The Pied Piper, a.k.a. Scott Boras

Player agent Scott Boras is proof positive of reincarnation—the man has to be the Pied Piper of Hamlin, take two.  Boras turns general managers and owners into the most adoring of children.

PPB is more than a little worried about the national pastime.  Mr. Boras doesn’t like the way teams are moving away from free agency to developing their own talent, and he wants to see changes in how MLB does the World Series.  In an interview with the Tribune this week, Boras proposed the idea of a neutral-site Series, a la the Super Bowl.

“If we continue to do this [having the home team play, literally, at home] on a regional scale, we’re going to lose something that baseball deserves, and what it deserves is world attention.  There is a sacrifice of two, three or four [home] games for a team, but the betterment it brings to baseball on the whole far exceeds the detriment.”

I wonder how much revenue such a change would cost the Piper, I mean, Scott Boras?      

Victor Martinez

As a White Sox fan, I love Chris Sale, which is probably why I hate the Tigers’ Victor Martinez, with his career .517 batting average and .563 on-base percentage against Sale.  So, what’s the silver lining to the Tigers’ resigning Martinez to a four-year contract worth $68 million?

Basically, his age.  Martinez will be 36-39 during the course of that deal.  He’s already slow on the bases, but the Tigers don’t dare pinch run for him because for fear of losing his bat late in the game or extra innings.  At some point, you get stuck playing the contract instead of the player (See Adam Dunn and Alfonso Soriano.).  Nothing like running a .200 hitter out there game after game.  I look forward to that day with Martinez.  Maybe he won’t bother to wait to the end of the contract to start losing it.

A fan can hope, and Chris Sale, too.

Veterans Day

Twenty-six years ago today, I had planned out a lecture on what would have been the 70^th anniversary of Armistice Day.  I wanted my students to understand the folly of bad foreign policy and the horror of war, but God had other plans.  Instead, I spent the day at the hospital, where my father underwent an eight-hour operation for the removal of a brain tumor.

On a Veterans Day when Clare was in sixth grade, we went to a place called Baseball Alley for a late autumn practice.  I could be a real d.i. of a coach.  Clare would get a hundred groundballs at third base, more if I thought she needed it.  Then I pitched to her, fastballs and sliders.  She liked the one more than the other, so I threw mostly sliders to break her of the habit of moving her front foot and bat in opposite directions:  Stop doing that, for chrissakes!  Maybe I should mention that my daughter sometimes tried to get out of these practices by saying she had too much homework.

Anyway, it was a warm November 11^th, around 11 AM.  We were on the smaller of two fields, the one she had just aged out of, and for good reason.  The girl kept hitting my pitches over the fence.

These are the Veterans Days I remember.

Teaching Moments En Masse Courtesy Chicago Bears

Teaching Moments En Masse

The Bears-Packer game ended at 10:50 PM last night, and Clare called three minutes later with a question.  “The announcers keep saying how good a coach [Marc] Trestman is.  Then how can they lose, 55-14?”  A good question.

Basically, Cris Collinsworth was showing how not to provide color commentary.  What he saw before him was a team in total disarray, this coming off a bye.  The 3-4 Bears had an extra week to recover from their 51-23 whipping by the Patriots and this is how they respond.  Cris, a good football coach doesn’t let his team get outscored 101-37 in back-to-back games.

Clare called because her inner coach was upset.  So, I tried to turn the football apple into a softball orange.  What would you do, I asked?  I reminded her of similar situations during her years of playing, of coaches who lost their players and those who never had them.  How do you avoid that?

The simple answer is, by winning, which is the product of talent and preparation.  Clare tells me that even Division I players get confused when a coach hitting grounders shouts out “6-4-3” for a short to second to first double play.  I’m pretty sure that would be Lesson One on Day One from Coach Clare.  Old man Halas played enough baseball with the Yankees to appreciate that.

Dog Days, Part Two

In August at least, there’s still baseball, however bad.  In November all you have is a gray sky and windswept lawns.

Every morning, I look for the Transactions notices, always hidden, always somewhere different.  Clare, child of a new age, gets the same news from an app.  Poor kid, that means she has more time to think about miserable she is.  Valpo is located smack dab in the middle of a toilet bowl for weather.  Who knew there was such a thing as a “snow belt,” courtesy of Lake Michigan?

The general managers will be meeting soon; that should be good for a few stories.  And the winter meetings are next month, although it’ll be Cubs, Cubs, Cubs, free agents and Wrigley.  After that, January, and after that…

You get the idea.

Maddon Speaks the Truth

Addressing Chicago media yesterday at a local bar, new Cubs manager Joe Maddon referred to Wrigley Field as the “cathedral across the street.”  The White Sox could never hire anyone who talks that way.

Just try and imagine the same press conference held at 35^th and Shields.  What would Maddon have called the Cell—that saucer across the street?  That mall?  That perfect reflection of group think?  Maddon didn’t get the chance because Jerry Reinsdorf is done taking a chance on personalities.  Phil Jackson and Ozzie Guillen may have won championships for his basketball and baseball teams, but they also took the spotlight away from the Chairman, who always needs to be the sharpest guy in the room. 

Joe Maddon would have done the same.

The North and the South

Chicago baseball commands a loyalty for one side or the other, North Side or South.  It really is a kind of civil war that can pit brother against brother, if not father and daughter.

The loyalties trace back generations, to when the Cubs drew from surrounding North Side neighborhoods, generally prosperous and WASP.  In contrast, the White Sox were blue collar and anything but Protestant—Catholic mostly, but also Jewish and black.  Again, it was a neighborhood thing.  Only the class differences have changed since the Sox played their first season in 1901.  Just don’t expect Sox fans to act as though they’ve got money.  Their ancestors would rise from the dead and beat the crap out of them if they did.

There is one demographic with class implications, though, that’s still relevant.  The Cubs draw younger, unmarried fans ready and willing to spend their disposable income while the Sox have more families in the stands.  Moms and dads aren’t in the habit of spending a day—or night—at the ballpark drinking away yet another home-team loss.  That as much as anything explains why the Cubs have drawn so well over the last fifteen years or so regardless of their record.

And by hiring Joe Maddon, it looks like they’ll outdraw my Sox in 2015.  The Sunday newspapers ran so much Cub stuff you would’ve thought it was the start of the season already, not early November.  Nothing like a picture of Maddon and Tampa players holding a python to send a message to the South Side—this guy is going to steal your coverage.

The best Sox fans can do is look for the silver lining.  Chicago sports media always falls for the big personality, like Mike Ditka or Ozzie Guillen.  It also falls for the new guy in town because he’s not the old guy and maybe he’ll have a fun personality, too.  Think Dusty Baker, Lou Pinella and Marc Trestman.  When things go south, it can happen incredibly fast, with sports folk leading the charge to tar and feather the latest old guy.  This I hope is Maddon’s fate.

Or not.  Before long, the Cubs will announce how great season tickets sales are going; the Sox will probably keep that a secret.  But the team isn’t so dumb as to think it can just keep chugging along.  If they don’t win, families and everyone else will avoid the Cell like the plague (which would turn it into the ideal site for an Ebola quarantine, if nothing else).  When the Cubs introduce Maddon tomorrow, the clock starts ticking for general manager Rick Hahn and manager Robin Ventura.  They ignore it at their own peril.