Back in the Day

 Oscar Robertson thinks Stephen Curry is great only because NBA defenses are so bad.  Robertson blames the coaches, who “do not understand the game of basketball, as far as I’m concerned.”

Ex-players resent the prefix that comes with retirement, so they lash out the way Robertson did on sports-talk radio last week.  This generation is never as good as the ones before.  New York Giants’ manager John McGraw practically invented “small ball” with the bunt, stolen base, hit-and-run.  Naturally, McGraw hated what Babe Ruth did to baseball in the 1920s because small things were traded in for Ruthian things.  And here I always thought Ruth was “old school” personified.

Is Robertson right about Curry?  Maybe, but another way to look at it is to ask: What about today?  Does Robertson made young again think he could guard Curry?  I wonder.  Switching back to Babe Ruth, imagine him facing a steady diet of lefty starters and relievers, dealing with curves and splitters.  I suspect the Babe would be looking for the first time machine home.  Ditto Robertson, who never struck me as the fastest player on the court.  The 6’5” 220-pound Robertson was a star in the 1960s, when the NBA played more of a half-court game.  I think he’d be hard-pressed to keep up with the likes of the 6’3” greyhound Curry, who’s a good 30 pounds lighter.  For that matter, Robertson would find all of the NBA a taller and faster world than the one he played in.

Sometimes, you just have to give the kids their due.

Compare and Contrast

In May of 1970, the New York Knicks were propelled to their first-ever NBA championship when center Willis Reed limped onto the court for game seven against Wilt Chamberlain and the Lakers to play through the pain of a torn thigh muscle.  Twenty-seven years later, Michael Jordan overcame stomach flu or food poisoning—take your pick—to score 38 points to lead the Bulls over the Jazz on his way to a fifth NBA championship.  And now we have Derrick Rose, who’d rather be safe than sorry.

Rose has held himself out of the last two Bulls’ game with what was first called general soreness and is now being termed a sore hamstring.  Where silence is golden, Rose prefers to speak with at least one foot in his mouth.  Talking to reporters before last night’s game in Atlanta, Rose explained how, “It’s a process.  I already put it into my mind that the year was going to be a long year and all I could do was work on my body, control what I can control and all the other stuff is out of my hands.” 

If only he’d stopped there to get for more therapy on his leg, the damage would’ve been enough.  But Rose did some more when asked if his approach would change in the postseason.  “No,” he answered.  “If I can’t play, I’m not going to play.  It’s a process, like I said.”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Willis Reed or Michael Jordan hears this.

Eddie Einhorn

Eddie Einhorn, who with Jerry Reinsdorf led the group that bought the White Sox from Bill Veeck in 1981, has died.  The obituaries say he was a visionary responsible for the explosive growth of sports, especially college basketball, on television 

What the obituaries leave out is mention of how Einhorn was the farmer, and we were all the cows, to be milked early and often.  In a 1981 interview, Einhorn considered the possibility of turning the Sox into “studio baseball.”  He didn’t worry about it, how “if it comes to that, if we only draw 500,000 people a season, but we make enough off cable so we can compete and put a winning team out there for the public, well...who cares if the seats aren’t full?  It’s not going to happen, but if it does, so what?”

Hawk Harrelson, stopped clock that he is, got it right in saying Einhorn was “the godfather of college basketball on television.  He’s the godfather of March Madness.”  Yes, Eddie Einhorn is the godfather who helped turn sports into content for which we pay time and again.   

Like Old Times

The great joy of going to Florida, besides the weather, was playing all these different schools, like SUNY Plattsburgh, which is part of the New York state university system.  Plattsburgh is located on the shores of Lake Champlain about 40 miles from the Canadian border.  Florida in mid to late March was the first chance the Cardinals at being outdoors, one of the players told me.

And then there was Bowdoin College in Maine, founded in 1794, and home, naturally, to the Polar Bears.  The first time we played Bowdoin I was all excited because one of their alumni, Joshua Chamberlain, won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg.  I kind of wanted Chamberlain to be in the Bowdoin dugout that morning.

