The Girl at the Batting Cages

             Clare would sneak into the 70- and 75-mph batting cages by the time she was eleven.  By the summer before freshman year high school, she was hitting at the 80-mph cage, and I was looking for a place with faster machines.  That place doesn’t exist, at least around here.

            After all these years of work, my daughter’s stance is a thing of beauty.  Clare bats right-handed, spreads her feet a little and puts her front foot tippy-toe; she will crouch ever so slightly waiting for the ball.  The hands are fast, the swing short and explosive.  For as long as I can remember, people have stopped to watch.  Boys her age mostly stare, or glare.  Girls aren’t supposed to hit with power.

            And to do this at Stella’s, no less.  Nothing comes easy there, not with yellow-coated balls flying out of a background of yellow corrugated plastic.  You can expect to hear one of three sounds at Stella’s—Splat! Boing! or Thwack!  The first is the ball hitting a rubber square of a strike zone suspended on fencing behind the batter; swing and a miss or take a pitch, the ball goes Splat!  The second sound comes from a ball hitting one of two floor-to-ceiling metal roof supports.  And the third is a ball hitting the padding on the lower half of the supports.  When she’s in a groove, Clare goes Boing-Thwack! Boing-Thwack! Boing-Thwack! ten swings for a dollar.  Splats! are few and far between.

            After next spring, I’ll have no reason to go to Stella’s, except maybe for the pepper and egg sandwich their kitchen makes during Lent.  No more paying Clare $1 every time she managed to hit the ball fair ten or eleven times on a token.  (Inflation means fewer swings now for the buck.)  No more entering her in hitting contests in seventh and eighth grade to show a bunch of strangers what she could do.  No more high school batting practice, when she complained that 70-mph was “too slow.”  And no more of this, going on a Wednesday afternoon in late July with fall ball starting up in another six weeks.  Oh, did I mention she was the first girl to break a demo bat at Stella’s?  They let her keep it as a souvenir.

***          

            With the White Sox trading Jake “I talk a good game” Peavy last night, my daughter sat on the living room couch last night working three screens, laptop, cellphone and T.V; she wanted to know who exactly was coming and who was going, ahead of MLB Network if possible.  Clare will either make a good general manager or a story-breaking reporter.  For any number of reasons, I prefer the former.  We’ll see. 

On This Day in White Sox History: July 30, 1952

             It was a battle of the Starting Ks at Comiskey Park Wednesday afternoon as Lou Kretlow of the White Sox bested Bob Kuzava and the first-place Yankees, 7-0.  The veteran right-hander went the distance, surrendering two hits and four walks while striking out six.  Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin all took the collar for the visitors, whose lead over Chicago now stands at seven games.  The White Sox attack was paced by second baseman Nellie Fox, who went three for three with a run and an rbi, and leftfielder Minnie Minoso with three rbis.  Centerfielder Jim Rivera hit his fifth home run of the season, a solo shot, in the third inning.

The game started at 1:30 PM, by which time I was four hours and ten minutes old, having entered the world at Englewood Hospital, about four miles south of the ballpark.  My parents were both one month shy of 39.  That means this August they would have turned 100.  Clare was born four months after my 39^th birthday.

            She was four or five the day we went hitting at Grandma and Grandpa’s in the backyard; it was the first and only time I ever threw a ball to my father.  Clare put on a clinic, lining balls into the black-eyed Susans by the garage.  So, my parents had some idea what their granddaughter would turn into.

            With luck, Clare will turn 61 the November after I reach 100.

A Different Kind of Ballgame

             We went to see the Chicago Bandits professional softball team last night.  You might call it interesting.

            The Bandits play in a stadium close to O’Hare Airport; for the out-of-town fans, being directly under a flight path was nearly as exciting as the action on the field.  The crowd numbered somewhere in the mid-hundreds, mostly softball players ages 10-16 along with dad-coaches.  Fathers dream of daughters playing pro ball, daughters wonder how it happens.  I should have warned everyone about the pitfalls of Division I college recruiting.

