Postmortem

The eighth-seed Bulls jumped ahead of the top-seed Celtics by winning the first two games of their opening-round playoff series, only to lose the next four contests by margins of 17, 19, 11 and 22 points.  None of those losses were as close as the margins might indicate.

The team won 42 games last year, the first under coach Fred Hoiberg, and 41 this year; that doesn’t seem make for a good trend, especially after they won 50 games in the last year of Tom Thibodeau’s run.  If Hoiberg isn’t clueless, his players are.  They play middle-school defense, with three people chasing after the ball, and four-statues’ offense, four guys standing still while the poor slob with the ball tries to fight off a triple team.

The best way to judge the Bulls is to look at the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf’s other team.  The Sox are supposedly in a rebuild, what with trading Chris Sale and Adam Eaton, only their starting lineups tend to feature eight players from last year.  Yet the team has started 13-9, good enough for first place in the AL Central Division.  What gives?  I’d say it’s new manager Rick Renteria.

His predecessor Robin Ventura was so laid back he seemed to be taking a five-year nap on the bench.  Compare that to Renteria, who twice this first month of the season has lifted a starter in the fifth inning of a game, winning both times.  Renteria comes with a pulse, moves people around in the lineup, gives different players a chance and talks directly to Latin players in Spanish (Renteria is Mexican-American).  The Sox may go south the way they did last year, but for the first time in years it won’t be for lack of effort.

Now, back to the Bulls—they need to find another Rick Renteria.  The roster may be a good deal better than 41 wins, with the right coach.  Next, they need to decide on their core.  For me, that would include Jimmy Butler along with young players Denzel Valentine, Paul Zipser, Bobby Portis and Cristiano Felicio; throw in Robin Lopez, and you’re pretty much done.  Say goodbye to Dwayne Wade; he’s a retired man walking.  If I’m spending money on anyone, it’s to pick up Rajon Rondo’s option.

If only someone were asking me.

His Vibrations

It’s a good thing Bears’ GM Ryan Pace avoids the media as much as he does.  Otherwise, Pace would be caught saying even more stuff like he did to reporters a day before the NFL draft:  “I really like our locker room right now.  I really like the vibe right now in that locker room with the guys that we have here, it feels good [as James Brown would say], and I want to continue to build on that vibe and add to that excitement.”  I wasn’t aware a 3-13 team generated that much excitement.

Then again, Pace may be crazy like a genius; after all, he did talk himself into the job; granted, it was the McCaskeys, but still, Pace had to be pretty good at blowing the right kind of smoke at that esteemed legacy family.  Maybe that’s what he was doing with reporters, talking gibberish to keep everyone off balance.  Then, he could shock them all by taking a quarterback with the second pick in the draft, and draft an NCAA Division-II tight end in the second round.  Maybe it’s impolite of me to point out that the Bears drafting quarterbacks is a lot like the White Sox developing their own catchers:  it just don’t happen, folks.  Sherm Lollar, Carlton Fisk and A.J. Pierzynski are all prove of that.

But it’s the Bears and Chicago, where the quarterback—Mitch Trubisky of North Carolina, with all of 13 starts in college to his credit—makes page 1 of the Tribune on a Saturday.  Casey Stengel talked gibber, too, and he won all the time.  Maybe Ryan Pace is Stengell reincarnated.  Just remember the Old Professor managed the 40-120 Mets, too.   

Thinking Outside the Box, Sort Of

 You have to hand it to the Pittsburgh Pirates—they go out of their way to look for talent.  Eight years ago, they signed the two winners of a baseball-throwing reality TV show in India with the idea of turning them into pitchers.  And this week, they brought up infielder Gift Ngoepe, the first-ever MLB player born in Africa, who just so happened to take the roster spot of pitcher Dovydas Neverauskas, the second-ever MLB player to be born in Lithuania.

So diverse, yet so very much the same.  All of the above players happen to be male.  Females, apparently, aren’t worth the Pirates’ time, or of any other MLB team, for that matter.

Talk About Your Sketchy Neighborhood

Professional sports is in a bit of a pinch these days.  There just aren’t that many cities anymore that want to go into massive debt to build a stadium for some demanding pro team.  Except for Las Vegas, of course.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has two teams—the Oakland A’s and Tampa Rays—that feel the need for new digs, preferably on someone else’s dime.  So, the commissioner recently did what all sports’ commissioners do and tried to stoke fans’ fear of losing a team.  “If we’re looking at relocation,” said Manfred last week, “Las Vegas would be on the list.”

