A Couple of RIngs

The phone rang yesterday afternoon, and I knew it had to be Clare from the i.d. readout.  That, or a fundraiser for the very expensive Chicago-area Big Ten school was calling a wrong number to ask for an alumni contribution, to which I could only say:  in your dreams, buddy.

But like I said it was Clare, who had a few seconds free.  “I have two pieces of information” that she proceeded to tell me.  First, the Mets had re-signed Yeonis Cespedes for four years at a boatload of money, and second, “The White Sox told the Cubs they won’t deal Chris Sale to them.”  Now, that would’ve been interesting, a deal involving Sale and Kyle Schwarber.  Oh, well.

A few hours after the call, Clare was off to Valparaiso to receive her ring for being part of the team that won the 2015-16 Horizon League postseason tournament.  The ceremony took place during halftime of a men’s basketball game, always a big thing at Valpo.  Clare showed me the ring when she got back home, “Bukowski” spelled out on one side, and I immediately thought of Bill “Moose” Skowron.

We met Skowron at SoxFest in 2011.  He was wearing one of his many World Series rings.  “It’s for sale, but you can’t afford it,” the mostly ex-Yankee and little-bit-of-a-White-Sox informed me.  I hope my daughter can say the same one day.        

We Pause Now for Commercial Interruptions

I swear I don’t remember the commercials being this bad on baseball telecasts; the NFL fan must be a different breed requiring different appeals during games.  Take the two Dodge commercials I’ve seen, where the cars are either zooming down the street or waiting to at the stop light.  Only thing is, it’s raining in one and snowing in the other.  Hey, guys, I don’t want some clown plowing his new Charger into me because the commercial says his car has magical powers in bad weather.  It doesn’t, and I will sue, or my estate will.

Then there are all these “football is family” ads.  Well, maybe it is, but it gets weird when you pair those with video game ads featuring Junior blasting away on the couch.  Really, this is a kid I don’t want to be related to.

But the best—or worst—is one by a Japanese carmaker about a high school football game where the ref makes a call that changes the outcome.  Wouldn’t you know it, his car breaks down after the game, and the people who stop are fans of the losing team, and the ref has to sit with some players from the losing team as well?  I think the tag line is Compassion.

Well, I hate to break the unicorn moment, but in real life that ref most likely would’ve changed out of his clothes immediately after a game because he absolutely doesn’t want to be recognized on the street.  At least, that’s what I observed in eight years of high school and college softball.  Incognito, not Grease, is the word.  Otherwise, the umps would be playing a very dangerous game of Road Rage and Road Kill, with them being on the receiving end.  But that compassion-thing is a nice thought.        

Rocky Horror Raiders Fans

Oakland Raider fans always look like they’re going on a casting call for Rocky Horror Picture Show—no costume’s too garish, too bizarre, as long as it can be done in black and silver, maybe with a skull motif worked in.  Whatever gets you through the day, I guess.

Raiders’ fans are like A’s fans in thinking—or deluding themselves—that their team is touched by their quirky displays of loyalty at the Oakland Coliseum.  Sorry, but they’re not.  If either team could get the sweetheart deal they dream of, they’d beat out of town without so much as a “Thanks, been nice to know ’ya.”  The Raiders are 9-2 after a 35-32 win over Carolina at home yesterday, good for first in the AFC West.  Oh, how the Rocky Horror faithful urged their team on, D-Fence and all that.  Do you think owner Mark Davis cared in the least?

I bet Davis would take five straight losses if it guaranteed a Raiders’ move to Las Vegas.  Any takers?      

Myth of the Irish

In so far as I follow a college football team (DePaul didn’t have one), it would be Northwestern for all the pretentious reasons.  I like the idea of wanting to compete in the Big 10 without cheating or turning standards into a joke.  Notre Dame stopped being like that a long time ago.  For as long as I can remember, Notre Dame football fans have wanted to win in the worst way.  Now, that’s exactly how they’re losing.

