If You Can't Say Something Nice....

We were checking the mums at a garden store when Clare called with the news—Adam Dunn is gone, traded to the A’s!  And so ends an era.

In one month short of four seasons with the White Sox, Dunn never hit better than .220 or collected 100 rbi’s.  In his first three seasons, Dunn put up strikeout totals of 177, 222 (!) and 189.  Then there was the matter of personality.  The man was all Alfred E. Neuman.  What, me worry?  It never seemed that Dunn did, or cared.

Part of it was personality, and part of it was a defense response, I’m sure.  Either way, Sox fans had to be worried when they read in the paper that Dunn wanted to be a mentor to younger players.  I mean, what was he going to do, tell them not to worry?  You don’t want a player to press, but you do want a player to be aware of the consequences of failure.  Clare certainly was every year she played baseball or softball.  She was the kid who wanted a chance and then never let go once she got it.  To her and to me, Adam Dunn was an alien from a distant galaxy by way of Houston Texas.  Dunn and the Astrodome, a perfect match.

I think the Cubs have something to do with the Sox making two moves this weekend, dumping both Dunn and the defensively challenged Alejandro De Aza (who lost a ball in the sun at Yankee Stadium last weekend.  De Aza stared up at the sun a second time before throwing the ball back to the infield.)  The North Siders are starting to bring up their much-heralded rookies, who may or may not help them break the 100-year-plus curse.  Regardless, the Cubs are going to dominate the sports section come next February, and the White Sox had better be prepared.

These two moves are a start.

The Cost of Doing Business

Yesterday, the city of Chicago held a parade for the Jackie Robinson West team, U.S. Little League champions.  There was a nice rally downtown at Millennium Park along with heartfelt sentiments expressed by the likes of the Cubs’ Theo Epstein and the Sox Kenny Williams.

Epstein told the Sun-Times that the baseball establishment needs to “ask the question how we can get young kids playing baseball again, especially in the inner city.”  The answer is, it can’t to any real extent.

In 1981, African-American players comprised 18.7 of major-league rosters; today, the figure stands at 8.3 percent.  What happened?  Basically, baseball changed its way of doing business at the same time the nature of youth sports changed.  To listen to Epstein and Williams is to hear nostalgia for the old days of kids playing the game in summer from dawn to dusk; ex-Sox player Harold Baines actually said that’s what he did growing up.  Things were different indeed in the time before free agency.

For example, as a 14-year old in 1967 I could buy a general admission ticket to a Sox game for $2, which would come out to just under $14 adjusted for inflation.  In 1981, the same ticket would have cost me $3, or $7.13 today; in other words, the cost of a ticket actually declined.  Consider what that means.

Kids could play the game and then go see their heroes on a regular basis without plunging their families into debt.  That’s just not possible anymore.  Yes, the White Sox have $7 seats in what they call the “upper corners,” but these are among the worst seats in professional sports.  It’s like Clare said about the game she went to for summer camp—you don’t even feel that you’re there.  When I was paying that $2-3, I headed straight for the left field foul pole and usually found a seat within the first three or four rows.  For all intents and purposes, I could’ve shaken hands with Tommie Agee or Ken Berry.

Now, baseball is a hyper big business, while the fan-player connection fostered by low ticket prices has been severed.  At the same time, the advent of travel sports has strained family budgets.  With Clare in travel softball, we barely had enough money for household expenses, let alone anything for a ballgame or two.  And, if money was tight for us, what’s it like in the inner city?  I’d like to know how many major-league games the Jackie Robinson kids have been to the past couple of years.

All sports are expensive, but no one complains about the cost of football or basketball tickets.  Baseball is held to a different standard as the first if not current national pastime.  It’d be nice if Jackie Robinson West could bring back the old days.  I just don’t see how.     

Roster Moves

Well, cell phones work from Indiana, which is always good news.  Clare called yesterday afternoon to tell me the White Sox sent Jordan Danks back to the minors.  An above average outfielder who might hit fifteen homeruns if someone gave him 500 at-bats, Danks and players like him are all but non-existent on big-league rosters.  Thank you, Tony La Russa.

