Smart Money, and Not

The White Sox won their home opener yesterday afternoon, topping the Blue Jays 5-4 in ten innings. Neither team’s big offseason free-agent signings did much to distinguish himself, starting with Toronto starter Dylan Cease. The onetime Sox enigma, signed to a seven-year deal worth $210 million, pitched just like he did on the South Side, which is to say not well enough. Cease needed 93 pitches to get through 4.1 innings. Against any other team, Cease would’ve exited on the short end of a score considerably worse than the 3-1 deficit he faced. And then we have Sox first baseman Munetaka Murakami, he of the two-year $34 million contract. The question going into the season concerned the 26-year old slugger’s ability to adjust to MLB pitching. So far so good there. Fielding is the greater concern. We’re not talking range, arm or hands; it’s more the feel for playing first base. Twice in six games Murakami has had his foot off the bag taking a throw. Yesterday, it happened with two out in the tenth of a tied game, which allowed the go-ahead run to score. This is something that did not happen with Andrew Vaughn at first. But you take the win and appreciate Sean Burke’s six innings of one-run ball. On another team, Burke would’ve had a good shot at the win. With the Sox, Jordan Leasure could—and did—relieve him, and you know what that means, right? First two batters, a single and a homerun. Bye-bye two-run lead. But Tristan Peters, that alum of the Savannah Bananas, drove in the winning run in the bottom of the tenth, and all ended well. Dylan Cease? Not my concern anymore. Munetaka Murakami? We need to find him some foot-stretching exercises.

Why Bother?

I checked the Tribune hardcopy sports’ section this morning, all six pages of it, and guess what? No mention of the Chicago White Sox, a professional sports’ team that plays within the city limits. But there was space enough for an AP story on how Indiana quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza did Wednesday performing for pro scouts. Pretty good, apparently. And here I thought the Bears had themselves a quarterback. At 11:20 AM, I checked the Trib website to see if they posted a Sox story. Nope, nothing since Wednesday. Interesting priorities.

Teetering

Six games into the new season, and the White Sox are teetering on the brink. Nothing says “disaster” like your pitching staff giving up nine or more runs in four of five losses, including yesterday’s 10-0 embarrassment in Miami. What to do? I say, panic. I don’t know what GM Chris Getz was thinking when he assembled his pitching staff, but it wasn’t anything smart. He’s already cut ties with Jedixson Paez, a Rule 5 pickup from the Red Sox. If Shane Smith, another Rule 5 alum, doesn’t get his act together, he may be joining Paez before long. The team’s purported top starter got clobbered in his second start of the season, just like he did in his first. Against the Marlins, Smith yielded seven earned runs in three innings. Add up what he did against the Brewers, and Smith is 0-2 with a 19.29 ERA. If nothing else, that makes Sean Burke (6.75 ERA) and Erik Fedde (5.40 ERA) look good in comparison. While its parent club struggles, Triple-A Charlotte is off to a 4-1 start in large part because, yes, the Sox do have talent in the minors. The question, how long are they going to wait to bring up players? Sam Anronacci looks like a better fit than three outfielders I could name while Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith and Tanner McDougal could do just as well as three starting pitchers I could name. Then, again, what do I know? The Sox have lost 100+ games three seasons in a row without following a word of advice from yours truly.