How Current Irish coach (though probably not for long) Brian Kelly embodies the school’s purported values is beyond me.  His team finished 4-8 with a loss to USC yesterday; two Notre Dame players roughed up a Trojan player as he lay on the ground after a play.  Shades of Rudy, there.  Earlier in the week, the NCAA stripped the football program of 21 victories from the 2012 and 2013 seasons for academic violations stemming from unauthorized help a student athletic trainer gave to several players.  As to Kelly’s responsibility for the actions of an underling, he said it’s “Zero.  None.  Absolutely none.”  Oh, and let’s not forget the arrests of six Notre Dame players stemming from off-the-field incidents this summer.

Assuming that Kelly isn’t long for the sidelines, I wonder what the school will do next.  Too bad ex-coach Ara Parseghian is 93.  He knew how to win and keep it honest, maybe because he coached at Northwestern first.

What a Difference a Year Makes

 Last time we saw Philadelphia 76ers center Jahlil Okafor, he was a 19-year old rookie tempted by nightclubs and speedometers that showed him doing 100-mph or more.  Yesterday in a loss to the Bulls, Okafor was a second-year player still trying to establish himself as a dominant force in the league.  If he can stay alive, he may do that yet.

Last year, the Bulls were a .500 team struggling with an unhappy Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah.  Rose is a star-crossed human being who’s athletic career is always going to be more unhappy than not.  Noah is a wonderful ballplayer who last year found himself on the wrong side of 30.  He knew it, the Bulls knew it and rookie coach Fred Hoiberg knew it (but not how to handle it).  Team chemistry was non-existent.

Rose and Noah are with the Knicks now, and the Bulls have turned over half their roster.  The team just finished a two-week road trip where they went 4-2 to put their season record at 10-6.  It’s early, and you don’t want to get too excited because the White Sox started their season at 23-10.  Still, it gives me hope that I can watch some basketball this winter and not have to feel like I’m going to the dentist.

Say What?

The gift of speech was wasted on Bears’ coach John Fox; he talks without saying anything.  After Sunday’s game against the Giants, reports surfaced that quarterback Jay Cutler had suffered a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder.  Rather than address the subject upfront, the Bears did what they do best (next to losing), which is nothing.  They just let Fox handle it.

This is what he told reporters Wednesday, “‘Tear’ is a kind of broad term.  It is sore.  But there’s a lot of things in the shoulder that can affect the quarterback.  Some of them can be just chronic wear-and-tear [factors], like pitchers or quarterbacks in the National Football League.  So it’s injured, but it’s not season-ending.”

Where do you even start with such garbage?  Oh, I know—‘Tear’ is a very specific term, you clown.  It’s about as specific a term as you could want.  And why are you comparing the injury to the kind that NFL quarterbacks get, unless you mean to say Cutler isn’t an NFL quarterback?

And an injury like pitchers get?  I don’t think so, and when the clown team gets around to firing your clown butt, do us all a favor by not trying to get a job as a MLB pitching coach.  I wouldn’t wish you on worst enemy, as in the Chicago Cubs.

  

Gone

Ex-Brooklyn Dodgers’ starter Ralph Branca died yesterday at the age of 90.  He was the last living member of the 1947 team Jackie Robinson integrated and the victim of Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” that ended a three-game playoff for the NL pennant in 1951 with a win by the then-New York Giants.  Branca was all of 25 at the time, the same age as Clare.

I can’t imagine my daughter—or anyone else, for that matter—having to carry around that kind of burden for the next 65 years.  I’m sure Branca would’ve been a millionaire several times over if he had a dollar for every time some clown made a “smart” remark to him, at a restaurant or on the street or at an airport or heaven knows where else.  As far as I’m concerned, there but for the grace of God go I.

Ask me my earliest memories of great baseball players, and my answer would be all Yankees—Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Moose Skowron, all of them now dead.  As for the White Sox, it would probably be Nellie Fox, gone, too.  (But not Charlie “Paw Paw” Maxwell, now 89 and counting, and whom I remember from 1962, Bob Elson telling his audience about the newest South Sider, acquired from Detroit.  There was something about “never on Sunday,” but I can’t remember what exactly.)  Neither baseball fans nor their heroes—and goats—live forever.  But they, we, pray to be remembered, our deeds recalled, any grace exhibited in the face of defeat recounted for all who come after.        