I’m thinking of these snowbirds playing softball because it snowed over twelve inches last night at Valparaiso (we got a dusting), and the Crusaders are supposed to make a six-hour bus trip to play in Bowling Green, Kentucky, this weekend.  You just have to love how snow is a part of spring sports in the Midwest.  Just don’t ask my daughter about it.  With the university shut down, she’s trying to get the bus to come for the team earlier, only the driver is having problems getting out of his driveway.  Ah, Indiana, where they trust the sun more than plows and salt to clear the snow.  

Malignant Content

A column in today’s Tribune sports quoted NFL Network producer Mike Muriano, who said, “Fans are starving for more football content.”  Muriano is amazed that fans will turn on their televisions to watch college players perform at the annual scouting combine before the draft.  Me, too.  It’s like dogs and ponies got together and fooled humans into doing demeaning tricks.

The NFL is like cancer, or a mall, always growing, until….Baseball and football used to be able to share the calendar: spring, summer and the first three weeks of autumn for baseball, fall and winter for football.  No more.  The NFL has nurtured an insatiable fan base that will watch all the time.  I just wonder what will happen if fans stop encouraging their own sons from playing the game for fear of concussions.  Who’ll show up at the combine?  Maybe the NFL will have developed the necessary androids by then.

    

Retreads

There was a time when the White Sox specialized in acquiring over-the-hill sluggers; think Walt Dropo, Rocky Colavito and Deron Johnson.  Now, the Sox prefer to pick up one-foot-in-retirement infielders like Omar Vizquel, Orlando Hudson and, as of yesterday, Jimmy Rollins.  The 37-year old former NL MVP with the Phillies was signed to a minor-league contract, meaning, of course, that he’ll never play for AAA Charlotte.  Either Collins makes the team out of spring training, or he can go to AARP.

What a wonderful vote of confidence for presumed starting shortstop Tyler Saladino, that the team is willing to switch to Rollins the second he falters.  It’s like that great philosopher Forrest Gump once said, Stupid is as stupid does.    

Getting Ready

The way it works usually is that I’m ready to crawl out of my skin by the end of February; when March opens like a scene out of Tolkien, flying replaces crawling.  Any kind of spring can’t come soon enough.

Rather than stare out the window at a thermometer, I get ready, mostly by making sure the Schwinn is in shape to ride another year.  Clare was a blessing because we had spring training together.  When she was small, we played catch in the backyard until I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.  Then it was the batting cages and calisthenics and after that being the chauffeur to and from practice.  All of it made the time pass.

And now I’m left with an old bike.

Out of the Limelight

 Other than golf and college basketball, a Saturday in February would not seem to be a major sports’ day.  High school parents know better.

Girls’ basketball playoffs are underway, along with wrestling, girls’ gymnastics, girls’ bowling and boys’ swimming.  Boys’ basketball, which should be starting in early March, will get most of the media attention, so sportswriters and reporters can ask:  Where’s he going to college and is he good enough to turn pro?  The amateur ideal is left for other sports.

Take gymnastics.  For some reason, very few kids from Illinois go on to the Olympics; ditto swimming.  Regardless, the athletes do it because they love it, and parents watch because it’s their kid competing.  Just once, though, I’d like to see Sunbelt athletes train and compete in the Midwest, with our ever-gray winter skies and cold that clings to a body like glue.  Clare went to Florida to start her college softball season, only to come back to play in the mud and cold.  Imagine Arizona State or Oklahoma starting their season in Chicago.  How do you like the wind, guys?  It can carry off the meanest softball cheer.

But athletes around here don’t complain the way their parents might.  It’s the playoffs, and time to lay it all out.

Spying Dollars and Sense

 I’ve always been fascinated by onetime White Sox catcher Moe Berg, of whom it was said he could speak seven languages—which was true—and hit in none of them (a career .243 hitter).  In his post-baseball life, Berg was an American spy during WW II.

Berg didn’t like other people to read his newspapers; to him the paper was a living thing, and anyone beating him to it killed it.  I’m pretty much the same way.  Furthermore, stories off the Internet aren’t alive in the way a newspaper story is.

