Time Travel

There I was, minding my own business at the breakfast table when all of a sudden the Tribune sports’ section sent me time traveling back to the fall of 1969.  This all because of a story on the best Chicago area prep-football traditions.

Let me tell you about St. Laurence High School, where only the lucky few got to drive their dinosaurs to school.  The good brothers in charge all shared the same mission of preparing us for possible military service in Vietnam, so that every class, whether math or history or religion, you didn’t know for sure if it was a teacher at the blackboard or a Marine drill instructor.  Who told you to open that window, son?  I didn’t.  Do you think you’re hot, son?  Do you want to feel heat, real heat….

St. Laurence was way better at discipline than football.  I got recruited once between periods; that taught me to cut back on the Sunday sweet rolls.  The Vikings tried very hard, but the Catholic League had no place for the meek of heart or pass rush.  These were less football games than events at the Colosseum, and the Vikings were just Christians in disguise.

Oh, but the Friday afternoon pep rallies in the school gym.  Everybody was pumped just to be out of class (see above).  The band played, the Christians bravely marched out to their seats at center court.  Some poor fool dressed up as a Viking complete with sword and horned helmet ran out to chase another fool dressed up as a rabbit, representing our archrivals, the Brother Rice Crusaders (Crusader Rabbit, get it?).  We were an all-boys’ school and would very much have liked to added cheerleaders to the festivities, but they were only there at game day from the Catholic girls’ school across the street from us.  I think, but I’m not sure, it was nearly fifty years ago and I was minding my own business eating Fiber One….  

 

Upstaged

Usually, Clare is the center of attention when we go to the batting cages.  All sorts of people—young and old, male and female, mixed and matched—stop by whatever cage she’s in to watch.  And that happened again Tuesday night, at least I think it did.  I admit to sneaking peaks at someone else, so I can’t say for sure how many people were watching my daughter.  When I wasn’t, it was to look at the guy in the 80-mph cage.  He hit everything, just like any good hitter.  But how many hitters are 70, if they’re a day?

I’m serious, he was 70 or more, and without glasses.  The ball came in, he hit it.  Ten balls a token, he hit them all.  Then he’d stand outside the cage for a few minutes, head down, eyes closed, hands gripping—and gripping hard—the top horizontal bar of a metal fence, one leg resting on the bar below.  The first time, I thought he’d hurt himself, but, No, this went on after each session in the cage, of which there were five at least.  Hit, rest or meditate, hit again.

I can only wonder what it meant, why he was doing it and for who.  Here was a life being measured, tested, ten balls a token.  When he finished, he walked out to his car, a Mercury, and drove away into the night.

(Un)Just Desserts

I wonder how Jerry Reinsdorf can stand it, the near-disappearance of his White Sox from local sports’ coverage.  Today’s Tribune sports’ section is a pretty good example.  Nearly 80 percent of the front page is taken up with graphics about the Cubs’ catching corps.  Inside, the North Siders get another 2-1/2 pages, which leaves a half-page for Chris Sale winning his 17^th game of the season last night.  All I can say is you get what you deserve, sometimes.  Bet your franchise’s future on the Adams—Dunn and LaRoche—throw in a rent-a-Jeff (Samardzija), and this is what you get.  Oh, well.  It could be worse, and it is, if you’re a fan of the WNBA Chicago Sky.  

Did you know the Sky won a playoff series Sunday to advance to the WNBA semifinals?  I didn’t know anything about it until stumbling across a story in the Monday sports’ section.  A lot of people probably missed it, being all of seven paragraphs long.  The Tribune sent four reporters to cover the now 0-3 Bears in Dallas Sunday but couldn’t find anyone to drive to Rosemont (about 30 minutes from Tribune Tower in Sunday traffic) to cover a woman’s team in the playoffs.  Those seven paragraphs came from the AP.

Like I said, it could be worse.

 

Glass Ceilings

Among the season’s new TV shows is “Pitch,” about the first woman to pitch in major league baseball.  This led the NYT to do a story on the chances of a female ballplayer taking the mound at an MLB park in real life.  The story was more optimistic than I am.  Oh, I think women can play baseball just fine.  In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to see one batting leadoff or third or sixth.  But pitching is, literally, for the big boys.

Baseball already has a problem with shorter guys pitching, but position players not so much.  According to an NYT story I found from 2011, ten pitchers 5’7” or shorter have made a big-league roster over the last 50 years.  Right now, the best “short” pitcher I can think of is 5’8” Marcus Stroman.  So, there’s a good measure—can she pitch better than Stroman?

