Told You So

At age 32, reliever Matt Albers can point to enough good years for general managers to overlook the bad ones.  Albers made the White Sox out of spring training and has looked sharp in limited action this month.  Or he did until Thursday against Kansas City.  Guess who broke the little finger on his pitching hand during the punch-and-shove-athon with the Royals?  Now all Albers can do is hope his replacement isn’t lights-out during his stint on the DL.  There is nothing as sad as a 32-year old reliever sent down to Triple A, unless it’s a 32-year old reliever being released altogether.

Baseball Fight

“Violent” may be the word most associated with football; depending on the teams involved, I’d say the same holds true for hockey.  But baseball fans are more likely to think of their game as “pastoral” (or “boring” to its critics). All of which makes baseball fights so interesting and different from other sports.

One broke out Thursday night between the Royals and White Sox.  Long story short, you root for your team while blaming the other guys.  So, the Sox were in the right, and Royals starter Yordano Ventura is more than a little nuts.  I mean, who yells at a batter for hitting the ball back to him, the way Ventura did to Adam Eaton?  After the usual shoving and sideways punching, peace was restored, and there were no reported injuries, thank heavens.  See below.

The two biggest brawlers for the Sox appeared to be starting pitchers Chris Sale and Jeff Smardzija; Sale wanted to start things up again after the game when he tried to get into the Kansas City clubhouse.  In football, fans would be shouting, Yeah!  In baseball, we say, Are you nuts?  What if you break a hand?  And Sale already has suffered a broken foot in spring training.

“We’re not boxers, we’re baseball players,” Sale told reporters afterwards, and he wants everyone to know “this isn’t going to turn into ‘Fight Club’ or anything like that.”  Well, let’s keep a good thought.  

Heartache

Tuesday afternoon, the Elmhurst College softball Bluejays controlled their own destiny; three out of four wins against the next two foes and they were a good bet for the CCIW postseason tournament.  Instead, they ended up with four losses.

Underclassmen don’t feel the sting as much as the juniors and (especially) seniors.  Four starters will graduate in another month.  There’s no crying in baseball, and next to no chance of turning pro in softball.  And just try finding a serious adult fast-pitch league.  Nearly all the teams Clare has found are mixed, as in “You want to go out for a drink after the game?”  That tends to give the final score a whole new meaning.

From experience, I know what the senior fathers are going through.  I talked to two of them yesterday.  One was OK, the other was sitting all alone behind the fence in left field; his daughter is leading the team in hitting.  He may already be in the early stages of withdrawal.

Youth sports ought to come with a disclaimer for athletes and parents alike: Warning.  May be habit-forming and hard to break.  Still, I doubt anyone at the game yesterday would have been scared away.      

Lightning, Twice

For the second time in a week, it happened and to the same pitcher.  Forget the blue skies.  Lightning in the form of a 12-inch softball can strike twice.

We were at Wheaton College, bottom of the fourth inning when a batter for the home team (the Thunder, I kid you not) hit a rocket our pitcher sort-of deflected with her glove, but not enough to keep her from hitting the ground so hard she may have suffered a concussion and whiplash.  Nothing a mother wants more than to see her child wheeled off the playing field into an ambulance.

Of course, the game continued, to be followed by another.  Softball doesn’t need to make changes any more than that bandit needed to show a badge to Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Happy endings all the way around  

Face of the Franchise

 Former Bears’ linebacker Doug Buffone died unexpectedly yesterday at the age of 70.  Buffone was held in high regard for a quick mind and a sharp wit, both of which he employed covering the Bears on sports’ talk radio.  You can’t expect to win the Kentucky Derby with a donkey, Buffone said after a recent Chicago loss to Green Bay.  We’re a town where owners are forever trying to pass off donkeys for thoroughbreds.

Buffone’s death qualifies as another passing of the guard; Chicago sports has been especially hard-hit this year with the losses of Ernie Banks and Minnie Minoso.  You can debate the talent of athletes then and now or argue over which eras were better, but what you can’t argue is ex-athletes are different now.  Very few are interested in being public personalities or the face of a particular franchise, if you will.