Like in today’s NYT (we’re one of those weekend subscribers).  The sports’ section had a story on Yankees’ pitcher C.C. Sabathia, going on 36 come July and 305 pounds, right now.  His record as a starting pitcher the last two years stands at 9-14, with a 4.86 ERA.  Guess who’s in line to make $25 million this year whether or not he cracks the starting rotation?

If I were a Yankee fan, that would be enough for me to blow my top.  Given that the Yankees received somewhere between $220-321 million in public subsidies (teams like to lowball what they get at the trough) for their new ballpark, my body would pretty much vaporize.  I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: taxpayers should not have to subsidize dumb decisions made by the front office.  Too bad that message is Greek to public officials time and again.

Where’s Moe Berg when you need him the most?

Pitchers and Catchers

  White Sox pitchers and catchers report to camp in Arizona today.  Rookies and veterans alike arrive with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads.  This is the year to snare the big contract, to break out of the minors into the bigs.

In grade school one spring I remember Manly Johnston; he must have had those dreams, too.  It had to be 1965 that Johnston went to camp in Sarasota, off his 20-win season the year before.  The man was a minor-league Babe Ruth, going 71-42 and hitting 101 homeruns over a nine-year career.  Johnston left baseball at the age of 27, after going 18-7 for AAA Indianapolis.

I also remember Bill Heath and Jerry McNertney.  They were testament to the wisdom of Casey Stengel, who knew that without a catcher you have a lot of passed balls (why not wild pitches?).  But Heath and McNertney made it to the majors, at least.  The minors were for other guys, like Johnston and Joel Gibson, another Indianapolis pitcher.

What I remember might frighten the pitchers and catchers reporting today.  

State of Mind

Ultimate fighter Ronda Rousey admitted this week to thoughts of suicide in the wake of her November defeat at the hands and feet of Holly Holm.  Rousey told talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, “I was sitting in the corner and I was like, ‘What am I anymore if I’m not this?’”  She was sure “‘no one gives a s--- about me anymore without this.’” 

Rousey said the love of her boyfriend brought her back, and you hope that it has.  To her credit, Rousey has raised a question that all athletes—and the parents of aspiring athletes—must confront at some point: What is the athlete without the sport?

I don’t want my daughter ever to forget that she’s a ballplayer and that God gave her an incredible gift, to hit baseballs and softballs with equal skill.  But we raised Clare to become a thinking adult, and, if she thinks of herself as more than a jock, that’s good; Michele and I have done something right as parents, then.  It might hurt me not to be going to Florida next month to watch Clare start the softball season, but that’s a part of life I have to accept.

Many athletes can’t.  I think of Pete Rose or any lifer toiling away in the minors, the NBA developmental league or a league—pick the sport—on another continent.  Life goes on whether or not the game is played.  This is why I think many if not most ex-athletes look to be so out of shape; the fat reminds them they’re not athletes anymore.  But they are people with lives to lead.  With luck, their parents showed the way a long time ago.

Amaateur Athletics

With the NCAA men’s basketball tournament weeks away, those wonderfully hypocritical commercials should start running soon, about all the unseen athletes out there.  It’s true, the amateur ideal thrives outside the spotlight, and not at all what March Madness has come to stand for.  Isn’t that right, Coach Pitino?

Here’s a side of NCAA sports you won’t see at bracket time.  Clare spent last weekend in and around Miami with her Valpo team at their first tournament—five games in three days, look out the window on takeoff and landing if you want to see the ocean.  My daughter learned—and can now teach—lessons on the movement of equipment and bodies under chaotic conditions that the cadets at West Point and Annapolis would do well to absorb.

While Clare was getting this up-close view of the coach’s life (as in it’s snowed, and now we have to take the bus back to ever-icy Indiana), the Syracuse softball team tweeted out a picture that they’re ready for the new season.  Of course, it was an indoor shot, given that the temperature over the weekend in beautiful Syracuse registered a brisk thirteen below.  That reminded me of all those teams we’d play in Florida, from Maine and upstate New York.  Yup, those are some of the places where the NCAA ideal of amateurism thrives, and will never see the light of national television cameras for anything other than basketball.  