   

       

School of Hard Knocks

Eventually, all athletes become ex-athletes, women sooner than men, as there are next to no professional opportunities for them.  I would love for Clare to try out with the softball Bandits, but that’s a story for another day.  In the meantime, she needs to work.  They don’t send checks in the mail just because you got your master’s degree.

Back in early September, Clare had a phone interview for an assistant coaching job at a very important school, the kind where you either need to have a ton of money to go to or be willing to go into perpetual debt for one of their degrees; the tuition is almost double of old Trump University.  When September turned into October, she figured she didn’t get the job.  That’s when they called to bring her on campus.

What followed was a 6-1/2 hour trial by combat; Clare saw and spoke to everyone short of the university president.  Along the way, she learned that her duties wouldn’t involve just softball.  No, she’d have to run concessions at the men’s football and basketball games, too, and assist the head coach with her summer softball camp.  At lunch with several assistant coaches from various sports, Clare learned they all lived nearby in a rented house, and none of them were engaged.

Clare was told they needed to fly in a candidate from the East Coast before deciding.  This was all in the first week of November.  In the meantime, Clare was working for a Big Ten school in a non-sports’ capacity, and they were about to offer her a fulltime position, only they weren’t wild about her interviewing with someone else.  What was she to do?  Risk losing one job offer to pursue another?  Turn down a chance to coach at a big school?  What would you do?

My daughter decided on honesty as the best policy.  She told her current employers that she had interviewed for the coaching job before they had approached her with this other job.  Luckily, they didn’t get too upset.  In fact, they might even have decided to sweeten the deal with more money than originally mentioned.  Long story short, Clare now has a fulltime job with a Big Ten school, and she’s working on helping out at Elmhurst, which is where her heart lies, anyway.  As for that other big school, they never bothered to tell Clare she didn’t get the job.  She found out yesterday by looking at their website to see a picture posted of the new softball hire.

The work world—you gotta love it.      

What Goes Around

Back in August, Bears’ Head Coach John Fox referred to player injuries as “owies,” with the implication being if it wasn’t broken, then shake it off.  Well, that old-school approach ain’t workin’.  An incredibly long list of injuries now includes quarterback Jay Cutler, likely out for the season—six games remaining—with a shoulder injury the result of the inability of an injury-depleted offensive line to protect him.  If he goes down for the count, Cutler will be the third Chicago quarterback to suffer a season-ending injury.  Owie.

Fox treats the media like a bunch of idiots, but isn’t he the one feeling dumb what with linebacker Jerrell Freeman getting slapped with a four-game suspension after testing positive for PEDs.  This comes eight days after Alshon Jeffery got hit with a four-game suspension for taking…PEDs.  Jeffery blamed an anti-inflammatory; Freeman said it was a prescription medication that did him in.  The John-Fox Bears also lost two players to PED suspensions last season.  Yowie.

The Bears hired GM Ryan Pace last year.  From a distance, Pace is young enough to be mistaken for Theo Epstein of the Cubs.  Only Epstein knows how to do his job.  So far, the Bears under Pace are 8-18.  Powie.

Put Up or Shut Up

I shouldn’t pick on Derrick Rose because…because it’s too easy, but I’m going to anyway.  Rose recently told the Washington Post that he wasn’t going to sell his Chicago condo at Trump Tower.  Why, you ask?  “Because I stay out of the political world,” Rose says.  But isn’t he the same person who wore an “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirt during warmups before a Bulls’ game not too long ago?  “I bought my place before he [then-developer Donald Trump] became a candidate.  And I felt [feel] nobody could [can] tell me to sell my property.”  Indeed.

I wonder if Rose knows about Dodgers’ first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who refused to stay at the hotel part of the development when Los Angeles was in town to play the Cubs during the regular season (they stayed elsewhere for the playoffs).  “We’re here to play baseball, not talk politics,” Gonzalez told reporters during the NLDS, after word of his mini-protest leaked out.

Athletes make political statements by the clothes they wear, the places they stay, the real estate they hold onto.  It would seem Adrian Gonzalez understands that.            

The Few, the Proud

Sometimes, I wonder what came first with Clare, her athleticism or her character.  Or did the one influence the other?