Maybe the simplest way to define a “face” is by the willingness to sign autographs—for free.  Major sports teams all have their fan fests, heavy with favorite ex-players.  But fans pay through the nose to get an autograph or a picture.  With the Bears, Blackhawks and Bulls, I can’t think of a single player under the age of fifty who would do what Banks and Buffone did for so long and at no cost.  Michael Jordan?  You’re kidding, right?  The situation is a little better with the baseball teams.  Kerry Wood, Ron Kittle and Frank Thomas seem willing to take up the role of public ambassador for their respective teams.

It’s a different world, as we old folks like to say.  Free agency means players rarely have a career with one team anymore, and even those who do aren’t often inclined to open a restaurant, a bowling alley or a car dealership like in the old days when the reserved clause reigned supreme.  That’s progress, I guess.

Twelve or so years ago, Michele was walking along State Street when she spied Minnie Minoso sitting at a table outside a restaurant.  My wife screwed up her courage, walked up to Minoso and asked for an autograph.  Minnie being Minnie, he just so happened to have a picture of himself at the ready.  “To Clare Best Wishes [one of his four names] Minoso #9.”

That is what fans now have to pay dearly for.

Learning Curve

Learning Curves

Clare says she’s learned a ton about coaching this spring while a graduate assistant, the importance of forbearance probably most of all.  A coach has to go with the flow and not give in to impulses, no matter how tempting.  The law will get you in the end, if the parents don’t get to you first.

It would also be a good idea for my daughter to watch and see how Robin Ventura goes about his job as manager of the White Sox, and then do the opposite.  The full Ventura was on display this weekend in Detroit.  On Fr4iday, the Tigers led off the bottom of the ninth inning of a 1-1 game with a double to right field, only the runner may have been out at second base.  Only Ventura doesn’t rush out to challenge the call because his replay people say the runner beat the tag, then he does go out only to be told by the umpire he’s too late.  Robin, it’s the bottom of the ninth.  Were you saving your challenge for extra innings?

Then came yesterday, a 9-1 drubbing set up by the purportedly talented Jose Quintana, who needed 42 pitches to get out the first inning.  Quintana gave up a grand slam and a two-run shot to Yeonis Cespedes, who now is six for eight in his career against the lefty, with four homers.  So, Robin, what was the game plan here, exactly?  Have Quintana go 3-2 on batter after batter (three out of the first four by my count) until he got comfortable?  And where was the pitching guru, Don Cooper, in all this?  After giving up the second homer by Cespedes, Quintana whacked himself in the head with his glove.  First off, that’s the wrong body part.  Second, all hitting—or kicking—should be done by a member of the coaching staff.

Oh, did I mention that Sox leadoff hitter Adam Eaton is batting a “robust” .136 two weeks into the season?  Eaton should come around, but there’s no reason to keep him at the top of the order.  The idea is to win now while working around your guys who are slumping.  But that’s not the Ventura Way.

Pay attention, Clare.  

Cheers

Cheers

How does a softball dugout differ from its baseball counterpart?   To this observer, it’s not the swearing—ballplayers are, after all, ballplayers—but the cheering.  Boys don’t do what girls do so well.

Back when Clare was in eighth grade, I admit this bothered me.  I assumed that cheering was one stepped removed from cheerleading, but I was wrong.  The softball cheer is nothing short of first-rate performance art done on the fly:  One/one/one you’re the one.  I just would’ve thought no. 11 was batting.

Feel a shot comin’ on, shot comin’ on.  Four, four (repeated in the seagull voice proclaiming “Mine” from Finding Nemo).  And names twisted and teased to fit the moment and the voices available: Clare-Bear!  Clare-Bear!  Boo-kow-ski!

This may all sound pretty tame, but trust me, there’s at least one cheer with an undertone so intense I can’t help but wonder if it’s about softball or something a wee bit more primal, and remember that everything is performed at a decibel level high enough to impress the most rabid Seattle Seahawk fans.  I have no particular love for softball because young women are entirely capable of playing baseball, and should be.  But a baseball dugout is all testosterone and whatnot.  I’ve really come to appreciate the softball alternative.