Once upon a time, teams carried players who could come off the bench to play late-inning defense, pinch hit and/or pinch run.  This was in the era of ten-man pitching staffs.  Then along came La Russa with his lefty-lefty, righty-righty matchups.  Something has to give on a 25-player roster, and it ended up being the jack-of-all-trades like Jordan Danks.  But, hey, this weekend the Sox will have a Tony La Russa bobblehead giveaway.

With luck, before long a team will make news by going back to the future with a ten-pitcher staff and six-player bench.  After some manager steals a few wins with his extra bench players, the competition will look to copy his success.  And the legacy of Tony La Russa will undergo a downsizing that has been too long in coming.

Ghosts

I hate September, and any part of August that brushes up against it.  Growing up, I dreaded school starting, which is kind of funny for someone who went to get a Ph.D. 

For me, September always meant new classmates, new anxieties, like would I ever get off of Team Four in softball?  (Think “The Leper Colony” in Twelve O’Clock High.)  By October I had enough answers to know what to expect for the rest of the school year.  I valued unpleasant routine over uncertainty.  

Then grade school led to high school; a big September there, when I learned that it was better not to go to the john in E Wing.  And high school to college.  I didn’t even know about A/B stops on the subway; it was a good thing all trains stopped at DePaul University.  And college led to graduate school, where they forgot to tell me when school started, in part because they forgot I was enrolled for that Ph.D.

I drove Clare to school five days a week, for ten years starting in junior kindergarten.  That stopped in the September of freshman year high school, and I felt lost.  I did OK shipping her off to Elmhurst for college.  It was only a half-hour away, and I had four years of softball to look forward to.

Yesterday, we moved Clare into her apartment at Valparaiso University, where she’s going for a master’s in sports’ administration.  The house is empty now, save for memories ruined by one September or another. 

South Side Pride

I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, so I had to be pulling for the Jackie Robinson West team in today’s U.S. Little League World Series title game against Las Vegas/Nevada.  For once, the underdog won.

I looked at the Chicago team and saw a bunch of kids, all different sizes, but kids nonetheless.  I looked at the Las Vegas team and saw a bunch of Bryce Harper wannabes.  That’s not their fault, I know; parents and coaches pushed to make the team what it was.  Still, I had flashbacks to travel ball, where the only thing better than having money is having more money.  The Chicago team nickel and dimed its way to a budget.  Las Vegas probably used a nice, thick roll of c-notes.

Las Vegas scored three runs in the top of the first and got all cocky, and I hate that.  Wait until the game is over, then celebrate, which is exactly what the Jackie Robinson team did.  Earlier in the week, one of their players showboated around the bases after hitting a homerun.  The coach made him go back and apologize to the opposing team.

That, my friends, is how you’re supposed to play the game.

Growth Chart

The New York Times has covered Mo’ne Davis to the point I wondered if they were more interested in the symbol than the child, so Wednesday’s story came as a surprise.  It focused more on health than sports.

Right now, 13-year old girls have a developmental advantage over their male counterparts.  But the odds are Davis won’t grow much taller than her present 5’4”.  If so, it’s unlikely we’ll be hearing much about her on the baseball diamond two or three years from now.

But as one of the experts in the story pointed out, she could still end up throwing a 90-mile an hour fastball.  And if not her, then another girl, maybe a six-footer we’ve never heard of from International Falls or Bisbee.  What the Little League World Series has shown above all is the existence of an audience ready to root for the next Jackie Robinson, if only baseball would exert itself to find her.

Mo’ne Davis met Rob Manfred, the next baseball commissioner, earlier this week.  I wonder what she told him.  I wonder if he listened.

Where Have You Gone, Norman Rockwell?

 The Little League World Series has moved from Norman Rockwell to ESPN Live, with instant replay.  Is that necessarily a good thing?

Yes, pitcher Mo’ne Davis getting on the cover of Sports Illustrated could really help girls in baseball, or not.  All of a sudden, this thirteen-year old is dealing with a world of media attention; older athletes have wilted under less pressure.  What happens if and when Davis stumbles?  I mean, even Sandy Koufax and Jennie Finch had their off days on the mound.  Or what happens if Davis does well next year but doesn’t return to Williamsport?  Will somebody stick a mic in her face to ask how she feels?

