Ice Berg Tips and Coal Mine Canaries

The NBA has been hit by a betting scandal, again, only now it involves HOFer and current Portland Trailblazers’ coach Chauncey Billups along with Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player and former assistant coach Damon Jones. What the various charges do is raise questions, again, about the honesty of NBA games, of their outcomes. (A second scandal involving Billups concerns high-stakes’ card games, rigged by the Mafia.) It also raises questions about the integrity of broadcast networks that show games and push betting. I’m talking about you, ESPN, Marquee and CHSN. Right now, it’s the NBA. How long until a scandal rocks the NFL or MLB? Is tonight’s game one of the World Series on the legit? You have to wonder.

A Sleeper, or Not

The Bulls kicked off their season last night, beating the Pistons 115-114 before a packed house at the United Center. They almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, only to think better of it. This is an odd team, one where the second unit looks nearly as talented as the starting five. That’s either a good thing, or bad; only time will tell. But nobody seemed to miss guard Coby White, expected to be out another two weeks with a calf strain. In which case, thank goodness Arturas Karnisovas decided to keep Tre Jones around for another three seasons. The 25-year old scored twelve points while dishing out eight assists, the sort of performance he gave on a regular basis last season after being acquired from the Spurs. A smart move by Karnisovas—who knew? Sort of like Nikola Vucevic, the human tree on skates, scoring 28 points to go with fourteen rebounds. Now, if the big tree can do that in March and April, there may be cause for hope. I’d also trade some of the 50 or so guards Karnisovas has collected, but that’s just me.

Do the Math

I wonder what Jerry Reinsdorf and Tom Ricketts are going to do during the World Series. Wag their fingers and say, “Tsk-tsk,” maybe, or lay the groundwork for a work stoppage after the CBA expires at the end of next season? A hard salary cap for the good of the game, anyone? At the very least, they should both be rooting for the “small-er” market Blue Jays, who have a $255.2 million payroll vs. $350 million for the top-spending Dodgers, per spotrac.com. Number seven payroll vs. number one. Go, seven. What I’d love to ask these two whiny billionaires is this—why are you team owners if you don’t want to spend money? By all means, be smart in spending the cash (think Blue Jays), but spend it or get out of the business. Instead, the odds are we’re talking about two owners who are going to spearhead the drive for a hard cap. What a bunch of cry babies.

Two Jays

Say this for the White Sox under GMs Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. When they made a dumb trade (and they made lots), you could count on it being a doozy. Take this one from December 2014. Hahn—or maybe Williams, the former was GM by then, but that never stopped the latter as team president from interfering—engineered a trade of four prospects for ex-Cub Jeff Samardzija and a minor leaguer. Three of the ex-Sox—pitcher Chris Bassitt, catcher Josh Phegley and infielder Marcus Semien—all have had pretty decent (or better) major-league careers. In fact, Bassitt and Semien are both still playing, and come Friday, both can say they’ve been on World Series teams. Samardzija? He pitched one year on the South Side before having five pretty-blah seasons with the Giants. I was reminded of all this last night when Bassitt came out of the bullpen to pitch a scoreless eighth inning while protecting a one-run lead for the Blue Jays. Jeff Hoffman did the same in the ninth, and the Jays beat the Mariners 4-3 in game seven of the ALCS to advance to a date with the Dodgers in the World Series. Three of the runs came courtesy of a George Springer homerun to erase a two-run Seattle lead in the seventh. Ah, George Springer. I’ve never been a fan, at least of his contract, six years at $150 million. At the time of signing, Springer was already 31 years old. I wondered what would happen the last two years of the contract. Well, what I thought would happen, sort of. Springer started 80 games as a DH, which suggests he won’t be seeing much of the field either in the World Series (honesty forces me to admit he took a fastball off the knee in game five of the ALCS) or next season. But, right now, I doubt Blue Jays’ fans care much about that, and I can’t say I blame them.

