Hornets, Mules and Jumbos Outside of Orlando, Oh My

 My daughter does not like to go into a game clueless, so it falls on me to provide the necessary information for her 12-game Florida sojourn at the National Training Center in Clermont, a little north of Orlando.  I must have been a scout in a previous life, because this doesn’t bother me in the least.

All I have to do is go to the school websites to get the won-loss record; team batting average, ERA and fielding percentage; top returning hitters and pitchers.  A certain right fielder wants to know when the power hitters are up just as a certain power hitter wants to know what kind of pitcher she’s facing.  Along with a “Thanks, Dad,” I’ll get a chuckle in the spirit of “Bruin Briefs” and “Sox Yarns.”  For I give you team nicknames.

In another seven weeks, we’ll be going up against the Hamline University Pipers and Macalester College Scots; they play in the same Minnesota conference, so there must be a heated Scots-Pipers rivalry, bagpipes a wheezin’.  Other Elmhurst opponents include the Colby College Mules; Kalamazoo College Hornets; Rutgers at Camden Scarlet Raptors; SUNY Potsdam Bears; and the Tufts University Jumbos.  That last one is going to be really tough.  The Jumbos won the NCAA Division III championship last year and are ranked number one going into this season.

           How exactly does a flock of jays stop a herd of jumbos?  We’ll find out 9 AM on March 22^nd,  which just happens to be my 34^th wedding anniversary.

Big League Dreams on a Winter's Day

 Because Clare asked, I did a little digging, and the answer is, No.  Ryan Crowley didn’t get a formal invite to spring training with the Angels.  But you never know.

Crowley was a year ahead of Clare in high school, and he had some idea of who she was as a ballplayer.  He signed her yearbook junior year, “If you don’t hit a homerun Saturday, our friendship is over ha-ha.”  A few weeks later, Crowley was drafted by the White Sox, but he didn’t sign.

This other Morton Mustang caught the attention of scouts in part by posting a 1.07 ERA as a junior; at the time people said he threw a nasty split-finger pitch.  Crowley went to school in Florida for a year and signed with the Angels after they drafted him in the 19^th round.  A 6’3” lefty starter, Ryan had his best year in 2013 at Class A Burlington of the Midwest League, posting a 10-7 record with a 3.28 ERA and 1.17 WHIP (walks and hits to innings pitched, in this case meaning just over one base runner allowed every inning) to go with 123 strikeouts in 151 innings.  Compared to all other Angels’ pitching prospects, Crowley ranked second in ERA, fourth in strikeouts, second in WHIP and fourth in batting average allowed (.248).  So, why no invite?

My guess is that Ryan doesn’t “look” like a big-league pitcher, if that means standing over 6’6” and throwing the ball at 100 mph.  He’s going to have to make it like Greg Maddux did, which is why the WHIP is encouraging.

We tried to see Ryan Crowley pitch last summer when the Burlington Bees played the Kane County Cougars.  It would be a lot more fun to see him at the Cell in June as a member of the Angels.  I’m sure he feels the same way.

SoxFests Past

Lately, we’ve been going to every other SoxFest, the White Sox fan convention.  Three years ago, I finally managed to get Minnie Minoso to sign a baseball that Luke Appling, Bill Veeck, Luis Aparicio, Hoyt Wilhelm, Billy Pierce and Walt Williams have autographed.  Let me just say that never has an octogenarian looked better in a three-piece suit.

Bill “Moose” Skowron, as I recall, was wearing a sweatshirt and talkative.  On hearing that Clare was about to start her first season of college softball, he gave her this bit of advice:  “Hit the ball up the middle, and don’t worry if you take the f****n’ pitcher’s head off.”  Moose also was sporting one of five his World Series rings.  “I’m selling it,” he said, “but you couldn’t afford it.”  I wish.  Of course, the autograph was free.

Last year, Clare wanted her picture taken with second baseman Gordon Beckham and former Sox center fielder Aaron Rowand.  Like Jim Landis two generations before, Rowand played a beautiful centerfield and swung a so-so bat.  By so-so, I mean just under 1200 career hits and a .273 batting average while playing on two World Series winners.  But if he had only listened to his hitting coaches, Rowand would probably still be playing.  Instead, Aaron Rowand was bull-headed.