            This is the third home for the Bandits; like the other two, it features metal grandstand construction.  That may be part of the problem.  If softball wants to thrive on this level, it needs to feel permanent, along the lines of brick walls, a roof over the stands and, dare I say, an upper deck.  A little of that baseball architecture would have spiced up those three homers the Bandits and NY/NJ Comets hit.  At Comiskey Park, mammoth shots were either “in the upper tank” or “roof shots.”  Softball fields need that kind of personality. 

            They also need more teams; the league only has four.  Compare that to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which fielded as many as ten teams a season.  In addition, the AAGPBL had P.K. Wrigley to help bankroll it early on.  Alas, none of the One Percent today seems interested in taking on that role.  No obscene profit in softball, I guess.  So, the National Pro Fastpitch League soldiers on with owners watching every penny and players needing to hold down outside jobs because the pay is so low.  Even in the dark ages before Marvin Miller, baseball players earned enough in-season to make ends meet.   

            Clare prowled the stadium as a Bandits’ intern.  Lately, she’s been given emcee duties, which puts her on the field with a microphone.  Now, if she could just trade it for a bat and the chance to play.

            In the end, I’m just like any other dad-coach.  

Keeping Score

            Clare and her boyfriend went to the Sox-Tigers’ game last night.  She said that man sitting next to them asked her to teach him how to keep score.  They have an app for that, but my daughter does it how I taught her, with a scorecard.  So, at least one a good baseball tradition lives on.

Short but Rich

             “How old is Dustin Pedroia?” Clare asked at breakfast today.  She saw in the sports’ section that the Red Sox second baseman was about to sign an eight-year, $110 million contract extension with the team.

            “Twenty-nine,” I said, adding that he stands 5’6”, though I could be wrong about that.  Measuring tapes can’t seem to get it right on Pedroia, who is listed at anywhere from 5’5” to 5’9”.  But any number you pick won’t hide the fact Mr. Pedoria is short for a professional athlete.

            Give the Red Sox credit.  Now people can’t say women are too short to play baseball.  Anyone interested, I know another 5’6” ballplayer who’s seen plenty of time at second.  And you should see her hit

Ryan Braun

            When Clare was in third or fourth grade, she bent a towel rack in the bathroom trying to do pull-ups.  To prevent further destruction and injury, I came up with the idea of “spring training,” for my little ballplayer to exercise and get strong just like the pros.  This worked better than I could have hoped, to the point that my daughter will now lose herself for, say, two hours at the gym.  She likes the equipment and the challenge.  To the best of my knowledge, she has not looked for any “outside” help, either to pump iron or swing a bat.

            Last night, the two of us watched MLB Network, and Clare was downright gleeful over the season-ending suspension handed down to Brewers’ outfielder Ryan Braun.  She’s the same way with Hall-of-Fame voting; the more Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens suffer, the happier she is.  I don’t take credit for making my daughter this way; my wife Michele and the good teachers at St. Bernardine’s Catholic School are probably more responsible for shaping Clare’s beliefs.  In any case, I am impressed.

            There really is pressure on young athletes to perform.  Everybody wants to start, everyone wants to play in college; PEDs are a way to make that happen.  Clare had dreams of playing NCAA Division I, so the temptation to cheat was out there.  But my kid decided to sweat the old-fashioned way and has passed every drug test administered since high school.

            We live in a time where that’s cause for parental pride.    

Nationals

                                       

            This is the weekend we’d set off for nationals.  I have no idea why it was called that or what the rationale was to it other than having a bunch of travel teams from different states face off against one another.  Even more confusing, the winning teams didn’t go on to play other national winners.  You just got to say, “We won at Lee’s Summit” or some other place.

            The first two times we went were kind of exciting, starting with Kansas City.  Who knew?  I mean, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and Country Club Plaza are great tourist destinations.  The museum was instructive (if not much on women), and CCP is a 1920s’, Spanish-influenced shopping district; we didn’t eat George Brett’s restaurant, but we did peek in.   (KC ribs?  Yes.)  As for the softball part, it was always fun to play a team like the Legion of Doom-ski.  I also appreciated the work of our coaches, Mike Schwab and Harry Johnson, the calm and the excitable (though never mean).