In general, ball clubs don’t care if a player can.  The odds for anyone under 6’ making a team’s pitching staff aren’t good.  Right now with expanded rosters only the Rays are carrying as many as four pitchers 5’11” or shorter.  Six teams have none, the most impressive of which is the Dodgers.  They’re carrying 22 pitchers right now, all six-feet plus.

Now, switch over to position players; short guys are everywhere.  On any given day the Red Sox starting outfield will have two or three players standing 5’9” or 5’10” while their infield will almost always have Dustin Pedroia (a pretend 5’9” closer to 5’7”) at second.  The next hot thing in Boston is outfielder Andrew Benintendi, 22 years old and 5’10”.  Benintendi is hitting .314 with 14 rbi’s in just 87 at-bats.  For the Red Sox, good things just seem to come in small packages, Big Papi excepted.  I mean, right fielder Mookie Betts is all of 5’9”, and that hasn’t gotten in the way of him hitting 31 homeruns to go with 109 rbi’s.  So, why all this focus on girls pitching instead of hitting?

The Astros’ Jose Altuve stands 5’6”, and he’s leading the AL in hitting with a .338 average.  The Twins’ Brian Dozier at 5’11” has 42 homeruns and could set the all-time single season mark for second basemen.  Anyone who thinks the girls can keep up with the boys is advised to put a bat in their daughter’s hands.  That’s what I did.  

What Was, What Might Have Been

 Clare walked into the kitchen Sunday morning, asking, “Do you know who died?”  No, I answered.  “Jose Fernandez of the Marlins.”  The 24-year old star right-hander was in the wrong place at the wrong time, in a boat that hit a jetty off of Miami’s South Beach sometime around 1 AM.  Golfing great Arnold Palmer died a number of hours later.

Fernandez won 38 games in a four-year career that saw him come back from Tommy John surgery, and he was 16-8 this season with a 2.86 ERA to go with 253 strikeouts.  In the last start of his life last Tuesday against the Nationals, Fernandez pitched eight shutout innings, yielding three hits while striking out 12.  He died in circumstances I constantly tell my daughter to avoid.

The idea, the hope, is to run the race and run it well, the way the 87-year old Palmer did.  For me growing up, Palmer was like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays, always there in the newspaper or on television, whose performances commanded attention, if only between bites of breakfast toast.  Palmer was a west Pennsylvania boy, son of a steel worker turned greens keeper.  He treated the gallery like they were friends, or at least fans, and he never left Pennsylvania.  This was a life well spent.

Fernandez’s might have been, too, a Cuban refugee who at the age of 15 saved his mother from drowning during their escape who went on to….That we’ll never know.

Creative Crackdowns

The Cubs are looking for a court order that will allow them to go after vendors selling knockoff merchandise.  On the one hand, I sympathize; people shouldn’t be allowed to steal someone else’s work.  On the other hand, it’s the Cubs.

On a slightly more serious note, I do think it’s wrong to try and pass knockoff stuff as the real deal.  Shame on you, go to jail, we confiscate your inventory.  Now, for the serious on the other hand—a little creativity will be lost along the way.

For example, one of the offending t-shirts shows Marilyn Monroe wearing a Cubs’ jersey.  Sorry, that strikes me as smart and funny, not actionable.  In fact, once upon a time baseball merchandise generally was sold without regard to MLB copyright.  At least the souvenir pennants were.

I have a hundred or so, nearly all dating to before 1969, the year baseball started to slap its copyright on stuff.  Before then, pennants were an exercise in the imagination.  Individual ball clubs might have tried to keep the bootleggers at bay, or away from the park, but it’s debatable how successful they were.  Anyone with access to rolls of felt and silk-screening machines could have a go at it.  Let me give you an example from out of the collection.

I have four different “scroll” pennants for the 1959 AL-pennant winning Sox team; each pennant has a scroll listing the names of players and manager Al Lopez.  Not one official scroll pennant, mind you, but five, probably all done by different people.  And the designer of one of the five apparently didn’t have access to a scorecard or newspaper.  The name of team owner Bill Veeck is misspelled “Veek”; by-then minority owner Chuck Comiskey is “Commiskey”; and outfielder Jim Rivera is “Riviera.”  Needless to say, the pennant is a prized possession of mine.

I also have a Yankee scroll pennant from 1960.  Somehow, the managed to get Bill Skowron’s name right, but not Duke Maas (“Mass”), Luis Arroyo (“Arrowy”) or Joe DeMaestri (“De Maestry”).  Gosh, the Big Apple making the same kind of mistakes like in Chicago.  No wonder the Yankees lost to the Pirates in seven.  There has to be a “Mazarowsky” on a scroll somewhere.

So, guys, if you’re going to go after purveyors of bogus merchandise, start with the knockoffs before moving onto the creative types and the misspellers, OK?