Walking Around

Michele calls what we did on Saturday part of the “best day of the year” for her. With Open House Chicago, you have access to places you wouldn’t get into the other 365 days, like the rooftop garden at McCormick Place. Trust me, it offers views of Chicago you can’t get anywhere else. We walked through an area generally referred to as the “South Loop,” an area once marked by abandoned buildings, old warehouse and vacant lots, along with a few Prairie Avenue mansion hanging on for dear existence. Well, the mansions are thriving now, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an empty lot. The place has been transformed to the point that, if you told me this was a new residential development in lower Manhattan, I’d believe it. Between an iffy weather forecast and the uncertainties attached to the “No Kings” march downtown, we didn’t know if we could do Saturday; Open House is a two-day affair. But everything worked out, so that we didn’t have to go on Sunday. Not that we could have, not really. As it was, I had a hard time finding street parking; let’s just say if you don’t live in the area and have a sticker on the windshield to prove it, you’ll be in trouble. But I found a spot that allowed us to walk around to three places, and all was good. But Sunday, the odds are somebody going to the Bears-Saints’ game at Soldier Field likely would’ve snagged it ahead of me. No doubt they’d have had a happy walk back to the car after the Munsters dominated the visitors, 26-14. Or they might’ve stopped in to celebrate at any of the restaurants and bars we passed. That’s the thing. The Bears right now generate all sorts of economic activity centered in the South Loop. The resulting tax revenue goes to the city. If the Munsters move to Arlington Heights, that economic activity will tag along. The team basically will be generating the same amount of business wherever it plays. It won’t matter to the state of Illinois where the McCaskeys pitch their flag, just to the communities within walking distance of wherever the Bears play. The Bears are already bad neighbors (What? We’re not responsible for that $534 million in construction bonds still outstanding for the 2003 Soldier Field renovation. We’re just tenants.) If the Munsters move out of the city, Arlington Heights and surrounding communities will learn just how bad.

Smart Money

Poor Tom Ricketts (relatively speaking). He must’ve drawn solace from the fact that his Cubs lost the NLDS to the kind of team he wishes his Cubs were. In other words, underpaid overachievers. According to sportac.com, the Cubs’ payroll this season is $211.9 million, as opposed to $121.7 million for the Brewers. And then the Dodgers had to go and ruin things by sweeping Milwaukee in the NLCS. Nobody spent more on salary this year than Los Angeles, at $350.3 million. Call it smart money, especially when compared to the Mets spending $342.4 and not even making the postseason. You can draft; develop; trade; and hope or draft; develop; trade; and spend smart. That’s what the Dodgers do. Oh, and gamble smart. They signed Blake Snell this year and Tyler Glasnow last year. Both have a history of arm problems, and neither pitched much in the regular season. But both were ready for the postseason, as evidenced by Snell’s eight shutout innings in game one of the NLCS. The same goes for Shohei Ohtani, who pitched all of 47 innings during the regular season. As if that kept him from throwing six shutout innings as he scattered two and three walks against strikeouts against the Brewers last night in the series clincher. We won’t even mention the three homeruns he hit in the game. This is the player Jerry Reinsdorf publicly stated the White Sox wouldn’t be pursuing when Ohtani was a free agent in 2023. Yes, by all means draft; develop; and trade. Just don’t expect to win unless you spend smart, which is not the same as spending less.

An Embarrassment of Choices

You want baseball? NLCS or ALCS? Hockey? Check the Hawks’ schedule this week? Basketball? The Bulls start next week. Football? NU or the Bears? Truly, this is the one time of year where Americans sports overlap. I hope to live long enough to see an October where the Cubs and White Sox are in their respective championship series, TV schedule be damned; the Hawks and Bull are looking to defend championships; ditto the Wildcats and Munsters. I’m pretty sure that never happened over the course of Sister Jean’s 106 years on the planet. I can wait.