From what I could see, Schwab handled lineups and the rotation while Johnson focused on motivation and positioning players.  “You’re creeping, Clare,” was how Harry wanted Clare to play second base.  “That will not drop!” was how he wanted everyone in the outfield to go after balls.  Unfortunately, Schwab and Johnson retired after that second year in KC.

They were replaced by the second coming of Abbott and Costello.  Clare hit .425 as a junior that spring, not that they cared.  It was up in the order, down in the order, play second base, or dh.  At one tournament, Clare hit five home runs in two days.  We took home the first-place trophy, but somebody else was named MVP.  That hurt.  So did the absence of any Division I coaches, two of whom we thought might be interested.  If no one’s there to hear the tree fall in the forest, does it make a sound?  If no one’s there to see the home runs fly, do they matter?

Our dynamic duo wanted to go to nationals somewhere in Kansas famous for its salt mines.  (I’m serious).  The team rebelled, and the coaches relented.  We went to Salisbury, Maryland, instead.  Talk about a nightmare.  Clare was hit by a pitch in her first at-bat, and then given the steal sign; the infielder slapped the tag on her head so hard Clare passed out.  Coach Abbott felt the need to tell Clare how she could have stolen the base without losing consciousness.  He also addressed the slump she was going through by saying that travel pitching is harder than varsity, even though two of our pitchers didn’t pitch on varsity that spring.  At some point in the summer Coach also told Clare he doubted she could play in college.

The only thing Coach didn’t do was show much concern for Clare when she did a full 360 in the air after a collision at first base.  He said more to my wife in telling her to get off the field; for Clare it was, at most, “Are you ok?”  When the tournament finished, my daughter informed me she would play her senior year, and that would be it for softball.  She’d had enough of coaches and heartbreak, or so she thought.        

       Those are some of the things I recall on a weekend like this as the soon-to-be-college senior and team co-captain goes off to work as an intern for the Chicago Bandits professional softball team.  To remember also invites the question: What happens when softball comes to its likely end next spring, to father and player alike?  I guess we’ll find out.

All-Star Character

            This is how the ‘60s went for me—the White Sox would finish in second place (until they got very bad late in the decade) and the American League would lose the All-Star game.  So, Chris Sale picking up the win last night makes up for some very old and unpleasant memories.

            Sale was pretty much MIA in the NYT sports’ section; it was all Mariano Rivera and Matt Harvey, which makes sense.  The sun does rise in the east, and NYC is east of here.  But I have no problems with Rivera, in his 19^th and final season as arguably the best-ever closer.  He also looks to be an athlete who doesn’t seem to know it.

            By that I mean the sense of entitlement.  Here’s a millionaire ballplayer and future HOFer going out of his way to thank fans and workers at the other ballparks.  In Cleveland, Rivera actually told the guy who sits in the stands beating that kettle drum, “I love you.”  Last night, as Rivera prepared to enter the game in the bottom of the eighth, you could see him taking it all in—the field, the fans, the emotion.  I could be wrong, but his face registered equal parts awe, wonder and joy. 

            Now compare that to Pete Rose.  Has there ever been a ballplayer more self-centered and at the same time clueless?  So, I’ve tipped my hand on the question of Rose plowing into Ray Fosse at the plate to end the 1970 All-Star Game.  Yes, I think it was a cheap shot, and, yes, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

            The Sox had A.J. Pierzynski for eight years.  By all accounts, A.J. is one of, if not the most, disliked player in the majors, but it’s for his mouth, not his dirty play.  Which brings us to one Clare Bukowski, who proudly wore her Pierzynski jersey to school on sports days.

            Clare has gone after a few catchers in her time, and laid at least one flat out.  Here’s the difference between her and Charlie Hustle—my wife Michele and I waited, literally, for the dust to settle and see if we’d be taking our child to the hospital.  It’s been the same with her playing the field.  In high school, Clare had to stand in there at second base with runners barreling down.  Now, in college she’s contorted her body every which way while going after balls in right field. 

            To me, there’s a clear difference between fearless and cheap.

