Dumb, Dumber...

The Trib sports’ section was really full of gems today.  As ever, there’s space devoted to the Bears, the last day of March being the opening of the football season (assuming it ever ends).  And let’s not forget Jimmy Rollins, released by the White Sox last June and trying to make it with the Giants this spring at the age of 38.  But that .119 batting average only led the Giants to say, Bye-bye.

Then again, it’s not as though a high batting average will earn anyone a job.  Just ask ByungHo Park of the Twins, who hit .353 while leading Minnesota this spring with six homeruns and 13 rbi’s.  But that’s not good enough for a team with the worst record in baseball last year at 59-103.  No, rather than go with a hot hitter to start the season, when there are plenty of off-days, the Twins opted to carry 13 pitchers.

That’s 13 pitchers for a team with a 5.08 ERA in 2016, just .01 of a run off from tying the D-backs for worst in baseball.  In other words, the Twins want more bad, which is just what they can expect to get.

Thank heavens they’re in the same division as the Sox.

Apples and Oranges (and a Slice of Lime)

 The Georgia shoebox—or envelope or drawer or whatever it was—that held those old photos of Comiskey Park is now officially empty.  The last two came in the mail yesterday, again from 1946 or thereabouts, this time showing two New York Yankees, identified on the back as “Hendricks” and “Dutch Schultz,” only nobody by those names ever wore Yankee pinstripes.

With a little digging, I was able to match near-names and faces to Tommy Henrich and Johnny Schulte, a left-handed power-hitting outfielder and coach/scout, respectively. Henrich managed four homeruns in four World Series while Schulte had a hand in scouting Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford.  What I really like about the Schulte photo, though, is that wall clock attached to the centerfield wall.  This time, it really stands out.

Did I say ten feet tall?  It’s higher than the leftfield wall and has to be closer to seventeen feet.  And now I can make out the words on top of the clock:  Gruen Watch Time.  Cool.  By the way, Schulte is posed in such a way so that the clock looks to be next to his right elbow and the American flag atop the centerfield flagpole is on a stick attached to his baseball cap.  In contrast, Henrich merely looks like another in a long line of New Yorkers ready to break South Side hearts with their bat or glove.

So, here I am all excited by what used to be my ballpark, now gone 26 years and counting.  And the Sox?  Why, they’re busy unveiling Craft Kave, where fans can go sample 75 craft beers.  The team has also signed on with not one, not two, not three, but four, Yes! Four regional breweries.  According to a team press release, the companies will each receive “prominent in-park exposure through a branded interactive kiosk.”  Wow.

This should bring at least three million fans to the park, maybe four.  Who needs winning baseball?     

Once Upon a March so Cold/Hot

Clare told me the other day that she’d been dreaming about softball for the past two weeks.  Given how this was such a major part of her life, I’m surprised it was only two.

My waking memories of softball are more hot and cold, literally and in reverse order.  Our wedding anniversary coincided with the start of softball, the third week of March.  All through high school, we basically froze; really, flesh will adhere to aluminum bleachers no matter the clothing, or so it seemed.  Sophomore year high school, I looked like the Michelin Man, I was bundled up so much.  But you root for the ones you love, whatever the temperature.

Our reward was college softball, which kicked off every year in Florida.  The first year we went, neither Michele nor I could get over that it was already 80 degrees around our anniversary.  The locals—Clermont, outside of Orlando—thought we had to be out-of-towners because we were wearing shorts; they thought it was a little “cool” out still.  Ordinarily, when in Rome...but not this time.  Better yet, we were able to sightsee around games, with trips to Daytona Beach and St. Augustine and a couple of spring training contests.

But now all we can do is dream or remember, or look at pictures uploaded.  My father always said it was hard getting old.  He was right. 

 

There Will Be No Raiders There

Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis always struck me as scum, and his son Mark is proudly carrying on that tradition by getting NFL owners to sign off on his proposed move to Las Vegas.  How quaint of the Dolphins’ Stephen Ross, the only to vote against the franchise shift, to say that “we as owners and as a league owe it to the fans to do everything we can to stay in the communities that have supported us until all options have been exhausted,” or in the case of the Raiders, Las Vegas comes up with $750 million in public funding for the $1.7 billion project.  Let it be noted for the record Ross spent $500 million of his own money to update what was once Joe Robbie (now Hard Rock) Stadium.

But paying for stuff with your own money isn’t how most professional sports’ team owners do things nowadays, Ross and the Ricketts’ family excepted; the 30-year mortgage is for suckers, and season’s-ticket holders.  If the Raiders' move is the injury, here’s the insult—they may not leave Oakland for two to three years, until their desert palace is ready.  Boy, won’t players feel the love from Oakland fans.  I bet Mark Davis will be a real man about it, though, and walk the sidelines without fear of what may come his way.

Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be fans of a pro sports’ team.  It’ll only break their hearts.    