Rowand hit out of a crouch that looked like he was sitting on the edge of an invisible chair, and he tried to pull everything.  That resulted in way too many groundballs to short and strikeouts.  Eventually, bad habits catch up with a hitter, and it happened to Rowand after the 2011 season.  A little over a year later, he was signing autographs and posing for pictures on a January Sunday in Chicago.  Not that my daughter minded.

As a group, White Sox fans rate right up there with Phillies fans, the difference being we don’t feel the need to go to games to boo people.  We will, however, attend the fan convention and voice our opinions, loudly.  This year, someone asked manager Robin Ventura if he had a pulse.  I’m not sure how many people in the audience believed Ventura when he answered, Yes.  And the Adam Dunn comments…Consider that Clare told me she would have asked for his autograph and then thrown the ball at him.

           It’s a good thing Dunn’s contract is up at the end of the season.  Otherwise, I’d hate to see what happens if we go to SoxFest next January.

Mixed Messages

            So, the Yankees win the Masahiro Tanaka sweepstakes with a seven-year, $155 million contract.  That means Team AARP gets a little younger.  And both Chicago teams get to keep their cash.

The Cubs apparently finished second, which is better than they usually do.  Why Theo Epstein thought Tanaka would go to the Land of Heartbreak is beyond me, but he did.  I’m more interested in the White Sox thinking.  They already have 24-year old Chris Sale, one of the best lefty starters in the game, which means Tanaka would have made an impressive number two in the rotation.  Theoretically, that is.

Last spring, the Sox signed Sale to a five-year extension for $32.5 million.  He has 24 career wins to go with 12 saves and a 2.97 ERA.  Without ever throwing a pitch in the majors, Tanaka will be making more than three times a year than Sale.  Assume the White Sox offer was for just twice as much, which says what to their star lefty:  We love you, Chris, you’re our number one, but we think this guy pitching behind you is worth a whole lot more?  Not good, or smart.

And I can only imagine what’s going through Clare’s mind.  An unproven guy can command heaven and earth, but a girl….If and when a woman breaks into the major leagues, what do you think her starting salary will be?

The Glass Half Full (of Snow)

            Snow?  Check.  Cold?  Check.  Chi-beria?  Oh yeah, or the North Pole or the South Pole or Antarctica by the Lake.  Chicago has it all in a white-death, the-sky-and-earth-merge-in-gray-at-the-horizon sort of way.

            And yet softball starts to practice for real next week.  Come February, time will exist on two tracks, the frozen outside and speed-of-light inside.  Then, boom, March, and off we go for six straight weeks of doubleheaders, hope and dread.

            When it ends, January will seem so long ago.  I hope.

More Déjà vu

            The MLK holiday made it possible for Clare to sleep over Sunday and Monday.  So, this morning we were sitting at the breakfast table, one person too cold from shoveling to talk and the other not awake enough to talk.  But the child still managed to reach for the sports’ section ahead of the father.  I was never that quick, even at her age.

Déjà vu, Again

Déjà vu, Again

            I’ve been scoring Clare’s games since Bronco Ball.  It gives me something to do while trying to cope with the perpetual 0-2 counts.  Hey, Dad, did you see how I didn’t give in to her?  Dad?  Why are you all sweaty?

            A father with a notebook does draw attention, though.  After Clare’s sophomore year in high school, her coach asked me to “keep the book,” or be the team’s official scorer.  My duties included scoring the game; computing team batting averages and ERAs; and calling newspapers with the recap.  For home games, I also rated the umpires, but we won’t get into that.

Probably the most important thing was being able to answer the question, “What did she do last time?”  Games are won or lost by how fast and accurate the answer is.  The coach wants to know if he should pitch around this batter or shade his second baseman towards the line.  We live in an information age.

            Yesterday, my notebook ways struck again.  Clare’s college coach asked if I’d keep the book come Florida.  It won’t involve as much as in high school, just being able to tell him what the opposing batter has done.  And a friendly word of advice from my daughter:  “I don’t want you in the dugout.”  After all, kids needs their space, sacred or profane.