Counting Noses

Orioles’ center fielder Adam Jones is disappointed the fans haven’t been showing up at games.  Baltimore is ½-game out of the second wild card spot, and apparently Jones thinks the team would be doing better with more fans in the stands.  No doubt, the vendors agree.

According to baseball-reference.com, attendance is down in Baltimore 2,800 people a game from last year.  The Indians, who could end up with the best record in the American League, are up just over 2,000 fans a game, to a whopping 19,443; that’s the third lowest average in all of baseball, behind only Tampa and Oakland.  What’s up?

Like I’ve said, fans may be experiencing fatigue.  Every year, marketing departments come up with ad campaigns that make it seem this will be the year.  On top of that, in cities like Baltimore and Cleveland, teams have already had nice runs that still ended short of a World Series parade.  People get tired after a while.  Nobody wants to tell the grandkids about going to Game Three of the playoff series that led to nothing back in…. 

So far, MLB attendance is down 552,307 over last year.  Watch for the commissioner’s office to come up with a positive spin.  Sorry, guys, the games take too long and cost too much.  That’s the pig’s ear truth of the matter.

Shooting the Breeze

I picked Clare up from the train around 8 PM Wednesday; she was working late at her temp job.  My daughter has been taking it on the chin in the job market.  People tell her they love her, compliment her interviewing skills and then go on and hire someone else, which keeps her temping.  Clare has come out of three interviews all but convinced she had the job based on people’s response to her.

How times have changed.  It used to be the interviewer was at best detached and at worst like a cop giving you the third degree:  You wanna a job here?  What was wrong with dat job you had diggin’ graves?  You scared or somethin’?  I can still remember an interview I had for a job a downtown bank a few months after I dropped out of law school.  The interviewer took great pleasure detailing the reasons why I wasn’t qualified for a career in finance.  Another time, a person wrote back because, as he said, he had nothing better to do that day than rip apart my resume.  But at least nobody was leading me on.

Naturally, we drove home while discussing the plight of the White Sox.  Chris Sale was getting shelled in Philadelphia, which is pretty much the epitaph for him getting the Cy Young Award this season.  I said how much this showed the team had given up under Robin Ventura.  Clare answered, “Yeah, but who would you hire?  I mean, Robin didn’t even want it at first.  They had to go to his house twice, I think, and convince him.”  You want things badly enough, sometimes that’s how you get them.  Clare thinks Jim Thome might be a possibility as the next Sox manager.  “At least he’s already in the organization” working for the front office.

This is how sports is supposed to work for people, not a matter of life and death like in the NFL commercials, but as a backdrop to their lives, a release from the struggles and disappointments of the day.  It’s just that right now those struggles would be relieved a whole lot more if we were Cub fans, which we’re not.  Sox fans soldier on.

There’s another epitaph for you.

Build It and They Will Come

 According to the Los Angeles Times, a Texas high school has a football stadium with a seating capacity of 18,000.  There’s also a video screen because you can never get too much of a 16-year old halfback.  Oh, and this all cost $60 million.  Another Texas high school is building a football facility for $62.5 million, and another’s being planned that will cost in the neighborhood of $70 million. 

These are all pretty well-to-do districts, so you can’t make the argument school officials are robbing the education budget for sports.  What it comes down to is a matter of priorities and messages.  How many of these players are bothering with their school work?  How many of their parents care?  How many district taxpayers complain about everything but the cost of a stadium?

Friday Night Lights, indeed. 

Talking Gibberish

Does White Sox starter James Shields listen to himself talk?  After getting hammered by the Phillies Tuesday night (5-1/3 innings pitched, 9 hits, 3 walks, 7 runs, 6 earned) to fall to 5-18 on the year with a 5.98 ERA (but 7.11 with the Sox), this is what Shields told reporters: “I made some pretty good pitches that I thought actually were going to hit the dirt, and they just strung together some hits when they needed to.  We ended up with the infield in, and they found some holes.”  Note to Shields: Philadelphia ranks 29^th, next to last, in MLB with a .238 team batting average and last in runs scored.

In this morning’s Tribune, Sox manager Robin Ventura said the Philadelphia hitters were “cueing them off the end” of their bats.  Robin, please read the above stats.        

Connect the Dots

I heard on the television yesterday that opposing hitters have a .475 batting average against White Sox starter Carlos Rodon when he throws a first-pitch fastball.  It may be worth noting here that in his last two starts Rodon has given up 12 earned runs on 17 hits in all of nine innings.  I tend to agree with my daughter that nearly all pitchers are dumb.  Rodon obviously thinks his fastball is working just fine.  So, what are his catcher(s) and his pitching coach doing to change that?

