The Last Day of January

 The last day of January 1987 I was driving the back roads outside Sheboygan, Wisconsin, part of a wedding party for someone I’d known since high school.  He’s been gone for over thirteen years now.

The last day of January 2014 I wondered how the final year of softball would go for Clare.  I know now she ended her college career by making all-conference.

The last day of January, today, I’m happy to learn my daughter survived a late night softball practice that required her driving the back roads of Indiana in order to reach a nice big dome; no injuries, everyone back home safe and sound.  Tonight, a blizzard could storm down from Berwyn to Valpo, but the graduate-student intern will wear her fancy dress to the baseball fundraiser, regardless.  And the most wintery of months will be no more than a memory come morning.    

Homecoming

Clare put her Bluetooth feature to good use yesterday driving back to Valpo from Hammond, where she had a meeting with Ron Santo Jr. (yes, of that Santo clan).  “Breaking news, Dad,” she said, “the White Sox have just signed Gordon Beckham and designated Dayan Viciedo for assignment.”

Beckham is what you call a real hair-puller of a player.  He can turn a double play in his sleep, and most of the time he looks asleep at the plate.  After a late August trade to the Angels, he’s back with a one-year contract, and, if he’s to be believed, a whole new outlook.

Beckham broke in Clare’s junior year of high school.  He was both alter ego and crush; we had to go to SoxFest a few years back so the ex-second baseman could have her picture snapped with the good-looking Georgia Bulldog.  You can make the high school infielder into an outfielder come college, but….

Beckham’s rookie year in 2009 he hit everything to right center and looked like the best second baseman in Sox history since Nellie Fox.  Then came the need to pull the ball; popups and strikeouts followed soon after.  Here’s hoping Gordon goes back to his old ways, assuming he can get enough playing time; there are two rookies ahead of him at second base.  It’s a good thing he played shortstop in college and debuted at third for the Sox.  Life is all about second chances and change.

How better to describe my daughter’s odyssey, from high school to college to graduate school, with the Valpo baseball fundraiser constituting yet another internship in her young life?  She had contacted Santo, who provides sports memorabilia for such occasions.  He drove down to Hammond, Clare drove up, and they loaded up her trunk with all sorts of goodies.  “Do you have a blanket to protect everything?” he asked, and she did, covered in Sox logos.

“That’s alright,” the son decided.  “My dad played for the Sox one year.”  Indeed, the elder Santo had to change over to the South Side in 1973.  It’s never easy, all this change.  

A Super Bowl of a Series

 Every time someone mentions the possibility of a neutral-site World Series, I shudder, because if that ever happens, baseball will have surrendered unconditionally to the NFL.

Think of it.  A neutral site takes weather out of the equation.  Playoffs could start in mid-October and end four weeks later.  As a sop to the “purists,” a few of the November games could be played during the day, and probably would have to be anyhow in the cold-weather cities.  Then the World Series could be scheduled so that the seventh game falls on Thanksgiving, or the day after, or the day after that if MLB is afraid of intruding on the NFL and national retailers (think Black Friday).  What could be more depressing to us purists?

As it stands, the Super Bowl buildup is more than enough for me in that regard.  When exactly did the event turn into a circus, with media day a cattle call for aspiring clowns, and Marshawn Lynch?  I’ll give the Seahawks’ Richard this much, he doesn’t suffer fools well.  “I don’t answer preschool questions,” he said a few days ago when asked to compare himself to one of the Patriots’ defenders.  “Improve your line of questioning, then we’ll talk.”

My thoughts exactly.

Say No More

Valpo softball has been doing camps for wee things in the area.  At one of them, Coach asked Clare to help with pitching instruction.  Replied my daughter, “I played baseball until I was thirteen.  When I switched over to softball, it was too late for me and pitching.  I got nothin’.”

Except for a couple of homerun records, that is.