A Parent's Pride

            Through no fault of our own, my father and I got caught up in a cold war.  On the one side was someone who had lost his own father at the age of 13 months; dropped out of school after the seventh grade; and spent a lifetime working.  Fire engine, delivery truck, assembly line—Ed Bukowski did his job without complaint or regard to his safety and health.  And so God rewarded him with a hippie of a son, in so far as seventeen years of Catholic education and living at home allowed me to be a hippie.

            If it wasn’t a cold war, it was a Venus-and-Mars thing.  I talked civil rights at the dinner table, he fought fires while being shot at.  Our common ground was being father and son.  Otherwise, who knows what might have been said or done?

            As Mark Twain said of his own father, I was amazed by how much the old man learned the older I got.  Age allowed me to see the extraordinary sacrifices this man had endured for his family, whether working the assembly line at Ford on Torrence Avenue to help his mother with the mortgage or putting me through college.  I probably never told him that just as he probably never told me he what he thought of my being a writer.  But he did say something toward the end of his life after yet another hospital stay.  I was picking him up to go home, and there was another patient, an elderly woman, who had no one to take her.  Seeing her wait for the bus, my father allowed, “I don’t know what I’d do without you and your sister.”

            My daughter isn’t a big fan of Mark Twain, and she has her doubts about my ever figuring out electronic devices, but she’s learned as she was taught and as I was taught.  This week, she went to a wake for a person who should have been too young to die; she also made sure other members of the Elmhurst softball team went to pay their respects.  Yesterday, though she didn’t have to, Clare also attended the funeral service.  This is how a team captain should act. 

            I look to be set in old age.

Mascot Crazy

            The Cubs can’t seem to get started on renovating Wrigley Field, but they found time this week to introduce Clark, a mascot for the kiddies.  Apparently, market research showed a need for appealing to fans ages twelve and under.  Hence, a life-sized, cartoon-faced bear.  Too bad they forgot to give him pants to go with the jersey.  I gather that cranks on the Internet are endowing Clark with big-time genitalia.

            And here I go into whippersnapper cranky mode.  When I was twelve, the game alone was the thing.  Going to Comiskey Park was not unlike going to church, except for the adults drinking beer.  And that didn’t interest me in the least. I was too busy taking in the park, its arches and dimensions and colors.  If there’s such a thing as forest green, why not “35^th and Shields” green or box-seat blue or loge red?  While my ballpark memories may fade, the colors have not.

            So, back in the day of the dinosaur, kids went to the ballpark to watch their heroes play.  It didn’t cost a lot of money, and it didn’t take long.  Then it all changed.  As much as I want to make fun of the Cubs, the White Sox are on their second mascot in the reign of Reinsdorf.  Ribbie and Roobarb graced Sox games long before Southpaw.

            I like my mascots more sincere, or at least less corporate.  Ronnie Woo-Woo cheers from the heart for his Cubs in the way of Andy the Clown did for the White Sox.  Nobody paid the man to roam the aisles in a clown suit and light-up nose and let out a rousing “Go, You White Sox!” rousing because those four words took Andy a full minute or more to get out.  Oh, and I don’t like AC/DC playing on the sound system.

            All of which has made high school and college softball so enjoyable.  It’s National Anthem, player intros, play ball and don’t blink because you’ll only get one chance to see the play.  It’s old school down to the long underwear to keep out the April chill.

            Elmhurst College has some sort of blue jay mascot, but thank heaven he’s never shown up for a game.  That alone was worth the cost of four years’ tuition.  Almost.

Bobby Jenks, Clean and Sober

Clare called last night, and, yes, we were already in bed.  You don’t complain if you want your child to stay in touch, and we do.

Anyway, she called to tell me that ex-White Sox reliever Bobby Jenks was going to appear at Sox Fest in a couple of weeks.  Jenks came out of nowhere (actually, Double-A Birmingham) late in the 2005 season to post six saves, with another two in the World Series, including the series winner.  After that, it was a rollercoaster five seasons.  Jenks was not immune to blowing a big save—though I’d take him in his prime over Addison Reed—or complaining to the press.  There was also talk of substance abuse.