I wonder why.  Is it the legalized gambling?  Any MLB team relocating to Vegas should be haunted into bankruptcy by Shoeless Joe Jackson and all the other banished Black Sox.  Or could it be the legalized prostitution in rural Nevada?  Imagine what fans traveling with their teams could arrange, say, a day game in Vegas followed by a bus ride out to the Mustang Ranch or Sharon’s Brothel and Bar.

After all, Las Vegas will soon be good enough for the NFL, and baseball wants to be all things football.  Yee-ha.

Hope

I ran across a comment on the Internet yesterday about Matt Davidson, that “Davidson has had a hot 40 plate appearances, but he’s still probably not very good.”  So much for hope springing eternal, not in “a season where the end goal isn’t to maximize your wins.”  Buddy, the end goal is to always maximize your wins.

Just because you’re “rebuilding,” doesn’t mean you don’t care about winning; constant losing is not good for pitching staffs and fan bases.  Right now, the Cubs are the end all and be all of franchise transformations.  What “experts” like the fellow above ignore, forget or never knew is that the Cubs basically had no choice but to go scorched earth.  The best players on the roster when Theo Epstein took over were second baseman Starlin Castro and pitcher Jeff Samardzija.  Compare that to the White Sox of 2016.  Would you trade Chris Sale for Castro and Samardzija?  I didn’t think so.  Also factor in that the Cubs’ fan base is unlike any other.  No other team in baseball can peddle ivy and a manual scoreboard as a balm for losing the way the North Siders have.  Talk about mass hypnotism.  

For what it’s worth, the Sox started off with substantially more than what the Cubs had to build with.  They have always drafted pitching (Sale, Carlos Rodon, Nate Jones), to which they added a bunch of pitching in trades of Sale and right fielder Adam Eaton.  And in true White Sox tradition, they cross their fingers on hitters.  Will Jose Abreu ever hit another homerun?  Will the real Tim Anderson please stand up?  And what about you, Matt Davidson?  Avi Garcia?

Which brings us to hope, the essence of baseball.  Fans don’t want to be sold a load of crap; they just want an honest effort from everyone in the dugout, on the field and in the front office.  Provide that, and you provide cause to hope.  Maybe Anderson, Davidson and Garcia are the real deal in 2017.  Is it such a bad thing to hope that they are, if just for the month of April?  May will come soon enough.  But keep in mind that every blue moon, hope pays off, and fans are rewarded with the Miracle Mets or Whiz Kids or the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff or…

For me, 40 at-bats is plenty enough to start dreaming and hoping for something special on the South Side, this year, not next or the one after or the one after that, per a plan that may be so much distant pie in the sky.

Life

My daughter and I have a running competition to see who’s the better evaluator of major-league talent.  Our current player of interest is White Sox rookie third baseman Matt Davidson, who spent three long years in AAA after being acquired from the Diamondbacks.

Last night against the Royals, Davidson had himself a very good game, starting with an opposite-field home run against lefty starter Jason Vargas, who entered the game with a 3-0 record and 0.44 ERA.  Clare called wanting to know if I’d seen the homer, at which point I started talking about Elmhurst softball.

At the start of every season, the Elmhurst coach would look to see if any of the bench players had developed from last spring.  Usually, what happened was one or two players would start off very hot, but not in a way that impressed me.  Someone would get three hits in a game to the opposite field against a second-string pitcher.  Sure enough, before long the player in question was showing she couldn’t get up to faster pitching.

Now, back to Davidson—the homer was to right, as was an rbi double (although that came against a sidearming righty, the kind of pitcher Sox hitters usually hide from in the dugout lest they be made to face him).  When Davidson lined a pitch from lefty reliever Travis Wood off the fence in left for another two rbi’s, I called Clare to say, “That’s a good sign to me.” 

Clare called again at 7:30 this morning, to say that the person she and her fiancé Chris were going to use had died suddenly.  He was six years older than Matt Davidson.

Ghosts

For only the second time since she graduated Elmhurst, Clare and I watched her alma mater play.  Yesterday, the Bluejays did battle with the Belles of St. Mary’s (I kid you not), sister school of Notre Dame University.  Sitting in the stands, I was a stranger in a strange land.

Never in four years of watching Clare play did we ever have weather for a home game as warm as what the Jays and Belles enjoyed.  Once I knew every player on the field.  Now, it was a passing acquaintance with those two seniors who were freshmen Clare’s last season.  As for the parents, there were two barely familiar faces and a mother’s voice I could never put a face to.  No one showed an ability to write the umpires like we did back in the day.  Where are all my old compatriots, working on the lawn or out for their first round of golf this year?  I miss them.