Big Contracts, Bad Habits

 Aaron Rowand stopped playing baseball at age 34, which may be why he had time on his hands to attend SoxFest over the weekend.  Rowand took a break from appearances and autographs to tell the Sun-Times “I have faith in” beleaguered Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler.  Rowand said he knows what it’s like to deal with the expectations of a big contract.  I’m not sure he does, entirely.

Rowand was, without a doubt, the best Sox centerfielder in since Ken Berry in 1970 or thereabouts.  If only he hit like he fielded.  Alas, Rowand never saw a pitch too far outside to try and pull down the leftfield line.  How do you say, “6-4-3, over and out” again and again?  There had to be a whole bunch of hitting coaches who begged Rowand to change his approach, but why should he if the Giants are going to sign him to a $60 million contract, which they did much to their regret?

Joining Rowand at SoxFest was former teammate Jon Garland, a right-handed starter with uncommon control.  Garland won 136 games while losing 125 with a 4.37 ERA before retiring at age 33.  Garland made $52 million, enough to muffle the message of pitching coaches trying to get through to him.  So much talent, so little seeming interest in developing it.

Jack McDowell retired Garland’s rookie season.  If Garland was laidback to a fault, “Black Jack” was all fire all the time.  He feuded with White Sox management and got shipped to New York, where he gained notoriety as the “Yankee Flipper” for a certain hand gesture to the fans at Yankee Stadium.  McDowell retired at age 33 with 127 wins.  The $28 million he earned made it possible for McDowell to play in a rock-and-roll band without starving.

In the time before free agency, lowball contracts probably would have made Rowand, Garland and McDowell a whole lot hungrier.  It’s awfully hard to “chuck it” when you’re not rich.  Garland and Rowand are still in their 30s, so it will be interesting to see where their wealth leads them.  McDowell is 49 and managing a rookie league team for the Dodgers.  Here’s hoping Black Jack can teach his players good habits strong enough to withstand big contracts.    

Ernie and Us

Ernie Banks was a ballplayer, touchstone and human being.  A good obituary of the man needs to go beyond the first two.

Banks looked taller than six-foot-one, so maybe his grace at shortstop shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Still, he is remembered more for the home runs than the fielding chances, which is wrong.  In an era of small gloves, rocky infields and stingy official scorers, Banks managed a .985 fielding percentage with just twelve errors in his second MVP season of 1959.  (It pains me to note that Luis Aparicio topped out at .983 in any one season.)  Clearly, Banks could handle the defensive part of the game.

But I wonder what he thought about being a touchstone for so many Chicagoans, or at least Cub fans.  There was no equivalent of Banks for followers of the White Sox.   An eight- or nine-year old Cub fan came home from school at three in the afternoon, turned on Channel 9 and there was Banks launching a home run into the left field bleachers.  There were precious few Sox games on after school; we had the ballpark with lights.  We also had homework to finish at night.  And no ballgame until you’re done.  Watching Al Weis was hardly what you would call an incentive to finish.  

Banks had his last great season at age 38 in 1969, when he hit 23 homers and drove in 106 runs.  That was the summer of Ron Santo clicking his heels and the Cubs collapsing, to which the Mets said, Thank you very much.  In a way, it didn’t matter.  That team, with Banks as its face and soul (no doubt to the disgust of manager Leo Durocher), brought out droves of kids to an otherwise iffy neighborhood.  So began the reign of the Bleacher Bums, from one generation to the next, until by the mid-2000s a small ballpark regularly drew over three million people a year.  In essence, Ernie Banks begat Wrigleyville, though I suspect he would have traded that distinction for a World Series ring.

To Cub fans, Banks was the time machine back to their youth, a role he didn’t appear to mind.  For now ex-Commissioner Bud Selig, Banks was “synonymous with a childlike enthusiasm for baseball.”  That’s cutting it close to a stereotype.  Part of Banks’ popularity was due to what he wasn’t, outspoken in a time of racial turbulence.  Roberto Clemente made waves, Ernie Banks didn’t, and a goodly number of fans wanted all ballplayers to be like Mr. Cub.  But how many of those people knew Ernie Banks?

