second inning” of work. “There was really no reason for me to kind of let it go like it did. But it’s spring training for everybody” and Keuchel says he feels “healthy,” he feels “good.” Lucas Giolito also made his spring debut for the Sox. The righty went three scoreless innings, giving up a hit and a walk; he also struck out four straight batters at one point. Compare and contrast outings, and, while you’re at it, wonder what the future holds for both starters. Spring training works as an excuse for only so long.

Anniversaries

Very many years ago today, I married a pretty girl from the suburbs, and we became a couple. For reasons that aren’t easy to explain, we waited forever to start a family. That’s why the double anniversaries seem like yesterday. Because, in a way, they were. If we had picked another month to get married in, it’d be different. We found otherwise on our seventeenth anniversary. That was Clare’s freshman year in high school. She made varsity and had three RBIs in her first-ever game as a Mustang. The day started sunny, ended cloudy. Typical March. According to my notes, the next time Clare played on our anniversary was senior year; she homered. A year later, we were in Florida, where she hit her first homerun in college. All the other times our anniversary happened in the Sunshine State, we were treated to a combination of hits, runs and RBIs. I have it all here in my notes. The last time was just eight years ago, almost yesterday. I hope baby Leo will see his mom at the batting cages before too long, and, when he gets old enough, I’ll tell him all about Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding anniversaries. The things his mom did for us.

King of the Hill

Well, this should be interesting. The White Sox sign reliever Joe Kelly while the Twins snag shortstop Carlos “Who, Me Cheat” Correa. That definitely promises some interesting matchups. Homer that I am, I say Correa will be putty in the hands of his bete noire Career wise, Correa is three for seven off of Kelly, with two homeruns and three RBIs, but wait until he hears the South Side faithful cheering Kelly’s every pitch late in a game in the middle of August. Another benefit of the Correa signing, should this actually spark a Twins’ revival, is that Sox manager Tony LaRussa will be less inclined to rest his regulars weeks at a time; competition is good for the soul. If not, then Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf will learn himself a valuable lesson about hiring with the heart (yes, big assumption on my part) instead of the head. Like I said, this should be interesting.

Talk is Frickin' Cheap

For fun yesterday, I Googled free-agent outfielder Michael Conforto for any updates on his status; some White Sox fans see Conforto as the answer to a perceived hole in right field. Wow, the things they put on the internet. One extremely longwinded fellow had a blog post titled, “The White Sox need to stop f*****g around and Sign Michael Conforto.” This astute observer of the national pastime also applied his talent for language in talking about right-hander Vince Velasquez, recently signed by the Sox as a reclamation project, as evidenced by his 4.95 ERA. But, hey, Velasquez “has the pure ‘s**t’” to be an effective middle- or back-of-the-rotation starter. Then we have the guy who thinks, “White Sox dropped the ball on Kris Bryant.” Yes, I guess all right-thinking fans and commentators want to sign a 30-year old for $182 million over the next seven years; I can’t wait to see Bryant play the field at age 35. With Bryant off the board, this budding GM thinks getting Conforto or Nick Castellanos, since signed with the Phillies, “feels like a must for this team.” Not to me, it doesn’t. If Rick Hahn, an honest-to-goodness general manager, ever doubts himself, all he has to do is check what the self-appointed experts (and you can include me, if you want) have to say. He sure as all h**l couldn’t do any worse. And, while it might pain me to say this, he’s likely to do a whole lot better.

One and Done, or None

In basketball, the danger of playing tenacious defense is that it can affect a team’s offense. That’s exactly what happened to Loyola yesterday in its opening-round 54-41 loss to Ohio State in the NCAA D-I men’s tournament. The Ramblers held their opponents to 42.9 percent shooting from the field and 6.7 (!) percent from beyond the three-point line. Loyola also had more steals and fewer turnovers than the Buckeyes, all of which would seem to add up to a Ramblers’ win, until you see that Loyola shot 26.8 percent from the field and 30 percent from the free-throw line; Ohio State sank fourteen more free throws than Loyola. So it goes. Yet it could be worse, if getting to the postseason matters. All the local media coverage focused on the Ramblers today, which makes sense. But I wondered, what about Porter Moser, their coach from last year? Did he get Oklahoma, his new team, to the Big Dance? No, he did not, though he thought an 18-15 record should’ve gotten the Sooner an invite. Maybe next year. Next season should be interesting for both coaches. Their respective teams should better reflect the person presently in charge. My money’s on Loyola and Drew Valentine.

