The Beginning and the End

 I happened to see in the paper today that Municipal Stadium in Cleveland opened on this date 84 years ago.  In a way, you can date the advent of the luxury-box mentality in baseball to July 31, 1932.

By that I mean the stadium was publicly funded, a bad precedent that’s come close to ruining baseball.  Fans pay for the facility, pay to see a team play, and owners cry poverty on their way to the bank.  The one saving grace to Municipal Stadium is that it was geared to the masses, with an opening-day capacity of 78,000.  In other words, the Indians wanted to draw fans in the same way the Yankees did.  When Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, it had a seating capacity of 58,000.  The early success of Municipal Stadium led the team to increase that figure to just over 71,000 in 1937.  Those were the days.

Now, teams are comfortable operating facilities that can seat 40,000 give or take a few thousand.  And, as I noted recently, the Cubs have announced plans for an exclusive club in Wrigley Field that doesn’t allow for viewing the game from your seat, unless you’re watching a television screen.  This is the wave of the future.

Thank you, Cleveland.       

Gibber Talk

The Cubs have stockpiled their roster, which is always a smart thing to do, but they don’t always know how to manage it.  Yesterday, they sent down utility man Tommy La Stella while activating outfielder Chris Coghlin.  The head scratching commences with a comparison of the two.  La Stella batted .295 with 31 hits, including two home runs.  He drove in 8 runs and scored 14.  Coghlin?  He has 8 hits, zero homers, 2 rbi’s and 11 runs scored.  Both rbi’s and two of the runs scored came in yesterday’s game against the Mariners.  Go figure.

But don’t try to make sense out of skipper Joe Maddon’s explanation for the move:  “It’s an unusual moment we’re in right now when we have so many guys.  These are hard decisions.  Guys are not going to like them.  It’s just a part of the rules and how they are constructed in our game that forces you into different moments.”  And while we’re at it, we should all think of one hand clapping, right, Joe?   

Tarnish

Tarnish

We project all sorts of stuff onto professional athletes, usually a mix of voyeurism and hero worship:  That could be me out there in centerfield.  The Mick is a great guy, a wonderful human being.  I mean, he hit a pitch over the scoreboard in right.

It’s a natural tendency that doesn’t hurt anyone, provided you remember heroes have been known to have feet of clay on more than one occasion.  The real problem is when athletes won’t play along in our little fantasy game.  They prefer being jerks.

The White Sox last won a World Series in 2005 with a roster that had two questionable personalities, starting with catcher A.J. Pierzynski.  A.J. was—and is—a jerk, the kind of guy who’ll bump you on purpose and probably spike you too, I’ll bet.  But he’s always played hard, stayed out of jail and never been out of a MLB job for the past nineteen years.  So with A.J., you project at your own risk.

The same was true of outfielder/DH Carl Everett, a fairly unpleasant fellow who once grabbed his crotch after hitting a homerun and earned a 10-game suspension for bumping an umpire during an argument.  On top of that, Everett let the world know he didn’t believe in dinosaurs, which earned him the most suitable of nicknames, the Truthasaurus.  Everett didn’t do a whole lot with the Sox other than make fans scratch their heads over why Kenny Williams acquired him in the first place. 

And now the Cubs have made their own head-scratching move by acquiring closer Aroldis Chapman from the Yankees in what is being heralded as the move that gets the team into the World Series.  Theo Epstein and the front office claim they told Chapman over the phone that they expect him to behave—no more domestic abuse allegations, please—only Chapman said in an interview he didn’t remember what team officials said in the call; he’d been sleeping just before.  But he can throw the ball at 105 MPH, so all is forgiven.

As with A.J., only now taken to the nth degree, you project at your own risk.       

And Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

 Sometimes, I don’t understand professional sports.  Take last night, for instance.  The White Sox started 26-year old Anthony Ranaudo against the Cubs.  Not only does Ranaudo hold the Cubs hitless in Wrigley Field for 5-1/3 innings in his tenth career start, he hits a homerun—his first major-league hit, no less—to give the Sox a 1-0 lead in the fifth.

Kris Bryant tied the game in the bottom of the sixth, and then Ranaudo walked a batter with two out in the seventh inning.  That would’ve been enough for me.  I mean, you could literally see sweat streaming off the brim of Ranaudo’s cap.  He was done, and Sox manager Robin Ventura needed to get him out.  But, no.  Ventura leaves Ranaudo in to give up a two-run homer to Javier Baez.  Thanks, skip.