With the White Sox, I live and die far too much with every game; with Clare’s old high school and college teams, I have no standing anymore:  Your daughter is who?  She played when?  You here by yourself?  It’s good to have a young woman sitting next to you at times like this.  You don’t look so out of place that way.

Clare made the rounds, talking to those seniors she knew and the coaches.  Coach Mike, bless him, adores Clare as one of his greatest recruits; he’s pushing to get her in the Elmhurst Athletes’ Hall of Fame.  He’s always been nice to me as the father of the star, and I appreciate that.  The Bluejays split, winning the second game on two homeruns in the bottom of the seventh, a pinch hit and a walk-off.  Coach said the homers were for Clare.

After dinner, Clare called Michele to tell her what a good time she had watching the games with me.  I wonder if she sees ghosts the way I do.

Crunched

In today’s Sunday Tribune sports’ section, the Bears get a full page to themselves, with the opposite page devoted to NFL stuff, ahead of the Cubs and White Sox.  Hey, the draft is almost here.  You’ve got baseball through October at least.

Truth be told, any Sox story should be relegated to the obituaries.  At least their 7-9 record is better than the hitting.  Consider that Cody Asche, Todd Frazier, Jose Abreu and Jacob May have 17 hits among them in 156 at-bats, for a collective .109 batting average good for one homerun and 10 rbi’s.   I’m pretty sure the front office wanted to send the rookie May down, once he got his first major-league hit.  Who knew that would take 28 at-bats?

This is how seasons turn sour and franchises lose relevance, if they don’t go belly up outright.  You make moves, e.g., fire the hitting coach and rearrange the deck chairs (or roster), to let fans know you know things are bad.  But that’s what a smart team would do, and the White Sox are the team that traded Chris Sale in order to play all those prospects in the minors.

And Now For Something Completely Different

 I turned on the start of the Bulls-Celtics’ game last night to catch Rajon Rondo in street clothes, by which I mean matching purplish shirt, tie, pants and short-sleeved (!) sports’ jacket.  That’s what happens when you suffer a broken thumb, I guess.  Somehow, the Bulls managed to play worse than Rondo looked, losing to Boston by a score of 104-87.

Late in the third quarter, my thoughts drifted over to baseball, as they are wont to do, and I got to wondering why Don Drysdale is in the Hall of Fame but Billy Pierce isn’t.  The 6’5” Drysdale had a 14-year career during which he went 209-166 with a 2.95 ERA to go with 167 complete games, 49 shutouts and a 3-3 record in the World Series.  That compares to the 5’10” Pierce, who over 18 seasons (including the 10 innings he pitched as an 18-year old for the Tigers in 1945) went 211-169 with a 3.27 ERA in addition to 193 complete games, 38 shutouts and a 1-1 World Series record.  Again, I ask:  Why Drysdale and not Pierce?

There can't be any dots to connect from Brooklyn to Los Angles back to Cooperstown.  Right?

 

Aaron Hernandez

Sportswriters looking to explain the apparent suicide of ex-Patriots tight-end Aaron Hernandez and the events that precipitated it seem to think that losing his father at the age of 16 played a significant role in all that transpired afterward.  I don’t know why.

My father was thirteen months old when his father died.  His mother remarried when he was 3-1/2, but it didn’t work out.  This is an understatement akin to calling the Grand Canyon a ditch.  My grandmother was Polish and Catholic; that she instituted divorce proceedings against her second husband can only mean that scandal was preferable to marriage.  For all but five months of that second marriage, she raised three boys on her own.

Elizabeth Bukowska pulled her middle son Edwin—my father—out of school when he was thirteen.  In other words, my dad never made it past seventh grade.  Instead, he started work, going from the family bakery to the Ford assembly line on Torrence Avenue to the Chicago Fire Department.  Then he “retired,” taking a part-time job as a truck driver for a couple of years.  In all that time, I’m not aware of him ever being indicted or convicted of murder, as Hernandez was.  Nor did my father, who was an avid Chicago Cardinals’ fan, ever sign a $40 million contract, as Hernandez did.

For that matter, neither did my father-in-law, who lost his father at the age of five.  A few years later, his mother found it impossible to raise two young boys—twins, at that—on her own, so she put them in an orphanage.  When he grew old enough, my father-in-law went into the foster-care system.  Oh, and he had a fun year on the front lines in Korea.  To this day, he can tell you the fastest way to get off a hill that’s under fire—you roll down.