Home Run Derbies

            Growing up a White Sox fan in the 1960s, I learned to love miniscule team ERA’s and tolerate miniscule team batting averages.  Home runs were rare—e.g., 89 in 1967—to the point of nonexistent.  Which is to say I don’t get Home Run Derby at the All Star Game.

            Growing up watching Frank Thomas and Paul Konerko, Clare is the direct opposite.  She watches every year, with me at her side.  Last night, Robinson Cano and Bryce Harper had their fathers pitch to them.  “You’d hit me,” my daughter joked, sort of, because I did hit her from time to time throwing batting practice.  “No, I’d yell at you not to lunge across the plate,” I responded, because I did that a heck of a lot more. 

            Clare did three home run derbies in travel ball, always a part of nationals, which is a kind of regional World Series that teams qualify for based on their records.  The first two contests were in suburban Kansas City, the other in Chattanooga.  All of them were ungodly hot.

            As a high school freshman on varsity, Clare only hit one homer, the same total she managed between thunderstorms in Overland Park, Kansas.  But something about launching a ball into a parking lot appealed to her (and still does).  Sophomore year she totaled another solitary homer.  Lee’s Summit, Missouri, however, was a revelation. 

            It helps to have a good travel coach, which we did that year in the person of Mike Schwab.  Other coaches rant, Mike kept his calm, and that rubbed off on his players.  There was one game I remember where Clare rushed a throw from second base, for an error.  This is when the typical coach starts yelling.  “You’re my second baseman, Clare.  You’ve got all the time in the world,” is what Mike Schwab said without raising his voice.

Mike did the soft-tossing for Clare in Lee’s Summit, the next year.  She responded by hitting nine pitches out of ten over the fence, good enough for a share of the title.  Two years later, she’d win one outright in the humidity of Tennessee.

            As a junior, Clare hit five homers, followed by ten her next year.  As a college freshman, she managed six, good for the school single-season record, which she broke the following year.  I give some of the credit to Mike Schwab, who was pleased to hear of her exploits when they bumped into one another this spring for the first time in five years.

Favorite Players and Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura

Favorite Players and Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura

            My first favorite ballplayer was White Sox catcher J.C. Martin, and I’m not sure why.  Number two, though, I can tell you all about.  That would be Walt Williams.

            The White Sox traded for him in December 1966.  It was power-hitting catcher Johnny Romano for a 5’ 6” outfield prospect.  Unlike other Sox deals, e.g., Goose Gossage and Terry Forster for one season of Richie Zisk, this one worked out.  Romano was at the end of his career while Williams went on to play six seasons on the South Side.          

            Williams was what you might humbly exuberant.  The man smiled as he hustled, running out groundballs, running to his position in the outfield, running back in to the dugout.  I remember a Tenth Inning show interview with Jack Brickhouse in 1967.  Brickhouse: Walt, you had 54 doubles with Tulsa last season while batting .330.  You must really know how to hit.  Williams: (after a pause, he looks down at his feet before answering) Yeah, I can hit a little bit.  A modest ballplayer, the greatest of oxymorons.

            I took Clare to see Williams when she was five and he was managing the Altoona Rail Kings in an independent league; Williams graciously agreed to pictures.  The little girl who barely came to my waist in the photo now stands as tall as Walt Williams.  And I’ve always encouraged her to hustle.

            Williams was nicknamed “No Neck” on account of a short neck the result of complications from a typhus shot when he was two.  Which leads me to my new favorite Sox player, catcher Josh Phegley.  This prospect has just hit three home runs after one week in the majors, including a grand slam against the mighty Tigers.  In a season of misery, Phegley is cause for hope.

            He also makes me think of my sister, Betty.  In 2010 Phegley was diagnosed with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, a serious blood disorder that seems to have resolved itself with the removal of his spleen.  Betty suffered from something similar to ITP and died in ’10.  Funny the connections a person will make.             

Baseball Movies

 

Last week we all went to the show and saw “42.”  It wasn’t half bad.