Wait, it gets better.  In the eighth inning, the Sox used relievers Carson Fulmer and Jacob Turner, who combined to give up five runs on four hits, a walk and a hit-by-pitch, making the final score 8-1.  That’s a no-hitter in the sixth becoming a blowout in the eighth courtesy of the manager and the bullpen.  But we’re not done yet.

  Fulmer now has an ERA of 17.18 with Turner close behind at 14.04.  Guess who got sent to the minors after the game?  Yup, Anthony Ranaudo.  Go figure.  I sure as heck can’t.

True Grit

True Grit

Clare got the results of her MRI from last week and found out she has a torn right labrum.  Ouch.  The question is, when did it happen?

She thinks sophomore year high school, when we had a doctor look at her shoulder; no mention of a tear, just a prescription of six weeks of physical therapy.  So, if that was a misdiagnosis, it means my daughter played seven years of high school and college softball with the tear.  “Thank God it didn’t affect my hitting,” the patient said last night.

Only I think it happened in eighth grade, when her first travel team put her at shortstop; Clare was in the habit of rushing her throws.  I also seem to remember an endless line of first basemen with sore hands and broken gloves (or not).  Either way, I don’t want to hear about millionaire athletes playing in pain.  I know an amateur who could put them all to shame.      

Glued

What is it about the Crosstown Classic that makes us go goofy?  I picked Clare up from the train last night (she’s just started a job with Northwestern University), and she said, “Dad, if the White Sox don’t win any more games this season except for these four against the Cubs, I could live with that.”  Oh, I raised my child well.

Melky Cabrera robs Kris Bryant of a homerun in the first and throws him out at second base in the ninth; Todd Frazier hits a three-run homer off Jake Arrieta; and Tyler Saladino drives in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning, the third straight Sox walk-off win for the first time since 1962.  That was the summer I saw my first Sox game.

Do you trade Chris Sale now?  Did David just slay Goliath, or is Goliath getting ready to storm back with a vengeance?  Father, daughter and mother will be sitting in front of the TV to find out.  

Reprieve

Michele and I had tickets to the theatre yesterday afternoon, as we are very cultured baseball fans.  On the way to War Paint (starring Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole), I had the car radio tuned to the White Sox game.  This one was the completion of Saturday’s contest, which had been suspended after eight innings due to rain.  Lo and behold, Adam Eaton drives in Avi Garcia just as I’m ready to pull into the parking garage across from the Goodman Theater.  That means nothing worse than a split on the day.

Three hours later, after a very enjoyable time watching two Broadway HOFers perform, I find out closer David Robertson gives up not one, not two, but three solo shots in the top of the ninth inning, yet the Sox win in the bottom of the ninth, this time Eaton scoring the winning run.

Chris Sale gets suspended five games, I put on Sunday airs (and good pants), the Sox take two from the Tigers as they prepare for four games against the Cubs.  Sometimes, you have to pick and choose your way to happiness.   

In Tatters

White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf once said a major-league baseball team was close to a public trust, so owning a team carried certain responsibilities.  Apparently, that includes running said trust into the ground.

Yesterday afternoon, Sox ace Chris Sale literally cut up the throwback uniforms the team was supposed to wear that day.  You could argue it was immature of Sale, or wait for his explanation.  Unfortunately, the latter is unlikely to occur.  The White Sox rarely comment on team controversy, and, when they do, they employ a form of English that muddles far more than it enlightens.

Kenny Williams, the team executive vice president, often acts like the general manager he used to be.  Rick Hahn, the general manager, acts like someone who lacks full authority to do his job.  Put those two together, and you get an organization that goes round and round in circles while hemorrhaging fans.  Why MLB allows this situation to fester is anyone’s guess.  You gotta love property rights in this country, at least if you’re rich and don’t engage in borderline hate speech.

The consensus among sports’ journalists—and we’re talking people with their own Mendoza line when it comes to average IQ—is that the White Sox should start all over and trade their biggest asset, viz., Sale.  In other words, the front office that made the mess in the first place gets to start over.  Trust us, they say.  Why should we?  Sox fans would like to know.

This is sports in Chicago.

T-shirts and Charity

The WNBA this week fined three teams $5000 each for allowing players to wear non-league approved t-shirts during warmups.  In addition, individual players were fined $500 for the offense.  The t-shirts in question were in protest of recent police shootings nationwide involving minorities.

For some reason, the Bill of Rights stops outside the arena, field and court in professional sports.  Players are supposed to be quiet on social issues yet always make nice at league-approved charity events.  That’s ever so the united way. 