I’ve wanted to kill my father-in-law on several occasions, which is another way of saying he must’ve wanted to kill me more than once; to the best of my knowledge, that didn’t happen.  No, what did happen is that Ed Bukowski and Bob Harris took the cards that life dealt them and left the world a better place by virtue of the families they raised. 

I can only imagine what these two men might have accomplished given the chances Aaron Hernandez wasted.    

On Further Review...

…Rajon Rondo is not a cancer in the clubhouse.  In what has to be the most up-and-down season any professional athlete has ever had in Chicago sports, Rondo has come back from the dead (at least three times by my count) to claim the role of starting point guard.  On Tuesday night, Rondo was a rebound short of a triple double as the number-eight seed Bulls beat the top-seed Celtics 111-97, to go up two games to none in their opening-round playoff series.

Rondo is both proud and difficult; you wouldn’t want to suggest to him that he’s slowed a step at the age of 31, unless you had a sudden urge to visit the dentist.  All I really knew about Rondo when the Bulls signed him in the offseason was that he had a reputation for mouthing whenever the mood hit; little did I or Bulls’ management realize their new player would do so on opponents and teammates—see Dwayne Wade and Jimmy Butler—alike.  Here’s the thing about Rondo, though.  He does the walk after the talk.

Whether benched, relegated to the second string or returned to the starting lineup, Rondo has been a revelation with the younger players, leading both by example and instruction.  In many ways, Rondo reminds me of ex-White Sox A.J. Pierzynski, a smart pain-in-the-butt sort of guy an opposing team never wants to go up against.  Only A.J. was never that popular with his teammates.  Rondo is, Wade and Butler excepted.

Maybe.    

Almost a Really Fast Game

But for a ninth-inning error and a strike call or two, last night’s White Sox game at Yankee Stadium was on track to finishing on the good side of two hours.  Factor in that error and a pitching change, and the game still only took 2 hours and 16 minutes, a Sox 4-1 win over the Yankees.

Fast is how I like my baseball.  The Sox managed all of three hits, two of them home runs.  That was enough for starter Miguel Gonzalez, who needed 88 pitchers to record 25 outs; Gonzalez threw all of 59 pitches through seven innings.  By way of contrast, Sox closer David Robertson needed 19 pitches to record two outs for the save.  David, the secret to a long and successful career is economy.  I only wish all those young pitchers the Sox have drafted and traded for could’ve watched Gonzalez pitch.  The four strikeouts meant he “pitched to contact,” as the saying goes.  But I’ll take that any day, if it comes with Gonzalez’s one walk and two double plays   

Avisail Garcia hit a three-run homer on a slow, 83-mph slider that was up and in; last year (and all the years before), Garcia was lucky to foul that pitch, let alone hit it fair.  Right now, Garcia is leading the world in hitting, but it’s April, and the sample size is way too small to get excited over.  Still, beating the Bronx Bombers with Matthew Broderick and Jimmy Fallon in attendance is always a good thing.   

Dead-tree Sportswriting

I grew up on the Sunday sports’ section, filled with columnists and feature stories.  I still look forward to it, if less and less.

Take this Sunday (please).  The Blackhawks, Cubs and White Sox had all played the day before, while the Bulls were getting ready for their playoff opener in Boston.  So, what filled the entire back page of the Tribune sports’ section?  Why, the upcoming draft for your 3-13 Chicago Bears, specifically whether the Bears would be drafting a Brett Favre clone from Texas Tech.  The Bears and quarterbacks are sort of like Russia and democracy—the two don’t mix, or haven’t so far in their respective, long histories.  This was a story better suited to April Fools’ Day, not April 16.

Then it hit me how 20^th century the whole thing is, the Sunday sports’ section and my reaction to the stories in it.  The only reason my daughter ever looked at the sports’ section was to check the box scores, sometimes.  Or she could just get them on her phone, along with in-game updates.  Maybe I should mention here the Blackhawks-Predators playoff game started at 8:30 last night, and neither Chicago newspaper had the results.  How many young Blackhawk fans didn’t know the exact moment the game ended, or get an update on their phones?

The first thing I want from print journalism is the news reported in a timely fashion; the second thing I want is the news written well.  With sports, the NFL excepted, I can’t get what I want when I want, which isn’t all that demanding given that I’m willing to wait until the next morning.  We won’t have the newspaper around much longer to line our bird cages with, I fear.  How sad.

Playgrounds

Growing up, I used to go over to the playground at Sawyer School, a few blocks from our house.  I remember it as huge with monkey bars, merry-go-round and a slide attached to something we called a toboggan run.  All of it was an invitation to serious injury.