They Just Can't Help Themselves

An outbreak of stadium fever hit Chicago in the late 1980s. Various team owners, starting with Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn of the White Sox, let it be known they really, really wanted a new facility, with the public chipping in. And, if they didn’t get one…. The Sox got their new mall in 1991, the Bulls and Blackhawks in 1994. Only then did fans begin to realize what they had after it was gone. The only thing I’ll say in regard to the United Center is that it was built without public money. As for Guaranteed Rate Whatever, well, if you know me, you know what I think. Chicago went in for these new sports’ malls because, at the time, it seemed the thing to do. Across the United States, the economic health and future of a place got wrapped up in stadium building, often on the public dime. That seems to have changed, more or less. At least nobody is talking about public funding for a possible new Bears’ home in Arlington Heights. The question is why the media keeps acting like it’s 1989. Today, the Sun-Times ran a story on the Munsters’ hiring the same architectural firm that did Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas for the wandering NFL Raiders. Manica Architecture will be tasked with providing blueprints. Of what? you might ask. The Times’ story noted how, back in February, Mr. Manica talked about the need to build sports’ venues that “bring people the most joy.” Wait, there’s more. Such facilities “become icons and hallmarks for the city. There’s an incredible amount of pride and joy wrapped up in these buildings.” Fans can only hope the blueprints also address issues like concession costs; travel times; and seat licenses, which won’t be transferable from Soldier Field. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. After all, we’re talking about pride of icon and whatnot.

Lost in Translation?

The Cubs went out yesterday and signed 27-year old outfielder Seiya Suzuki to a five-year deal worth $85 million. Last year, Suzuki hit .317 with 38 homeruns and 88 RBIs for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of the Japanese Central League. After reading at least four stories, I have three unanswered questions, starting with, who’s going to translate? I think the language barrier is a lot tougher for Asian players than Latinos. An increasing number of MLB coaches speak Spanish, and there are always teammates who can translate. If there are any coaches on the big-league level who speak Japanese (or Korean or Chinese), I haven’t heard of them. Like any rookie, Suzuki is going to need advice. Unlike other rookies (and Latin players), he’s going to have to lean on his interpreter for virtually all of it. If that person doesn’t come from a baseball background or does but lacks a strong grasp of English, Suzuki will suffer. If the Cubs are willing to pay their new player $85 million, here’s hoping that don’t scrimp on an interpreter. According to baseball-reference.com, Suzuki has hit 189 homers in Japan. So, how many were against former MLB and affiliated minor-league pitchers? And what are his other stats against that competition? To me, those are numbers worth looking into.

Destruction, Hold the Creative

Economists and pundits of a certain stripe like to throw around a phrase coined by Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist of long ago. Schumpeter wrote about capitalism’s ability to evolve through “creative destruction,” sort of like the phone company turning into a bunch of cell-phone companies. With the Oakland A’s, it’s just about the destruction. In the past two days, the A’s have traded their two cornerstones, first baseman Matt Olson and third baseman Matt Chapman for a total of eight prospects in return. That’s in addition to trading Chris Bassitt, their best pitcher, for yet two more prospects. Go wild, A’s fans. Oakland has regularly gone this route since the days of Charlie Finley in the 1970s. By my count, four different ownership groups have held periodic fire sales, and never once have they been called out by the commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn excepted, and not really even then. Gosh, do you think what the A’s always do may be why players keep calling for competitive balance? The current owner is John J. Fisher, worth in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion. Fisher, like every A’s owner before him, wants out of the Coliseum, but he doesn’t want to build a replacement park all by himself, God forbid. Then he wouldn’t be worth $2.5 billion. Instead, he looks for a public patsy, excuse me, partner, while refusing to pay the talent that GM Billy Beane develops once they head towards free agency. This is the business the owners sought to protect with their lockout. Joseph Schumpeter wouldn’t be impressed. I imagine A’s fans aren’t any too happy, either.