What it comes down to for me is reading rather than watching.  I want to read about Davis and the Jackie Robinson team from Chicago, but I don’t want to watch them on TV.  Why?  Because THEY’RE 13 YEARS OLD!  No one outside of family and friends should be watching.  To put kids on television like this turns them into nothing more than so much programming to help fill up a Monday night.

When Clare was in sixth grade, I coached her in a fall-ball league.  We had a pitcher who belonged in the Little League Hall of Fame.  The kid’s fastball knocked the mitt off the first two boys who tried to catch him, and he ended up striking out 27 of the 29 batters he faced that autumn.  ESPN and Sports Illustrated here we come, or so he and his father thought.  But I knew not to call.

The kid loved to pitch batting practice, if only to humiliate teammates.  Of the 12-13 players I had, only one could make solid contact off of him.  Yup, it was Clare.  That told me something about both the boy and the girl.  One went on to play in college while the other wasn’t even the best pitcher on his high school team.  Failure happens all the time in sports.

And an exploitive media can only make it worse.

We're Major-League Baseball, and We Love Slappers*

Infielder Munenori Kawasaki of the Toronto Blue Jays is a textbook slapper—he hits off his front foot to guide the ball into left field.  Why anyone throws him a ball over the plate, especially a changeup, is beyond me, to say nothing of the White Sox pitching staff.

Next month, the Sox play Kansas City Royals, who have their own slapper in Nori Aoki.  Again, Sox pitchers just love to leave a pitch out there for Aoki to slap at.  Of the two, Aoki is probably the better hitter because he also has some power from the left side.  But what I want to know is why teams feel the need to go to Japan for this type of ballplayer.

Neither of them stands taller than 5’11’’, and they were both thirty-year old rookies.  Tell me again why a college softball player couldn’t fill the same role, at a younger age and without the language barrier.  I’m sure there’s a reason somewhere.

Maybe it has to do with only wanting guys in the dugout.

The Dinosaur that is Hawk

 On Wednesday, the White Sox got burned by one of the dumbest rules in baseball, meant to prevent collisions at the plate.  As of this year, the catcher can’t move to block the plate until he has possession of the ball.  In the seventh inning with the Sox leading 1-0, Sox catcher Tyler Flowers caught the ball from first baseman Jose Abreu with the Giants’ Gregor Blanco a good five or six feet from the plate.  Flowers then applied the tag for the out, but Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy challenged the call, which was overturned on review from New York.  In the words of radio announcer Ed Farmer, Flowers was deemed to have had his “pinky toe” over the line.

Now, that’s great commentary, unlike what happened on television.  Ken “Hawk” Harrelson was so upset by the call he said, “Next thing you know we’ll have catchers wearing skirts out there.”  Really, Hawk, have you watched any female athletes lately, especially softball players?  I doubt it.

But in case anyone is wondering why the White Sox are a stale organization, all they have to do is turn on the TV for proof.  You might want to keep it on mute, though.

A Girl on the Mound

Thirteen-year old pitcher Mo’ne Davis will be the eighteenth girl to play in the Little League World Series.  Girls in Little League baseball always garner headlines.  Then they fade away.

Davis, though, says she wants to be the first female player in the major leagues or NBA.  So, let’s say she’s serious.  The interest in basketball suggests she might come from a family where the people grow tall, which would translate well to the pitcher’s mound.  As Tom Seaver would say, legs generate power.

Right now, Davis can hold her own against the boys with a 70-mph fastball, but the guys will more than catch up soon in terms of strength.  If I were Mo’ne or her most trusted coach, I’d be shooting for the ability to throw at 90 by the age of 19-20.  Then, we’re talking serious stuff, that is, if she has command.

That would seem to be the most important asset for any woman pitcher wanting to make it in baseball—be fast enough and be able to spot the ball anywhere in the strike zone.  That would get scouts interested.  An out-pitch would get them excited.

It won’t be a fastball, and it doesn’t have to be a knuckler.  The New York Times Magazine had an interesting story several weeks ago on the screwball, a pitch that forever breaks down and in or down and away on a batter, depending on the particular matchup.  The most interesting part of the story was its contention that fastballs are more likely to hurt a pitcher’s arm than the screwball, which has fallen out of favor as a high elbow-stress pitch.  It certainly didn’t hurt Tug McGraw or Fernando Valenzuela, to say nothing of Carl Hubbell and Warren Spahn.