"Beloved"

I ran across an obituary in today’s Sun-Times for Sam Parisi, age 95.  Two things caught my eye, starting with Mr. Parisi’s military service in World War II; he was a bombardier and navigator on B-24s.  The obit noted he flew 25 missions, a number indicating this son of Italian immigrants was active in 1943, when conditions were particularly nasty over the skies of Europe.  But he survived and eventually opened up a grocery I probably passed by a hundred times in nearby Lyons.

The other point of interest for me was how Sam Parisi courted his future wife Frances, “often heading to Comiskey Park to cheer on their beloved White Sox.”  The Parisis married in 1948; the Sox lost 265 games, 1946-1948, with another 185 over the next two seasons.  This was love, indeed.

Johnny Lattner

In the time before fame joined wealth in its exodus from contact with the hoi polloi, it was possible to bump into someone like Johnny Lattner, Notre Dame Class of ’53 and Heisman Trophy winner the same year.  Born on the West Side of Chicago, Lattner stayed close to his roots till the time of his death over the weekend at the age of 83.

A knee injury kept Lattner, a running back, from repeating his college success in the NFL.  If that resulted in any self-pity, Lattner kept it to himself while running a steakhouse before going to work for a graphic arts company.  To see Lattner in public was to see a man ever the athlete, proud but not arrogant, dignified yet accessible.

Lattner attended Fenwick High School in Oak Park, where we wanted Clare to go, but our daughter would have none of it.  She knew better than we what her life path should be.  But the choice she made meant no seeing the Heisman Trophy recipient cheering his alma mater at a Fenwick sporting event.  Still, we did occasionally see Lattner on a Sunday at Mass; Lattner was not too proud to attend the church in Forest Park across the street from Ferrara Pan candy factory; the aroma of Atomic Fireballs has a way of with the liturgy at St. Bernardine’s.  Come the handshake of peace, and you had a chance to shake hands with Johnny Lattner.

Therein lies a lesson for another Johnny and Heisman recipient.

A Ban that Gets It Right

 Mets closer Jenry Mejia has recorded a first, as in first player to receive a lifetime ban for failing his third drug test.  Way to go, big guy.

Mejia received an 80-game ban at the start of last season for taking steroids.  “I can honestly say I have no idea how a banned substance ended up in my system,” he said in a statement after the penalty was handed down.  Mejia served his time, pitched in seven games for the Mets in July and promptly was suspended a second time for a second positive drug test, netting a 162-game punishment.  Strike three ended team hopes their onetime closer could come back late this season.  No word yet on if Mejia has any idea how steroids ended up in his system two more times.  Talk about bad luck

It’s a good thing for Mejia that Kenesaw Mountain Landis isn’t commissioner.  A “lifetime” band still allows Mejia to seek reinstatement for 2018.  If the commissioner’s office refuses, Mejia can then take his case to an arbitrator.  I must be a big old softy, because this process strikes me as fair, especially since news reports indicate he won’t be getting paid.  I think King Solomon would go for it while Buck Weaver and Shoeless Joe Jackson would have given anything for a deal where “lifetime” in fact means “some time.”       

A Business Decision

The Bears announced yesterday that, after eight years, they were cutting ties with running back Matt Forte, the second leading rusher in team history after Walter Peyton.  But Forte has hit the magic age of 30, when runner often start to break down.  This was business, not personal, said Bears’ GM Ryan Pace, “given what Matt has meant to our team and our community.

The last time the Bears did something like this it involved running back Thomas Jones, who had three very good years with the team, 2004-2006.  Things worked out just fine for the 28-year old Jones, who played another five years, three with the Jets—where he rushed for between 1100 and 1400 yards a season—and two with the Chiefs.  Ironically, a year after the Bears let Thomas go, they drafted Forte.

I know, comparing baseball to football is apples and oranges, but it’s a Saturday afternoon in February, so why not?  The Forte move is as much about salary cap as it is athletic decline.  In baseball, 30-year old players get signed all the time.  A team may not want to give a six- or seven-year contract, but it wants the player for the next three seasons at least.