Did they care about what it was like growing up in a family of fourteen or being black in the whitest part of Chicago?  Did they ask him his views on race or politics?  How many know that Banks’ foundation supported efforts to overturn wrongful convictions?  The stats at baseballreferendce.com don’t begin to measure the human being. 

In Your Backyard

Clare sent a video clip of the girl who pitched herself into a scholarship last weekend atg the Valpo camp.  Holy Cow, did she hum that pea!  If players dream of something like this happening, coaches do, too.  One minute, you’re just trying to get through the day with a bunch of wannabes and then, Pop!  Who’s throwing so hard?  And two years from now, your pitching needs are all taken care of.  Even better, it didn’t cost a dime in airfare to check the prospect out.

The pros don’t bank on such serendipity, although in a way, I wish they did.  Teams send scouts half way around the world to look for anyone who can pitch or hit, but in Chicago they don’t care much about the talent around Chicago.  Consider that Jim Thome of Peoria was drafted in the 13^th round (!) while both the Sox and Cubs passed on Gary Gaetti (from downstate Centralia) when either of them could have drafted him in the first round.  And then we have the Cubs passing on Chicago’s own Kirby Puckett in the first round to take the immortal Troy Afenir.

If Jackie Robinson had played for the Chicago American Giants instead of the Kansas City Monarchs, he still would’ve broken in with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It’s just the way we do things around here, regardless of color.

Girl Players, Boy Players

 This week the NYT sports section ran a story about a girls’ 10- and 11-year old basketball team in a boys’ league in downstate Springfield that was beating up on the male competition good enough for an 8-1 record.  The coach runs closed practices, and he thinks that girls process differently than boys, as in methodical vs. instinctive.

Maybe basketball is different, but barring me from practice would be a red flag.  I had to drive Clare to practices 20 minutes to a half-hour away in the years before she had a license.  Once we got there, I sat and watched.  Her first coach also made it clear that all spectators were to shut up, even when he ran a girl into an asthma attack.  So, I don’t like the idea of closed doors.

As to thought processes, again, maybe basketball is different, but I never detected a gender-specific approached that separated softball from baseball players. Both groups want to win, and both groups listen to what their coaches have to say, or they find a seat on the bench, which is where I did see difference.  In a softball dugout, it’s all chatter and cheers.  In baseball, the testosterone muffles things more and keeps players from consoling a teammate who failed.  Whatever this girl thought of that girl, they always seemed to be there for one another come failure.

A gender difference?  If so, the NYT needs to consider it fit enough to print.   

Time is of the Essence--Or Not

 The Cubs’ Jon Lester, he of the new six-year $155 million contract, isn’t wild about efforts to try and speed up the game.  For Lester, it’s a matter of no clock no hurry.

“The fans know what they are getting into when they show up,” he told the Tribune on Monday.  “So, if it’s a three hour game, it’s a three hour game.  If it’s a five-hour game, it’s a five-hour game. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

Nor should anyone want to, apparently.  “There’s such a cat-and-mouse game as far as messing up a hitter’s timing, messing up pitchers’ timing…different things that fans and people who never played this game don’t understand.”  Forget for a moment that most fans have played the game at one point or another in their lives; they know about timing.  I wonder if Jon Lester will ever understand what it’s like to worry about where the money for next month’s tuition will come from, or next week’s food bill or insurance or the dentist….

MLB intends to tackle the time issue, with or without Lester’s support.  Pitch clocks are going to be used in the minors this year while the commissioner’s office hopes to convince players it’s in their best interests to be ready to go at the start of every half-inning 20 to 30 seconds before the end of commercial breaks.  What this means is the commercials would still go on forever, but the action would start as soon as the cameras cut back.  Won’t that be fun in a most disconcerting way?