I ask because I was watching a little college football yesterday—Northwestern in bad uniforms playing even worse—when a commercial came on for the Marines.  When recruiters descended on Morton West High School, Clare always liked the physical challenges they might throw at her.  Oh, you want me to do pushups?  How many?  What kept her from putting her name on the dotted line, I have no idea.  I think she liked her mother’s cooking too much to enlist.

Still, Clare goes about life the way an Army Ranger or Marine would—identify problem, devise solution, implement.  If unsuccessful, repeat.  Not all of Clare’s teammates in high school and college were that way, but there were enough to make me think a real link exists between athletics and the military.  Not every jock joins the military, but everyone in the armed forces seems to have been a jock early on in their lives.  I was an honors’ student all through high school and college.  Trust me, there were precious few military types in liberal arts’ classes.

What I really find interesting is that my daughter is a little left of center politically.  In the two presidential elections where she’s been eligible to vote (and liberal-arts’ Daddy insists that she does), Clare has gone Democrat.  Maybe this will change, or not.  The one constant will be that athlete’s competitiveness.  Clare believes in a level playing field for all.  And, if it is, look out for the girl with fire in her eyes.  How many, again?            

Start at the Top, Not the Bottom

 MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is going through his “woe is us, what can we do about it?” diversity dance, telling reporters baseball is really going to get serious about diversity.  Yeah, right.  And I am the walrus.

Baseball organizations take their cue from the top, aka, ownership.  If memory serves, no MLB teams have sizable, let alone controlling, minority investors outside of the Los Angeles Angels, owned by Arte Moreno.  As ownership goes, so the front office tends to go.  White on white, if you will, with a few exceptions.

How to change this?  The surest way is through minority ownership of teams.  If there’s not enough minority wealth around to purchase a team, that’s a discussion for another day.  Otherwise, nothing short of massive boycotts and demonstrations is going to change things.

In the meantime, maybe the commissioner could do something about the status of women in the game.

Life After Sports

LeBron James has had an interesting week.  A few days ago, he slammed former Bulls’ and Lakers’ coach and current Knicks’ VP Phil Jackson for referring to his friends/business partners as a “posse.”  Today, I read that James has contributed $2.5 million to underwrite an exhibit about Muhammad Ali at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.  This is not your typical jock going through the motions.

That would be Derrick Rose, who talks a lot about his son and is known for the occasional symbolic gesture.  But I have a hunch LeBron James is giving serious thought to life after basketball.  At the very least, he could be another athlete-entrepreneur like Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson.  Only, why stop there?  James regularly comments on the real-world issues and just the other week was out campaigning for Hillary Clinton.  Perhaps Ohio’s most famous native son is thinking of a career in politics himself.

The only question I have is where he would start.  It doesn’t take too much imagination to see him running for mayor of Cleveland or governor of Ohio.  I can definitely see him moving on to the Senate and, after that, maybe a certain house on Pennsylvania Avenue.  I mean, an NBA career with the Knicks didn’t stop Bill Bradley from going to the Senate and running for President.  Just saying.  

Get Out the Vote

49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick just can’t help himself.  Kaepernick told reporters that he didn’t bother to vote in last week’s presidential election.  “You know it would be hypocritical of me to vote,” he tried to explain.  “I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression.  I’m not going to show support for that system.  And to me, the oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.”  But apparently he will allow Kaepernick to play himself out of a job.  At 1-8, the 49ers have the second worst record in the NFL, behind the hapless Browns (0-10).

I haven’t walked in Kaepernick’s shoes, so I can’t say for sure he’s wrong.  Then again, he’s never walked in mine.  I remember being a child, off to the polls with my mother.  She’d disappear behind the curtain of a voting machine, make her choices, then reappear with the pull of that big lever.  My Polish immigrant grandmother never tired of telling me, “Douglas, I couldn’t vote for President Roosevelt, but—” and I interrupt here for effect “—I did vote for President Taft.”  Later, she also voted for that other president named Roosevelt, a man she considered a saint for making possible Social Security and the two-week vacation.

In case you’re wondering, Colin, I’m a size 10.

Consequences

Nothing comes free in sports, the amateur level included.  Play a sport long enough, and it will stay with you the rest of your life.  At least Clare has memories—and school records—to ease the pain.