Freeze Frame

My latest purchase arrived in the mail on Monday, an 8”x10” photo of Tommie Agee sliding under the tag of Lee Elia during spring training, 1966. Oh, the memories. Agee was part of a three-way trade with the Indians and A’s. We sent Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger and Jim Landis to Kansas City for Rocky Colavito and then shipped Colavito and Cam Carreon to Cleveland for Agee, Tommy John and John Romano. Nice deal, that. Elia was already a baseball lifer when he debuted with the Sox as a 28-year old rookie in ’66. A .205 BA in 195 at-bats didn’t win him a second season on the South Side, just a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1968. But his career in baseball was hardly over. Dallas Green named him Cubs’ manager in 1982. Elia gained notoriety for speaking truth to conceit in April of 1983. His team had just lost a close game to the Dodgers and gotten off to a terrible start at 5-14. Let’s just say Elia wasn’t a fan of the fans who showed up back then, saying that, “Eighty-five percent of the f****n’ world is working. The other fifteen come out here.” Unfortunately for Elia, his words were caught on tape. Not that he was wrong. This was the era of “Bleacher Bums,” which offered a fanciful take on that fifteen percent. Bums they were, and unemployed Elia became late in the ’83 season when the Cubs fired him. I see those full houses at Wrigley Field, and I can still hear Elia cursing, good White Sox that he was.

Now, That's What I'm Talking About

So, if Blake Snell was doing Sandy Koufax Monday night, then Yoshinobu Yamamoto stepped into the role of Don Drysdale last night. The 27-year old righthander threw a 118-pitch complete game helping the Dodgers beat the Brewers 5-1 win in Milwaukee. It’s the first postseason complete game since Justin Verlander in 2017. Eight innings from Snell, nine from Yamamoto—the analytics’ world must be reeling. What about batting average third time around the order? What about starter fatigue? What about leveraging power arms out of the bullpen? Who cares?

Stop the Presses!

How old school was that? Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts let starter Blake Snell go eight innings last night in game one of the NLCS in Milwaukee. It didn’t hurt that Snell gave up all of one baserunner enroute to a 2-1 LA win over the Brewers. That’s the good news for those of us who remember going to ballgames on our brontosauruses. The game still took 2:53 to play. Yes, Brewers’ pitchers—and there were six of them—issued eight free passes, but the Dodgers helped things along by hitting into two double plays. And the Brewers chipped in, so to speak, when Caleb Durbin was picked off of first in the third inning. Gosh, I wonder if an onslaught of TV commercials had anything to do with an excruciating pace? Nah. Commissioner Rob Manfred cares too much about the future of the game to let anything like that happen. Right?

Done

With the Cubs’ loss to the Brewers in the NLDS Saturday night, the Chicago baseball season is officially over. It’s liberating, in a way. Now, I don’t have to listen to White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable—and I’ll call him by his given name the day he gets his team ten games over .500, I promise—start every answer to a question with “Yeah” or wonder why the lineup features the likes of Jacob Amaya or Josh Rojas or Will Robertson or why a hot hitter sits for one of the above. I miss reading box scores, but only for the 60 wins on the season. On a possibly related note, the 1967 team-autographed ball I bought arrived over the weekend. Talk about a stroll down memory lane—Wayne Causey, Don McMahon, Don Buford and, oh, so many more. Best of all, the autographs are clear, which makes it easy to spot Ken Boyer and Rocky Colavito (acquiring aging talent, always the White Sox way). The only tough signature to decipher belongs to coach Kerby Farrell, born two weeks after my dad and died 25 years before he did. Gary Peter, Joel Horlen, Walt Williams. Perfection, or almost. There’s no Cisco Carlos, who amassed an eyepopping 0.86 ERA in 41.2 innings. The 26-year old rookie got his first start August 25th (Bukowski father and son were in the stands, I distinctly recall), and Colavito was acquired July 29th. My guess is the autographs were amassed sometime between July 30-August 24. I lived and died with this team, the last gasp of a “Go-Go” Sox iteration dating to 1951, before my birth. With five games left in the ’67 season and one game out of first place, the Sox finished out the schedule against the tenth-place A’s and seventh-place Senators. Easy-peasey, right? No, a five-game losing streak brought me to tears and ushered in three miserable seasons of losing culminating in the 56-106 debacle of 1970. Hope returned in the following season with the hiring of Chuck Tanner. I already have the 1971 team ball: Bart Johnson, Jay Johnstone, Carlos May…Venable as the new Tanner? Sox fans should be so lucky.