Gibber-jabber

I never let Clare make excuses for herself or talk gibber, as I call it.  She always hustled, so I never once called her on that in high school or college.  Hitting, we disagreed on and argued over.  On my end, it was all about learning from mistakes and finding the best approach that day against that pitcher.  My daughter thought she was doing that and told me when I was wrong to think otherwise.  You could call it a frank exchange of positions that went on for some time.

Thank God I had the child I did because if I were the father of James Shields or Todd Frazier, they might not have made it to the majors.  Shields started for the White Sox yesterday and escaped with three runs in five innings on eight hits and three walks.  This is how he put it to the Tribune:  “They [Giants’ hitters] battled me out there.  They had a bunch of foul-offs today, and the second inning was my bad inning [where he allowed all three runs].  I was up in the zone a little bit, and they were taking advantage of it.”  The Sun-Times story had Shields also saying, “But overall, I felt good, and I’m ready to move on.”  Not so fast, son.

If the other team has a lot of “foul-offs,” as you put it, that means your fastball was very hittable and your breaking stuff wasn’t doing anything special.  A pitcher should never talk about “my bad inning” because that makes it sound he’s in the habit of giving himself a mulligan every appearance.  And don’t be in a rush to move on unless you’ve learned something first.

As for Frazier, he’s hitting .161 without any homers or rbi’s in a spring where he’s had to battle finger and oblique injuries.  But not to worry, he tells the Trib.  “Everything is good, where I want to be.  I’m working on some stuff, so the numbers might not all be there, but the way I’m approaching spring training is to work and see what I can do going to the opposite field.”

You see, Frazier wants to improve on his .225 average from last year, but only so much.  “I’m a .250 hitter, so I’d like to be around there.  Let’s be realistic.  I’m not going to hit .315 or .320, even though I’d like to.  That means I’ll probably hit 15 home runs [vs. the 40 he hit in 2016], if that’s the case.  You have to be realistic with yourself.  Be who you are.”  And who exactly is that, young man?

Any child of mine was encouraged to demand the most of herself, to hit .300, then more [.425 one year in high school, .309 one season in college], six homeruns, then more [10 one year in high school, seven one year in college].  The idea isn’t to hit 40 homers or .315, but to do both.  Didn’t Frazier grow up wanting to be like Mike...Schmidt?  If not, why not?  Being “realistic” should never be an excuse for expecting less of yourself, as my daughter could tell you.   

A Little Mystery

Well, I can’t help myself.  I bought another two batches of snapshots taken at Comiskey Park, six in all and all apparently from 1946.  They come from an antique store in Georgia, so I see this as a form of rescue and repatriation.

Two of the photos have comments written on the back.  Tigers’ outfielder Dick Wakefield is described as “The very nicest of all players.  Posed for me on request.”  Added beneath that is “Detroit paid plenty for him but he ‘copped out.’”  How quickly an opinion changes.  Wakefield batted .293 in a nine-year career, mostly with the Tigers.

Then we have the snapshot of Luke Appling, Old Aches and Pains.  On the back it says, “I can’t believe this is Luke Appling, who was with the Cardinals in St. Louis when they won their first pennant.  Dizzy Dean, Paul [Dean], Appling, [Leo] Durocher and many others were with Card[s] then.  It was in the ’30ies I believe.”

Well, yes and no.  The Dean brothers and Leo the Lip did in fact play for those Gashouse Gang St. Louis teams of the 1930s, but not Appling; he spent his entire career, 1930-1950, on the South Side.  Either Luke was toying with the person who wrote that, or somebody’s memory failed.  I checked the St. Louis rosters from 1932-38, and no one has a name that even comes close to Appling.  A mystery in black and white, this is.  

I Second that Emotion

Well, the U.S. bought home the cup/trophy/ribbon/participation certificate by winning the World Baseball Classic with a 8-0 thumping of Puerto Rico earlier this week.  The Americans also made a statement by not being demonstrative, at least when compared to other teams and fans.

Puerto Rico, Cuba, Korea, Italy, Israel, Venezuela, Mexico, Japan—everybody seemed to get into the “act” but the U.S.  This whole question of showing emotion goes back to Jose Batista’s bat flips and the routines of a number of closers on the mound after they’ve finished a game.  The more the merrier in some cultures, but…

“It didn’t sit well,” Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen told the NYT of all the victory preparations—caps, t-shirts, parade—the other side was making, this before the game had been played.  “I always learned in this game: Stay humble, be humble, or this game will humble you,” McCutchen said.  “I learned it over my career.  Hey, don’t say anything; just go out and play the game.  It will speak for you.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Here’s hoping McCutchen wins Comeback Player of the Year in the NL.

But for a Bounce

In baseball, there are genius front-office executives and geniuses who catch lightning in a bottle and then lose it when they switch teams.  In other words, Theo Epstein—I’m absolutely serious—and the flash in the pans.  Think Syd Thrift, Larry Himes and the just-departed Dallas Green.

Green came to the Cubs in 1981 as team president and general manager.  He huffed, and he puffed, and he blew the old P.K. Wrigley ways down and had the North Siders challenging for a pennant within three years.  But for a ball that went through the legs of first baseman Leon Durham against the Padres, the Cubs would have taken on the Tigers in the 1984 World Series.  And wouldn’t things have turned out differently for Dallas Green and Cub Nation?