When the White Sox let Jenks walk after the 2010 season, he signed with Boston, where he hurt his back.  Since then, there have been three surgeries, and addiction to pain medication and a stint in rehab.  Jenks says he’s been clean of drugs and alcohol for just about eighteen months, and I hope he can stay that way.  He’s also planning a comeback, which will definitely challenge his sobriety.

             There are personal demons for an athlete with addiction issues, and there are fans, especially those who will boo and tweet and post easy disdain at the first sign of failure, on or off the field.  We’re nothing without the quality of mercy.

One Damn' Thing after Another

            Saturday afternoon, Clare found out the softball team trainer had died; he was all of 30, if that.  The cause was an infection from his first chemo treatment for leukemia, which had been diagnosed in December.  I remember watching him Clare’s freshman year in Florida, working on a player’s hamstring before one of the games.  With our center fielder lying across a bleacher seat, it was shoulder to thigh, foot to sky—we weren’t in high school anymore, I thought.

            Saturday night, one of Clare’s roommates was involved in a traffic accident; she and her boyfriend had the misfortune of encountering a driver who didn’t believe in stopping at a red light, or see what damage had been done, for that matter.  Luckily, there appears to be more damage to steel than flesh.

            Yesterday morning, Michele’s mother called to say her dad was in the hospital, something about his heart.  Clare found out about Gramps a few hours before she came home to go hitting.  It was a real hack-and-whack session; Clare hit between coughs.  All of the above are reasons to hate January.

            But I loved those times my daughter made those metal roof posts ring. 

HOF Gibberish

            With Hall-of-Fame inductees Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas having such strong Chicago ties, the sportswriters have been working overtime producing stories and commentary.  Only some of it is gibberish.

            As in Maddux looking so normal.  Granted, the man could never pass for Roger Clemens, but he’s still a freak of nature.  Maddux pitched 23 years in the majors and went on the disabled list once, for his back not his arm, elbow or shoulder.  And he didn’t throw much harder than 90 mph.  So, where did all that movement come on his pitches?  I’d argue that Maddux was the perfect height with the perfect-sized right hand and fingers and with the perfect sized legs making for the perfect stride to the plate.  That package can’t be bought, with or without PEDs, and cloning is still a ways off.

            One other thing—Greg Maddux is indirectly responsible for more bad pitching over the past quarter century than we can imagine.  That’s because other young pitchers, not nearly as gifted, thought they could succeed like Maddux did given how they weren’t that tall and didn’t throw that hard, either.  All they had to do was nibble, work the ball up and down, inside and out.  And those guys always get creamed.  For every Greg Maddux, there are countless entries in baseballreference.com with career ERAs of 4, 5, 6 and worse.  I think a moment of silence is in order here.   

Now, let’s move on to Frank Thomas, who can’t stop proclaiming his love of hitting coach Walt Hriniak.  Please.  The Big Hurt was so talented he could have used Mario Mendoza, Ray Oyler and/or Mark Belanger for a hitting coach and still gotten into Cooperstown.  I read in the paper Saturday how fortunate Hriniak feels to have HOFers Thomas, Carlton Fisk and Wade Boggs among his pupils.  And what about Red Sox catcher Rich Gedman?  He also used a level swing and had his top hand come off the bat on his follow-through.  Gedman’s career was pretty much over by the time he was 28.  How many more Gedmans than Thomases did Hriniak have as a coach?

            If I were to pick a favorite hitting coach, it would be former outfielder Bill Robinson because first he practiced what he later preached.  Robinson was a top prospect the Yankees were banking on in the late ‘60s to lead them back to glory, only he was a bust, batting .196, .240 and .171 his first three seasons.  Robinson didn’t learn to hit until the season he turned 30; 142 of his 166 career home runs and 527 of his 641RBIs came from that point on.  That’s what I mean by practicing.

            Robinson’s pupils with the Mets included Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez, and he also served as hitting coach for the Marlins when they won the World Series in 2003.  According to his obituary in the NYT, Robinson believed, “A good hitting instructor is able to mold his teachings to the individual.”  For such a coach, “If a guy stands on his head, you perfect that.”

            Which is what I’ve always wanted for my daughter.

Cooperstown, Here We Come

            “I see that the Frank of Thomas made the Hall of Fame,” Clare said forty minutes after the fact.  “You weren’t going to call me?”  I let the app tell her instead.