Coach Encounters

We were doing the mall thing Monday when I happened to see this guy standing with his three kids.  I stopped, stared, and said, “Coach!”  He looked up, stared, and replied, “Professor!”

Coach T was the assistant softball coach for Clare in high school; he also had a one-year run as varsity football coach.  So, it really was high praise when he told us Clare “could play linebacker for me any day.”  I think he meant heart more than size.

Coach thought I was pretty ok for a dad, especially when he found out I happened to have a Ph.D.; I always had the suspicion that someone with an advanced degree bit him once.  From that perspective, I seemed downright normal in comparison, outside of the clothing choices.  Coach always wanted to know what team I was wearing, you might say.  Monday, it was an Oakland Oaks jacket and Joliet Slammers cap.   

We talked kids, we reminisced, we shook hands again and went our separate ways.  Life goes on no matter how much I want it to stand still, or repeat, any of eight springs, 2007-2014.

What Dads Do

Clare said there were a lot of fathers at the Valpo camp who insisted on catching their pitcher-daughters.  It’s what dads do.

They also fetch food and hairpins, offer tips through the dugout fence and ride umpires unfamiliar with the strike zone.  On occasion, they can even be talked into coaching teams when asked by their daughters.

Clare didn’t mention if there were any fathers at the second camp she helped staff late that Sunday afternoon.  This one focused on teaching six-year olds how to hit off a tee.  “We never did that at Camp Dad,” a certain someone joked to her mother over the phone.

No, I took my daughter out front at that age and pitched to her with a wiffle ball.  Swing, swing, swing, was the idea; I threw the ball as soon as it came to me.  I figured that the quantity of pitches would shape the quality of the talent we were working on.  Right before Clare went into Mustang Ball, I switched over to a rubber ball.  Warning to all fathers in a similar situation:  This is not the way to go, unless you want to pay for broken windows across the street.

So, I started collecting real baseballs to put into a bucket for b.p.  Such was the camp that ran for twelve years, from our house to the fields at Baseball Alley and beyond.

Volunteer Life

Flu didn’t keep us from visiting Clare at Valpo this weekend, and flu didn’t keep her from helping out at softball.  That included going outside Saturday to work on plays at the (snow-covered) field.  Clare took pictures for the disbelieving.  I guess this is what happens when you hire someone whose coaching résumé includes a stint at West Point.

We filled up our little sickie with medicine Saturday night so she could get up at 5:30 AM the next morning to handle outfielders at an all-day camp.  Something like 125 girls showed up, and one of them, a pitcher, won the lottery.  She probably had the best stuff of her life, enough so Coach offered her a scholarship on the spot.

“This is what a girl dreams about,” Clare related over the phone.  “To go to a camp like that, do really good and have someone see it.”  I was just happy that fifteen hours into her day our volunteer coach had enough energy left to tell the story.  Someone will notice, someday.

A Slur, Baseball-Style

New Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon, in town for the fan convention, thinks the Wrigley Field renovation is “going to be tastefully done, [but] I’m sure the purists are going to be upset.”  There you have it, baseball’s biggest slur, the “purist” designation.

The Cubs are by no means alone in tossing the term about, but they do it as well as anybody. Fans who protested lights at Wrigley were purists and now so are those who might not think all the changes to the park will be in keeping with its landmark status.  The only thing you’ll never hear a Cub official or broadcaster complain about is the lack of the designated hitter in the National League.

Just don’t call them purists.  After all, they like the expanded playoff format.  Come to think of it, they’re not so much purists as hypocrites.

The Wide World of (Not) Sport

 Two climbers scale 3,000 feet up the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan using just their hands and feet, oh, and safety ropes.  Is that sport?  A blindfolded Nik Wallenda walks a wire suspended 543 feet above the streets of Chicago from one Marina Tower to the other, all without a net.  Is that sport?  Reese Witherspoon portrays the woman who walked 1000 miles more or less by herself in order to prove…something.  Is that sport, or when people venture out across Death Valley or the English Channel or the distance from the tip of Florida to Cuba, a support team to monitor their progress?  Or the person who sets out across the ocean, alone, in a tripped-out rowboat?