As it was, Green left in 1987, but not before he forced the Chicago City Council to accept night baseball at Wrigley Field.  Yes, it was a quirky tradition that set off the Cubs from the rest of major-league baseball, and it minted generations’ of fans who, as youngsters, came home from school and caught the end of the ballgame on WGN TV; those kids grew up to become the foundation of the team fan base in the 1980s and ’90s.  That said, the only reason Wrigley Field didn’t have lights is because World War II got in the way.

Wrigley bought the equipment with the intentions of letting there be light at Clark and Addison; then came Pearl Harbor, and the equipment was donated to the war effort.  So, the grand “tradition” was nothing more than an accident, or conspiracy, if you want to link FDR to both Pearl Harbor and a lightless Wrigley Field.  The brusque Dallas Green couldn’t have cared less about history.  He huffed, and he puffed, and he got his way, only to be let go for Jim Frey, whom Green had hired to manage the team in 1984.  The first night game took place in August of 1988.

Good karma, bad karma, I don’t know.  But at least Cub fans got to keep their ballpark.  I would’ve put up with Green’s blustering if he could’ve saved Comiskey Park.   

First the Talk, Now the Walk

 I saw in the paper last week that President Trump bragged no NFL team will sign free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick for fear of being on the short end of a Trump tweet.  Kaepernick responded, in a way, this week by pledging $50,000 to Meals on Wheels, a not-for-profit program that delivers meals to the homebound.  The proposed Trump budget threatens to cut off federal funding to the group.

And much exactly did the president give to charity last year?  Oh, that’s right.  His tax returns are being “audited.”

Speaking Ill

You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but the way sportswriters are carrying on about former Bulls’ general manager Jerry Krause, who died yesterday at the age of 77, I’ll make an exception.  Krause was a talented executive given to paranoia and megalomania.  There, I said what most of the eulogists know to be true.

From what I read today, Krause made those six Bulls’ NBA championships possible.  Oh, and Michael Jordan.  Take Jordan out of the equation, and what are you left with?  How about not winning a championship those 1-1/2 years Jordan was “retired” and trying to play baseball?

Michael Jordan was a basketball god, perhaps the god, and I say this as someone who rooted against the Bulls with every last fiber in his body.  (Why?  Comiskey Park.)  Jerry Reinsdorf inherited Jordan when he bought the Bulls, which is like inheriting a young Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  Give me either of those as a foundation, and let’s see what I could do, or anybody else.

Yes, hiring Phil Jackson as coach and filling in the roster (Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, John Paxson, Bill Cartwright, Dennis Rodman, Steve Kerr) were astute moves, maybe smart enough to earn Krause admission to the basketball HOF.  But don’t forget that Krause and Reinsdorf thought so much of their respective abilities they allowed Jordan and Jackson to leave after championship #6 (pushed/jumped, potato/potahto).

Krause firmly believed that organizations, not the players on the court alone, won championships.  Fair enough.  So, what was the post-Jordan era like when Krause got to implement his philosophy?  The Bulls went 45-169 the first three years and 96-282 before Krause left.  Lots of high draft picks, though.

Krause is also being credited by some with having a hand in the White Sox 2005 World Series win.  Why?  Because as a scout for the Sox back in the 1980s, he recommended they acquire Ozzie Guillen, and Guillen the Sox player in time became Guillen the Sox manager.  But did Krause ever recommend any bad trades, did he fall in love with any Joe Charboneaus?  The eulogists don’t say.

And let’s get back to Guillen.  The Sox traded LaMarr Hoyt for him.  Hoyt had won 74 games with the Sox in five years, which in itself was impressive considering he was a minor part of the Bucky Dent-Oscar Gamble deal with the Yankees.  Roland Hemond was the Sox general manager who did that, just as he was the GM who signed off on the Hoyt-Guillen deal.

Of course, I'm just speaking ill here.  

Once Immortal

I grew up watching Gayle Sayers and Dick Butkus; the one tried to escape what the other sought to mete out.  Sayers at his prime vs. Butkus at his prime—who’d be considered the prey in an open field?

Sayers played five full seasons, 1965-69, and parts of two others.  In his first four, he basically couldn’t be tackled; pursuit was futile.  Either desperation bred extraordinary grace, or grace was Gayle Sayers by any other name.  Pro football should kneel before as gifted an athlete as this.

And the NFL should pay every last cent the soon-to-be 74-year old will require for care now that his diagnosis of dementia has gone public.  No, on second thought, the Bears should pay it.  Without Sayers and Butkus, there isn’t that much of a legacy for this “storied” franchise to draw on.  Let’s see how the McCaskeys respond to this crisis in their “family.”

I try not to see the past in sepia tones, but that’s impossible for me with Sayers.  He filled my Sunday afternoons with demonstrations of godlike talent.  Mercury isn’t supposed to get dementia because he’s too fast to be caught, but time and the occasional tackle conspired against the Kansas Comet.  Life should not be this unfair.