Hit, run, catch—where’s the risk in that?  Provided the hitter doesn’t get hit with a pitch, the runner doesn’t get his/her spikes caught on a base, and the fielder doesn’t run into anything or anybody, then probably not much.  Maybe.  What got Clare a torn labrum, I think, was the throwing, as early as eighth grade.

The travel team then wanted her to play shortstop; it was the only time I ever saw my daughter struggle in athletics.  Ask her to hit with two strikes and two outs or leave her feet to catch a ball, no problem.  But in the spring and summer of 2006, she just couldn’t field a ball cleanly at short.  Clare acted as more of a goalie, stopping the shot and then picking it up.  To say that she then fired the throw to first is no cliché.  I felt sorry for the first baseman.  The damage was probably done before she played her first high school varsity game.

That means my daughter played with a significant injury for eight years.  She was a starter each and every spring, missing a total of five games in that time to sickness and family obligation.  So, don’t tell me women athletes can’t handle pain.  Our soon-to-be 25-year old now has to make a decision.  The surgeon says that as things stand, she can have an out-patient procedure, but if she dislocates her shoulder, they’ll have to go in with the big knives and forks.  “You decide.”

And so we remember the time in senior year high school when Clare hit a ball so hard she tore the stitching on the cover (it was a homerun) and sophomore year college when she a ball in the conference playoffs that nearly sailed into eternity.  At the time, pain was an afterthought.   

Bear(s) Down

I was driving along Ogden Road yesterday when I passed a restaurant sign that said, “Mr. Ricketts, can you please buy the Bears?”  Could it be that Bears’ fans are finally tired of the McCaskey clan?  It would seem so.

The team record “stands” at a pathetic 2-7.  Right after the latest loss, 36-10 to the mediocre Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I happened to catch a radio show featuring two ex-Bears, Dan Hampton and Ed O’Bradovich.  As the saying goes, they went ballistic over the team’s “performance,” O”Bradovich in particular.  The former defensive end is 76-years old and, from the sound of things, ready to stroke out over his beloved Bears. 

The center of everyone’s ire is quarterback Jay Cutler, who combined two interceptions (one a pick-six) and two fumbles (one leading to a safety) to stink up the field.  I can safely say I have never witnessed a worse performance by a Bears’ quarterback in the past fifty years.  (Anyone remember Larry Rakestraw?)  But Coach John Fox says Cutler will start next Sunday against the Giants.  That is not what the fan base wants to hear.  However, since GM Ryan Pace never bothered to get a good understudy, Cutler it basically has to be.

The McCaskey family has been the recipient of undeserved fan loyalty for decades; they’re also incredibly lucky.  If the Bears were at home Sunday, you’d see a lot of unhappy campers expressing themselves to the cameras.  As luck would have it, they’re on the road in New York and won’t play at home until November 27.  By then, after another likely pounding, not that many fans are likely to show up at Soldier Field.   

The McCaskeys would rather be lucky than smart any day.

Too Much Time

Stop the presses!  NFL ratings are down double digits!  Commissioner Goodell says games take too long!  The average game-time last season was 3 hours and 8 minutes.  And they say baseball is long.

There are all sorts of theories for why ratings are off—the Cubs’ playoff run, the presidential election, crackdown on celebrations, National Anthem protests.  Take your pick.  All I know is that nothing changes in professional sports until owners take a hit in the pocketbook; that they feel.  But will the commissioner and his posse actually rein in on the practice of running commercials before and after kickoffs (one of my pet peeves)?  Stay tuned.  No, check that.  Stay tuned to anything but a Sunday afternoon football game, at least until things change.

One More Time

Because I’m expected to do this kind of thing, I went to the last football game of the season for the Elmhurst Bluejays.  A win against unbeaten North Central College, and they’d have a very good season at 6-4.  Instead, Elmhurst ended up with a nice season at .500.  Oh, well.

It was football weather for the first time all season, cool, crisp and clear.  How nice of North Central to locate the visitors’ bleachers so that we had our backs to the wind the whole game.  Looking at the school’s sports’ complex, you could almost believe in that kind of attention to detail.  If you want to play NCAA D-III sports, it doesn’t get any better than North Central, with the campus smack dab in the middle of Naperville, where the smart and well-to-do go to live once they’ve gotten the city out of their system.