I saw in the Tribune today that Sox first baseman Jose Abreu offered a reason for why the Royals beat his team 14 (!) times this year.  “It’s [the] desire to win,” Abreu said through his interpreter.  “It’s their hunger to win games and to be good.”  When asked if the Sox have that same desire, Abreu answered, No.

So, what about the manager?    

Saturday in the Park, Sort Of

 For the first time in four years, I found myself spending a Saturday afternoon watching an Elmhurst College football game, the Blue Jays topping the visiting North Park Vikings by a score of 42-10.  Clare’s former boyfriend Chris is the new Elmhurst offensive line coach.  I say “former” because Clare and Chris got engaged last week.  There’s a law on the books somewhere that a future father-in-law has to see his future son-in-law’s first home game as a coach.  Where exactly I don’t know, but it’s there somewhere.

Allow me a quick refresher on the joys of NCAA D-III football—a game takes 2-1/2 hours, not three-plus; the players don’t look to be freaks of nature or chemical enhancement; you can actually hear the coaches address the troops and hear some of the hits, too; you get a sense of the players as young people entering adulthood.  You can see the emotion, the drive and, yes, the heartbreak attached to a game played on a warm September afternoon.

A few of the Elmhurst players knelt during the National Anthem, because they felt the need to express themselves.  From what I could tell, none of the players refrained from singing the fight song after the game, and nobody passed up another tradition—ringing the bell in the northwest corner of the stadium after a home victory.  The young men are kids, too, and sports on very good days can be a bridge between those two stages of life.   

Head Games

  Before Carlos Sanchez belted a three-run homer off of Royals’ reliever Kelvin Herrera Friday night, Herrera buzzed a fastball head-high past Todd Frazier, and the White Sox third baseman was not amused.  In fact, Frazier took a couple of steps towards the mound before KC catcher Salvador Perez, a very big man, blocked his path.  After calming down a bit, Frazier hit a double that ignited the eighth-inning rally.

Frazier said after the game the at-bat was just like the old adage of let sleeping dogs lie; Herrera didn’t, and Frazier made him pay.  The intriguing question is why can’t Frazier be like that at the plate all the time?  Somehow, he’s squeezed 91 rbi’s out of a .215 batting average.  Imagine where he and his team would be with him hitting .260, or .250, even.

If some players need to be psyched up, other players can be psyched out.  The Phillies Dickie Noles knocked George Brett down in Game Four of the 1980 World Series, after which Brett managed just three singles and one rbi over the next 2-1/2 games.  And, yes, the Phillies won the Series.

So, is it a good idea to throw at someone?  That’s the beauty of baseball.  You just don’t know, but you’re always tempted to find out.

Yogi, Carlos and Tyler

 Well, the fifty percent, half-mental White Sox continued on their merry way in Kansas City last night against the Royals.  Tyler Saladino had another three-hit game while Carlos Sanchez chipped in with his own three-fer, strikeouts, that is.  Then along comes the eighth inning, the Sox down by two with two runners on and Sanchez facing fireballing reliever Kelvin Herrera.  Sanchez worked the count full before depositing a Herrera pitch into the right field stands for his first home run of the year.  The Sox went on to win, 7-4.

The way the players celebrated, you would’ve thought they’d clinched the division, just like their crosstown rivals had the night before.  But the Sox are fighting to finish above .500 and for every second, every line of attention, they can steal from the Cubs and the Bears.  Good luck with that.

You mostly get what you deserve, in sports if not in life.  The Cubs worked to get where they are; they had a plan, the Sox, not so much.  There are a hundred ways to measure the difference between the teams.  Here are two—team president Theo Epstein donned a fake mustache to watch the game from the bleachers.  Apparently, Epstein didn’t want to drink himself to death, courtesy of all the free beers fans would’ve have bought for him.  If anyone should be wearing a disguise at the ballpark, it ought to be Sox v.p. Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn.  Nobody will be offering those guys a beer on the house anytime soon.  One-way tickets out of town, yes, but no suds.

I also saw team owner Tom Ricketts walking around Wrigley.  Ricketts has done that a lot since his family bought the club in 2009, good times and bad.  Can you imagine Jerry Reinsdorf doing the same?  Unless he could pick the sycophants to fill the stands, that ain’t gonna happen, ever.   

Young and Old

Right now, I’m reading a biography of Joe Black, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers and in 1952 became the first African American to win a World Series game, against the Yankees, no less.  It never ceases to amaze me that ballplayers from the 1950s and ’60s, to say nothing of the ’20s and ‘30s, were just kids or very young adults playing a kids’ game.