In Minnesota, off-duty police working security for the WNBA Lynx walked out of a game in protest over the t-shirts.  I like that; the issue is more complex than a few words silk-screened on non-shrink cotton.  But I also like players exercising their First Amendment rights.  Where’s the ACLU when you need them?

Bet on Gold

Clare was four going on five during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.  I can’t remember if she was already climbing over the furniture or the Olympics gave her the idea or Legends of the Hidden Temple on Nickelodeon.  Anyway, she was a serious climber by her fifth birthday.

She still loves the Olympics.  To her, an athlete, it’s all about watching others go about their craft.  That’s a great way, really, to look at these two upcoming weeks in Rio.  We should be cheering athletes from the far ends of the Earth coming together to see who’s the best.  Too bad Russia wanted to dope its way to the top of the winners podium.  Not that Las Vegas would’ve cared.

What great news that it’s legal again to place bets in Vegas on the Olympics.  We can’t lose business to overseas’ bookies, now can we?  In my darker moments, I think that we’ve lost the ability to feel awe over accomplishment.  Instead, we want to make money off someone else’s training and sacrifice.  Got any inside dope—oops, no pun intended (nudge, nudge)—on who’s gonna win the 100-meter dash?  Insider trading, Wall Street, Vegas—what’s the difference?

It’s a good thing I don’t give in to those dark moods.

Slabs

Because the White Sox can’t get over .500, the trade deadline is looming and sportswriters have nothing better to do, there are all sorts of stories in the papers about whether or not the team should trade Chris Sale.  For instance, yesterday’s Sun-Times quotes a major-league scout, speaking anonymously, as saying, “Many times with young, controllable superstars, it’s all about pricing the beef, gauging his real value.”  Pardon me, pricing the what?

This is why athletes in pro sports are willing to risk come off as moneygrubbers; their employers don’t even see them as human.  Who wouldn’t want to maximize his value under those conditions?  I’m forever talking about women in baseball.  Here’s an example of a guy—because you can bet that wasn’t a female scout talking—who can’t even see the humanity of the person he’s giving an opinion of.

I’d like to think that Branch Rickey is spinning in his grave right now.

Baseball for the One Percent

 The Cubs are taking $500 reservations for a new VIP club to be located in the bowels of Wrigley Field behind home plate.  “Tradition.  Beauty.  Charm.  Coming Soon…Luxury,” the team promises on a special website.  Lucky fans, no, worthy and rich fans, will “Experience baseball most majestic ballpark in a whole new way.”  Yeah, like Louis XIV would have if he were alive.

All the later-day Louies soon will be able to avail themselves of “multiple bars serving premium drinks” because, hey, a beer-buzz is so déclassé, along with “reserve wines” and unique food offerings.”  If I’m Steve Trout, I’m not accepting any special tours of the club kitchen.

Baseball used to be about green cathedrals and stickball and doubleheaders where one ticket was good for two games.  Those times are dead and gone.  The national pastime’s demise may not be far behind.   

Teaching

I watch the White Sox not hit—one run in 41 innings—and not pitch—“closer” David Robertson give up a three-run walk-off homerun in Seattle last night—and wonder about coaching.  Does it happen on the major-league level?  It should.

With Clare, I was forever hitting her groundballs and pitching batting practice.  If she booted a ball or swung and missed at a slider, I stopped to tell her what she was doing wrong.  I also knew to tell her what she was doing right.  It was the same for when she played—talk about the mistakes and the progress.  My biggest thrill as the parent of a jock was when my daughter motioned to me from the dugout in college to talk about what she was doing at the plate.  She trusted me.

I’m not saying I did anything special; far from it.  Something like this takes place in sports all the time through college and, in baseball, the minor leagues, for other teams if not the White Sox.  But once players reach the big time?  Hardly.  I can’t count the number of times a coach will say he doesn’t go up to a player to tell him he has to change his approach, to which I say, Why not?  Sorry, but a batting average under .250—I’m talking about you, Todd Frazier—or an ERA over 4—hello, David Robertson and Matt Albers—merits a talking to.

Sox second baseman Brett Lawrie has absolutely no sense of the strike zone; he consistently takes pitches down the middle of the plate while swinging at sliders down and away and pitches up and in.  This translates into a .252 BA with a team-high 105 strikeouts in 341 at-bats.  If I’m the hitting coach, I pull Lawrie aside and show him video of his at-bats, again and again, until he changes or the front office smartens up and gets rid of him.  The same goes for the pitching.  I’m tired of hearing acts of contrition.  Pitchers need to see what they threw and then explain why they did.