The problem with baseball movies is that actors usually don’t make good ballplayers.  By that, I mean Gary Cooper in “Pride of the Yankees.”  Has anyone ever looked worse swinging a bat?  Talent-wise, there’s high school pitcher Charlie Sheen in “Eight Men Out” and…well, that’s about it.

            To compensate, baseball movies typically employ close ups of the actor throwing, catching or hitting.  It’s throw, cut to another camera or swing, cut to another camera rather than one long action shot; nobody wants to see a ball fall to the earth after travelling all of 20 feet.  As a moviegoer, you buy your ticket and hope for the best.

            That said, I like “The Natural” for its supporting cast—Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Robert Prosky, Richard Farnsworth, Darren McGavin; that’s a sum a lot bigger than the parts of Robert Redford and Glenn Close.  I like “Field of Dreams” because, first of all, it’s the White Sox.  Then, there’s Iowa with its yeoman farmers and Grant Wood scenery.  There’s also the story, of a son getting to play catch with his father on a field shorn of its corn.  My own father started working at the age of 13 and kept going until his death 74 years later.  After I dropped out of law school, he lined up a job for me picking orders at a wire warehouse.  I loaded his delivery truck once, but we never played a game of catch together.

            Clare, of course, loves “A League of Their Own” because it shows women playing baseball.  And she liked “42” because of its subject.  Whenever she could in grade school, my daughter would do a report of some sort on Jackie Robinson.  Since we’re not black, I have to assume there were other reasons.

            We went to Dyersville Iowa, site of “Field of Dreams,” the summer before Clare went into seventh grade.  The corn was as green and tall as in the movie, the sky as blue.  I took the pitcher’s mound to face a very young Shoeless Joe Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Racine Belle from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.  Any or all of them nearly took my head off with a line drive up the middle.  Later, we walked out to where the outfield meets the corn to have our pictures taken.

            Anyway, “42” told a good story, and I was especially impressed by how they green-screened Ebbets and Forbes Field(s).  Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a way to recreate Branch Rickey, even with another pool of Jackie Robinsons out there waiting to play.

Games on the Fourth of July

 Baseball is all about tradition and memory.  According to the former, teams in first place on the Fourth can expect to play in October.  My team, the White Sox, are deep in the cellar, so memories it is.

The first ballgame Clare ever went to was on July 4, 1994, for the Kane County Cougars of the A-level Midwest League; we took my parents, who were both 81 at the time.  I would have preferred going to Comiskey Park, but it was three years gone by then.  The most memorable part of the day was the first-ever blimp Clare saw on the way.  “Daddy, I have blimp ears,” my daughter would say after that whenever she heard a blimp.

Clare twice made the All-Star team at the Mustang level in Pony Ball, played, appropriately, on the Fourth.  It was hard to say who was prouder, father or child.  Clare was the only one who needed a little privacy to change into her All-Star tee-shirt, which I should have seen as an omen.  But I ignored that for the hit she got in her first All-Star at-bat.

Two years later, on another Independence Day, Clare insisted on taking part in the homerun hitting contest held before the Bronco level All-Star game.  By then, the more talented boys were doing travel as well as Pony.  They were the likely competition that Fourth, but Clare didn’t care.  Unlike the night before in her final regular-season game, she didn’t put any balls over the fence, she just kept one-hopping it, good enough for fifth place out of twenty-five.  There had to be twenty very disappointed boys that afternoon.

           Like Greg Maddux said, chicks dig the long ball.           

Extra! Extra! Baseball Taps Penguin Players....

 Last month was the MLB draft, this week kicks off the signing period for international talent.  Since 1900, teams have brought up players from Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Curacao, Jamaica, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany and Holland (along with the American possessions of Puerto Rico, Samoa and the Virgin Islands).  And let’s not forget India, where the top two finishers of a baseball throwing contest/reality show were signed by the Pirates in 2009.  Neither contestant had ever played baseball in his life.

It’s only a matter of time until MLB hits the South Pole to sign some talented penguins.  Male penguins, that is.

Viewing Habits

Last night I asked Clare if she ever watched the TV show, Girlfriends.  She said, No, “This is what I watch on television—Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother and baseball.”