Get Numb To It

Another spring day, another round of Bears’ stories in the papers and on TV. You have to get numb to it in order to survive. Outsized Munster coverage is the default setting for Chicago media, no matter how bad the team. The only way to change that is by other teams winning consistently. In Chicago? Not likely. Once upon a time, Michael Jordan and the Bulls grabbed attention away from the bumblers of the gridiron, but that happened in a century now 26 years past. Jordan is long retired and long gone, a 63-year old millionaire devoted to his NASCAR team. But Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner who ran Jordan and coach Phil Jackson out of town, is still around, finding yet new ways to humiliate an organization. The Bulls are in the midst of a public-relations nightmare because Reinsdorf and his son Michael hired Arturas Karnisovas to run the team six years ago, only Karnisovas is clueless. The latest example of his ineptitude involves now ex-Bull guard Jaden Ivey, who went off the deep end in a series of social media rants targeting anyone who wasn’t his kind of Christian. According to Joe Cowley of the Sun-Times, talking to Ivey was pretty much to face the kinds of questions best left to St. Peter. Bye-bye, Ivey, but not Karnisovas. How come? Because Jerry Reinsdorf does what he wants, no matter the cost to his White Sox or Bulls. In a different market, the attention would eventually shift to other teams. Alas, in Chicago it’s just an excuse to heap more coverage on a team that doesn’t deserve it in the least.

Deliverance

Deliver me, oh Lord, from the plague known as professional football. I fear that those who call the land around Lake Michigan home will devolve into creatures capable of speaking only in a series of “Huts!” and “Omahas!”, with the occasional grunt thrown in. And our media is leading the way. The hard-copy Sun-Times sports’ section went four pages deep in football coverage before offering anything on the Cubs or Sox. A team that won’t play its next regular-season game for close to six months got equal coverage with the two teams just four games into their 162-game season. Mercy. The hard-copy Tribune sports’ section is next to worthless. The Sox started their game against the Marlins at 5:40 our time, and they still couldn’t do a story or box score; for that, I have to wait till tomorrow. I could—and did—go online for said story, but electronic Trib sports is just as Bears-focused as the hard-copy Trib, which had a front-page story on Coach Ben Johnson. Last I checked, Johnson still lost the last game he coached his team, and it wasn’t the Super Bowl. Miguel Vargas had a grand slam and six RBIs in a 9-4 win, in case you were wondering.

Bargain Hunting

White Sox general manager Chris Getz looks to have himself a real bargain in first baseman Munetaka Murakamit, who’s hit three homeruns in his first three career MLB games. If only Getz had the same luck with pitching. I figured it would be a rough start to the season with the Sox opening on the road against the Brewers. Getting out of Milwaukee with a 1-2 record would’ve been OK by me. Blowing a four-run lead in the eighth only to lose by two, not so much. But that’s what Getz’s rebuilt bullpen did. Chirs Murphy loaded the bases with one out before giving up a one-run single. Murphy then exited, to be replaced by Seranthony Dominguez, who did manage to retire the first batter he faced on a popup. Oh, but what happened nest. A two-run single on a full count followed by a three-run, pinch-hit homer courtesy of Christian Yelich, this on a 2-2 pitch. To state the obvious, Dominguez didn’t attack the zone, and he showed the reflexes of a sloth on the single, hit to his left. He fields it, inning’s over. He slows it down, maybe inning’s over. Just not good. Next up, the Marlins, who’ve started the season 3-0, followed by the Bluejays, also 3-0. Not good, indeed.

L.A. Goodbye

Spend 5-1/2 days in Los Angeles (Santa Monica, actually), and you notice things, like traffic. It’s different, not worse. Here, people drive the taxis and Ubers. There, the taxis drive themselves. But an L.A. freeway could pass for a Chicago expressway, easy. The one thing that did impress me was the sports’ scene. In Chicago, it’s Bears, Bears, Bears, 24/7 365 days a year. In Los Angeles, no one seems to care that the Rams beat the Munsters in the playoffs to get to the NFC Championship game; that’s old news, if it was ever news at all. I could be wrong, but people look to be in Dodgers-Dodgers-Dodgers’ mode, 24/7 365 days a year. More interesting yet, we’re not talking celebrity fandom, either. In fact, the Dodgers’ fan base looks as varied as the White Sox, and more working-class, if that’s possible. L.A. may be home to two basketball and two football teams and a hockey team, but you’d never know it from walking around. The only “gear” that counts comes in Dodger-blue. I can respect that.