Star(r) It Is

Well, that didn’t take long, forty days (and nights?) to be exact. Now that he’s had enough of the wife and kids, Tom Brady has decided to unretire. No Ted Williams for Brady. More like Bart Starr in decline. I wonder, would Brady play a full seventeen-game season if he stunk from day one? If he was injured on Opening Day, would he try to come back? What if the injury contributed to the stink? Will another Updike capture his last throw or play from center? Would Brady acknowledge the crowd? So many questions he could have avoided.

Some People

I read a letter to the editor in the Tribune yesterday written by someone I’m pretty sure believes in the divine right of kings and, if not that, then baseball owners. Rather than blame management, this purported “50-year plus season ticket holder [for who, the Robber Barons?]” argued, “Players’ ridiculous greed and their ‘entitlement’ philosophy are why there was a risk of no baseball.” Do tell. No doubt writing with quill in hand, this product of an earlier, meaner, age went to note “owners are the employers. They are the ones who put together investors or invested their hard-earned money in a ballclub. Significant move, to say the least!” Wait, there’s more. Ballplayers are mere “employees. They choose to play baseball; they are not forced into it. If they do not like their relationship with their employer, they are free to leave.” I could point out here that investors are also free to put their money elsewhere rather than in an industry where the employees insist on being heard. Or that baseball is a business particularly dependent on its employees unless the likes of Jerry Reinsdorf or Tom Ricketts is willing to play shortstop, a proposition that would not do much for the business in the long run. But I’m pretty sure those words would fall on deaf ears. People stuck in the 19th century aren’t open to persuasion. So, I’ll forgo pointing out that the money Tom Ricketts has is more inherited than hard-earned (ditto the Steinbrenners, the McCaskeys, the Wirtzes…) But it is interesting that the Ricketts’ clan is reported to be interested in joining an investment group to buy the Chelsea Football Club, valued at $3.3 billion. Wherever would these poor, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth people come up with that kind of cash, in whole or in part? I mean, back in 2020 Tom Ricketts said, “The scale of losses across the league is biblical,” this because of the squeeze COVID was putting on MLB owners. So, what happened, some fishes-and-loaves’ action, maybe? Goooal!

He Crazy

As I was saying, Clare and I have been in regular contact the past few days now that baseball’s back. Last night, Michele and I were binge-watching episodes of “Grantchester” when our daughter texted that the White Sox reportedly signed reliever Joe Kelly. Father and daughter agree, he crazy. And that may be a good thing. First off, the right-handed reliever has a Ryne Duren thing going on. For those of you too young to remember, Duren was a fastballing reliever who had some good years with those dynasty Yankees of Mantle, Ford and company. Not only did Duren wear glasses, he was effectively wild, in particular during warmups. Batters saw the glasses, the fastball, the lack of control and took an instinctive step back. Kelly wears glasses, throws a mean fastball and will throw at people, at least if they’re wearing an Astros’ uniform. Kelly was suspended eight games in 2020 for throwing at Alex Bregman; this was the same game where Kelly mouthed “Boo-hoo” to Carlos Correa after striking him out to end the inning. Correa was not amused, nor was his manager. At one point in the inning, Dusty Baker yelled from the Houston dugout for Kelly to “Get your skinny ass on the mound” after covering first base on a play. Anybody who irritates Dusty Baker is OK in my book. As Kelly would go on to explain, he didn’t like how the Astros’ players handled the sign-stealing scandal, not so much the stealing as the taking responsibility, or failure thereof. The new-White Sox thought that coaches and managers were thrown under the bus—think Alex Cora and AJ Hinch losing their jobs—while the actual cheaters got off punishment-free. Good point. Here's hoping Correa, now a free agent, doesn’t sign on the South Side. I want to see him in a matchup with Kelly. Ditto those Dusty Astros.