            So much like her father and yet so different.  A lover of baseball, a fan of the White Sox but absolutely no sense of the Go-Go Sox with that steal-a-base, pitch-a-shutout mindset of the 1950s and ‘60s.  It’s all boom-boom bam! with Clare.  Believe me, I tried to raise her right.

            A little before Clare turned six, I took her to see the Altoona Rail Kings square off against the Will County Cheetahs in the independent Frontier League.  The idea was to have our picture taken, with the visiting manager, not any of his players.  That’s because the Altoona manager happened to be Walt “No Neck” Williams, my favorite White Sox player of all time.  Clare would grow to be the same height as Walt, 5’ 6”, and she hustles the way he always did in the outfield, on the bases or just going back to the dugout:  This is how I want you to be.  And so it came to pass, the picture taken and the hustle rubbing off.  But you can’t expect a child to go crazy over someone she never saw play.

            So, it is my fault, after all, sitting with a baby on my lap to watch the White Sox of Thomas and Ventura.  The little girl imagined she could be like the giant man.  And now she’s coordinating team lifting and open gyms because, as she says, “Games are won in January.”  Come July, we’ll try to hear The Big Hurt give his induction in the town where Abner Doubleday didn’t quite invent the national pastime.  There are worse ways to spend a summer day.  

Piggy Move Up

   

            The old TV goes from the living room to the basement while the basement TV, which happens to be my sister Betty’s, goes with Clare to Elmhurst.  From what I gather, she can use her Apple TV app-doohickey to get the MLB Network without cable.  Then, when the time comes, she can retreat to her bedroom.

            Clare lives on-campus with three roommates in a school-owned house; three of the girls are athletes.  Close quarters requires all sorts of give and take, which my daughter is pretty good at, except for the TV.  “I will not watch that show,” Clare says of The Bachelor, which is returning soon.  She’ll take Bob Costas and Harold Reynolds to a rose anytime.

Practice Makes Perfect

 

            We beat the snow and the cold and the winding roads of Fredrick Law Olmsted’s Riverside to reach Stella’s, our indoor hitting facility of choice.  It was worth the trek.

            Clare has been going to Stella’s since she was nine.  We followed all the posted do’s and don’ts for about a year until I relented and let her hit at 70 mph.  A year later, it was 75 and 80 before she was in eighth grade.  The girl has yet to meet a fastball she didn’t like.

            Up until junior year high school, Clare was a good, basic line-drive hitter, with a swing made to find the gaps.  It was a January five years ago when that changed.  I was watching my daughter hit at 75 and 80 when, all of a sudden, she started booming shots.  Stella’s is an odd place that seems to stretch forever and has a roof supported by two three-foot in diameter metal columns.  So, when I say “booming” I mean the balls went into the nether regions and/or they bounced off the columns.  In that case, the “boom” was more of a very loud “boing.”

            Clare hit five homers the spring that followed, to go with her .425 average and then hit ten more homers her senior year.  Hence the interest from schools like Elmhurst.  Coach Brown did well by her West Suburban Gold Conference recruit.  Clare hit six homers as a freshman, which broke the school single-season record, and seven as a sophomore.  That gave her the career mark as well.

            Then came last year.  The team slumped, Clare slumped.  Among the reasons were an unexpected change in coaches, a 12-player roster and the death of a favorite first-cousin; we had to leave Florida to attend the funeral.  All of that led to a season that included two homers from the Babe and no return to the postseason.

            I told Clare in the fall she should make a tee-shirt that says, I’m owning up to last year so I can own this one.  Off of yesterday, she’s taking that message to heart.  From the pictures and video we studied, Clare seemed to have developed a bad habit, not in her swing but her stance; the front foot was tippy-toe in the extreme.  So, the foot went down yesterday, and Stella’s went “boing” for a good half-hour.  But we’re still not done.

              The habit leads to the question:  Did it cause the slump, or did the slump cause it?  In other words, did all the stuff happening on and off the field affect performance?  I think so, which then leads us back, yet again, to Yogi Berra and the mental part of sports.  If my daughter’s head is right, her swing is right.  That’s why I made the tee-shirt suggestion.