I happened onto Sayers once at a mall, where he was doing a book signing.  How to say this?  He didn’t look like an ex-football player.  At six feet tall and not even 200 pounds, he was hardly immense, but more like an old golfer or baseball player who’d stayed in shape; that so much came from someone so relatively compact still amazes me.  There was also an intense expression on his face, which led me to think he didn’t suffer fools gladly.  Since foolishness can befall me from time to time, I thought it best to keep my distance.

That was a mistake, but what’s happened to Gayle Sayers is more than that.  Gods are not meant to turn mortal.

Wrong

In 2012, the Cubs shook down the city of Mesa, Arizona, by threatening to move their spring training base to Florida.  Voila.  Mesa ponied up $100 million to keep the snowbirds coming.

“The Cubs were in a position to negotiate a very lucrative deal,” the Tribune quoted Mesa mayor John Giles in a story yesterday about the deal, “and we’re not begrudging that at all.”  Wrong answer, Mr. Mayor.

The Cubs are a business worth an estimated $2.5 billion.  If anyone can afford to pay for their own training facilities, these guys can.  Pro sports team have no right to the public dime, not when money can go for public services, or nothing at all; most people I know have an idea what to do with money not going to taxes.  Come summertime, the Cubs’ complex is short on people as temperatures hit 100 degrees.  Gosh, I wonder who pays to water the grass come June, July and August.

Get the Picture

Well, it’s official—I’m now an admitted fossil, dinosaur, old man.  Why?  Because every day I look forward to my “Comiskey Park photos” search on eBay.  You never know what will pop up.

This week, I bought two snapshots, both showing Comiskey in 1947.  The park has to be at its 46,000-plus capacity, with fans crowded on a ramp that ran down from the upper deck in left field to the bleachers—also filled—in center.  It’s Opening Day, or the Yankees are in town.

You want quirks, or personality, in a ballpark?  Study the photo, my friends, study the photo.  It was probably taken from on top of the visitors’ dugout on the first-base side.  Front and center is an Andy Frain usher in full uniform—hat, epaulets on the jacket, double-striped pants.  As a kid, you didn’t dare cross an Andy Frain usher.  As a teenager, you had the chance to become an Andy Frain usher.  The company still exists, but it stopped ushering White Sox games long ago.

The picture also shows Comiskey in all its pitchers’ glory, up to and including the center-field wall 440 feet from the plate.  On the far left side of the wall is a clock that looks to be a good ten feet in diameter—and it’s in play.  Ditto the horns of the PA system at the top center of the wall and the flagpole in front of that, on the warning track.  You played center field at Comiskey Park at your own risk in those days.

The second photo is an exterior shot showing the crowd leaving the ballpark.  Inside or out, those sublime arches of Comiskey show clearly.  What a waste, or so says a dinosaur.

Here a Dot, There a Dot

 March Madness, the World Baseball Classic, the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships: connect the dots, and you’re left with a not-so-pretty picture.

The NCAA men’s Division-I basketball tournament has as much to do with college as root canal.  The WBC exists because major-league baseball tolerates it in a head-scratching sort of way.  And USA Hockey is all bash-brother, no Gretzky in intent.  The one thing they have in common is growing the brand, as the kids in marketing say these days.  Love of sports be damned.

D-I basketball and football basically exist as the minor leagues for the NBA and NFL, which is fine to a point.  Just don’t pretend it’s college in the same way most people experience it.  Northwestern along with the Ivy League, Stanford and a few other D-I schools stand out as exceptions to that ever-so-depressing rule.  The WBC?  ’Nough said.

Which leaves the U.S. women’s national hockey team, boycotting the upcoming world championships to protest the lack of financial support from their parent organization.  In response, USA Hockey is threatening to use replacement players, or perhaps you say “scabs.”  Nothing signals contempt in sports so much as when the people in power decide to replace players because of a labor dispute.  God bless Peter Angelos, owner of the Orioles in 1994, for refusing to go along with the baseball owners’ plan to start the season with replacement/scabs, a move that would have brought Cal Ripken’s consecutive-game streak to a premature end.  Apparently, none of the other owners or Commissioner Bud Selig had considered the consequences of instituting pretend baseball.

People love sports because it long ago became part of our collective DNA.  I just wish it didn’t feel like an inherited disease so much of the time.

 

Dumb Idea

Dodgers’ first baseman Adrian Gonzalez told the Los Angeles Times, “It’s good to be out of that [World Baseball Classic] Tournament.  They’re trying to be the World Cup.  But they’re not even the Little League World Series.”

Gonzalez was upset because Team Mexico, which he played for, was eliminated from competition via a tiebreaker.  Think sabermetrics’ formula tiebreaker, as in Mexico came up 1/100^th of a run short.  I’m supposed to get all excited about a tournament with that kind of rule?  Sorry, ain’t gonna happen.