Like any athlete, Forte wants to be paid for the numbers he’s put up; like any team, the Bears are more interested in next year, not career stats.  In my non-football mind, I don’t see why a one- or two-year deal can’t get done, unless it’s because Forte wants to be paid like a 30-year old baseball player.  In that case, the NFL players’ union needs to fight for free agency after no more than three years in the league.  That, and an end to the salary cap, which probably brings about as many retirements for players over 30 as injuries do.

Thibs' Team

The Bulls limp into the NBA All-Star break with a 27-25 record, barely good enough for seventh place in the Eastern Conference rankings and one game from being on the outside of the playoffs looking in.  So, was firing Tom Thibodeau a mistake?

Given all the championship rings Thibodeau has won in his career (zero), I would still say No, though now with the qualifier, Not Necessarily.  What Bulls’ management did was change coaches while keeping Coach’s team intact.  This really was Thidbodeau’s team, if not molded in his image then bent enough to his will.  New coach Fred Hoiberg is proving every night the difference between the NBA and college.  Note to other NBA teams—when you fire a strong personality, don’t replace him with a weak one.

The Bulls did and are now paying the price, with Jimmy Butler challenging Hoiberg to coach harder and Pau Gasol declaring his intent to exercise his opt-out come summer just two of many examples of the mice happily at play with the cat away.  Oh, and Derrick Rose’s play.  Who knew you could sleepwalk for entire games at a time?

If the front office intends to keep this roster, it’s going to have to fire the coach.  If management likes the new coach so much, it needs to restructure the team, as in yesterday.     

Long Arm of the Law

 The NCAA may not have moved on the Louisville men’s basketball program yet, but they are making the world safe from the likes of Clare Bukowski.  That can only mean the “the list” is out.  By that, I mean the list of banned bats for NCAA softball players.  Anything my daughter swung two years ago is now banned.

What happened?  Did Clare go all Sammy Sosa and cork her composite bat?  No, the list come out every year, in part to force the retirement of equipment prone to fatigue; wood bats shatter and so do composites.  But this is where someone who’s bought a bunch of bats for his kid gets suspicious.  There are a lot of two- and three-year old bats that have never been used; for proof of that, just go on eBay.  Why ban them?  Why not simply have the umpires decide what’s safe when they do their pre-game bat-checks?

The skeptic would say because the NCAA wants athletes and/or athletic departments and/or parents to keep buying new bats at $300 or more a crack (pardon the pun).  Of course, you can go cheaper, but nobody wants to buy a Yugo these days.  As for the sporting goods’ companies, they’re on the gravy train.  The cost of dumping unsold bats pales to the money made from that nice, steady market provided by the list.      

The NCAA, looking out for you.

Comeuppance

Phil Jackson was always happy to take the accolades for being a genius coach with an ingenious system, the triangle offense, which, as far as I can tell, he never fully explained.  My take is that it’s a sort of basketball flying wedge—a center, a guard and a forward in triangle formation running down court to open up shots for the other guard and forward.  And it’s a great system, provided you have if not the two best players ever in Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant then two of the best to run it.  Notice, though, how Jackson knew how to move on before the collapse of the Bulls’ and Lakers’ teams he coached.  That definitely was genius.

Now, Jackson is in charge of reviving the Knicks, which is very important for the city that thinks it invented the game of basketball.  Jackson’s handpicked coach, Derek Fisher, went 17-65 last year and 23-31 so far this season.  So, bye-bye, Derek.  There’s talk about Tom Thibodeau, late of the Bulls, as a replacement, but Thibs isn’t a fan of the triangle.

Jeff Van Gundy long ago dismissed Jackson as Big Chief Triangle.  The little man must be enjoying the big man’s comeuppance.  I know I am.

Cam Newton and Life Lessons

 Here’s a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking: Cam Newton looked off from the very start of last night’s game, literally, as if he were sick.  By the time of his postgame news conference, Newton definitely was out of sorts.  An ebullience borne of fifteen regular-season victories turned into a reticence the product of Super Bowl defeat.