No, sport is a bat and ball with a fence for definition or a pool divided into lanes, a digital clock separating the winners from everyone else.  Sport is the primal assault of a safety blitz and the now more sad than not career of Michael Jordan.  The other stuff is an endeavor that means whatever its participants want, minus the hype.

I’ll take sport. 

Talent, Used and Abused

 January in these parts can drive people to extremes.  You have those benighted fools who jump into Lake Michigan in the belief they’re polar bears and all those people who try to bring on hibernation through overeating.  I tend to confuse myself with Doctor Zhivago, walking the endless, snow-driven steppes in search of warmth.  My daughter prefers to look at her career stats while sitting in her apartment at Valpo.

She wanted us to know yesterday that there were only ten games in her college career where she didn’t get at least one hit.  She also feels like she could’ve had the Elmhurst career rbi record if for just a few days of decent weather.  Clare missed the mark by five, thanks in large part to the twenty rainouts junior and senior year.  But second place isn’t so bad.

Especially when you consider the travel coach who told her she wouldn’t hit much in college.  A real judge of talent, that man.  What I love about my daughter is she played her game the way you’re supposed, leaving everything she had on the field.  That way, there are no regrets, other than over the crappy spring weather, 2013-2014.

I doubt that Brian Anderson can say as much.  Anderson was held in such high regard by the White Sox they traded Aaron Rowand to make room for him.  Great judge of talent, that Kenny Williams.  A gifted centerfielder with a strong arm and above-average speed, Anderson either wouldn’t or couldn’t hit.  In 3-1/2 seasons with the Sox, it sure didn’t look like he cared much one way or the other.  The Sox traded Anderson away in 2009, and he hasn’t played the last two years due to injury.  He had been trying to come back as a pitcher.

And now the Sox have signed Anderson to a minor league contract.  He’s back as an outfielder and wants back in the bigs.  We’ll see if the head has finally caught up with the talent.

 

A Crack in the Glass Ceiling, Maybe

 An entry in today’s Transactions caught my eye—the Red Sox promoted Raquel Ferreira to vice president of baseball administration.  Ferreira thus becomes the third woman ever to hold that position with a major-league ball club.  Then I went on-line and found out there are also seven women general managers working for MLB-affiliated minor-league teams.

Here’s the thing: minor-league GMs don’t trade players.  They have plenty of duties, or responsibilities, just like in the Catholic Church.  What they don’t have is an abundance of power.  In the same way, Ms. Ferreira no doubt is responsible for a ton of stuff; just don’t expect her to be signing free agents anytime soon.

Still, it’s progress of a sort.  Guys used to do this work.  But is it something they came to think they could stick women with?  We’ll see.   

Pete Rose and Punishment

 An independent minor-league team, the Normal CornBelters, has announced Pete Rose will join the team’s coaching staff for one game in July.  How the mighty continue to fall.

Rose’s situation puts me into “on the one hand/on the other” frame of mind.  On the one hand, he admitted to the MLB mortal sin of betting on the sport, and he accepted a lifetime ban, which makes me wonder about his common sense, if not his intelligence.  Still, the man has more base hits than anyone before or since; steroids have put his transgressions into perspective, kind of and maybe; and he’ll be 74 in April.  Maybe it’s time to temper the punishment with some mercy.

Put Rose in the Hall of Fame, but first subject him to a news conference where he has to answer questions about his betting; to keep him from ducking his guilt, pack it with all the biggest Pete Rose critics you can find, and, yes, I’d be happy to attend.  Next, vet his acceptance speech to ensure he owns up to his misdeeds.  If he can’t man up with the requisite eloquence, then find a ghost writer who’ll do it for him.  Lastly, note on his plaque the reason for the delayed HOF installation.

