That Time of Year

From t-ball through seventh grade, Clare played baseball; June marked what would be the middle of her season.  Then, in eighth grade she made the switch to softball.  A year later, June became the month when she switched from high school ball to travel ball.  Clare always liked varsity more than travel.  Too much summertime drama, I think.

On varsity, Clare always knew where she stood; she might not have liked it, but she knew.  Coach Euks loved her bat, so she never had to worry about starting, somewhere.  It might be left field, dh or second base, but Clare could always expect to be in the lineup.  By junior year, she laid claim to second base and never let go, of that and batting third in the order.

In contrast, travel lacked rhyme and reason, in large part because Clare was never anybody’s favorite.  The first two years on the Blazers, the coaches were affiliated with schools other than Morton, so that made my daughter something of an outlier.  The third year, the coaches were just plain nuts, to the point that one of them told Clare she’d never hit in college, this after she’d hit five homeruns in one tournament.  Talk about raining on a kid’s parade.  So, yeah, she liked her time on varsity more.

Clare knew one of the baseball players at Morton; he was a year ahead.  The White Sox drafted him his senior year, but he didn’t sign; then the Angels drafted him the next year, and he did.  My daughter has a Ted-Williams like disdain for pitchers, but in this case I think she may have lived vicariously through her ex-classmate.  She went off to play in college while he went to ply his craft in the Angels’ system.

They each played their sport four more years, Clare ending up with more records.  Would she have traded places with her friend?  Oh, in a heartbeat, as long as she could’ve switched to hitting.

Comings and Goings

Sports at any level is about comings and goings.  Players make their debut, which means somebody sits or somebody leaves.  I saw as much with my daughter.

Twice in travel ball, coaches waited until just before the season started to add a player.  Nobody left, but people who would have played suddenly found themselves spending more time on the bench.  Clare was neither an instigator in that regard or a victim, but she probably did send someone else packing when she made teams at tryout.  It’s the nature of the beast.

So, another June means another MLB draft, with teams certain this pitcher or that hitter will be making his—but never her—debut soon.  I wonder how this affects players from last year’s draft, and the one before that, and so on.  Right about now, they may be hearing an unpleasant message along the lines of, “You used to be a prospect, now you’re suspect.”

With their #1 pick, the White Sox chose infielder Nick Madrigal (at 5’7”, a whopping one inch taller than Clare, and with less power from what I can tell).  What do Tim Anderson and Yuan Moncada think about that, or Yolmer Sanchez?  There are a whole bunch of middle infielders in the White Sox system, a number of them posting pretty decent numbers so far this season.  What does Mitch Roman think of his chances of making the Sox?  Maybe he should ask Jake Peter, once a Sox farmhand now toiling away in the Dodgers’ system.

An ocean of ink has been spilled extolling the joys of what may or may not be our national pastime.  As for the struggle, the doubt, the Darwinian element that comes with success and failure on the baseball diamond, that’s something that doesn’t get much notice, least of all that week in June when a new bunch of ballplayers is picked to enter the arena.

Logjam

Orson Welles used to do a commercial that ended with the tagline, “We will sell no wine before its time.”  That must be where White Sox general manager Rick Hahn got the idea of doing a rebuild in slow motion.  No prospect gets promoted until his time, which right now looks to be close to never.

Not only does Hahn refuse to move star prospect Eloy Jimenez out of AA Birmingham, he’s pretty much frozen everyone else in place, too; chalk it up to the Welles-Hahn time test.  Consider what Hahn has done at AAA Charlotte.  Rather than promote anyone from the lower affiliates, he’s gone out and signed the following: infielder Johnny Giavotello, who’ll turn 31 in July; outfielder Michael Saunders, 31; and outfielder Alex Presley, 32.  Oh, and one of his three AAA catchers is already 30 while another is a career .233 hitter in the minors.  So much for Zach Collins and/or Seby Zavala—both honest-to-goodness catching prospects facing off against one another in AA—getting a chance to show what they can do at the next level.

With the draft taking place, the Sox will have even more players to sit on.  Usually, players who do really well in rookie ball are promoted to A-ball before season’s end to get their feet wet.  If that doesn’t happen this year, thank Rick Hahn channeling his inner Orson Welles. 

Progress, or Not

The Tribune and New York Times each ran stories last Friday that gauge the status of women in sports.  Taken together, they signal how little has changed for how long.