I met Luke Appling when he was 82, Bob Feller when he was 71.  Those times I spoke with Billy Pierce, he always came off as somebody’s incredibly polite grandfather.  Yet Feller broke in with the Indians at the tender age of 17, while Pierce had a cup of coffee with the Tigers in 1945 at 18.  But they never sounded that young, any more than Joe Black does in this book.  This is all part of the wonder of baseball.

Players from a half-century ago or more carry around career stats that belie their age; they tell stories that change according to their age.  The callow youth becomes the wise commentator.  Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams and Hank Aaron now have an element of myth about them.  The passage of time does that to a person.  All that the pictures of DiMaggio et al do is to remind people how we, they, don’t look like that anymore.

And then you have Carlos Sanchez, a 24-year old utility infielder for the White Sox from Venezuela.  Yesterday, Sanchez hit a walk-off single against the Indians, a feat that earned him a postgame interview.  Sanchez sounded so young, so sincere, so much like somebody’s son rather than an octogenarian.   

Baseball will always be about the young and old alike, even at the same time, even with the same person.

Incognito

This is how my day has gone.  In the morning, I drove out to Elmhurst—in a different county, mind you—to pick up some old brick pavers for landscaping around the yard; there was an ad on craigslist.  Not only did I get an address, I was told to look for the Cub “W” flag flying out front.  Oh yeah, I felt like a winner, alright.  The brick man was hoping his team loses tonight so that way they can clinch the division when he goes tomorrow.

Next, I went to the high-end jewelry story where I’d dropped off my father-in-law’s wristwatch to be fixed.  This is what I mean by “high end”: I collect old watches, like Bulova and Elgin, the kind my father wore those rare times he got all dressed up to go out with my mother.  Some jewelers sell these watches, but not the place I was at.  My asking if they had any went over about as well as passing gas, loudly.  Wait, it gets better.

I swear to God everybody in the place started talking about the Cubs simultaneously.  One counter person was going to the game tonight, another tomorrow.  I was the only person not contributing to the love fest.  I just smiled and shook my head.

My father taught me two things in life—the Bukowskis aren’t Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and South Siders don’t jump on bandwagons.  He also left me some beautiful watches.

Specs

These new glasses of mine are a wonder.  They let me read the box scores in-depth, and then some.  Yesterday, I was going through the erstwhile tiny type of This Date in Baseball to see that on September 13, 1936, 17-year old Bob Feller of the Indians—and I’d love to see Terry Francona try to bring in a reliever with that man pitching—struck out 17 Philadelphia A’s to set an AL record.  Feller was that good.

I met him once, at a book signing in the spring of 1990.  I was pretty much on assignment, for Luke Appling, of all people.  I’d met Appling at a memorabilia show the previous autumn in downstate Illinois.  For some reason, no one else was there, and the White Sox HOFer wanted to talk.  The conversation—more of a monologue, really—eventually turned to the Opening Day 1940 no-hitter Feller threw against the Sox at Comiskey Park.  Only Old Aches and Pains said it wasn’t so, that he hit a ball fair down the third-base line that the ump mistakenly called foul.  “Go ahead, ask him,” Appling said of Feller.  “He’ll tell you.”

No, he wouldn’t.  When I mentioned it, all Feller would say was, “Tell him [Appling] not to hit the ball so close to the foul line.”  Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.  Rapid Robert did allow that Luscious Luke was a pretty good hitter.  High praise, indeed, from the Pride of Van Meter, Iowa.  

Dr. Yogi Is (Still) In

 This is getting ridiculous.  Avisail Garcia and Tyler Saladino of the White Sox were at it again last night, garnering six hits between them, only this time Garcia had four as the White Sox beat the Indians, 11-4.   Baseball is fifty percent half mental?  All coaches would do well to have a master’s in psychology at the very least.

And while they’re at it, they should picket the dugout or anywhere else Indians’ manager Terry Francona shows up.  Back in the 1970s, Mike Hargrove earned the nickname of The Human Rain Delay for how he fidgeted every at-bat into an eternity.  Francona is HRD II.  The man has never met a reliever he wouldn’t use (quick, somebody ship Matt Albers to Cleveland), and now he has the September expanded roster to play with.  The Indians are carrying 19 (!) pitchers, seven of whom put in appearances on the mound in last night’s game.  The parade of pitchers couldn’t keep the Sox from scoring in every inning.  That’s only been done 20 times in 116 years.

Here’s hoping it happens again, every time Francona dips into his playpen.

Mixed Messages

I just went on the MLB website to check for any breaking news, say the commissioner taking the White Sox away from Jerry Reinsdorf or the Cubs being barred from postseason play, but no luck.  There was an interesting Coldwell Banker ad, though.

