You Can't Go Home Again

 With all due respect to Thomas Wolfe, sometimes you can go home again, sometimes not.  LeBron James did this season with the Cavaliers, and it almost went from literary allusion to fairy-book ending.  Too bad for the Warriors’ Stephen Curry.

The athlete-leaving and –returning is a constant on the sports’ page.  In Chicago, Michael Jordan left once for baseball, came back and left again when he didn’t feel the love.  City, team and player are worse off for Jordan’s relocation to Charlotte.

Mike Ditka left, begged George Halas to come back and conquered the football world only to get fired by Halas’s grandson.  Ditka tried coaching in New Orleans before returning to the city where he’s revered as a cantankerous, slightly loopy grandpa.  I have yet to eat at one of his steakhouses.

Luis Aparicio was traded by the White Sox and cursed them for the affront.  When they traded to get him back, Aparicio renounced the curse, but the team still stunk (it was the late ‘60s) and they traded him away again.  Aparicio now returns to the South Side with the frequency of Halley’s Comet.

The Cubs failed to give Greg Maddux a big contract, so he walked, to Atlanta.  Maddux came back after eleven seasons, stayed a mediocre two-and-a-half, and moved on.  His hat of choice for HOF enshrinement does not bear the letter C in red.

Ron Santo was traded from the Cubs without ever leaving the city; Santo spent a year in exile on the South Side at the end of his career.  It was like he never left, and he never did.  I miss him in the broadcast booth for all the wrong reasons.

The White Sox parted ways with Robin Ventura at the age of 31, which proved to be a real mistake; good third basemen, the kind who can drive in 120 runs and play into their mid-30s, are about as rare as hens’ teeth, especially for the Sox.  But we brought Ventura back to manage, and that’s proven to be a mistake, too.  Bad managers are a dime a dozen.