Finis

The Brewers sent the Cubs packing with a 3-1 win last night at a rocking American Family Field to clinch the NLDS. Put another way, the team that finished 22nd in homeruns during the regular season bested the team that finished with the sixth most longballs by outhomering them, three taters to one. Best of all, ex-White Sox Andrew Vaughn hit the deciding go-ahead homer for his new team in the fourth inning. Oh, where to start? The emperor’s new clothes seems the best bet, the emperor here being Cubs’ team chair and de facto owner Tom Ricketts. This is the man who claims his cash cow is but a small or medium market franchise. Hence, only the tenth highest team payroll this year, per sportrac.com. Up until around 9:30 or so last night, Ricketts was probably feeling downright proud of himself. Why, his team with a $211.9 million payroll had a good shot at advancing to the NLCS. Not like the Mets, who didn’t even make the postseason despite spending $342.4 million on player salaries. Too bad the real small-to-medium market team, the one with the eighth-lowest payroll ($121.7 million), won when it counted. The other team? Oh, they played the analytics-driven game of longball and launch angle all season while their opponents opted for on-base percentage. The team that had the sixth most homers in the regular season lost the division, let alone the NLDS, to the team that finished with the second-highest on-base percentage. And that really mattered because the home team won every game in the series. Would the Brewers have won game five if it were played at Wrigley Field? I really, really doubt it. But we’ll never know, courtesy of front-office decisions made by Jed Hoyer and company, at the behest of their emperor. Which leads me to my last point, that Emperor Ricketts also subscribed to the Jerry Krause dictum that players and coaches alone don’t win championships, organizations do. That’s were willing to spend $40 million in the 2023 offseason to make Craig Counsell the highest paid manager in baseball. (The Dodgers’ Dave Roberts signed an extension at the beginning of 2025 that gives him $8.1 million a season to Counsell’s $8 million.) The Cubs thought Counsell provided more value than any potential free-agent signing. In other words, they spent money to save money, however imaginary the savings might be. Great philosophy, only it didn’t work for the Krause’s Bulls after Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson left, and it’s not working for the cash cow on Addison. Let’s see if the postseason changes anything.

Not My Cup of Tea

I bailed on the Tigers-Mariners’ ALDS game five after thirteen innings. Where FOX announcer Adam Amin saw baseball poetry in motion which he described in hyperbolic flourishes, I saw two teams incapable of bunting the ball or stealing a base. Heaven forbid someone try a hit-and-run. The Tigers struck out seventeen times in fifteen innings, the Mariners twenty (!) times in 14.1. Somebody had to win, and it was the Mariners 3-2 on a walk-off single by Jorge Polanco. Yea. They still lose to the Blue Jays in the ALCS.

Sister Jean

Sister Jean Schmidt died yesterday at the age of 106. She was an actual person turned into a media star. If you’re Catholic and of a certain age, the odds are you knew someone like Sister Jean, a teacher probably along the way from kindergarten through twelfth grade, although it’s worth noting Sister Jean also taught on the college level. If you’re looking for a “the nun(s) beat me every day for x-years” story here, sorry, I don’t have one. Members of the Sister Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary taught me as best they could at St. Gall. In many ways, I was a challenging case. Sister Jerome Marie, my teacher in fourth grade, gave me batting tips, which was very nice of her considering how I tried to forge my mother’s name on my report card in the spring. Like I said, no “she beat me silly” stories here. To me, Sister Jean and Sister Jerome Marie are interchangeable; nuns were jacks—and maybe Jills—of all trades who helped the students entrusted in their care. Because she was the team chaplain for the Loyola Ramblers men’s basketball team and Loyola went deep in the NCAA tournament in 2018, a national audience learned all about Sister Jean, or some cute version of her. Make it to 106, and you outlive just about everyone you’ve ever cared about. Age brings sorrow as well as wisdom. That Sister Jean chose to smile for the cameras diminished neither her wisdom nor her sorrow. We’re diminished, or should be, by her passing.

Minority Report

According to today’s Tribune via the AP, viewership was way up for MLB’s Wild Card Series, especially among the young folks. There were big gains registered for both the under-35 and under-17 demographics. Something about trotting out relief pitchers, maybe, in which case I don’t get it. What’s so exciting about watching a parade of pitchers following the starter, e.g., seven relievers for the Guardians in their October 2nd loss to the Tigers? And who gets a kick out of watching batters fan time after time, e.g., the first Tigers-Guardians’ game that featured 28 strikeouts? I can’t wait to see the numbers for the ALDS and NLDS. I mean, the Yankees struck out fifteen times against eight Toronto pitchers on October 5th. Talk about exciting.