Lose your footing on the monkey bars, and you could hit your head hit multiple times on the way down to the ground, which had stones everywhere.  Get dizzy on the merry-go-round, and you might lose your grip and fall off; if you were standing and running on the inside in that open area between the seat and the axle in order to make things go round, you could hit the dirt and then get hit in the head by the metal piping passing overhead.  As for that slide, let me just say that it was attached to this oblong wooden structure (think a long right triangle on its side) that had to be 25-30 tall at the top.  From there you climbed up the slide, putting you 30-35 feet above ground.  The place was triage waiting to happen.

I’m not sorry Clare never got to experience that kind of playground; I really do think there are emergency-room records buried away that would make a person gasp to read.  Twenty years ago, when our daughter was at her playground peak, everything had turned to soft surfaces and gentle climbing.  Clare being Clare, she wanted more of a challenge, so I would take her to this thing where you grabbed an overhead bar to move eight feet or so from Point A to Point B.  We turned that into an Olympic event.  Then there was Willie the Whale.

Willie is a piece of granite or marble, I’m not sure which, sculpted into the form of a whale.  Better yet, there’s a sprinkler for a blow hole.  I cannot tell you the joy produced by running—or watching a child run—through that sprinkler.

We left Willie behind in Oak Park when we moved to Berwyn, but Clare dealt with the loss OK because we had a playground at the end of the block, all swings and bridges.  The playground may have made all the difference in our parenting; I dread to think of what we would’ve had to do otherwise to tire out the child of perpetual motion we had.  I feel sorry now for those parents around here with their own versions of Clare.

The city of Berwyn, in its infinite wisdom, is turning the playground into a parking lot for some new fast food places that have gone up.  Off in Oak Park, Willie the Whale sheds a tear.

Time Ever So Cruel

Two years ago, Lou Brock lost part of his left leg due to diabetes.  Now, he’s been diagnosed with bone cancer.  This is one of those times when you have to conclude life sucks.

Brock is to the Cubs what Babe Ruth was to the Red Sox, a supremely talented player who got away.  With the Cubs, he was a young outfielder who showed flashes of talent over the course of 2-1/2 seasons on the North Side.  Traded to St. Louis for nobody in particular (alright, Ernie Broglio, Bobby Shantz and Doug Clemens) just days before his 25^th birthday, Brock blossomed into a superstar.  As a White Sox fan, I shudder to think of Brock in the same lineup with Ernie Banks, Ron Santo and Billy Williams.  Throw in Fergie Jenkines, and you have a team with five future HOFers who should’ve called Wrigley Field home throughout the 1960s and ’70s.

Brock hit .391 over the course of three World Series and scored over 1600 runs in his career while amassing 3023 hits and 938 stolen bases.  He also popularized a version of the umbrella hat, called the “Brockabrella,” which still brings a smile to my face.  Brock even spent a season doing color on White Sox games with Harry Caray.  Talk about a mispairing.  Lou Brock twenty years gone would know more baseball than Harry Caray in his prime.  

Long story short, bad things shouldn’t happen to good athletes and decent people. 

  

 

Selfish?

For only the second time in NBA history, a player has averaged a triple-double—a minimum of ten points, ten rebounds and ten assists a game—over the course of the regular season.  The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook joins Oscar Robertson, who did it first in 1961-62.  I wonder if people complained that Robertson was selfish, too.

This has been the knock on Westbrook, that he wouldn’t share with teammate Kevin Durant and was still selfish this season with Durant gone to Golden State.  Oh, please.  The man’s a shooting guard—he’s supposed to score points.  It’s the other two parts of the equation that make the accomplishment so amazing.  Westbrook averaged over ten rebounds and assists a game.  A selfish player can’t do that; he doesn’t want to hang under the basket fighting very big guys for rebounds, and he doesn’t like to pass the ball in order for someone else to score.

Sorry, but you can’t set this record while being “selfish.”  It’s logically impossible.

Just Plain Stupid

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is verging on breathless over the opening of the Braves’ new $1.1 billion complex.  MLB has now reached the point where you don’t talk about ballparks or stadiums, even, but complexes.  The mall goeth before the fall.

“There has never been something this massive around a baseball stadium,” says Manfred, “and it’s really an amazing accomplishment.”  Or not.  Somebody should point out to the commissioner that Wrigley Field, Tiger Stadium and just about all the classic ballparks were located smack dab in the middle of cities.  What’s Wrigleyville if not “massive,” in 2017 or 1947, for that matter?