If Rose can accept those terms, let him in.  Then we can talk about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, as soon as they’re reduced to appearing with the Normal CornBelters at age 74.  

Randy Johnson

On a cold Monday in January, it helps to remember another time, say, a Thursday afternoon in June of 1990 at the real Comiskey Park.  Randy Johnson was in his second full season as a starting pitcher.  My friend Frank and I sat a few rows back of home plate.

Johnson was masterful, and slow.  He allowed one run on five hits and a walk in a complete-game, 2-1 win; and still the game took just under three hours.  I have pictures on the basement wall of Ivan Calderon and Carlton Fisk trying to stand in against Johnson with his nasty leg kick (or was it a fastball or possibly a curve or both together at once?). 

Calderon connected for a homerun while a young, thin South-Side Sammy Sosa struck out twice; then again, so did Robin Ventura.  Twenty-year old Ken Griffey also played for the Mariners that day.  It was after the season, when the White Sox finished with a surprising record of 94-68, that we finally decided to start a family. 

That would be Clare.   

American Idol

On our recruiting trip to Elmhurst College in the autumn of 2009, we had dinner with the coach (Division III sandwiches vs. Division I steak) and a visit with the team during indoor practice.  A catcher spotted us right away and walked up to introduce herself.  The equipment couldn’t hide her personality.

“Hi, I’m Gina from Dixon Illinois,” she said taking off her mask to reveal a pretty face with the brunette hair tied back in the obligatory softball ponytail.  ”I mostly play the infield, but Coach needs someone to catch today.”  This upfront friendliness took us all by surprise.  Mother, father and daughter had barely survived the war of recruiting and travel.  If Gina had decided to crash her mask down on one of our heads, no one would’ve been surprised.  Maybe Clare was destined for Elmhurst, regardless; Coach did say she was looking for a power hitter, which was right up Clare’s alley, so to speak.  But having a stranger treat Clare like a friend and teammate didn’t hurt.

Gina was right.  She played wherever Coach wanted, mostly third and short.  Really good hands, great with a bunt and fast, more super-sub than starter.  She would’ve been perfect on the playoff team Clare’s sophomore year, but Gina skipped her last year of eligibility to graduate early.  She had plans, or dreams.

Gina wanted to be a professional singer, a calling that took her from North Side clubs to Nashville.  Last night, she appeared on American Idol, face-to-face with Jennifer Lopez.  Gina sat atop a drum contraption she beat with a foot pedal while doing a country-folk song.  She’s going to L.A.  The cameras caught her outside the audition room, swinging an imaginary bat.  The ball went further than I’d ever seen before.

Rolling the Dice

For a team that hasn’t won the World Series in 107 years, the Cubs draw like gangbusters, thanks in large part to a distinctive ballpark and luck.  Let me explain.

Before lights were installed in 1988, they owned the television airwaves in the afternoon, at least for any baseball-minded kid.  If the Cubs were your team, you put them on in the afternoon after school; with luck, Jack Brickhouse was announcing a game only in the fifth or sixth inning.  If they weren’t your team, you put them on anyway in hopes of seeing them lose like they did to the Mets, 19-1, on a glorious day in May of 1964.  Either way, you were watching the Cubs on WGN.  Young fans became adult fans with kids of their own who also turned on WGN to watch their team.

In 1968, the White Sox aided the cause by switching over to Channel 32, a UHF station; that left WGN—with a superior broadcast picture—to focus on the Cubs.  Thirteen years later, Jerry Reinsdorf booted Harry Caray out of the broadcast booth on the South Side, which is how he ended up doing Cub games on WGN.  Then WGN went on cable nationwide.  The rest is turnstile history.