Mo’ne Davis doesn’t have to win any games to join those ranks.  All she has to do is throw one pitch from a big-league mound.  That alone would get her into Cooperstown.

K Count

Todd Steverson, the new White Sox hitting coach, wants to cut out on team strikeouts in the same way I’d like to drop a few pounds.  Who would you bet on, a middle-aged man or Adam Dunn?  I don’t mean to brag, but my money’s on me.

Right now, the Sox rank fifth worst in baseball.  They should get better next season because Dunn is in the last year of his contract, and the only way he gets resigned is if the organization has a collective death wish.  But there are some other guys who strike out way too much.

Take Tyler Flowers and Dayan Viciedo (please).  As of today, Flowers has struck out 35 percent of his total at-bats; for Viciedo, it’s 22 percent.  Both figures are up 1-2 percent from last year.  Viciedo has been a starter the past three seasons while this is the second one for Flowers.  Given that Viciedo has a .256 career batting average and Flowers .219, how long do you wait?  And how exactly do you get batters to cut down on strikeouts?

Part of the answer is putting the fear of God in them, as in “keep striking out like that, and you won’t be here for long.”  The problem with Viciedo and Flowers is they’re already here.  The threat should’ve been made a long time ago.  Maybe if they’d seen players who didn’t flail away get promoted ahead of them, the message would’ve sunk in.  Now, it’s probably too late.

I always worried about strikeouts with Clare, who already was a textbook “free swinger” by the time she was nine.  It caught up to her one year in Pony baseball when the coach looked for any excuse not to play a girl:  She’s not making contact, good.  In a way it was because Clare saw the consequence of failure and she adapted.  The girl still struck out more than a leadoff batter, but she learned to combine power with a relatively high batting average, over .400 one year in high school and over .300 one year in college.

All of which brings us to Adam Eaton, the Sox leadoff man with 66 strikeouts.  What are you going to do about that, Mr. Steverson?

Seems Like Old Times

The starting outfield for the 2013 and 2014 Elmhurst College Bluejays spent yesterday afternoon in our yard.  So did Clare’s high school coach and a friend of mine from just about kindergarten.  If you let it, the past is never really past.

Clare had a bunch of people over for a combination graduation/going away party.  The softball girls went over last season and what’s going to happen next year without Clare around.  The softball dad and coach reminisced over games from what now seems a very long time ago:  The freshman Clare getting a single in the top of the seventh inning to start an improbable four-run-after-two-out rally against Riverside-Brookfield for our first of four consecutive regional championships; the senior Clare hitting a game-tying homerun in the bottom of the seventh to set up the last one.

I only wish it were enough to reminisce.  Maybe in time it will be.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

 I belonged to a group that wanted to save Comiskey Park, in the way that Fenway has been and Wrigley most likely will be.  We argued history—the first All-Star game, Larry Doby breaking the color line in the American League, Joe Louis winning the heavyweight title—along with policy—if welfare is bad, it’s especially bad for professional sports’ franchises—and design—the upper deck at Comiskey virtually hovered over the field of play.  But all critics wanted to talk about was obstructed views and trough urinals.

When the park came down in 1991, I spent a couple of very unhappy seasons rooting against the White Sox.  Then Clare came along.  What was I supposed to do, sit her down and pass along my grudges?  So, I let it go in order to be a good father and fan.

On Wednesday, Clare took her Oak Park kids on a field trip to a day game at the Cell.  They had what are known as “nosebleed seats.”  Clare told me, “We were so high up the sound was different,” maybe because the crack of the bat travels more out than up.  “And I couldn’t see the scoreboard.  It was like watching the game at home.”  Why?  “Because there was no sense you were there.”

I delicately suggested that Wrigley Field was a better place for the serious fan to watch a game, and my daughter agreed.  Let it be noted that architect Zachary Taylor Davis designed both real Chicago ballparks.       