While Elmhurst has a larger enrollment, North Central has more land, 65 acres to 48; every bit of that difference must be devoted to sports.  The facilities form a chain: softball-track-baseball-football.  I was particularly impressed with the baseball field, where it’s 403 feet to dead center.  Nothing Mickey Mouse about that.  At Elmhurst, softball and baseball are off-campus, which means “out of sight, out of mind” for most of the student body.  If you want sports to matter to your school, North Central is how you do it.

Which makes beating North Central, a perennial power in football and softball, that much sweeter.  Wait ’til next year.

 

Win Some, Lose Some

While the country elected a president on Tuesday, voters in San Diego and Arlington decided if they wanted to help build new stadiums for two professional sports teams.  San Diego said No, Arlington Yes.

The football Chargers want out of Qualcomm Stadium, where they’ve played since 1967.  In a way, you can’t blame them.  Qualcomm, nee Jack Murphy, is one of those multi-use monstrosities that were so popular in the 1960s and ’70s.  From the air, it looks like an immense bowl with a series of little ramp/bowls encircling it.  Of course, the Chargers could build their own stadium, but where’s the fun in that if you’re a football robber baron?  The Chargers wanted the public to pick up $1.15 billion of the project’s stated—as in don’t believe what we’re stating the cost to be—cost of $1.8 billion.  The team may now try to share a stadium with the Los Angeles Rams.  The last time two teams tried to share a stadium in LA, the Angels ended up very unhappy tenants in Dodger Stadium, so we’ll see.

Meanwhile, in Texas voters said Yes, kick us in the shins to the tune of $500 million.  How can those poor Rangers play baseball in a 22-year old dump?  Why, let’s pay half of the tab for a new park with retractable roof.  The team presently plays in Globe Life Park, with a seating capacity just north of 48,000.  The team promised their new park will hold at least 38,000, with the assumption being actual capacity falling somewhere between 42,000 to 44,000.

This is how a typical sports team treats its fans—demanding public money for a private enterprise while reducing the seats available to watch the entertainment at hand.  Texans are big believers in the law of supply and demand.  I hope Rangers’ fans realize they’ll be in for a lesson on that in the near future.

Balk

As ever, Fox used the World Series to plug its shows, including Pitch, about the first female player in the majors.  Judging by the promo, I’d have to say Pitch is more about fantasy than future fact.

It showed the main character throwing; so far so good.  But she only threw one pitch per ball.  The catcher didn’t throw the ball back.  Instead, the pitcher picked a new ball out of a basket for her next pitch.  Spoiler Alert:  Pitchers are as crazy as hitters, only with balls instead of bats.  It’s all about “feel,” how a ball relates to the fingers.  If it feels right, the pitcher will throw his/her pitch with confidence.  If it feels “wrong,” pitchers will ask for another ball.  It has to be the right one, just like a bat for a hitter.

Pitchers ask the home-plate umpire for a new ball all the time.  That’s during a game.  During warmups or side sessions, pitchers tend to treat whatever ball’s at hand as the right one.  They’re not facing a batter, so there isn’t that same worry about giving up a base hit.  What pitchers want to do is get into a groove—throw pitch, get the throw back, throw pitch….      

Apparently, no one on Pitch has spent a lot of time around pitchers.  Unless technical advisor and ex-MLB reliever Gregg Olson knows something I don’t.     

Out of Season

So far, I’ve shot a rifle—or was it a shotgun?—once in my life.  I may even have hit my target, a bird that lost some feathers if nothing else.  That one time was enough, though the thought of squirrel hunting is tempting.  Trust me, if they keep digging up my lawn in search of treasure, I may give in.

But I won’t go after ducks, pheasant or deer.  They’re not part of my palate, so what’s the point?  Ditto the recent move by the state of Illinois to allow hunting of lynx, or bob cats.  Really?  What a mighty trophy that.  As far as I can tell, Clare has yet to discharge a firearm. 

Fish I do eat, and have gone after, but no more.  Rowboats and piers stopped being my thing long ago.  My sister Barb always liked the “sport” more than me, and she tried to interest Clare in it.  But the only way that was going to happen was if my daughter could hit them with a baseball bat or chase them around the bases. 