            The best part of watching Clare hit is when she draws a crowd, as she did yesterday; girls her size aren’t supposed to hit balls coming in that fast so hard and so far.  The more people of the male persuasion who watch the better; I swear the girl lives to confound others.  Yesterday, men stared, boys watched and my daughter was happy.

            And somewhere in New Jersey Mr. Berra did a good day’s work without ever knowing it.     

Gone

            The TV and the TiVo were no longer on good speaking terms, at least on the subject of Netflix movie downloads (Retrieving…Retrieving…Retrieving).  So, we went out and updated our entertainment media.  It’s not having to spend a lot of money that bothered me.

            First, some background.  Clare hit .425 her junior year of high school, played a Dustin Pedroia-like second base and drew some Division I interest.  Then came travel ball with two new coaches, both clowns of immense proportion.  First, they batted her up and down the order, then they shifted her from second to dh, then they platooned her, then they couldn’t wait to pinch hit for her.  What sprung eternal in April had grown ugly by late July.  Oh, and the college coaches proved to be mirage.

            We were at the nationals’ tournament in Salisbury, Maryland, when disaster struck.  Clare was trying to beat out a grounder in a downpour when she collided with the second baseman, who was moving to cover first.  I watched as my daughter spun, literally, 360 degrees in the air before landing in the mud flat-out on her back.  Michele rushed out on the field, because that’s what mothers do.  Only Clown #1 told her to get off; I think he was afraid of forfeiting on account of an unruly parent.  Did I mention Coach had already told Clare that she would never hit in college?  The week couldn’t end soon enough.

            We went back to the hotel after the game and turned on ESPN.  As luck would have it, the White Sox were playing a day game against the Blue Jays, with Mark Buehrle pitching.  Clare and I watched bonus coverage of Buehrle taking a perfect game into the ninth inning.  The first batter he faced was Gabe Kapler, who lined the ball to deep left-center field.  “So much for that,” I thought, but, no, Dewayne Wise, just entering the game as a defensive replacement, leaps and catches the ball, only to juggle it on the way down.  And, and, and he hangs on!  The gods finally smiled down on Maryland.

            I recorded a rebroadcast of the game, which went unwatched until the following January.  Then, after we buried my sister, Clare’s Auntie Betty (as in Mame), Clare and I sat on the couch to watch perfection unfold from the very first pitch.  I never watched the game after that.   But I kept it on TiVo as a reminder of July and January, of struggle and family and loss.  And now it’s gone.

Through a Door, (Not) Softly

 

            Even with the door to my room shut I could hear Clare shouting at the TV.  She was sitting on the couch, home from New Year’s Eve, watching MLB Network count down the season’s best ejections.  This was what joy sounds like.

            If my daughter hadn’t gone to work New Year’s Eve (before going out), “I would’ve spent the day on the couch having MLB break down 2013 for me.”  She was serious and, as ever, unique onto herself.

Happy New Year, More Years

 

            So, if it’s a new year, why do I feel so old?  Michele and I barely made it to midnight this morning.  I probably woke up the same time my daughter was falling asleep.  Ah, to be young again.

            I’ve reached that point in life where I need to guard against the tendency to break out in spontaneous lectures that begin with, “Why, you whippersnappers.  Back when I was your age….”  Really, who cares?  But….

            Among the things I miss in this digital age of ours are The Sporting News, The Baseball Register and The Baseball Encyclopedia.  I first stumbled upon the Sporting News going to visit a friend who was working behind the counter at Glendale Drugs on 52^nd and Kedzie on the Great Southwest Side (Why, you suburban whippersnappers….).  Statistics from every league, oh my.  Now, I have to go to mlb.com or a league website, and it just isn’t the same.  To switch from the American Association to the International League was a lot easier when you just had to turn the page.

            The same goes for the Register and the Encyclopedia.  Maybe I was a master flipper of pages, a skill that no longer seems much in demand these days.  But I can’t warm up to baseballreference.com—there’s no going back and forth to compare players.  Wait, I need to figure out how to do split screens.  For three players?  As I said, I was a master flipper of pages.  And now I argue with my wife, who has committed the treasonous act of buying a Kindle to read new books.

            Happy New Year’s, whippersnappers.