A Crack in the Ceiling

Yesterday, the San Antonio Spurs hired Becky Hammon as the first fulltime assistant coach in the NBA.  Hammon is a 37-year old point guard with the San Antonio Stars of the WNBA.  A knee injury last year got the six-time All-Star to thinking seriously about her post-playing career.

I’m not surprised that the Spurs are giving Hammon a shot.  Coach Gregg Popovich comes from the Bill Walsh school of coaching, where the unconventional approach is to be expected.  And any team with Tim Duncan on it is going to be serious about things.  I only wish major-league baseball had beaten the NBA to the punch.

But there’s still time.  Right, Clare?

A.J.

Catcher A.J. Pierzynski played eight seasons with the White Sox, 2005-2012.  There have been four other teams, not counting the Cardinals, who signed him late last month after his release from the Red Sox.  For the most part, the hometown fans aren’t sad to see A.J. go, except on the South Side.  In fact, there probably isn’t a White Sox fan alive who wouldn’t buy A.J. a drink, and that includes Clare, who is now 22-years old and still treasure her Pierzynski jersey from freshman-year high school.

Depending who you talk to, Pierzynski is either a cancer or a catalyst.  Ex-Sox manager Ozzie Guillen probably put it best when he said, “If you play against him, you hate him.  If you play with him, you hate him a little less.”  In the 2005 Championship Series against the Angels, A.J. struck out in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game.  Catcher Josh Paul thought Pierzynski had tipped the ball, which had rolled past him.  A.J. thought otherwise and ran to first, thinking it was a dropped third strike.  The umpires agreed.  And the replay?  Not exactly what you’d call definitive.  Pinch runner Pablo Ozuna stole second base and scored the winning run on Joe Crede’s double.  Perhaps I should say here that the Sox beat the Angels four games to one then swept the Astros for their first World Series championship in 88 years.

During a Cub-Sox game the next year, Pierzynski barreled over Cubs’ catcher Michael Barrett on a sacrifice fly.  A.J. slapped the plate and jumped to his feet, brushing shoulders with Barrett, who took offense and a swing at A.J.’s jaw.  Perhaps I should mention here that Pierzynski is not universally loved in all parts of Chicago.

Naturally, he went three for four with an rbi in his first game as a Cardinal, at Wrigley Field.

16-3

OK, so women just don’t have the muscle mass to compete with the big boys of major league baseball, right?  Lord knows what the score would’ve been in yesterday’s 16-3 White Sox loss to the Twins.  The bullpen gave up 15 runs, twelve of them after the seventh inning.  Obviously, guys are better.

The old days were bad in terms of health care and race relations; give me antibiotics and the Civil Rights Act anytime.  And I don’t want the Negro Leagues coming back, either.  But, back before franchise operated on a monkey-see monkey-do basis, teams pushed boundaries, Branch Rickey’s Dodgers most of all.

If my White Sox were at all like that (ironically, their owner was born in Brooklyn and grew up a Dodgers’ fan), they would squeeze that lemon of a bullpen into something better.  They’d look for pitchers who throw knuckleballs, screwballs and palm balls.  They’d send scouts to watch the Chicago Bandits.  They’d do something more than send out pitchers because of the size of their contract, which in at least one case rivals his ERA. 

Graduation Gift

For graduation, we treated Clare and her boyfriend to the White Sox game yesterday.  She thought the seats were good, and the girl has always loved a fireworks’ show, which the team does on Saturday nights.  As for the scoreboard message that said, Welcome #7 Clare Bukowski Elmhurst College Softball All-time Homerun Hitter, well, that was priceless, as they used to say on the commercial.

I wasn’t too cranky at the end of the game, given that the Sox coughed up a late-inning lead to lose to the Twins, 8-6.  But $8.25 for a beer?  How long till they start loansharking money to pay for the concessions?  I mean, for the fans who can’t get to the ATMs around the park.

I don’t drink, but I still end up with a headache from games.  It’s the pulsing lights and the noise and the lights.  Call me old school, but if you’re going to pump up the crowd with AC/DC, why stop there?  A human sacrifice at the mound is the next logical step.  And the perky interns who toss t-shirts into the stands between innings—I hate it.

Can’t we just play ball and post a few heartfelt messages on the scoreboard?