What’s my point?  Just that we should eat what we kill and not appoint ourselves masters of the cull for the sake of the environment.  Madness that way lurks. 

Bad Company

I don’t go to Resurrection Cemetery to visit relatives; they’re not there.  Instead, I go out of the belief their graves serve as satellite dishes that make for better communication.  It’s also a good way to pick up brownie points when it comes time to check in with St. Peter:  Hey, I passed up biking that one nice day in November to go to the cemetery instead.  But, for the sake of today’s post, let’s say Resurrection is just like the cemetery in Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology, with the departed present, accounted for and talking. 

I went yesterday to do my seasonal cleaning of headstones.  I was surprised and, yes, a little disappointed, to see a sprinkling of Cub flags and pennants; Resurrection is very much South Side, which should mean White Sox territory, but you can’t account for taste with some people present and past.  I’m just happy none of that stuff was around my father’s grave.  Things could’ve gotten heated among residents after closing time.  Ed Bukowski didn’t suffer fools or….

A Time and a Place

By my way of thinking, it’s now time for football, with baseball out of the way and the clocks pushed back an hour.  Never was a game made to be played in the lengthening shadows of autumn as our new national pastime.

 

And for me, football is about memory.  One in particular involves my sister Barbara.  She took me fossil hunting one Sunday in November, 1968, I think.  We went to Coal City, about fifty miles southwest of Chicago, where they did a lot of open pit mining.  I climbed up the waste piles, Barb wore heels; it was the ’60s and a Sunday, and we were raised a certain way.  On the way back to her apartment, we listened to the Bears.  Gayle Sayers did something impossible, again, like circle left 30 yards then right for another 30 then straight ahead for a five-yard gain.  After the game, it was time for Ed Sullivan and a ride back home.

 

I remember Dick Butkus the same way (but for some reason have next to no memory of Mike Ditka), a player doing the impossible in near anonymity; somewhere is film of Butkus using his pinkie finger while flat on the ground to sack a quarterback.  Butkus and Sayers, they ought to be charter members of the Hemingway club for long-ago twentysomethings showing grace under duress.  I’ve had the good fortune to meet both gentlemen in the years since.  They both carry themselves as warriors, I’d almost say lions in winter, but that would be mixing football with Shakespeare with the Detroit Lions.  “Bears in winter” doesn’t sound as good.  Warriors, it is.

 

Now, NFL football gives me something to ride my exercyle to after church.  I mostly have the sound off because the announcers irritate me in a Hawk Harrelson kind of way.  I watch the Bears if only for the chance to see old film clips of Sayers and Butkus at work, on a muddy field, the shadows gathering, the score in the other team’s favor, their desire to win unshaken.

But Ed Sullivan will not be on after dinner. 

Safe Harborf

An estimated five million people attended the Cubs’ victory rally and parade downtown Friday.  There weren’t quite that many on Saturday for Elmhurst College’s last home football game of the season, a Bluejays’ 56-14 win over the Big Blue of Millikin University.  I wonder how many of the senior parents were even thinking of Friday, Saturday being Senior Day and all.

 

What an incredible day it was for families about to end their commitment to football that started in Pop Warner and went through high school to college; those who parent also serve the great god Gridiron.  And this is how I would want to remember my son’s last game—blue skies, temperature in the 60s, hardly a breeze even, and a score to make every senior proud.  For the soon-to-be-gone senior starters, this is how you want to walk away from your home field.  The only thing better to cap a career would be an upset next week of conference leading North Central, owners of a 9-0 record and way too much attitude.

 

There was more than a little Cubs’ apparel in the stands, but what can you do?  People are entitled to express themselves; darn that First Amendment.  But I kept quiet, and so did Clare; you just have to take your lumps sometimes.  Why ruin a perfect afternoon by being small?      

This and That

These are the worst of times for White Sox fans.  Clare is at work right now, the Cubs’ victory parade set to pass two blocks from where she’s sitting at her laptop, texting commentary to Michele, e.g., there’s Kerry Wood on the losers’ bus.  Me, I’m just avoiding the TV and thinking about something John Smoltz said Wednesday night, that this is the first-ever World Series where a starting pitcher didn’t go more than six innings.