This and That

What I didn’t miss about baseball—reading all the OP GMs spending other people’s money to construct a team they’ll rip the second in starts to underperform. Case in point: folks clamoring to for the White Sox to sign the likes of Nick Castellanos or Michael Conforto. No, thanks. I’ll stick with Andrew Vaughn and Gavin Sheets. What I did miss about baseball—talking about it with my daughter. Clare and I have been downright gab-happy the past few days. Case in point: Carlos Rodon. Neither of us would have signed Rodon to a two-year deal for $44 million, as the Giants reportedly did yesterday. Great competitor, left arm full of visits to the IL waiting to happen. We would, however, trade the likes of Yoan Moncada for young pitching and catching. Call it All in the Family OP GMing.

Relieved, But...

By agreeing to a new CBA yesterday, baseball owners and players actually did something smart by stepping away from the abyss. The ceiling for the luxury tax—the owners’ euphemism for a salary cap—gets raised more than the billionaires would like, and all is right in the world. Sort of. What struck me the most was the newly proposed international draft. According to mlb.com, if the players agree to the draft in exchange for the owners dropping free-agent signing compensation, “Clubs who select players from growth countries (countries with less than 0.5% of signings in the previous three signing periods) will receive additional selections to incentivize scouting and signing in emerging markets.” Let’s translate that into standard English. Teams that draft players from countries like Australia, China, Korea and Taiwan would be rewarded with extra picks. Fine. Now where’s the draft for female players, domestic or international? It must be in the fine print somewhere.

Poking Around

The lack of spring training must be getting to me. I’ve been poking around in all the weird places to get my baseball fix. All things considered, I should’ve stayed off of baseball-reference.com. At a certain point, looking at the In Memoriam section can get to you, or did me. Twenty-three former players have already died this year, including, recently, Ike Delock and Fred Lasher. I know both of them from Strat-O-Matic. Delock finished an eleven-year career in 1963, and I have no memory of ever seeing him pitch, but he was a mainstay for those old-timer 50s Red Sox teams Strat-O-Matic has done. Lasher I probably have some sense of from the late ’60s; anyone on the Tigers back then seemed to do well against the White Sox. But, like Delock, I knew him more as a game piece than an actual human being. Games pieces last indefinitely, provided they’re stored away from the reach of basement floods. Human beings are different. Delock was 92, Lasher 80. I did better on eBay, where someone was selling two photos of a Sox game at Comiskey Park from July of 1943. Orval Grove of the Sox shut out the Yankees, 1-0, losing a no-hitter on a two-out double by Joe Gordon. Both look to be snapshots taken from center field. Nice, but not worth the $100-a-piece asking price. I can make an offer, but I doubt the seller would accept $45 for both. Doing my “Chicago White Sox press photo” search, I cam up with a photo of Sox owner Arthur Allyn with Sox GM Ed Short and American Football League Commissioner Joe Foss. According to the caption, Allyn “has been mentioned as a prime candidate for an A.F.L. franchise.” Wouldn’t that have been something? From what Ken Rosenthal says in today’s The Athletic, players and owners are deadlocked over the issue of an international draft; owners want it, Latin players in particular are opposed. So it goes. If nothing changes by tomorrow, I may check and see if anyone’s bought those snapshots.

Yeah, Right

Yesterday being International Women’s Day and baseball being busy trying to destroy itself, mlb.com dedicated the site to stories on women in baseball, past and present. You could almost believe glass ceilings are being broken, or soon will be. But that was yesterday. Today, mlb.com ran a story on a 20-year old Chinese national aiming to be the first ballplayer from China (not born of American missionaries) to make the majors. As ever, baseball will go to the far ends of the earth to find talent. Except female players, of course. Too bad mlb.com didn’t devote a little space to that topic yesterday.

Or Else

According to today’s The Athletic, owners and players met on Monday and are set to continue negotiating today. Owners reportedly have offered to play a full 162-game schedule if both sides can reach an agreement before tomorrow. How interesting. Back in February, “Duffer” Manfred said, “I see missing games as a disastrous outcome for this industry,” then he cancelled the first two series of the season when players refused to roll over and give the owners the agreement they wanted. If The Athletic is correct, the owners have upped the luxury tax threshold by $10 million and are holding out the prospect of a full season, which means full salaries to boot. What happened to that “best and final” offer from last week? The threat not to make up games? Back in the real world, football has filled the void left by the defensive lockout specialists. Today’s Tribune has a full page of football news, including the jabbering of ex-Bears’ coach Lovie Smith; the Sun-Times has two-plus pages of football. Both papers are giving Chicago-team minor-league players the star treatment, but it rings hollow after a while. If they haven’t even reached High A, how can you treat them like the second coming of Ruth and Young? Another day wasted, another wound to the foot. I bet the Duffer is getting his practice swings in, though.