Ever since they started playing the game of baseball with an American and a National League, tie games have been decided by extra innings and a tie in the final standings by a playoff game/series.  But the WBC is a creation without rhyme or reason or enough time—or the pitchers needed to do things right—to settle ties with more games.  In that case, just toss a damn’ coin.

That, or make the tiebreaker formula an official part of the regular season.  I'd love to see how that goes over.

And Then There Were None

I sucked it up yesterday morning, drove to the nearest Barnes and Noble bookstore and made my way to the magazine rack.  It wasn’t so much a matter of scanning the titles as running the gauntlet of Cub-this and Cub-that, Cub-blah-blah-blah.  Naturally, the Lindy’s Baseball Preview I wanted featured the Cubs’ Kris Bryant on the cover.  I bought it anyhow.  So what if they haven’t picked the White Sox right two years running (first in the Central Division, 2015, and third last year)?  What’s baseball without prognostications, including Lindy’s pegging the White Sox for fourth, just ahead of the Twins? 

For that matter, what’s my season going to be without Who’s Who in Baseball?  It was nowhere to be seen, so I asked at customer service; you would’ve thought I wanted the Sanskrit Review from the look on the person’s face.  Back home, I checked at amazon.com; again, no luck.  Then, I did a few searches and found the magazine went out of business shortly after printing the 2016 issue, which constituted 100 years.

I didn’t even like Who’s Who that much; it was merely a substitute for the Baseball Register.  Now, there was an almanac chock full of tidbits; Who’s Who was two-thirds the size, if that, with less info and fewer players.  According to the story I read, the likes of baseballreference.com was the culprit.  Apparently, who wants hardcopy when a screen will do?

Never mind the screen—technically, the site—has yet to come up with a scroll function and the hardcopy never needs charging, though it’s advised to keep both away from water.  All I know is I could work the Baseball Register, the Baseball Encyclopedia and Who’s Who faster than I can a stat website.  But no one asked me.

Now I know how the dinosaurs felt.

(Kind of a) Cinderella

When the New York Times does a story on your basketball program, you know you’ve arrived, Northwestern.  A first-ever NCAA bid in 78 years is a great story, but….

You’re still a relatively big school, with an undergraduate enrollment of 8,300 students vs. 6,700 for Harvard and 5,500 for Yale.  Also, you’re a D-I school that gives out athletic scholarships, so it’s not as though sports are an afterthought on campus.  In fact, a recent push by the football team to unionize suggests a professional mindset lightyears ahead of Alabama or Georgia.

Now, take my daughter’s two alma maters, Valparaiso and Elmhurst. Valpo has an undergraduate enrollment of 3,200 students and Elmhurst 2,800.  That Valpo competes as a D-I school is pretty amazing, to say the least.  You want to talk Cinderella story, the Crusaders made the Sweet Sixteen in 1998, in part thanks to a buzzer-beating three-pointer by Bryce Drew against Ole Miss in the first round.  Never was a glass slipper more fitting.

Clare’s sophomore year we thought the softball team had a good chance of making the NCAA D-III tournament.  As I recall, we had to go online to find out; there was no televised selection party or any of that.  So, excuse me if I don’t jump on the Cinderella bandwagon.  In D-III, there are no athletic scholarships, just athletes who love to play their sport.  That said, I will be rooting for Northwestern come Thursday.  They’ll be playing Vanderbilt, which just so happens to be coached by Bryce Drew.      

Instant Karma

Wow, John Lennon really knew what he was talking about—instant karma will get you if you’re not careful.  Just ask Jimmy Butler and Dwayne Wade of the Bulls.

Back in January, Butler and Wade called out their younger teammates for lack of effort.  Six weeks later, the team is worse than ever, at 31-35 with a five-game losing streak and ever-diminishing chances of making the playoffs.  On Sunday, Butler scored 5 points against the Celtics to Wade’s 8 as the Bulls missed their first 12 shots on the way to a nine-point first quarter.  That’s what you call leading by example, not.  (NOTE: Things improved enough Monday for a 115-109 win over the Hornets to snap the streak.)

After the game, reporters did what reporters do, leading Wade to sigh, “I wish upper management could be answering these questions.”  Yes, as in why they chose to sign a then 34-year old guard at the same time they said it was time for the team to go younger.  Really, curious minds want to know.

The Bulls have mostly been wandering through the wilderness since Michael Jordan left after the ’98 season.  Tim Floyd, Eddy Curry, Scott Skiles, Derrick Rose: such are the signposts to disappointment.  You’d never think that this was an organization that made the playoffs in its first season of existence, 1966-67, or that three years later they’d start on a run of four straight 50+ win seasons.  But that was a long time ago, and a different owner.

Rollercoaster

This is why I wish spring training counted:  The White Sox looked thoroughly flat in their first televised game of the spring yesterday, a split squad down 5-0 to the Rangers in the bottom of the sixth.  Then they strung together eight singles with two walks to score eight runs.

This is why I’m glad it’s only spring training: Future Sox closer Zack Burdi, who played in the same high school conference as Clare, gave up a three-run homer with two out on a 2-2 pitch in the eighth inning for a 10-8 loss.  With that thin air the Cactus League has, the ball may not have come down yet.