As ever, the danger here is making things racial.  Let me put that to rest by saying it looked like Newton was channeling his inner Jay Cutler, circa 2011-2014, for the cameras.  The good news is that Newton can change.  By that I mean accept the consequences of defeat by facing an ever curious—and irritating—media, no matter how stupid the questions.  I don’t know what comes first, showing leadership while on the field, which Newton failed to (he seemed to be in a Cutler-like fog), or later with reporters.  But if one happens, so will the other.

One other thing: I’d trade Cutler for Newton in a heartbeat.

Pitino Pity Party

Poor Rick Pitino.  Louisville has moved to discipline its wayward men’s basketball program amid allegations that a former assistant coach arranged sex parties for recruits.  The school has decided to opt out of this year’s ACC and NCAA tournaments, and Coach is unhappy, to say the least.

Pitino has already gone through shock and anger to move into bargaining.  “We should be penalized, no question about it [which differs from his earlier, who-cares? attitude], but not this team.”  Pitino thinks a fine of, oh $10 million, would stop schools from cheating, and he wants coaches to pony up, too.  Hey, that’s a great idea.  Not too long ago, Pitino got himself a 10-year contract worth a base of $50.9 million.  He could take a $10 million hit easy.           

Running the Gauntlet

 Getting through the Tribune sports’ section took some extra effort this morning.  On page one was a story quoting remarks NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made the day before.  Commissioner Goodell is so passionate about football he would by all means want his own flesh and blood to play the game.  “I’d love to have him play the game of football because of the values you get,” said Goodell about a son who doesn’t exist.  The commissioner didn’t mention his twin daughters in the same context.

I skipped over the Bulls’ story on account of having watched the game already.  You give up 42 points in the fourth quarter, you’re going to lose, which the Bulls did on the road to the Nuggets, 115-110.  But really, page one beat page two, starting with the story of a short lap dance that Patriots’ tight end Rob Gronkowski did on/for Julie Stewart-Binks of Fox Sports 1.  And here I thought the NFL was all about promoting diversity.  As to what Johnny Manziel is promoting, I have no idea.  His father fears Manziel is suicidal while his agent has dropped him.  Tough love or a rat abandoning a sinking ship?  With this story, you just can’t tell.  Apparently, Manziel has been emotionally fragile since high school, and periodic attempts by his parents to get him help have done little to prevent the ongoing train wreck playing out before our very eyes.

Finally, a bit of good news on page three—Bruno Mars will join the halftime entertainment for the Super Bowl; I love that guy.  But over on page six in Transactions are the names of a bunch of minor-league ballplayers suspended after testing positive for banned substances.  A page after that is some more good news—Morton, Clare’s high school, beat Willowbrook 67-49 in West Suburban Gold action last night.  Oh, and on the back page it says the thermometer will hit a high of 44 tomorrow.  Happy Super Bowl, everyone.  And to all our friends who celebrate Festivus instead, whatever.   

Do the Math

Super Bowl Week generates all sorts of stories, like increasing the number of regular season games from 16 to 18.  My father’s Chicago Cardinals played a 12-game season.  When I sat in the back seat of the car listening to the Bears-Giants’ championship game during a family drive one December Sunday in 1963, both teams were in their third year of playing a 14-game season.  The current 16-game schedule dates to 1978.

I’m a big fan of playing with numbers, though more from an actuarial than sabermetric viewpoint.  What might be fun—and something the players’ association should already have done—would be to calculate the average player lifespan based on a minimum five-season career starting in the 1950s for each of the different-length season eras.  Even better would be comparing those numbers to the average lifespan of players in similar time periods for the other major pro sports, viz., baseball, basketball and hockey.  I wonder what the numbers would say.

Are you ready for some football?  

Bad Timing

Talk about a bit of news the NFL would like swept under the rug—reports are both Ken Stabler and Earl Morrall, were suffering from brain damage at the time of their deaths, Stabler at 69 last summer and Morrall at 79 two years ago.  Stabler—a left-handed escape artist in the fashion of Aaron Rodgers—quarterbacked three NFL teams from 1970-1984 while Morrall—with the perpetual crew cut—guided five teams over a quarterbacking career that spanned an incredible 21 seasons, 1956-1976.