My Madness

For the first time I can remember and maybe for the first time in my life, I watched two men’s college basketball games over a weekend. On Saturday, Loyola of Chicago beat Northern Iowa to advance to the finals in the Missouri Valley tournament. Sunday, the Ramblers beat Drake to secure a bid to the NCAA tournament. College sports make me admittedly prickly. I insist on drawing a distinction between student athletes and athletes participating in minor-league programs run by colleges and universities for the benefit of pro sports. Loyola rates in the first category. Yesterday, first-year Ramblers’ coach Drew Valentine used nine players, not one of them an undergraduate; but three of his starters were fifth-year/COVID graduate students, along with one junior and a senior. When was the last time Duke went with an all upperclassmen starting five? Last year, under Porter Moser, critics would have been tempted to say the Ramblers played a suburban, or “white” game, with a lot of passing and assists to go with take-a-charge and floor-burn defense. Coach Valentine isn’t white, though he is employing that same team-first approach. It works for me. I have three college degrees and have some idea what it takes to graduate; my daughter was a college athlete who, so far, has earned two degrees. She was a true student athlete who balanced time in the weight room with time in the library. Members of the men’s Loyola basketball team look to be doing the same. Go, Ramblers.

Do Care, Don't Care

Other people keep telling me what to think about the baseball lockout, and I don’t care much for what they have to say. Let’s start with pitcher Max “Porsche” Scherzer. Or should I call him Ghost? Either way, Scherzer wants a 14-team postseason where the higher first-round seeds—and isn’t that a term that just attaches itself to the national pastime?—would not only get home-field advantage for the full five games, they’d also be staked to a one-game lead. For anyone who thinks this is a stupid idea (I do), consider what MLB is proposing. The poohbahs want a 14-team postseason format where some teams get to pick their competition. Oh, the owners must’ve picked this up while listening to fans, as they want the world to know they do. Nothing like a little cockamamie to burnish the image of the national pastime. And then I read an editorial in today’s Tribune: Play Ball! This is not the moment for owners, or players, to put greed first. If anyone involved with this piece knows baseball as a business or sport, you could’ve fooled me. Like it or not, baseball is a business that generates oodles of cash. The tug-of-war over who gets what is inevitable and wouldn’t rate so much national attention if we were talking about John Deere or Starbucks. The editorial also thinks fans don’t care about the economic issues involved, ditto a pitch clock and defensive shifts. Funny, but I do. Heck, I even care about the price of concessions. Last year, the Orioles were charging $10 for a beer. The Mets topped the O’s by $1.75. They also had the nerve to gouge fans $7 for a hotdog. Ed Bukowski would not be amused. I care about the time of a game and the cost of a game. If only players, owners and editorial writers did, too.

Sad and Sadder

Yesterday, MLB players announced they’re setting up a $1 million fund for workers affected by the lockout. Matt Scherzer-wise, how many Porsches does that come out to? Count up all the spring-training and major-league venues there are, then do a head-count for workers. Sorry to say, but $1 million isn’t going to cut it, unless the players can get some fishes-and-loaves action going. That, or contribute a whole lot more to the fund. If the players appear at all hypocritical or tight-fisted here, at least they’re not clueless. Do the owners even know that a whole bunch of blue-collar folk depend on baseball for a livelihood? Do they even know what “blue collar” means? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Plain as Day (93)

You think Rob Manfred is a shill for MLB owners? Then take a look at mlb.com, which makes the Kremlin sound like a paragon of truth. Want an update on the lockout? Nothing more recent than Tuesday’s “letter” to the fans from the duffer in chief and a clip of him announcing the cancellation of games, along with a clip from Wednesday featuring a puppet talking head who commented on how many “wins” there were for players’ in the owners’ most recent offer. But, hey, you can always check on the “30 prospects ready for redemption”! The Neroes of baseball—and I’ll include the players here—fiddle while the world moves on without them or their game. Peter Gammons put it best in today’s The Athletic. The lockout continues while March Madness, the Masters and the NFL Draft all beckon. Launch angle that.

