Two Wrongs

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sure do make it fun.  Peterson got away with the proverbial slap on the wrist in court for using a switch on his four-year old son, and he argued that Goodell’s indefinite suspension that came after the court ruling was in essence ex post facto.  A federal judge agreed.

The NFL intends to appeal, and Peterson wants to get back to work.  Goodell’s case looks weak—he tried to apply a new conduct policy to Peterson, on top of which the arbitrator who did his bidding was a former league employee.  How do you say “bias”?

In a perfect world, the NFL loses its appeal, and nobody picks up Peterson, who so far has shown far less remorse for his transgressions than Ray Rice has for his.  If only we lived in such a place.     

Injury

Can you both dislike a player and not wish him ill?  That’s basically how I feel about Derrick Rose, someone who got a free pass when it comes to academics (Google the rumors in re high school and college) only to be dealt the injury card a third time this week at the age of 26.  There’s luck and what Derrick Rose has.

It’s impossible to tell how good Rose will be after surgery to repair the meniscus in his right knee.  He may yet, though I doubt it, justify the $94.3 million contract he signed with the Bulls in 2011.  Injuries happen all the time in pro sports.  Consider the career of Greg Bollo.

A 6’ 4” right hander out of Western Michigan, Bollo signed with the White Sox in 1964 and made the team at the age of 21 a year later.  He pitched a total of 29.2 innings in 1965-1966, and then vanished.  Bollo’s major-league career was over before he could celebrate his 23^rd birthday.  I always wondered why, if for no other reason I liked the name “Bollo,” which struck me as a little like “Bukowski.”

Around the time Greg Bollo turned 70 I found out what happened while reading an online CNN Money story on Tommy John and Frank Jobe, the surgeon who saved his career.  According to John, “We had a kid when I was with the White Sox named Greg Bollo who could really throw the ball.  But after he had [bone] chips taken out in 1966, he was never able to come back.  There were a lot of guys like that.  It was a real shame.” (“Surgeon Should Make Cooperstown ‘Cut,’” Chris Isidore, CNN Money, 7-27-07)

Elbow, knee, shoulder, back—the body will betray an athlete a hundred different ways.  The lucky player will have a big contract that provides protection.  But with or without a boatload of money, the career is over, and life goes on.

The Sunshine State

Guess who said, “If I can’t go to Florida next spring, you can’t either” when I broached the subject last fall.  Hint:  It wasn’t me.  Guess who’s going to Florida the week after next.  Not me.

But johnny-on-the-spot Clare the softball-team G.A. will, after turning an Arkansas lemon into the sweetest Florida lemonade this side of the snow belt.  The weather in Arkansas is so bad that by Monday they had already cancelled the Friday tournament in Fayettville AR.  The new G.A. was then given the job of trolling the Internet to find a replacement, which she did in good ol’ Kissimmee, where some CCIW teams have been known to play.  In fact, Kissimmee and the Bluejays’ stomping grounds at Orlando are pretty close, but Valpo will be in town a week ahead of Elmhurst.

The girl won’t get to play or visit former teammates, but she will get to soak up the sun, which is more than you can say for me.    

Stop the Insanity

If only stories in the sports’ section could talk to one another, then MLB Commissioner Manfred and Sox manager Robin Ventura would be on the same page figuratively as well as literally.

The top story on page five of today’s Tribune sports mentions the commissioner’s concern over declining offense.  Then, in the story below, Robin Ventura says he might go north with 13 pitchers.  Manfred and Ventura are dots begging to be connected, if not erased.

For openers, the more pitchers on a roster, the less offense, unless Manfred has found a way to clone that hard-throwing lefty, Babe Ruth.  Thirteen pitchers means no room for the next Smoky Burgess or Lenny Harris to get a pinch hit, no room for the next Allan Lewis—or do you say “Panamanian Express”?—to steal a base pinch running, no room for the next Johnny Blanchard to be a platoon-player extraordinaire.  Instead of that, we get the late inning, lefty-lefty matchup.  Thank you, Tony LaRussa.  (And, yes, the ten-man staff also allowed for flexibility on defense as well.  Think Ray Oyler or Mark Belanger coming in at short in the ninth inning to steal a hit or two with their fielding.)