No, what the commissioner is talking about is the furthering of baseball into a daylong “experience” ala Disney or Universal.  It’s nice, if you can afford it and don’t particularly care about the quality of the product on the field.  And the media, as ever, is playing along as the uncritical observer, as when USA Today says the 41,149 seating capacity “will make for a far more intimate ballpark experience” than the “old”—as in twenty years old—Turner Stadium, which seated 50,000.  In a pig’s eye it’ll be intimate compared to Wrigley Field or Fenway Park.

Those facilities have posts that carry the upper deck close to the field of play; SunTrust Park is more of the same old same old, cantilever construction carrying the upper decks up and away to the stars.  And what’s so great about a smaller capacity?  Sporting events are all about supply and demand for tickets.  If your team is good and tickets are scarce, both the primary and secondary markets will be sky-high expensive.

I guess Commissioner Manfred didn’t take economics in college.   

April Showers

I suggested to Clare a couple of months ago that she look into season-ticket packages with the White Sox, as a kind of communal penance thing.  And the Sox had just the ticket(s), if we were interested, a package for all the April games, for which you could not pay father and daughter to attend.  No sir, but we’d go for free if the younger of us were playing.

Which is precisely what happened for eight years of high school and college.  What Michele and I did was what parents of athletes are supposed to do, go out and bear witness regardless the elements.  It’s raining as I write this, an inconvenience that won’t have a major bearing on my day.  But three or seven years ago, I’d be Johnny the Weather Forecaster checking the radar and seeing what the odds for afternoon precipitation are. 

Some forty thousand Cub fans will be doing likewise because they have tickets to see their world champions play the Dodgers today.  What miserable weather for a ballgame, what perfect weather to watch your daughter play in.

Make Me

The commissioner’s office has released a statement saying it wants to work with the Indians in getting them to move away from Chief Wahoo, their simpering mascot/logo.  As soon as word hit the street outside Progressive Field yesterday, fans were all aghast, talking about history threatened and how a crude caricature isn’t hurting anyone.  If only the team would change its name to Your Granny, with artwork “borrowed” from those fans so fond of the Chief.

A good rule of thumb is that most people don’t like to be told what to like, think or say; label something offensive, and you’ve practically guaranteed they’ll hold onto it for dear life.  I’m sure a whole bunch of Indians’ fans are complaining they’re being singled out by the “politically correct” police.  Sorry, not on this.

I will admit, though, the argument would be a lot easier if there weren’t folks out there who think “Tomahawk missile” is culturally offensive.  They do, they’re wrong, and only Chief Wahoo benefits.  

Not Your Daddy's Wrigley Field

Really, it’s too bad Leni Riefenstahl wasn’t on hand at Wrigley Field last night to shoot footage for “Triumph of the Will, part II.”  Things are getting a little out of hand with golden jerseys and whatnot.  Someone needs to remind Team Ricketts that they’re merely the flavor of the week, and the bigger they are, the harder they fall, vines and all.

The Tribune did a story the other day on the rising cost of everything Cub.  Right now, so long as they win, nobody outside of us White Sox curmudgeons really cares.  But it is interesting, this tectonic shift in appeal.  The story included a timeline on ticket prices for an undefined “regular ticket,” bleacher or grandstand, either way a nice seat.  In 1962 such a ticket cost 75 cents; in the collapse year of 1969, $1; and as late as 1998, $12.  These various prices harken back to a time when attendance amounted to an impulse buy.

If the team was good, you sat with a lot of other fans; if the Cubbies stunk, so much the better for you to sneak into the good seats after the fifth inning or so.  You went to games when you wanted to; watched home games mostly in the daytime; and never went broke in the process.  The days of becoming a Cubs’ fan in that manner are long gone.

Now, the game is an “event,” with dynamic pricing worthy of a Broadway show (how long until Alexander Hamilton throws out the first pitch or sings “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”?).  Once upon a time, museums were free, and ballgames cost very little.  Nowadays, museums in Chicago rationalize their admission fees as being no more expensive than a ballgame.  Something’s changed.

Obviously, I prefer the old days, even though they were subsidized by players who were grossly underpaid.  So, nobody’s being cheated in their pay envelope anymore.  But what happens when the Cubs—or Red Sox or Yankees or Dodgers…—stop winning?  Professional sports will do anything to avoid a drop in prices.  In Chicago, the Bears stink, but refuse to drop prices; the Bulls kind of stink, and act like the McCaskeys.  Only the White Sox have bowed to reality in the face of mediocrity.

We live in interesting times, with or without Ms. Riefenstahl.