It shows a father and daughter playing catch in front of their house with a 12-inch softball.  That’s OK, but somebody tell me why are there two baseballs in the grass?  And since when has MLB cared about girls and women as athletes or coaches or front-office personnel with real power? 

Next time, maybe they could do an ad that’s a little more realistic.  The girl could be raking leaves or mowing the lawn so her father has the time to play catch with her brother, and there wouldn’t be a softball in sight.  Now, that’d what I call an effective ad, if not intentionally so.

 

Nine Hits in Three Games, Another Opening Sunday

 Tyler Saladino went three for four again last night from the nine spot in the batting order, in case anyone cared to sift through the college football news and NFL predictions.  I did.  Way to go, Tyler.

After my in-season morning ritual of Fiber One and the box scores (eat one, read the other), I dragged the dog for her walk; she’s a basset hound, that’s how it works.  Our neighbor across the street, who happens to be Puerto Rican, was out taking pictures of his front porch; I imagine they went on Facebook.  He has these two cement lions, one for each porch pedestal at the base of the stairs.  They’re adorned with Bears’ scarves every game day.  The irony here is that the most unworthy professional sports’ team in the city has the widest demographic draw.  Go figure.

On Friday, the White Sox had their annual “Half Way to St. Patrick’s Day” promotion.  Without forgetting the last syllable in my family name, I second that emotion.

More Yogi, and Melancholy

 Avisail Garcia and Tyler Saladino kept it up in a 7-2 White Sox win over the Royals last night.  Garcia went 2 for 4 with a run scored while Saladino did him one better, with his second straight 3-for-4 night, including a double and a run scored to go with two rbi’s.

This is the kind of performance that makes me want to shout, Wait’ll Next Year, only it’s September in Chicago.  Virtually no one cares about the White Sox in September.  They either have to be in the thick of the pennant race or take a back seat to the Bears.  The leaves are far from falling, but September 10^th is football season in these parts.  I hate it but have to accept that it comes with the territory.

I was looking through the tiny type in the sports pages today (new glasses really do help) and saw that on this date in 1967 Joe Horlen of the Sox no-hit the Tigers, 6-0.  Horlen was an error and hit-by-pitch short of a perfect game.  He went 19-7 with a 2.06 ERA but finished second in Cy Young Award voting to Jim Lonborg of the Red Sox.  Really, we ought to make Rodney Dangerfield a posthumous, honorary South Sider.  We just don’t get no respect.

As I recall, Horlen pitched on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  I’d walked over the five blocks to my grandmother’s, not to visit so much as mow the lawn, which was my job.  I can still remember the stump of an apricot tree in the backyard and the garden.  All the grandchildren I suspect liked it better when Grandma grew strawberries than carrots for the simple fact it was easier for us to bend over and pick strawberries than dig up carrots with a spade.  Anyway, I’d do half the backyard, then run in and put the game on the TV, then go out and do some moret, then watch more on the TV.  I must’ve finished ahead of Horlen because I can remember watching the end of the game.  I thought for sure the Sox would win the pennant.  They finished fourth instead, three games behind the Impossible Dream Red Sox.

I just don’t do well with Septembers.   

Good Morning

As God is my witness, the first words out of my daughter’s mouth yesterday weren’t “Good morning” or “I hate you because you’ve ruined my life.”  No, Clare walked into the kitchen and said, “Dad, did you know the Mets signed Tim Tebow to a minor-league contract?”  I did at that moment.

I could go on here about a 29-year old ex-quarterback getting some sort of MLB commitment ahead of any 21-year old female ballplayer, but I’ll leave that for another day.  You just have to shake your head at how baseball will beat the bushes for talent, as long as it’s guy talent.

More Yogi

The White Sox went into the bottom of the eighth yesterday afternoon trailing the Tigers, 4-3.  Jose Abreu led off with a single and scored on Justin Morneau’s double to right center.  It’s the fastest I’ve seen Abreu run in the three years he’s played on the South Side; apparently, the piano on his back is detachable.  Two batters later, Avisail Garcia singled home what proved to be the winning run, allowing the Sox to take the series two games to one.

As I noted yesterday, Garcia gets up to play his old team, and something the people on TV said also bears repeating—he always runs hard to first base (are you listening, Adam Eaton?)  With 20-plus games left in the season, it only makes sense—assuming people in the Sox dugout and front office understand the meaning of the word—to let Garcia keep playing to see if he can find a way to treat the Royals and Indians like he does the Tigers.  I always root for a player who shows he’s trying hard.  Do you hear me, Adam?