This is why I wish spring training counted:  The other half of the Sox played the Dodgers a few hours later.  Down 3-1 in the top of the ninth, the Sox proceeded to score 14 runs on seven hits, four Dodger errors, three walks and two hit-by-pitches on their way to a 15-5 win.

What counts regardless:  The team is showing more life this March under Rick Renteria than it has since Ozzie Guillen stopped caring, ca. 2010.

Frankenstein's Monster

There I was yesterday afternoon peddling away on my exercycle in front of the TV.  It didn’t take long for me to get tired of watching Wisconsin dismantle Northwestern in the Big Ten basketball tournament, so I turned on the MLB Network to catch the score of the White Sox Cactus League game against the Rangers.  Big mistake.  All that matters is the Baseball World Classic.  Personally, I sure wouldn’t want to waste my time watching Ryan Dempster—two months shy of his 40^th birthday and out of baseball since 2014—try to pitch for Team Canada .  But for other people, who knows.

Then it hit me.  The WBC is one part World Cup rip-off and one part March Madness impersonation.  Pool play, anyone, or will they start talking about what bracket the Netherlands is in?  What a happy coincidence, at least for MLB, that the NCAA tournament and the WBC both take place in March.  I mean, do you think Commissioner Manfred is hoping to draw viewers away from basketball in the coming weeks?

Maybe a better question is, do you think anyone outside the commissioner’s office thinks that’s even remotely possible?        

Abandon Ship!

What exactly makes a team bad?  Is it the players, the front office, the coaching staff or some combination thereof?  With the Bulls, I’d start with the coach.  Who hired Fred Hoiberg to replace Tom Thibodeau?  That’s right, the same front office that assembled this roster.

If Thibodeau expected too much from his players, Hoiberg looks satisfied with the barest of efforts.  For going onto two seasons now, I’ve watched Bulls’ players unable to fight off a screen or to set one, for that matter.  If there’s an offensive scheme, it seems to consist of four guys hanging back while Jimmy Butler tries to go five against one.  That doesn’t produce many points.

On the other side of the ledger, the Bulls now employ what I call middle-school defense, with two or three players chasing after whoever has the ball; this leads to a lot of passes to open players, who make their shot more often than not; that would explain last night’s stretch against the Rockets, when Houston went on a 33-2 run from in the second third quarters.  So, it’s hard to say for sure what kind of talent the team has because no one’s being coached.

Watch and listen to Fred Hoiberg, and he comes off as another Robin Ventura—calm deprecating and, ultimately, clueless.  You’d almost think Jerry Reinsdorf hired both of them.  Oh, wait, he did. 

 

A Keen Observation

Clare called last night to shoot the breeze, as we used to say at St. Laurence.  Fan that she is, my daughter was streaming the White Sox game at work—kids, I tell you—when she saw Tim Anderson make a nice play.  “He’s so fast.  He did it all in one motion.  I don’t want to say ‘Jeter-esque,’ but it was.”

I hope and think she’s right.  Different teams have different historical strengths.  With the Sox, it’s always been pitching and shortstop play.  Luke Appling and Luis Aparicio are in the Hall of Fame, Even the guys who didn’t make it to Cooperstown have been pretty good—Chico Carrasquel, Ron Hansen, Ozzie Guillen, Alexi Ramirez.  And that’s not to forget Bucky Dent, who remains near and dear in the hearts of all good Red Sox fans.

We traded Dent before his time.  Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen with Anderson.

A Tough Sell

Fore!  The Sun-Times reported yesterday that plans for bringing a PGA tournament-worthy golf course to the Chicago lakefront haven’t attracted a whole lot of private-sector donations.  Of course not.  Business people aren’t stupid.  They prefer to make money off the public’s dime.  Private-sector involvement depends on treating the idea like a stadium project, the more public funding the better.  Build a course for others to run, and business folk will knock down city hall’s door.

The neighboring courses in Jackson Park and the old South Shore Country Club aren’t broke, so there’s no reason to change them other than that some guy thinks it’s a cool idea.  Comiskey Park wasn’t broken, either, or the Stadium.  But new times demand new venues in professional sports.  Personally, I hope to lead a very long life, every day of which will be in protest of that need for things new and expensive paid for by the likes of me meant for the likes of the well-heeled.

If Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to get this idea off the ground, he should go to his old boss, ex-president Barack Obama, and ask for an endorsement of it, along with a pledge to do a little fundraising to make the greens just right.  Otherwise, forget it.

A Tree Falls in the Forest...

...only it goes by the name of the World Baseball Classic.  Does anyone in these United States care, other than the people who work in the commissioner’s office?  Not that I can tell.

The rest of the baseball-playing world sees the WBC one way, while in the U.S. Mets’ pitcher summed it up perfectly when he said, “Ain’t nobody makes it to the Hall of Fame and win the World Series playing in the WBC.”  Amen to that, Thor.