The Trib’s story concerned the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s 75^th anniversary.  Yes, women have been playing baseball for a long time, and at least one of them, Shirley Burkovich of the Rockford Peaches, never wanted to stop playing.  When the league folded in 1954, “It was devastating,” Burkovich recalled.  “I thought baseball was going to be my career.  I figured I’d play forever.”  Maybelle Blair, another AAGPL veteran, hopes to live long enough to see a female general manager or umpire break into major-league baseball.  “Our eyes work the same as men, right?” offered Blair.

It’s too bad Clare wasn’t included in the story; she played baseball, too.  She’s also applied for at least one MLB front-office job; Kenny Williams must’ve misplaced her résumé.  The one area of professional sports that seems to be welcoming women more than ever is cheerleading, which happened to be the subject of the Times’ story.

It seems that there are two types of cheerleaders, those who dance and those who mingle with the fans.  Guess what?  Both are subject to crappy pay and crappy work conditions.  Put women who aren’t wearing a whole lot of clothes into a situation where they interact with young male fans who are drinking, and you’re asking for trouble in the form of harassment.  Good luck trying to fix that problem, as numerous NFL teams have promised to do.

Sorry, but cheerleading based on females in tight costumes no longer has a role in society, if it ever did.  At least in baseball, those ever-irritating “cheer teams” are integrated by gender, and the young women are dressed no more provocatively than their male counterparts; I just don’t need anyone tossing t-shirts my way.  As for the NBA, NFL and NHL, they need to move beyond the organized booty-shake to sell their product. 

Tales of Paul Bunyan

Last week in Detroit, White Sox rookie Daniel Palka skied a ball so high the right fielder—playing medium deep—lost track of it; so did the TV camera.  The ball ended up deep in the right field stands.  Something similar happened Friday night with the Brewers in town.

Milwaukee right fielder Domingo Santana, also playing medium deep, froze in the wake of Palka’s swing; Santana had no idea where the ball was.  Centerfielder Lorenzo Cain had to race over and caught Palka’s fly ball with his back to the fence.

Palka can’t catch a ball for the life of him, but he sure can hit ’em.  Along with the moon shots, he’s recorded among the hardest-hit homers of the year—and hardest-hit singles, one exiting the infield in the vicinity of 110 mph.  I wonder how Palka’s emergence will affect the well-laid rebuild plans of general manager Rick Hahn and company.   

We wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of things, now would we?

Reflections

Four weeks from today, I walk my daughter down the aisle of the same church where she was baptized, received her First Holy Communion and Confirmation and gave the eighth-grade graduation speech.  It all puts me in a reflective mood.

I try not to live in the past for fear of being trapped there, but the memories keep intruding anyhow:  the first time I pitched to Clare, our first ballgame, her first homeruns (baseball before softball).  The danger is forcing her to relive those moments with and for me; that’s just depressing and a sure way to keep her from dropping in to visit the old man.  Best to keep busy and stay focused on what lies ahead rather than behind.

If only the White Sox were worth watching.

Compare and Contrast

The Cavaliers and Warriors are facing one another for the fourth straight year in the NBA finals.  If Cleveland wins, Lebron James will be 4-5 in the finals.  That’s one mighy big if.

In last night’s opening game, the Cavs had pulled even at 107 apiece with 4.7 seconds left and guard George Hill on the line to shoot the second of two free throws.  Hill missed, but teammate J.R. Smith rebounded.  Only Smith dribbled away from the basket before finally passing the ball, too late to avoid an overtime loss.       

 Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue said Smith thought his team was ahead, and James sure had a look of disbelief on his face that Smith didn’t know where he was going.  Smith contends he was aware of the score, didn’t want to try to shoot over Kevin Durant and thought James was going to call a timeout, so he waited, in which case Smith couldn’t tell time.  As they say outside of New York, once a Knick always a Knick.

There’s a good deal of debate going on these days as to who’s the better player, James or Michael Jordan.  I recently found myself in the middle of one such argument during my niece’s college graduation party.  I look at it this way.  Put James on those Bulls’ teams, and they still go 6-0.  Put Jordan on this Cavs’ team, and he probably stuffs Smith into a basket for his play, and they still lose.

Michael always had a topnotch supporting cast and the perfect coach for that roster.  Lebron has to depend on an ex-Knick in crunch time.  Short of a time machine to prove my hypothesis, I’d call it a draw between two greats.