But I’m not the White Sox hitting or pitching coach.  Those guys just sit there in the dugout, although Don Cooper does visit the mound on occasion.  I don’t know why.  It sure hasn’t helped.        

Like a Mule

Chicago sports are proof positive of reincarnation.  We were all very bad people in previous lives.  How else to explain such crappy owners?

George Halas probably would’ve outlawed the forward pass, if he’d lived long enough, and his progeny are more clueless than not when it comes to running a football franchise.  The Cubs were once owned by a man who had nothing against night baseball, until he did.  P.K. Wrigley also publicly stood behind manager Leo Durocher against the likes of Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, Ron Santo and Billy Williams.  Dumb move, sort of like trading away Lou Brock.  As far as the new owners go, until that World Series flag flies over Wrigley Field it never hurts to remember the immortal words of Pete Townshend:  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The Blackhawks used to be run by a crotchety old man who threatened to dissolve the team if he didn’t get his way.  They’re infinitely better now, with three Stanley Cup championships in recent years, but you wonder why they joined forces at the United Center with Jerry Reinsdorf.  He blew up the Bulls twenty years ago now, and they still haven’t recovered.  Who needs Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson when you have Jerry Krause?  To ask the question is to laugh and cry in equal measure.

Did I mention Mr. Reinsdorf also owns my White Sox, losers of their last four games in which they’ve scored all of one run?  Did I mention Reinsdorf despises the media and takes criticism as a form of betrayal and that he plans to own the team forever?  Did I maybe torture puppies in another life?     

Kayaking to Please

This is how you know you’re a recovering helicopter parent—you worry about your 24-year old kayaking on the north branch of the Chicago River at dusk.  Why not stick your finger into an electrical outlet while we’re at it?

But Elmhurst College thought it would be a fun activity for alums, and so did Clare and her boyfriend Chris.  Nothing like hearing stories about running into embankments or being rammed by other craft.  Oh, yeah, we’re talking fun.  They know the Eastland rolled over in the very same river, yes?

But the river is all the rage these days; non-carp fish have moved in, and it’s more recreational than commercial, thanks to a post-industrial economy.  No more Medusa Challengers or other big ore boats working their way up the river to the turning basin at North Avenue.  Now we have those little kayakers propelled by men and women who still look like boys and girls to their parents.

But the girl and her boy survived their trip, to tell us all about it just as the White Sox were finishing up their third consecutive shutout to a sub-.500 team.  There’s good news somewhere in that sentence.    

Early to Bed

This is why you don’t stay up late to watch a game on the West Coast: the White Sox sleepwalk through their second straight shutout loss, 7-0 at the hands of the up-until-now fairly hapless Angels, this after a shutout courtesy of the truly hapless Braves.  Better to get upset after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.

Because, really, who wants to see Sox skipper Robin Ventura in his nightshirt coming out of the dugout, especially if he’s bringing in his favorite toy, Matt Albers, he of the 5.06 ERA?  Who wants to watch a team collect all of five hits against a pitcher, Hector Santiago, with an ERA of 4.27 (thanks to those seven scoreless innings he tossed)?  And who wants to hear Hawk Harrelson trying yet again to peddle caviar in the form of horse manure?  I don’t.

You want entertaining zombies, then go watch the Walking Dead on cable.  That a major-league ball club could pretend its product has so much as a pulse is beyond me.  And they wonder why fans don’t want to come and drink the overpriced beer in an upper deck that scrapes the clouds.  It’s like Forrest said, stupid is as stupid does.  And the Chicago White Sox are too stupid for their own good.  

Déjà vu

I have to stop biking in an oven.  At least that’s how it’s felt the last two times out on the 606 Trail.  Next time, I crack an egg on the pavement and see what happens.

This must be why the Tour de France people use PEDs.  I managed five blocks short of 50 miles yesterday, at the end of which you could’ve stuck a fork in me; I was done.  That Irish saying about the wind at your back, well, I had that for 25 miles.  The rest of the time the devil knew I was coming and blew a gale-force hello my way.  I looked like Marcel Marceau on a Schwinn.

The silver lining to all this sweating and pedaling was the stream of consciousness that started about halfway through.  The thing about the 606 is that it’s an old elevated railroad spur converted into a biking-running-walking-(and standing in the middle daring you to run them over) path originally intended to serve area factories, now all gone or converted into loft space.  For example, across the west end of the trail is a large building where they used to make Lincoln Logs.  And then I started to think about how the logs tasted.  Like I said, stream of consciousness.