Of course, Commissioner Rob Manfred would rather we follow his lead on the subject because, among other reasons, the WBC is “vital to the internationalization of the game.”  No, it isn’t.  Nothing Italy or the Netherlands does the next couple of weeks is going to undo the sports’ supremacy of soccer—or cycling, for that matter—in Europe.  You know what will, Commissioner?  Opening the national pastime to women players, coaches and executives, that’s what.  The first woman hitter steps to the plate in a major-league game, and ratings will go through the roof; ditto the first woman pitcher on the mound.  But I won’t hold my breath on baseball working to make that happen.  

 

Keep Your Shirt On

Thank God I had a girl.  The first thing I see in the paper this morning—and before my first cup of coffee, mind you—is a picture on the first page of the Tribune sports’ section showing seven shirtless young men identified as Northwestern students.  Spelled out on their chests during the recent NU-Purdue basketball game Sunday were the letters F-I-N-A-L-L-Y, as in NU finally making the NCAA “big dance.”  The only thing missing was a plastic cup of beer in hand.  Without some kind of intervention, that will surely come next.

If I’ve seen it once on TV, I’ve seen it a thousand times, the shirtless clowns at a baseball or football game, a message painted on their bodies.  Especially sad are the devotees of the bare—and at Bears’ games, beer—belly at an outdoor venue in December and January.  Oh, We Are Tough.  No, you look stupid.

Civilization hangs by a thread.  The “No Hats, No Shoes, No Service” sign may be all that’s keeping us from descending into chaos.  Allow me another No to the betterment of humanity—No Shirt, No Media Exposure. 

Hans Brinker, Shortstop

This is how baseball works unlike any other sport.  Michele and I were driving to 5 o’clock Saturday Mass, and I had the radio on to the White Sox game.  It was the first time I ever heard Ed Farmer call an inside-the-park homerun.  Talk about being put in a good mood for the first Sunday of Lent.  Just let Satan tempt me the way he tried with our Lord.

Eddy Alvarez, a non-roster player, did the honors around the bases, and what an interesting story the 27-year old, 5’9” Alvarez is.  He got a late start in baseball because he went with Olympic speed-skating first.  How many ballplayers at spring training can say they won a silver medal in in the 5000 meter relay, as Alvarez did in 2014 at the Sochi Games, and this after two knee surgeries?  How many Olympic skaters hail from Miami, the son of immigrant Cuban parents?  Alvarez would seem to be in pretty elite company.

Alvarez signed with the Sox as a free agent in 2014.  Last year as the starting shortstop at AA Birmingham, he hit an OK .263, but with an eye-popping 62 rbi’s on only six homeruns.  Alvarez credits skating with giving him the necessary experience to handle pressure situations.  Given those stats, he may be onto something.

How many NFL or NBA players have this kind of back story?  The bulky and the very tall tend to be kind of blah.  Alvarez comes with definite longshot appeal, an Olympic star who wants a World Series ring.  Hey, it took David Eckstein, all 5’6” of him, until he was 26 to break into the majors, so it’s not impossible, at least not on a Saturday afternoon in March, the first weekend of Lent.          

On Further Review

Those Comiskey Park snapshots I bought last week aren’t from the “1930s,” despite what the listing on eBay said.  No, a closer look shows they’re from 1939, and sometime before August 14^th.

How do I know?  Well, for openers, the S-O-X uniform has blockier lettering than was used earlier in the decade; the new uniform debuted in 1939.  Then there’s something else I missed the first time around, the absence of light standards in any of the pictures.  The first night game at Comiskey Park took place on August 14^th, a 5-2 win against the St. Louis Browns.  In fact, I’d go so far as to date the pictures date to May.

How do I know?  By checking the all-time list of Yankee players by number.  It pains me to say that it looks like Clare was right.  The one player whose number is showing had to be #25, pitcher Wes Ferrell; nobody wore #29 for New York that season.  It’s even possible the day in question is May 8^th.  Ferrell only appeared in three games for the Yankees that year, including a 5-3 complete game loss at Comiskey Park.  So, there you have it, mystery more or less solved.  Who says a Ph.D. in American history doesn’t come in handy?

 

Addition through Subtraction

I called Clare at work yesterday afternoon to play a little game of Guess Who, as in “Guess who the White Sox just released?”  With the slightest of hints (“I may be more excited about it than you”), she got it on the first try, “Brett Lawrie.”  So, goodbye, Mr. Fang Mouth-guard.  Here’s hoping everything gets “aligned” before you run out of teams willing to take a chance on a player who marches to the beat of an awfully strange drum.

While we were talking, Clare let me know she thought I was all wrong about players being musclebound.  My daughter explained how baseball is an “explosive” sport where players need “dynamic” muscles to rise to the sudden occasion.  Or was it a dynamic sport and explosive muscles?  Anyway, I’m just happy Clare actually went to class and paid attention.  Of course, she’ll never know as much as her old man, but who does?

Go, Wildcats, Go

As of this morning, the planets seem to be in the right alignment for the Northwestern University men’s basketball team to get their first-ever NCAA tournament bid.  At the risk of a jinx, way to go, guys.