Infielder Tyler Saladino is yet another example of hustle.  As a rookie last year, Saladino batted .225 in 236 at-bats with six doubles, four homers and 20 rbi’s.  In 26 more at-bats this season, he’s hitting .267 with 11 doubles, eight homers and 35 rbi’s while mostly batting at the bottom of the order.  Saladino took over at second base in late July when Brett Lawrie, that bundle of unfocussed energy, went down with oblique and knee problems.  In 89 fewer at-bats, Saladino has one less rbi than Lawrie, that and 52 fewer strikeouts.

Saladino has started at second, shortstop and third base and volunteered to play the outfield.  He’s also gone out of his way to help rookies adjust to things once they’re called up.  Long story short, he doesn’t do stupid stuff.  You can never have enough of those kinds of players.  We should clone him, not trade him.

Fifty Percent Half Mental

 Yogi Berra said that baseball is fifty percent half mental, and White Sox outfielder Avisail Garcia is proof of that.  When the Sox traded for the 22-year old Garcia in 2013, they thought they were getting a player who would live up to his nickname as Little Miggie, or another Miguel Cabrera.  In the 3-1/2 seasons since, the 6’4” 240-pound Garcia has been a disappointment wrapped in a 259 career batting average.  Except when he plays against his old team, that is.

Man, does Garcia love to face the Tigers.  This year, he’s hitting .327 (17/52) with 4 homers and 9 rbi’s.  For his career vs. Detroit, Garcia comes in at .278 with 8 homers and 35 rbi’s, those last two figures his best against any team.  The other night against Justin Verlander, he went 2 for 4 with a double; for the game Garcia went 3 for 5 with a run scored an rbi.  So, what gives?

Well, Yogi was right.  Left to his own devices, Garcia can psyche himself up for the Tigers, but the Royals (career .229 BA) not so much.  You either trade the player, or find the coaches who can reach him.  This has gone on so long now with Garcia that everyone would be better off if he were traded and new coaches were brought in.       

A Plan's a Plan

 Ballplayers mostly care about three things—their contracts, the size of the dugout and clubhouse amenities.  I mean, when was the last time you heard a player complain about the cost of tickets or concessions or what a joke it is for fans to have to watch them from way up in the second—or third—deck?  That’s why I was surprised to read about some Cub players upset over the plan to move the bullpens in Wrigley from foul territory down both the lines to under the outfield stands.

“I know most guys personally don’t like the feel of throwing indoors,” Jake Arrieta said in the Tribune last week.  Yes, it makes sense to throw indoors during the offseason or because of the rain, but Arrieta prefers to warm up outside when he can:  “There really is no comparison to being outside to replicate the way you’re going to be pitching in a game situation.  I’m OK with it.  I like it.”  Despite the views of Arrieta and, reportedly, other players, the move is scheduled to take place next season.

The team says it’s concerned about injuries, and outfielders do on occasion trip over the mound when going after foul balls.  Still, I wonder, is this a move that’s going to cost money, or is it intended to make money?  Either way, it’s a rare case of the players be damned, even a potential repeat Cy Young award winner.  

A Class Organization

Just when I’m ready to declare the White Sox the worst sports’ franchise in Chicago for ever so many reasons, along come the Bears to remind me otherwise.  This is a team that hates its best players—Gayle Sayers, Dick Butkus, Mike Ditka, Brian Urlacher and now kicker Robbie Gould.   The team’s all-time scoring leader, whose 85.449% accuracy rate ranks ninth all-time in the NFL, spent 11 years with the team, but two missed PATs in the preseason and a $4.1 million salary that would’ve kicked in had Gould made the team led the Bears to act.  Hope the new guy is as good kicking in the tornado known as Soldier Field as Gould was.

Gould is 34 and could kick another ten years.  I hope he does, and I hope Bears’ fans see how their team treats great players, as opposed to other organizations.  As much as I might hate to say it, the Sox were first class with Paul Konerko.

First class?  The Bears?  I don’t think so, not ever.   

17 Down, 2 to Go

 The work of the White Sox front office was on full display last night.  James Shields, their big in-season acquisition, started and was relieved by offseason pickup Jacob Turner.  Maybe I should mention here that the Sox lost to the Twins, the worst team in baseball, by a score of 11-3.

Shields went 2-2/3 innings, giving up five earned runs on five hits (only three of which were hit out of the park) and four walks.  That puts his ERA on the season at 6.07, 7.50 with the Sox.  Turner’s ERA went down to 7.58 even though he gave up six runs in 1/3 of an inning.  If Jose Abreu digs the throw out of the dirt, the Twins don’t score any more, in the third, that is.  I’m pretty sure Turner would’ve come out for the fourth, though.  Maybe I should mention here that the only out he recorded, what with the five hits and a walk, happened on an outfield assist, a Twins’ runner thrown out at the plate.