And then there was that unseen plane overhead, darting from cloud to cloud, its engine strong and loud echoing down to me on the path.  Well, then I started in on B-17s.  I’ve had a thing about these planes since childhood, building models of them, watching movies about them, climbing into them when I can.  If there is reincarnation, I’m probably coming back as a waist gunner on a B-17, circa October 1943.  That’s when my next-door neighbor flew in them.

Anyway, I dodged all the ME-109s and FW-190s that buzzed along the trail.  A normal bombing run from England to Germany took about eight hours.  I was home with three hours to spare.  The next mission depends on the ability of the ground crew to get my legs back in shape.  General Savage wants a full report….       

Ruining a Good Thing

 Baseball is a game so sublime it’s entering its third century of popularity in this country.  If Fox Television has any say in it, there won’t be a fourth century.

The one intelligent comment I heard all night came from color commentator John Smoltz, that hitters would be swinging at the first and second pitch because they were facing, well, All-Stars on the mound.  What that led to was 1-2-3 innings that took less time than the commercials that ran afterwards.

Then again, the less time play-by-play announcer Joe Buck gets to talk is a good thing.  Buck couldn’t even be bothered to follow the game.  New pitcher?  Figure it out who he is.  New batter?  Ditto.  Buck’s stream of consciousness would drown a whale.  This assault by jabber went on for three hours and five minutes.  Think about it.  Fox stretched a 4-2 game into three-plus agonizing hours.

Part of it involved the “war” on cancer, where everybody in Petco Park got up with signs bearing the names of people they were standing up for.  I don’t know.  If we are at war with this disease, I’d say we’re somewhere between Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor, maybe as far as April 1942, but not a whole lot more.  But you’d think we were on the outskirts of Berlin from the sounds of it.  And one of the sponsors contributed $10,000 for every homerun hit; there were two.  But in a war you sacrifice in order to win.  Why weren’t sponsors and Fox and MLB offering $1 million, no $10 million, a shot?  Maybe because it was all for show.     

In the Eyes of the Beholder

 Clare didn’t care, she didn’t even notice, the little clip of Mark McGwire that ran at the start of the broadcast of Home Run Derby at Petco Park in San Diego last night.  She didn’t care about the DJ on the field or even the uniforms the players wore, a god-awful homage in yellow and brown to those god-awful yellow-and-brown uniforms the Padres wore in the 1980s.  Her focus was on homeruns.

She talked arms and legs, hardly ever agreeing with what the commentators had to say, and she watched swings and analyzed stances.  Her boyfriend joked that she wanted to be one of the girls running out Gatorade and towels to the participants.  “No,” she countered, “I want to be the girl hitting homeruns.”  How I would have loved that, too.  Good White Sox fans that we are, we all rooted for Todd Frazier, who lost to Giancarlo Stanton in the final round.

Frazier went into the tank after winning the Derby in Cincinnati last year.  Maybe losing it last night means he’ll start hitting for average and lead the Sox to a division crown.  You can dream when your team is above .500 (barely) at the break.  

Homerun Derby

In our house, the day before the All-Star Game matters just as much as the game itself, if not more.  Clare will spend two hours watching major-league hitters and critiquing their swings.  She can’t help herself, what with winning two homerun derbies and all.

It started nine years ago, at a 16u nationals’ tournament in suburban Kansas City.  It was a “90/60” day, 90 degrees heat to go with 60 percent humidity.  The homerun hitting contest followed the inevitable deluge.  Never has a child been more enthralled by a challenge.  There wasn’t any trophy that day, just a vow made very quietly, Wait ’till next year.

And when it came, we were in another complex outside of Kansas City.  This time, Clare unloaded nine homerun balls in ten pitches, good enough for a share of the championship.  I can still remember the balls sailing through an afternoon sky, flashes of yellow headed for a distant fence.  Two years later, in suburban Chattanooga, Clare won the title outright.  And the college homeruns were still to come.

So, the girl’s entitled to sit on the couch tonight and offer commentary.  She’s been there, done that.  

Never Can Say Goodbye

 Clare and her boyfriend Chris went to the White Sox game yesterday afternoon against the Braves.  Talk about homecoming for ex-Sox players.  Gordon Beckham, Tyler Flowers and A.J. Pierzynski all played for Atlanta.  Only A.J., four years gone and counting, got a standing ovation.  The TV cameras showed Clare—in her Pierzynski Sox jersey—and Chris on their feet with everyone else.  

Sox fans want their players to be one of two ways, in the spirit of Paul Konerko or A.J.  Paulie is who we’re supposed to be, a perfectionist dedicated to his craft to the day he retires, and fearless, like the game he took a pitch in the face and later hit a homerun.  That’s South Side.