As I recall, the ’60s and ’70s were the heyday of he-man football.  The game was presented as gladiatorial combat played on frozen fields in slow motion (thank you, NFL Films).  I’m sure the players felt that way, but in real time.

If I were a reporter covering the Super Bowl in San Francisco, all my questions would touch on Stabler-Morrall:  Cam, are you afraid of the effects of concussions once your playing days are over?  Peyton, what about you?  Hey, every guy on the Carolina and Denver rosters, what about you?

This is no time to be polite.

I'm Just Not Wild about Harry

 The MLB Network aired its Harry Caray special last night, and it ended up about two shades short of a whitewash.  Mentioned was an incident where Caray warned the Cardinals’ Ken Boyer “I can make you or break you with this,” his microphone, but little else of how Caray could turn on a player.  Allow me three examples from the time Caray resurrected his career in the 1970s with the White Sox.

First, of course, is Bill Melton, who must’ve stepped on Caray’s toes one day or refused to pick up a bar tab for him in Kansas City.  Either way, Caray rode Melton like a horse to the slaughterhouse.  Why no Melton interview to see what it was like to be on the wrong end of Caray’s microphone?  Or how about Luis Alvarado?

Alvarado was a journeyman infielder with the Sox in the early ‘70s whose fielding never met Harry Caray’s high standards.  If Alvarado struggled under a pop up in a day game, Caray let go with something along the lines of: I don’t know what his problem is.  I mean, he’s from Puerto Rico.  They got sun there, right? 

Or Caray would build up a player like rookie shortstop Harry Chappas, only to tear him down, and he’d goad broadcast partner Jimmy Piersall into doing something dumb enough to get suspended over.  My, how quiet Harry Caray got then, hoping that his good friend would be back in the broadcast booth real soon.  Again, why not interview Piersall for his take on the man?

But the documentary did offer a glimpse into the man as seen by his grandson, Braves’ broadcaster Chip Caray.  The younger Caray was a 12-year old Little Leaguer playing a game his grandfather happened to be at.  Chip went up to Harry, who didn’t recognize him.  For me, that says it all.  

A Glimpse--Barely--of Women's Baseball

 The Sun-Times ran an obituary today of a woman who played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.  Nice story, weird photos.  If you looked fast, you’d think Geena Davis had died instead.

Among the teams Barbara Berger Brown played for were the Chicago Colleens, a feeder team for the league; according to Wikipedia, the Colleens and the Springfield Sallies barnstormed across the eastern U.S.  Looking to draw new fans and develop new players at the same time would seem to be the mark of a league with a clue.  I swear, if they’d had anything to do with the Bears, AAGPBL players would have had streets named after them downtown.

You can always tell it’s the national pastime by how little people know about it, which is why a still featuring Ms. Davis and Tom Hanks from the movie “A League of Their Own” is used to help illustrate an obituary.  On second thought, it’s more sad than weird.

The Dog Days

These are the dog days of winter for a baseball fan, from the end of the fan fests to the start of spring training.  The weather outside is frightful, the news concerns anything but the national pastime.  Last night I watched a sports’ report about a Chicago synchronized ice skating team that won a world title.  It’s enough to drive a person crazy.

To fight that, I daydream and ask myself questions like, what if the White Sox had never traded away Norm Cash or Johnny Callison or Aaron Rowand; kept minor leaguer Denny McLain over Bruce Howard; or signed Torii Hunter?  When that grows old, I go to baseball-reference.com.  The things you can learn there.

Forget the advanced metrics, and just start clicking.  That’s how I found that future Sox and Cubs’ GM Larry Himes was a 23-year old catcher with the Indianapolis Indians in 1964 and outfielder Mike Hershberger, all 5’10” and 175 pounds of him, threw out 17 baserunners for the Athletics in 1967?  Or that the Brooklyn Dodgers barely drew a million fans in 1955, the year they finally beat the Yankees in the World Series?  Or that Dodgers’ starter Carl Erskine—“Oisk” to the Brooklyn faithful—turned 89 last December?

I also check out baseball cards on eBay from time to time.  Maybe this is the year I flesh out my Topps collection for 1965.  It’s definitely worth thinking about.