Give It a Rest

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has himself a problem that refuses to go away—coaches keep resting their star players to keep them fresh both for the regular season and playoffs.  But if someone has put out big money for courtside seats (and the Bulls charge $1,800 at the United Center), that person wants to be able to see LeBron James or Kevin Durant play.

I imagine NBA coaches have rested their stars since the days of Red Auerbach, but it’s a question that merits further research.  In many ways, the Bulls of 1970-71 were my favorite basketball team with Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier, Chet Walker, Bob Love and Tom Boerwinkle (I didn’t have to look up any of the names).  They were, as the cliché goes, a scrappy bunch coached to overachieve by the maniacal Dick Motta.  The team won 51 games that year before falling to the Lakers in seven during the playoffs.

Here’s where it gets really interesting—the NBA Finals, with the Bucks sweeping the Bullets, ended on April 30; by contrast, the Finals last year ended on June 19.  (In case you’re wondering, the NBA had 17 teams in 1970-71 vs. 30 today.)  Did coaches rest their players in January back then the way they do now, or did they see the season as more of marathon that would all be over in April?  It’s a question one I bet Commissioner Silver wishes he could spend time on rather than the problem he’s got to deal with right now.

If Him, Why Not Her?

The Twins have an interesting young outfielder by the name of Max Kepler, who was born in Berlin to parents who were both ballet dancers.  The young Kepler was exposed to the arts at an early age but opted for sports instead.  And, while he showed an aptitude for tennis, he picked baseball—mind you, German baseball—instead.  Go figure.

There are a couple of things worth noting here.  First, hats off to the Twins for scouting and signing Kepler; obviously, the White Sox couldn’t be bothered.  Second, if baseball can think outside the box in finding a talent like this—the left-hand hitting Kepler has a sweet swing and plays a nice right field—then why can’t it do the same with that half of the human population that isn’t male?  Not one in several billion is baseball ready?  I’d take those odds, if only I owned a ball club.  

Words of Wisdom

Before yesterday’s game against the Twins, a Sun-Times’ reporter asked White Sox rookie infielder Matt Davidson why he wasn’t watching the Masters’ golf tournament on the TV; Davidson had opted for a ballgame instead.  Said the rookie, wise beyond his 26 years:  “I don’t watch golf.  That thing bores me to death.”

Indeed.  Nothing like seeing a tiny white speck against a blue sky, hour after hour.  To me, all golf courses look alike, I don’t care how hard the par-5 seventh hole at Blah-blah-blah is.  Of course, baseball critics say pretty much the same thing, except the white speck comes off as a little bigger onscreen.  But you know what?  They can have Augusta and the green jacket and the old-boys’ misogyny.  Give me Fenway any day.  With Chris Sale on the mound, the place is electric.  Fore!

Pardon My Broken Record

Ordinarily, I could care less about the Astros and Mariners playing one another in a four-game series, but this is different.  We’re talking two teams playing FOUR GAMES against one another to start the season; that’s strange.  Oh, and we’re talking about TWO DOME TEAMS!!!

Did I ever mention that the MLB schedule is dumb?  This is one of those areas where it’d be nice if fans could force a little bit of change on the game.  But as we White Sox fans would say just hours before the first night game of the season (on April 7^th, no less), there’s always the Craft Kave. 

 

Old Boys Will Only Get You So Far

By my count, Clare has tried for at least two jobs in MLB without so much as a form email in response.  Part of the problem is her old man, who doesn’t have ties with guys in the ML.  Katy Feeney’s father did.

He was Charles “Chub” Feeney, onetime GM of the Giants and NL president.  His daughter, who died over the weekend, worked for MLB for some forty years, to become, according her obit by the Associated Press, “among the most prominent women in baseball.”  But don’t get too excited.  Katy Feeney didn’t have all that much power, even as a vice president.

Oh, Feeney had plenty of responsibility, both for media relations and the schedule; there’d be all sorts of headaches if somebody didn’t take care of these things.  You have to have a schedule every year, HOF inductees have to be introduced on the podium at Cooperstown, and Feeney handled these responsibilities well.  But did she have power, could she set policy?  Surely, you jest.  

You Can't Fight Nature

Today is April 5, and the White Sox schedule has generated two postponements already; with snow forecast for tomorrow, #3 won’t be long in coming.  There are two ways to handle this.

Either teams in the Northeast and Midwest all open on the road in warm climates (Milwaukee and Toronto excepted because of their domes), or the season’s start should be delayed until mid-April.  To make up for lost time, MLB could employ something known as the doubleheader; on dates two games are scheduled, rosters would be expanded to 27 or 28 players.