I really like that the Sox are managed by Sponge Bob, my new nickname for Robin Ventura; Clare doesn’t like it because she’s a fan of the cartoon.  Anyway, Robin the Sponge said after the game, “The way they were hitting homers, it wasn’t good for us.”

Ya think?        

On Mute

I don’t usually watch a White Sox game with the sound on; Hawk Harrelson is too irritating.  But a finger slipped, and I heard Harrelson jabber about Todd Frazier after Frazier hit his 35^th against the Twins last night.

According to the Hawk, batting average is either the most overrated or misunderstood statistic there is in baseball, I can’t remember which because I immediately suffered a shouting fit after hearing this bit of “wisdom.”  But let’s look at some other statistics, shall we?

On the season, Frazier is batting .215 with 35 homeruns and 86 rbi’s.  He’s hitting .194 with runners on and .162 with runners in scoring position (good for 45 rbi’s).  Now, to me, if Frazier is hitting .250-.260, he’s already well over 100 rbi’s and leading the Sox to a wildcard if not the division lead.  Sorry, Hawk, but .215 makes me worry that Frazier is the second coming of Dave Kingman, with a personality and a glove to be sure, but still the second coming of Dave Kingman.

Maybe Hawk means to say that Jose Abreu’s .293 BA is misleading.  Abreu has been hitting a ton lately, what in the old days we’d call a salary drive.  Isn’t that right, Hawk?

Bad Fashion

This is the problem with young people—youth is wasted on them way too often.  Colin Kaepernick is testament to that.

The 28-year old 49ers’ quarterback has stirred up a hornets’ nest of controversy by refusing to stand for the national anthem, twice now at the start of preseason games.  His explanation why is about as articulate as you could expect from someone who’s grown up a jock and is now searching for a different kind of voice.  If anything, Kaepernick has burnished his reputation by saying he’s going to donate $1 million to organizations involved in the fight against violence.  That’s good, that’s walking the walk.  But the socks?  Nope, that was dumb.

It appears that at practice last month Kaepernick wore socks with little pig police on them.  He wore them to protest “rogue cops” who “put the community in danger,” Kaepernick wrote on Twitter.  Here’s the thing.  People are now going to start sticking Kaepernick’s face on a slew of farm animals, wild beasts and insects.  He’s never going to be able to direct the conversation how he wants to.  It would’ve been a lot better to pay for a special “Don’t shoot”/hands-up arm band and wear that instead. 

I wouldn’t presume to tell Colin Kaepernick what to think or what to do, but I would urge him to get smarter advisors who could steer him away from the adolescent stuff.  People would then have to pay attention to what the man has to say.

Come Look

It’s been a hard summer for Clare, between the job she has and the job she wants.  She’s happy to be at Northwestern; it’s a good name to attach to a résumé.  And the people there like her enough not to complain when she interviews for other jobs.

The only problem is it’s the commute from hell any way you go at it.  Northwestern’s Chicago campus is located just off the Magnificent Mile, so traffic is a bear 24/7.  Drive, and you’re stuck in traffic.  If you beat the traffic by some miracle, you end up paying an arm and a leg for parking.  Unfortunately, public transportation isn’t much better.  The train takes her to the West Loop, after which Clare can either walk six blocks to State Street, take the subway and then walk another eight blocks to the campus or pay for a shuttle that goes there...in heavy traffic.  Long story short, it takes her about an hour and a half each way every day.

So, we haven’t gone hitting much this summer.  Last night was the first time in close to two months; it happened because a job interview gone south made my child want to take a bat in her hands and hit things, things coming out of a pitching machine, though God knows those things came in with the faces of certain people attached.  I wasn’t too keen on the idea because it was likely to be a very “rusty” session.  My bad.

She was warming up in the 70 mph cage when a father walked by.  “Come look at her,” he told his nine- or ten-year old son.  “Look at her front foot; she doesn’t lift it too much,” which evidently the boy was doing.  After watching for a couple of minutes, the man said, “She’s got a beautiful swing,” just what a boy wants to hear about a girl, and an adult one at that.

When Clare moved up to 75 mph, she waited in line with a bunch of 30-somethings who must have been in a wooden-bat league.  No comments, just a lot of stares because she was making as much contact as they were.  None of them moved up to 80.  It was open to Clare and Clare alone.

The faster the better, as far as my daughter is concerned.  She was merrily bashing away when a young woman came up to me, put her hand on my arm and asked, “Where does she play?”  Somebody was looking to do a little recruiting, but Clare wasn’t interested in slow pitch.  She did like the attention, though.

Me, too.