Flashbacks

It’s happened twice so far this week, once in the Cermak Plaza parking lot on Monday and again today, when I was driving along First Avenue. Flashbacks like this I could get used to. The first one occurred as Michele and I were going for dogfood. Wonder Basset has a persisting ear infection the vet thinks is the result of food allergies, and I’m hoping to find a bag of special bits for under $200. No, that’s not a typo. The breeze and the blue sky triggered a crowd of memories, along with being in that particular parking lot, the other side of Clare’s high school. All of a sudden, I could’ve been going to one of her games with the Mustangs. Then, just like that, it was gone, and I found myself back in the last day of February, not a bag of hypoallergenic dogfood in sight. This morning, I was on my way to Menards to buy new blinds for the back porch. Right around Brookfield Zoo, I happened to look up and saw three or four contrails lining the sky in white. And, just like that, it was ten years ago. Michele and I were making our way through a sandy-soiled state park in Florida, our way of killing time before Clare’s games that day. All the while we hiked, a skywriter puffed out a message high above. Somebody wanted us to know Jesus is our savior. But I knew that already and just wanted the games to start. Did I mention my daughter could hit the cover off the ball? All that spring she did. I saw it again in a flashback.

What He Does

For anyone he need of a demonstration, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred yesterday demonstrated that special talent of his to lie while standing up or writing a letter. Either and both showed Manfred for the lying liar that he is. I bet the owners love him for it. Manfred took to the cameras to announce that negotiations to bring about a new collective bargaining agreement had ended. “I had hoped against hope that I would not have to have this particular press conference in which I am going to cancel some regular season games,” said the man caught by an AP photographer earlier in the day practicing his golf swing. The duffer lied because he and the owners think they can bring the players to their knees because of the pay lost to cancelled games. Manfred also said that his side “exhausted every possibility” to make an agreement, which is a lie so big as to verge on hilarious, if only it weren’t so outrageously sad. An offer that includes no movement on the luxury-tax threshold for three out of five years is the result of delusion, not exhaustion. I tried watching this performance only to get sick of the lies coming out of Manfred’s mouth; for me, at least, it’s easier to read a series of untruths. Like the line about how the duffer and company “listened to our fans.” Not anyone like me, they didn’t. I don’t care about expanded playoffs; teams hovering around .500 don’t deserve to go, and owners of such teams don’t deserve the extra revenue. And don’t tell me what “the calendar dictates.” It doesn’t dictate anything, Rob, you do. Baseball played a full 162-game schedule in 1990 with opening day in the second week of April. And don’t insult me by bringing up the 1994 strike again. That was then, and this is now. If you want to blame the players for something that happened twenty-seven years ago, then accept the blame for putting this season in doubt. Some people want to turn lead into gold; baseball owners just want a salary cap. That’s what this lockout is about. If the owners get one, the Ricketts family comes out way ahead because they have the most SoFi-Stadium like operation in baseball. I imagine every owner short of Jerry Reinsdorf will want to copy that idea of ever-bigger revenue streams based on controlled costs. All of which leads me to root for the multimillionaires instead. In the meantime, local media is turning its attention to the NFL Combine later this week. Wait to go, duffer.

As I Was Saying

Another game against a good team, another loss for the Bulls, this time 112-99 to the Heat in Miami last night. You know what’s coming next, right? A look at how Nikola Vucevic did. And you should know what the answer is—not that good. Vucevic went up against Edrice “Bam” Adebayo (maybe nicknames fake him out), scoring 14 points with seven rebounds to Adebayo’s 15 points and seven boards; Adebayo also had five assists to two for Vucevic. What’s the point of a big man in the middle if he can’t dominate? Alas, the answer to that question gets more obvious with each passing game.