Long ago, NU earned the reputation as underdog of the Big Ten, with athletic standards more in keeping with the Ivy League.  How odd to think of a school that charges in the neighborhood of $65,000 a year in tuition and board as an underdog.  Truly, we live in strange and interesting times.

In so far as I follow college athletics, I root for NU.  Call me old fashioned, but I want my students going to class and taking their own tests.  If NU football players want to go new school and organize into a union, that’s fine by me, just so long as all they get their degrees. 

I can’t say about the other men’s sports, but NU baseball has developed its fair share of major-league talent.  According to baseballreference.com, 75 NU players have been drafted since 1967, and ten have them have made it to the majors; that number includes pitcher J.A. Happ, catcher Joe Girardi and infielder Mark Loretta.  You might call them a thinking man’s players.

NU coaches tend to be different, from Ara Parseghian and Pat Fitzgerald in football to current basketball coach Chris Collins, son of ex-NBA player and Bulls’ coach Doug Collins.  The younger Collins has recruited a refreshingly rah-rah bunch of players, and his father can be seen in the stands cheering his son on.  Did that ever happen with Bobby Knight or John Calipari or Rick Pitino? 

All I know for sure is that NU basketball players don’t look like they’ve been beaten like dogs or are counting down the days to the NBA draft.  How odd that this could seem quaint or that thinking it a good thing risks being labelled reactionary, if not worse.  We live in strange and interesting times.

Moving Forward

This is how the White Sox mark progress: last spring, they had a pitcher who could explain away each and every bad outing.  Now they have pitchers who can tell you exactly where things went wrong.

 Back in March of 2016, when the Sox thought they were a player or two away from contending, Jacob Turner talked about how good his stuff was and those pesky ground balls that found a way into the outfield.  Turner is long gone (how I miss the happy talk and that 6.57 ERA), replaced by the likes of Lucas Giolito and Michael Kopech.  Call them the Sad Truth Twins.

Giolito gave up a run over two innings in his Cactus League debut against the Cubs.  The newly acquired righty said, “I’m just going to continue to work on that, throwing a curveball for a strike, [and] commanding a fastball down and away to righties.” Wait, there’s more self-analysis:  “My biggest things are throwing a curveball for a strike, being able to differentiate throwing it for a strike and throwing a good one down for a put-away pitch, and then commanding fastballs on both sides of the plate.” 

At least Giolitio did better than the flame-throwing Kopech, who coughed up four earned runs in one inning during his first appearance of the spring.  Kopech, too, knows what went wrong.  “The name of the game is executing pitches, and I didn’t do that.  For the most part I was able to put stuff in the zone.  It was just that when I did miss small, I would get myself behind in counts, and when I get behind in counts, that’s when you need to be able to execute your stuff.”  He may also want to work on his pronoun use.

So, both pitchers knew what they did wrong.  Is it too much to hope there’ll come a day when they can go into as much detail on what went right in their starts?

Scrapbook

Scrapbook

I met Luke Appling in the fall of 1989 at a memorabilia show in the downstate town of Lewistown.  With nobody else in line, Old Aches and Pains talked to me nonstop for ten minutes, until his host prevailed on him to start signing pictures and whatnot.  What most animated Appling was the Chicago weather (“the snow felt like knives driving into my neck at short”) and a bad call by an umpire that took away a base hit that would have broken up Bob Feller’s Opening Day no-hitter at Comiskey Park in 1940.  Ever since that encounter, I’ve developed an interest in the 1930s’ and ’40s teams Appling played on.  Most of the players outside of Appling and pitchers Ted Lyons weren’t that good, but, oh, the uniforms with the “o” and the “x” inside the curves of the supersized “S.”  How I’d love to see those make a comeback for Sunday home games.  

This is another way of saying I bought five snapshots on eBay of a Yankees-Sox game at Comiskey, exact date and players unknown.  No DiMaggio or Appling stands out, and only one player can be seen with a number; Clare thinks it’s 25, to me it looks like 29.  The seller said it was sometime in the 1930s.  The upper corners of the pictures all have a black, upside down “L” imprint on them, so I’m guessing that’s where those little paper/glue anchors went to hold the pictures down on a scrapbook page.    

It looks to be an hour or so before game time.  Players are walking about or warming up.  One of the Yankees is nearing the visitors’ dugout, where a teammate has taken up a spot on the top step to scan the crowd.  Maybe a Sox fan has taken to heckling the Bronx Bombers; at least I hope so.  Two people in the Sox dugout, probably coaches judging from their age, are actually giving the raspberries—thumb and forefinger in a circle before the mouth, the other three fingers along for the ride—to someone.  Two men in suits, reporters maybe, look on in laughter.

The ballpark appears both immense and stately, those wonderful outfield arches leading to a center field that measured some 440 feet to the plate.  An exterior shot show the main entrance, the bricks unpainted and sporting letters that spell out: Comiskey Park Home of the White Sox.

If only.