Problem solved. 

Headscratchers

First, will someone tell me why a baseball club would share Opening Day with football players, even if it is Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski at Fenway Park?  They want to attend the game, fine, but they don’t get on the field.  I sure wouldn’t want a Bear running around Guaranteed Rate Field (!), and thank goodness, neither did the White Sox yesterday.

Second, is it me, or were the NCAA and CBS complicit in exposing Gonzaga and North Carolina players to injury throughout the men’s basketball finals’ game last night at the University of Phoenix Stadium?  From what I could see, the court was elevated two-three feet above the first row of seats.  Maybe they don’t hustle as much in college, but NBA players go crashing into the seats all the time while going after loose balls; now imagine them falling off a cliff as well.  I don’t want to see anyone injured, but I sure wish the powers that be had been taken to court, both literally and figuratively, on this.   

Chimps and Tees

The New York Times had an interesting page 1 story yesterday (Sunday):  “They Can Hit a Ball 400 Feet.  But Play Catch?  That’s Tricky.”  It seems that college baseball coaches are coming across ever-more players who can hit the ball or throw the ball hard and little else; all the fundamentals that used to mark the college-ready player are in eclipse.  How come?

According to the story, it’s the fault of travel ball and parents’ quest for the Holy Grail of an athletic scholarship.  Softball gets mentioned in passing, and I’m guilty as charged.  The story notes that parents will send their athletes off to see the hitting or pitching coach, and that’s it.  The head baseball coach at Tufts is so aggravated he feels like telling new players, “You have been hitting off a tee in an indoor cage way too much.  You could teach a chimpanzee smoking a cigarette to hit a baseball off a tee.”  Or a 12-inch softball.

Players, of course, swear by private lessons.  As one college-bound pitcher put it, “There is only so much the average dad can teach a kid.”  For me, that was getting my daughter to lay off of sliders down and away and to stop fielding grounders off her front foot.  I don’t know what the hitting coach taught her all those years—the 22-year old had the same vicious swing as the 14-year old and the 4-year old, for that matter.  But I do know what travel-coach Harry did.

Harry used to be the head softball coach at an area girls’ Catholic high school that had; teaching was in his blood.  All fall and winter of Clare’s sophomore year of high school he worked with her before or after regular Sunday practice: Position your body like this, hold the ball here to make your throws.  Back and forth they went, month after month.  I think Clare came to hate Harry nearly as much as she did me all those times I’d ask her after she went fishing for an outside pitch, “And exactly where would that’ve gone had you managed to get your bat it?”  Clare played a beautiful second base her last two years of high school.

.And when the college coach said she didn’t need a second baseman but a right fielder, Clare volunteered, not because she wanted to learn a new position but because she realized a complete ballplayer plays the field as well as hits.         

  

The Greatest Story Never Heard

 The bigger they are, the harder they fall, one and all.  Just ask Goliath, or the Connecticut women’s basketball team.

Women also play NCAA D-I basketball, and it’s also quite good.  In the semi-finals Friday, UConn put its 111-game winning streak on the line against Mississippi State, a team they had beaten by 60 points in the tournament last year.  Only on Friday, State didn’t roll over, forcing UConn into overtime, where 5’5” guard Morgan William sank a 15-foot jump shot with time expiring.  Clare told me it was on the anniversary of the death of William’s stepfather.  Why would my daughter feel the need to tell me that, I wonder.

The game was too late—and too female—for coverage in the Saturday papers.  I caught the shot on the national news, but not the local.  Today, the Tribune ran a wire story and the Sun-Times nothing at all.  And if that winning streak had belonged to UCLA, Kentucky or Louisville, the level of coverage would’ve been the same, no doubt.

That last sentence, my friends, was written one day after April Fool’s. 

Then and Now

Five years ago starting this week, Clare was on a homerun binge, hitting three, two of them three-run jobs.  Today, Clare will be having dinner with us after working a half-day on Saturday.  Her fiancé Chris is watching spring practice at Western Michigan University, where his old Elmhurst coach is now the head football coach.

Five years ago this week, the White Sox embarked on what so far is their last season over .500, when they finished 85-77.  After four seasons of mediocrity—this despite having Chris Sale, the best left-handed starter in baseball—the Sox are in rebuilding mode, sans Sale.  How nice.

Five years ago, Paul Konerko had his last really good season, hitting .298 with 75 rbi’s.  This will be Konerko’s third year of retirement—and A.J. Pierzynski’s first.

Time waits for no one.