Like I Said

Pardon my crude analytics, but I said the other day the Blue Jays should’ve kept Trey Yesavage in for more than 5.1 innings of no-hit ball on 78 pitches. Here’s why. Last night in the Bronx, four of the relievers who appeared in Sunday’s game came out again in what at one time was a 6-3 Toronto lead. Three of those four were scored on, this after they posted scoreless outings on Sunday. So, it does in fact look like the Yankees gained momentum scoring those seven runs in a 13-7 loss. Final score of Yankees 9 Blue Jays 6. But what do I know?

The Ex- Factor

Oh, my Cub-loving hardware guy must’ve been in seventh heaven last night after Seiya Suzuki hit a three-run homerun in the top of the first inning. Cubs 3 Brewers 0. Oh, to have seen his reaction when ex-White Sox Andrew Vaughn tied the game with a three-run homer of his own in the bottom half of the inning. Final score: Brewers 7 Cubs 3. After the game, Vaughn said all the right things while his teammates and manager said all the nice things. All White Sox fans can do is note that Vaughn was hitting .189 when he was shipped off as opposed to the .308 BA he put up just north of the border. Nothing says “good trade” for a team better than the player you acquired having 46 RBIs in a mere 221 at-bats. How did the 27-year old, former first-round pick do it? In part, he credits working “my butt off” at Triple-A Nashville and then taking advantage of the opportunity when the Brewers called him up. [quote in story today on team website] And nothing more than that? Vaughn never struck me as a prima donna in any sense of the term applied to sports. After he homered, Clare texted, “That’s the first time I ever saw Andrew Vaughn smile,” which is probably little if any exaggeration. The guy was always serious, always looking to do his part. But it didn’t work. If the trade shook him and showed him he had to change, good for Andrew Vaughn. If the Milwaukee minor- and major-league coaching staff was able to reach him unlike anyone with his former team, shame on the White Sox. I checked, and none of the five hitting coaches in the Milwaukee system Vaughn has encountered since the trade got beyond Triple-A. It's not enough to go all-in on analytics, if that had anything to do with Andrew Vaughn’s resurgence. You have to have the right people doing the analyzing. The proof’s in the homerun that denied the Cubs any momentum.

Two Questions

First question: Why did Blue Jays’ manager John Schneider pull his starter? I ask because 22-year old Trey Yesavage had thrown 5.1 HITLESS innings, striking out eleven Yankees along the way. Yes, the Jays won 13-7, but why not let Yesavage at least go six innings? I mean, he’d thrown all of 78 pitches. If he goes six or seven, the Yankees may not have scored the seven runs they did off of Toronto relievers, giving them the tiniest bit of momentum. No doubt Schneider went by the analytics’ book. God forbid the home-team fans or those watching the game on television get a chance to see some no-hit history. In any event, the Yankees are now down two games to none, which leads to my second question. If Aaron Judge and company stink the way they did the previous two games, how will Yankee fans react? Class has never been a strong suit in the Bronx.

A Dream Come True

This is every White Sox fan’s dream come true: The Cubs are in the postseason, and manager Craig Counsell’s first call to the bullpen is for ex-Sox Micheal Sorka…in the first inning! Yes, it happened, with results any Sox fan could’ve predicted. Soroka entered with his team already down 4-1 with two runners on and two out. A walk and a single led to two more runs. Wait, there’s more. The 28-year old righthander, who was not a happy camper on the South Side last season, gave up three consecutive singles to start the second inning. Before long, another two runs had crossed the plate, and Counsell called the bullpen for another ex-Sox pitcher, Aaron Civale, and Civale promptly gave up a run-scoring single. Final score, Brewers 9 Cubs 3. Now, far be it from me to gloat, at least not until another two Cub losses. I can almost tolerate the North Siders. The older I get, the less any one Cubbie player bothers me. Not so the fans, like the one I ran into at a hardware store Friday night in the northern suburbs. I was there to have two screens fixed for my soon-to-be 94-year old mother-in-law. Silly me was wearing his Sox cap, which apparently offended the employee in question. He started in on what a terrible team the White Sox are, blah, blah, blah. All in good fun, of course. Maybe I get the last laugh.