But that could all end if the Cubs aren’t careful, never mind that it looks like they’ll be back on WGN for 45 games or for the next several years.  By my count, Cub games will be broadcast on any of five local stations, and seven, if you count Fox and ESPN.  People might go channel-hunting for a good team, but not a bad one.  The Cubs appear to be willing to take that risk in order to set up their own network a la the Dodgers.

Then come 2020 or so, and everything old will be new again, with games again on one primary channel.  The only difference is it’ll be far from free.  

Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown isn’t all that different than the White House; both are a place of reverence and awe.  We took Clare to the HOF the summer she was ten, and it was like Babe Ruth led her by the hand from plaque to plaque.  Cooperstown is not a place to screw around with.

Which is precisely what sportswriters do with their vote every year.  On Sunday, five writers for the Tribune shared their ballot, something they really ought not to have done.  Now, the world can see how dumb the profession can be.  Don Mattingly and Edgar Martinez got two votes while Gary Sheffield managed one.  Apparently, Martinez qualifies “because it’s time to acknowledge that designated hitters are part of the game” too.  Yeah, and I bet Harold Baines agrees.  As to Mattingly, I can only hope that Paul Konerko gets as much unconditional support—and then some—starting five years from now when his name goes on the ballot.

Then we have the columnist in today’s Sun-Times who goes after Bud Selig for not putting a stop to Sammy Sosa’s muscle-popping shenanigans.  But I don’t remember said columnist challenging Sosa or the commissioner, for that matter.  I know a bunch of people who suspected something was up, but we didn’t have a press pass to get into the locker room to see for ourselves.

The other irritant with the announcement of every new HOF class is the call for everyone to get over the steroids’ mess; the past is past, and deserving players should be voted in no matter how inflated their stats.  All I can say is that argument doesn’t hold up if you’re trying to raise a ten-year old right.

Factor in the Wind Chill....

Factor in the Wind Chill…

We packed Clare off to school this morning so she could beat an expected snowstorm—and help out with the start of softball season.  On Wednesday, the team has practice at 5 AM.  It should be interesting to see if the volunteer coach trudges through the snow and cold for that one.

Among the many reasons I hate the West Coast and South is that their athletes grow up in perfect weather.  Let the sun-kissed gods and goddesses play and practice in these parts.  I guess there comes a time in life when all Chicagoans are Green Bay Packers, marching down the tundra against poor, shivering Dallas.  Starr in for the quarterback sneak….

This is why I’d love to see the hotshot Division I softball teams play in the conditions my daughter did—snow on the field, ice cold water in puddles down the right field line, a northeast wind straight off the lake; that should work wonders on everyone’s career stats.  I also make a habit of rooting for a player like infielder Mike Bordick, the pride of Hampden (Maine) High School and the University of Maine at Orno.  Bordick went on to play fourteen years in the majors.  I bet he knew how to play a hop off the spring snow and ice.

Men, Women, Football, Life

 On Monday, Bears’ chairman George McCaskey reported that his 91-year old mother Virginia, the team’s principal owner and daughter of team founder George Halas,  is ”pissed off” after having to endure a 5-11 season.  I wonder if there are degrees of being p.o.’ed.

In the four days since the Bears’ housecleaning began with the firing of the coach and general manager, it’s been one rumor after another, along with the occasional trial balloon taking flight.  But no matter what names are finally attached to the vacancies, they’ll belong to guys.  The NFL wants as many women as it can get as fans but executives, not so much.  Pro football can’t point to its own Kim Ng yet and, according to a September report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, does the worst of any of the major sports when it comes to hiring women.

Now, does that piss off Mrs. McCaskey, too?

Resolutions Revisited

I checked to see how many of last year’s resolutions I kept.  Outside of all those times I baited the ump; stomped my feet when Clare didn’t connect on a swing; and despaired over the results of an at-bat or game, I did pretty well, if I do say so myself.

I mean, I did take a breath between pitches and take joy in my daughter’s final season in college.  I haven’t let go, which makes for a good do-over resolution this year.

And I’ll try not to get the shakes come March.