When I was a mere boy, the White Sox made do with a staff of ten pitchers.  In 1965, they had two relievers, knuckleballers Eddie Fisher and Hoyt Wilhelm, who amassed over 300 innings between them; sinker-baller Bob Locker added another 91 innings.  In addition, four of their starters, including a young Tommy John, made relief appearances.  I could see the virtues of the expanded staff if that meant saving arms, but pitchers appear to get hurt as much today as in 1965.  If the knuckleball and sinker (along with maybe the screwball) are more forgiving on the arm/elbow, then teams need to bring those pitches back.  (Oh my, girl knuckleballers.  That would never do, now would it?) 

I keep waiting for a team to show how everything old can be new again.  But it doesn’t look like that’ll happen this year.  

Character Building

From what I can tell, Clare had a barrel of fun in Birmingham over the weekend.  The temperature for the first game Friday was a “delightful” 24 degrees.  That means bees in the bat, bees in the mitt, bees in the butt on the bench.  The mercury never did climb into the 60s, so Sunday’s finale was cancelled, but there was no rescheduling the flight.  Instead, everybody got to hang around town and airport until departure time at 6 PM; that included a team meal so bad the restaurant manager tore up the bill by way of apology.  Isn’t there an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song that goes “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again”?  Or Birmingham, for that matter.

The flight to Midway took two hours, followed by baggage wait and the drive back to Indiana (how sad, that.  Indiana wants me, I won’t…).  Clare tumbled into bed at 10:30, the perfect end to a day that started around 5 AM.  This is why college athletes are encouraged to take easy schedules, at least in-season.  Playing, practice and travel wreak havoc on GPAs. 

Parents, don’t raise your boys or girls to be cowboys or cowgirls.  But equip them with good study habits, by all means.  

Love It or Leave It

 Oh, do Cub pitchers dislike the notion of speeding up the game.  (Sox pitchers probably do, too, but nobody thought to ask.)  Why can’t they leave things alone? starter Jason Hammel complained in today’s Tribune.  “It’s a great game.  How many times are you going to flip these things and change the rules and bend them here and there?  Football is going to become flag football very soon,” and readers are left to wonder if Hammel can tell one sport from another, or if he suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder.

Over at the Sun-Times, Jake Arrieta was quoted as saying efforts to speed up the game are “ridiculous.”  He thinks it’s all about getting “16-to-30 year olds more interested in baseball,” which will fail.  “I don’t think you completely change the way the game’s been played forever because we can’t get people to put their iPhones down.”  Good to know that Arrieta doesn’t suffer from that very same bad habit.            

No, he just worries about a spur-of-the-moment decision to attract “people that don’t necessarily even like baseball anyways.  If they don’t really like the game of baseball, the people that do love the game of baseball are going to suffer for it.”

People that do love the game—how ungrammatical and yet crystal clear.  Arrieta means only ballplayers can love the game, and fans who agree with those ballplayers.  Somehow, I’ve ended up with the iPhone crowd, and I don’t even own one.

Speed-Up

New Commissioner Manfred and the Players’ Association have announced a plan to speed up the game by basically adapting the same approach a sixth-grade teacher uses to keep the boys in line: Don’t step out of the box, warm up now, let’s go the cameras are on.  No detention for breaking the rules, just fines and possible suspensions.

One thing the mlb.com story didn’t mention was what to do about Fox broadcasts; low scores are no bar to three-hour plus games; Joe Buck’s droning on only makes it seem like four.  So, a modest suggestion to the powers that be that could help with Fox and more:  Announce a bonus plan starting at, say, $500,000, for umpiring crews with the shortest average game times over the course of the season.

Oh, and a minimum qualifying time of two hours and thirty minutes.