Show Me the Money

The Bears released updated renderings of their stadium project this week, the better to extort money—along the lines of $855 million—from local and state government for infrastructure. Wait, there’s more. The accompanying buildings to the site are featureless geometric patterns, not that the stadium itself is anything to get excited about, unless your fancy runs to classic hubcaps. The team website offers all kinds of reasons why the project makes sense, up to and including better household water pressure for surrounding homes. The team claims the McCaskey clan needs a new stadium “[t]o remain competitive in the NFL today.” Funny, but I thought a hard salary cap allowed them to do exactly that.

New Screen Readers

On Monday the White Sox gave four coaches—including pitching coach Ethan Katz and hitting coach Marcus Thames—their walking papers. I won’t hold my breath that their replacements will be any better. Just different guys reading a computer screen. Katz was a minor leaguer who never rose above A-ball (but did coach Lucas Giolito in high school) while Thames collected 450 hits over a ten-year career with the Dodger, Tigers and Yankees. My guess is that their replacements will have similar backgrounds. I keep hearing on broadcasts how it’s the postseason and everything is different. If so, wouldn’t you want people who’d been there coaching players who want to get there? At least Thames appeared in five postseason series and even collected nine hits. Too bad he never articulated a hitting philosophy. It’s worth noting the assistant pitching and hitting coaches, were kept on. Joel McKeithan never hit a major-league pitch while Matt Wise went 17-22 with a 4.23 ERA in his eight years with the Angels, Brewers and Mets. Big-league success doesn’t matter to the White Sox or any other team these days. They want coaches who can break down data and facilitate tweaks in mechanics per the data Mark my words—the White Sox will hire people who have never been there to coach players who want to get there. Good luck with that.

Ex-Sox Starters

The wild card has been very good for ex-White Sox starters, beginning with Garrett Crochet. Pitching Tuesday night in the lion’s den known as Yankee Stadium, the 26-year old lefthander went 7.2 innings, during which time he allowed one run on four hits, with eleven strikeouts making the zero walks all the sweeter in a 3-1 Red Sox win. Crochet told manager Alex Cora he would only need to make one call to the bullpen, and he was right. Last night, Cora called down to the pen six times, but it didn’t work. Yankees 4 Red Sox 3. For better or worse, now-32-year old Carlos Rodon made the Yankee win possible with a pretty good six-inning performance—three runs; four hits; three walks; and six strikeouts. I never doubted Rodon’s grit when he pitched on the South Side. With him it was—and always will be—a question of health. Well, he was healthy enough last night. Did I mention Dylan Cease? Lo and behold, the great enigma threw goose eggs through 3.1 innings, after which San Diego manager Mike Shildt went into analytics’ mode and went to his bullpen. Unlike Cora, Shildt was able to get by on three relievers in a 3-0 Padres’ win. No doubt Cease’s agent Scott Boras will have something to say about the quick hook. Lest I forget, the Cubs called on ex-Sox Michael Soroka, who responded with .2 innings of scoreless relief. So, former Sox pitchers have acquitted themselves well. Now, we’ll se what ex-Cub Yu Darvish does against his old team in the third and deciding game at Wrigley Field late this afternoon.

Venue

The thing about Wrigley Field is, you know it’s Wrigley Field. No other ballpark has that outfield or walls down the line. The area around home plate used to be unique, so much so other teams copied the brick-and-limestone design for their new parks. Oh, and it’s loud because the upper deck is right on top of the lower deck rather than terraced up and away like in all new stadiums, baseball or football. When those members of the great Cubbie Cult start to screaming, the opposition has to hear it. If they say otherwise, fine, in which case, they can feel it. And when the Cubbie Cult starts to cheering at full lung capacity, the home team can’t help but feel the energy projected. All of the above came into play yesterday during the North Siders’ 3-1 win over the Padres in their Wild Card matchup. Players felt what fans were channeling their way, viewers knew exactly where the game was being played. I wonder, how much of this does Jerry Reinsdorf understand? He once had a ballpark just as unique as Wrigley, only bigger, and he walked away from it for a ball-mall. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.