 

That’s another way of saying both teams carried extra pitchers, 11 for the Cubs and 12 for the Indians.  I wonder how the Cleveland front office feels about that decision right now.  With two outs in the bottom of the 10^th inning and the tying run at first, Terry Francona had no one left to bat for Michael Martinez to the plate, a 34-year old with a .197 career batting average over six seasons; Martinez was in the game as a defensive replacement.  How do you say, Groundout to third?  The Cubs opted for an extra hitter, that being Kyle Schwarber.  Oh, Schwarber singled to lead off the 10^th .  Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t have put him on the playoff roster, but I’m also on record as saying teams should cap their pitching staff at 10.  That’s two extra bats.

 

How do you say Dusty Rhodes and George Shuba? 

Say Something

Well, it happened.  In their 108^th year of trying, the Cubs finally won a World Series, beating the Indians 8-7 in 10 innings of game seven.  We all watched, and we all hoped for a different outcome.  I didn’t raise my daughter to jump on North Side bandwagons.

 

As a White Sox fan, I look for silver linings and may have found one in the person of Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon.  He pulled starter Kyle Hendricks in the fifth, with Hendricks in command of his pitches and ahead by four runs.  Maddon’s first choice out of the pen was Jon Lester, who proceeded to give up a two-run wild pitch.  Still, the Cubs were ahead 6-3 in the eighth when Maddon switched to Aroldis Chapman, pitching in his third straight game, and all for more than an inning.  Chapman yielded three two-out runs, one of them belonging to Lester.  That tied the score at six and invoked one of my baseball rules: any team that scores three or more runs to tie the score in the seventh inning or later but doesn’t take the lead in that inning is likely to lose.  And the Indians did.

 

They put another baserunner on in the eighth, and he had second base stolen, with the throw going into centerfield no less, but the batter was swing happy and chased a ball out of the zone for strike three.  After that, God signaled his displeasure with the city of Cleveland; it might have something to do with Chief Wahoo.  Anyway, the Indians went down in order in the ninth, and then it rained.

 

That mattered because the delay took Indians’ reliever Brian Shaw out of his rhythm.  The Cubs scored two in the tenth and held on as the Indians answered with but one.  There’s always next year.  At least Maddon will be back in the dugout.

And Now For Something Completely Different

With Chicago deep in Cubs’ hysteria, a little bit of football news got buried inside the Tribune yesterday.  No, it had nothing to do the Bears’ upset win over the Vikings Monday night.  This was about dollars and cents, the lifeblood of the NFL.

 

It seems that the city waived $937,500 in rent for NFL use of downtown parks.  Oh, we couldn’t have Commissioner Goodell pony up all that money; it might bankrupt his league.  Chicago should be grateful the league allowed it to get all that positive publicity for having the draft two straight years.  I bet nobody thinks of the city as the murder capital of the U.S anymore.  No, they still talk about what a great draft Chicago puts on.

 

The good news is that the NFL is proof positive of reincarnation.  P.T. Barnum is back from the dead, and he’s playing fans for the suckers they are.  Consider the Raiders as they try to exit Oakland, yet again.  Las Vegas is tripping all over itself to help fund a stadium for the team.   The state of Nevada just approved public financing to the tune of $750 million.  There’s your working definition of a sucker.  If Oakland tries to see that giveaway and raise it a couple hundred million, there’s sucker #2.

 

And retired NFL players are going to get how much to deal with the effects of dementia?  I forget.

 

Reconnoiter

With November 1^st temperatures in the mid-70s plus the Cubs in the World Series plus the presidential election next week, these could be end times, give or take a meteor.  What better time for a bike ride along the lakefront?

I did twenty miles each way, going far into enemy territory north of Madison Street.  But, despite the May-like temperatures and blue skis, traffic along the trail was pretty light.  I spotted a sprinkling of Cub hats and a few t-shirts, and that was it.  Oh, and one White Sox t, which didn’t happen to belong to me.  Maybe everybody took the day off to get ready for game six in Cleveland.  In that case, thank you.  Or there may have been a mass rally somewhere, in which case I’m glad I missed it.  You wouldn’t want my bad karma mixing in with all that hope, or desperation.