And A.J.?  He’s the punk our parents told us not to hang out with after school; he was too smart for his own good.  But even a good boy like Paulie probably couldn’t resist.  We all wanted to be as sharp, as tall, as good-looking, as cocky, as talented as A.J.  Oh, and fearless, or do I mean reckless?  It all depends on what dugout you’re sitting in, I guess. A.J. was so perfect he could pass for a North Sider, not that he ever wanted to.     

Sox fans, myself included, are of a type who would cut off their nose to spite their face.  We hate Cub fans for filling up Wrigley Field while refusing to do the same at the Cell.  I think it goes back to Jerry Reinsdorf threatening to move the team in the late ’80s to get a new stadium and then masterminding the owners’ lockout in ’94; south of Madison Street, we can be quick to take offense, slow to forgive. 

If Reinsdorf wants anything close to acceptance, he brings back A.J., immediately if not sooner.  

Nickel and Diming Your Way to Gold

 Clare went downtown with a friend yesterday, and who should they bump into at The Taste of Chicago?  Why, it was a very accommodating Olympic gold medalist in beach volleyball.  Misty May Treanor posed for pictures and signed autographs.  Good for her and good for the Olympic ideal.

If I were there, I might’ve been tempted to ask Treanor how she found the money to compete in four Olympics.  The answer probably was luck, pure and simple.  Sponsors will flock to beach volleyball.  Wrestling?  Not so much.

Apparently, a number of American athletes have taken to crowdfunding as a way to finance their Olympic costs.  What?  I turn on the news—NBC, local or national—and see all these inspirational stories about athletes from Podunk on their way to Rio.  Never once do they delve into the matter of financing.  The International Olympic Committee and NBC stand to make all sorts of money from the Games (and don’t tell me about the IOC being nonprofit; those folks aren’t going to die poor).  Some, heck, most, of the profits should go into a fund for qualifying athletes: you make the Olympic team, and you get a little pot of gold in recognition of your sacrifices.

I can’t wait for NBC to propose the idea.  But I won’t hold my breath.

Pushin' Too Hard

Pushin’ Too Hard

I read a story in the Tribune the other day about golfer Michelle Wie, who’s 26 now and has all of four victories in her ten-year pro career.  Worse yet, she has a number of aches and pains—ankle, hip, neck, wrist—that are likely affecting her game.  So, you have to wonder if it was worth it for her to start competing at the age of 12.

Every parent of a young athlete has to confront the Goldilocks Question: what’s just right for my kid?  I seem to remember that Wie’s parents thought she could handle a whole lot more than I would’ve allowed.  I’m not saying they wanted to share in an early payday, but way too many parents push their athlete kids to reach for the gold ring well before their legal drinking age.  The one-and-done phenomenon of NCAA basketball speaks for itself.  Isn’t that right, Jahlil Okafor, Mr. Speed Racer?  The mind needs to catch up to the body, and the body needs to grow at its own pace.

If Clare were Wie, I would’ve done everything in my power to have had her athletic talent develop more along the lines of a normal kid.  Making the varsity golf team her freshman high school year should’ve been enough; ditto college, with the exception of an occasional summer tournament, NCAA permitting.  Anything more and you’re risking damage to body and/or soul.

When Clare was in middle school, I did push, especially one-on-one practices.  My daughter took grounders and BP more than she wanted to.  Then, come eighth grade, outsiders saw the same talent I did years earlier.  Clare made her first softball travel team at the age of 13, and it was for 16 and under. (Note: they then farmed her out to a 14u team.)  She in fact did make varsity as a freshman and was a starter all four years in college.  I lit a fire under my daughter in middle school, and it never went out.  I also let her set the pace after eighth grade.

I could’ve pushed Clare to try out for other, tougher travel teams; take more hitting lessons; and go to more camps, at which point the question would be, who’s the parent and who’s the athlete here?  I think I always knew the answer.  I wonder if the Wies did, too. 

Wrigley, contd.

My father would take me to between five and ten White Sox games a year.  We always had hot dogs, but never at the game.  The game itself was the treat, and the only things I wanted or expected after that were a scorebook and some popcorn.  Then, after the game, we headed out in search of a new hotdog stand or cart to try.  My father was always on the lookout.

We followed this same tradition with Clare, who never complained at not having the cotton candy or nachos or licorice or…And let me tell you that one of my proudest achievements as a father was teaching my daughter how to score a game.  When she goes to the Cell now, people comment on her having this nearly-lost skill.  What, we should depend on the scoreboard, when it’s not playing a baseball version of the shell game?

I also remember taking the bus—actually, two—to Comiskey Park by myself once I reached high school; Michele took the bus and ‘L’ to Wrigley at the same age.  I can’t imagine any South Side parent doing that nowadays, and I wouldn’t bet on that many North Siders allowing it, either.  Times change.

But the older we get, the more we need things that stay relatively the same.  Hence, Wrigley Field.  Lucky are those parents who are like my father and want their kids to focus on the game.  Otherwise, look for the nearest ATM machine, because you’re gonna need it.  The cost of a baseball game could give college tuition a run for the money.

Here’s one difference between Wrigley and the Cell—we sat in perfect upper-deck seats on Monday; in the 25 years the Cell has been open, I have yet to sit in the upper deck.  Here’s why—the last row of seats in the upper deck behind home plate at Comiskey Park was closer to the field than the first row of seats in the upper deck behind home plate at the Cell.  This is an object lesson in new being different, not better.

And here’s another difference between the two parks—the concourse is wider at the Cell.  Generally, I’d say that’s a good thing in terms of crowd circulation, though I’d never cite it as a reason for tearing down a landmark the way the Sox did.  What I would do if I ever wake up to find myself inhabiting the body of Warren Buffet is build a new ballpark—with my own money, of course—that incorporated both load-bearing posts to bring the upper deck so close to the action, like at Wrigley and Fenway Park, and modern concourses.  Maybe an MLB owner will do that, someday.  Maybe.

Behind Enemy Lines

Yesterday, Michele and I went to Wrigley Field for the Reds-Cubs game.  If you could extend the third-base line to the upper deck about fifteen rows, those were our seats, and perfect ones they were.

I was very well behaved throughout, except for that time in the top of the first when Cincinnati’s Billy Hamilton scored from second on a passed ball and error by Cubs’ catcher David Ross; a few loud “way to go’s” slipped out.  But other than that, I was good to the point of invisible.  It helped that there was a very big, muscled guy off to my left.  He was fully tanked and ready to go at it with the home-plate umpire for his balls and strikes.  Better that I didn’t divert his attention away from the field.

And, anyway, there was so much to look at, in addition to the game.  It’s at times like this that I appreciate baseball as a city game.  At Comiskey Park, and to a lesser extent now at the Cell, I could always look out from one of the arches in the façade to see the church steeples and factory smokestacks in the distance; you always knew where you were.  It’s the same at Wrigley with those apartment buildings along Waveland and Sheffield avenues.

Our seats made for easy tracking of all four Cub homeruns, each of which I dutifully marked down on my scorecard.  Between pitches, I looked around, kept an eye on my inebriated friend down the way.  There was a little boy sitting next to me, and I wondered if he’d remember what I did, the breeze shifting, that large American flag off in the distance atop a building with an equally large B on its side.  When the Braves move to their new suburban park next year, will fans even be able to see outside the park?  And what will they see, other than more of suburbia?

We didn’t have anything to drink at the park ($8.75 for a beer, $5 for water), so we had no need to use the remodeled and expanded washroom facilities.  The only part of the remodeling that struck me were the two video boards.  What’s the old saying, two’s company and three’s a crowd?  Well, with the hand-operated scoreboard, you’re at three.  The one in left field should go.  Call it redundant.

That’s a Joe Maddon kind of word, like “amorphous,” which is how Joe described the strike zone for one of the Mets’ games over the weekend.  Apparently, it turned amorphous again yesterday, and Mr. Maddon got tossed by the umpire my friend wanted to fight, this in the second inning.  So, the home-team manager wasn’t around to see if batting the pitcher eighth worked; John Lackey went 0 for 2 while Javier Baez, the no. 9 batter, went 1 for 3 with a homer.

White Sox fans like to say that their favorite teams are the Sox and whoever’s playing the Cubs that day.  My Reds won, 9-5.  It made for a nice ‘L’ ride.    

Extremes

On July 2, 1933, Carl Hubbell pitched an 18-inning shutout over the Cardinals, winning by a score of 1-0.  On July 1, 2016, the Indians beat the Blue Jays, 2-1 in 19 innings.  Cleveland used 9 pitchers, Toronto 10.  There has to be a happy medium somewhere.

Baseball in the age of specialists is not made for 19-inning games; pitching guys for 1/3 of an inning in the seventh comes back to bite you in the eighteenth, which is exactly what happened to the Jays.  They used position players on the mound for the eighteenth and nineteenth innings.  Toronto has 13 pitchers on the roster, yet they still ran out.  Better yet, one of those player-pitchers for Toronto went on the DL.

Yes, pitching is a valuable commodity, and what Carl Hubbell did comes about as close as you can to cruel and unusual punishment this side of the electric chair.  But 19 pitchers in a game is dumb baseball.  Back when I rode my dinosaur to school, the White Sox had Hoyt Wilhelm with either Eddie Fisher or Wilbur Wood, all inning-eaters with their knuckleball; at the age of 42 in 1965, Wilhelm threw 144 innings, all in relief, with a 1.81 ERA.  That same year, Fisher threw 165-1/3 innings in relief, going 15-7 with a 2.40 ERA.  Oh, and those Sox also had Bob Locker throw another 91-1/3 innings in relief.  Locker didn’t throw a knuckleball, but he had a good sinker.  In case you’re wondering, Wilhelm pitched another seven years (in a 21-year MLB career) and Fisher another eight in a 15-year big-league career.  Locker was a rookie who lasted “just” ten seasons.

The moral here is you don’t need power arms and specialists to win.  You can win with inning-eaters, whether they start or relieve.

Happy Fourth

Clare made her first baseball All-Star team as a nine-year old, this on the Fourth of July. 2001; she was the only player who needed a little privacy to put on her All-Star tee shirt.  I have a picture of her swinging at the pitch before the one she got a hit on.  I wonder what the coaches thought as she ran down the line.  I know they didn’t want her to play the field.

She made the All-Star team the next year, too, right after which we went to Cooperstown.  Two years later, she hit her first homerun over a fence.  The next day, the Fourth, was the homerun hitting contest, featuring 24 boys, many if not most already on travel teams, and one girl who kept one-hopping the fence at the Bronco field.  Clare finished fifth that day.

Somewhere I have a picture of her standing on the front porch in her All-Star tee and uniform pants.  It’s an image I’ll carry with me the rest of my life. 

Anniversaries

According to today’s paper, on this date in 1947, the Cleveland Indians bought the contract of Larry Doby from the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League.  Two days later,  Doby would break the color line in the American League when he pinch-hit against the White Sox at Comiskey Park.  Yesterday, Clare and I got to talking about a woman being the first, after I told her the Sonoma Stompers, an independent-league team in California with some kind of connection to movie director Francis Ford Coppola, signed two women players, both of whom pitch and play other positions.

Clare made an interesting point (and I hate it when other people do that) saying, “You have no idea about the sense of camaraderie softball players have with one another.  It’s not like baseball makes an effort.  There’s no place for girls in the locker room.  And do you know what it’s like to be the only girl on a high school baseball team?”  After spending the last few weeks supervising a baseball field inhabited by teenaged boys, my daughter is a little down on certain aspects of the national pastime.

For what it’s worth, not many players on the Indians wanted to shake Doby’s hand when he arrived in the visitors’ clubhouse July 5, 1947.  The Negro Leagues were home, but the future lay elsewhere.  I wonder if that includes Sonoma.

More Mad Genius

In an extra-inning game against the Reds this week, Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon used three pitchers as outfielders.  In the 14^th inning, he flip-flopped pitcher and outfielder depending on the matchup at the plate.  For you young fans out there, managers like to go righty to right-handed hitter, lefty to left-handed hitter in these situations.  And the Mad Hatter got away with one, yet again.

It’s good strategy, actually, in a way, which is another way of saying I’d do it too, maybe.  If you’re going to carry 12 or 13 pitchers, it’s definitely worth the gamble, as long as you realize at some point the batter is going to hit it out to that pitcher/outfielder.  As I’ve said, oh, a hundred times or so by now, I’d rather have a 10-pitcher staff, with five relievers who can get people out from either side of the plate.

Push comes to shove, you’re a lot better off with an honest-to-goodness defensive replacement out there than a guy who hasn’t caught a fly ball since sophomore year high school.  But that’s just me, and Joe Maddon is a genius.

Get Out the Vote

 Clare has been voting for the All-Star game for ten years if not more.  She goes for the best AL players along with the worst NL players.  I wonder who gave her that idea.

The way MLB treats voting bothers me; I could’ve voted 35 times had I wanted.  Sorry, one fan one vote.  Anything else is encouraging a bad habit.  I’m surprised the Republicans haven’t launched a voter fraud investigation.

In the next few days, MLB will announce a list of candidates for the last spot on both rosters.  If they want us to vote early and often (a line I think appeared on the MLB website), then they should charge us for the privilege, $10 a pop.  Give the proceeds to Cooperstown or to help fund a pension for those players who never qualified.  At least that would be a right to balance the wrong.