Me and Joe Benz

Maybe football works the same way, but I doubt it.  I was reading the box scores at breakfast this morning and came across a note that on this date in 1914 Joe Benz of the White Sox pitched a no-hitter against the Indians.  Substitute Benz for Kevin Bacon, and I’m connected to a whole bunch of people in Cooperstown, this even though Benz has been dead sixty years and counting.

Allow me to explain.  In an earlier incarnation, I freelanced pointed-headed, highbrow features (eventually, too highbrow for editors) to the Chicago Tribune.  In 2000, when the Cubs opened the season against the Mets in Japan, I thought it would be fun to do a story on the 1913-14 world tour organized by Sox owner Charles Comiskey.  Benz was among the players who made the trip.

An earlier story for the late and lamented Elysian Fields quarterly brought me in contact with one of Benz’s children, who happened to be a nun.  She’d read something I’d done in the magazine and wanted to do a story on her dad; from where I come from, you never say No to a sister.  The one thing I still recall from our conversation was her telling me about a quilt made out of team sweaters from the time her dad played (1911-1919, 76-75 lifetime record, all with the Sox).  Oh, to bring that quilt on “Antiques Roadshow.”

For the world tour story, I got in touch with Benz’s son, also named Joe, and 82 at the time or 99 now, God willing.  The younger Benz had a picture of the touring players taking in the sights of ancient Egypt; at one point, catcher Ivy Wingo tossed a ball over the Sphynx to outfielder Steve Evans.  Benz gave me a copy of the photo to use in my story.

Given that Joe Benz pitched one inning in 1919, I figure that connects me to Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the Black Sox.  So, there you have it, a magic carpet ride fueled by memory and encounter rather than mushrooms.

Take a Hike

Who knew I’d be walking before biking this year?  Memorial Day turned warm and breezy with Palm Springs humidity, so Michele and I took to the 606 to do six miles on foot.  Just like Roger Daltrey, I could walk for mile and miles on such a day.

Growing up, we always walked places, to my grandmother’s, the grocery, the Tastee-Freez on 58^th Street.  How do you get a kid to stop complaining?  Why, buy him a foot-long hot dog, of course.  What I learned to do with family I continued on my own.  On Fridays in high school, I’d walk the mile through open fields (my high school was then in the boondocks) to the bus stop.  In college, I seemed to walk everywhere.  On one of our first dates, Michele and I took the “L” to the end of the line and walked back in the direction of DePaul.  It’s so long ago, at least I think that’s what we did.

Walk or ride, which is better?  Force me to choose, and I’ll take biking.  You cover more distance and generate your own breeze, but feet on the ground do serve a purpose, especially on vacation.  When Clare was in third grade, I got to be a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” (I did, but higher powers decided otherwise), and we walked all through Manhattan.  Cities are made to walk through, and maybe we’ll do the Brooklyn Bridge one day.  Maybe I’ll ask someone to point out Ebbbets Field for me.   

Changes

I won’t lie.  Clare seems to be taking her retirement from softball better than I am.  It’s like what Rutger Hauer told Harrison Ford at the end of “Blade Runner”—I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe.  No, not attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, but balls hit so far they brushed by those ships on their way past the stars.  And now, everything is over.

There was a pitcher on Elmhurst two years older than Clare, good enough to be considered one of if not the best pitcher in school history.  Her father refused to sit with us.  It had nothing to do with any of the other parents; he just couldn’t handle being that close to his daughter when she was pitching.  Instead, every game he went to the outfield and stood behind the fence.  Sometimes, he said a few words to Clare between outs.

I asked him at the alumni game last autumn if he misses it, and he gave me that look; you have to have seen burning attack ships to recognize it.  Miserable though he was out there in exile, he misses it more than anyone could ever know, though I think I have a clue how much.

His daughter is married now and coaching in the suburbs.  The pitcher from Clare’s high school team got married earlier this year, and in two weeks Clare will be off to Freeport for the wedding of the Elmhurst shortstop, who wants to start married life in Colorado.  My daughter also rides the train into work partway with the Elmhurst second baseman.  She’ll be starting law school in the fall.

Things change, and people, too.  Fathers are left to remember those times off of Orion.  

Lunch

Clare told me that Euks, her high school softball coach, texted her that he wants to have lunch with me.  I don’t text for reasons of conscience.

As I’ve said, Euks is a wonderful human being, even though he came into this world wearing a Cubs’ hat in the delivery room; some things in life you just have to ignore.  From what I gather, he wants to go to Freddie’s on 16^th Street in Cicero.  This is the kind of place “progressive” people try to feel comfortable in while everyone around them are dropping their Gs or speaking ill of Democrats. The nervous glances among the well-dressed are a dead giveaway.

That, and an inability to join in on the sports’ talk: Yeah, well the Cubs suck.  No, your Sox do.  No, the Bulls.  Wait, the Bears.  It’s the language of true Chicagoans.

Is He, or Isn't He?

LeBron James has just surpassed Michael Jordan for total points scored in the postseason, which has people arguing over who’s the better player, King James or his Airness.  This debate won’t be settled either until James moves from three championship rings to Jordan’s six, plus one more, or James retires short of those six.  For now, in my book Jordan reigns supreme.

Which isn’t to deny the two could be clones on the court; both James and Jordan have played guard, forward and center as the situation demands, as well as coach.  I think the major difference is more one of personality than talent.  Jordan always tended to be detached, an attitude that no longer serves an athlete well in this age of social media.  Players feared Jordan.  They honestly seem to like James.  So do most fans.

In retirement, Jordan’s personality has curdled; the man can be nasty, as his HOF induction speech showed.  James, on the other hand, is always engaging and relatively modest as he goes about the business of rewriting the record books.  Michael Jordan seems destined to follow in the moody footsteps of Bill Russell while LeBron James goes down as the most popular, if not the greatest, basketball player of all time—depending on the number of rings he retires with, of course.  

Keep That Kool-Aid Comin'

I just don’t get it.  Here we are at the end of May, the early prime part of the baseball season, and both newspapers act as if it’s late August, when they go into 24/7 Bears’ mode.  Last season’s 3-13 Monsters of the Midway—insert whatever joke you want here—made the first page of the Trib’s sports’ section three days running, and two out of three at the Sun-Times.  Did you know the Bears have a quarterback controversy brewing, or that they don’t want to comment on the injury status of oft-injured former #1 draft pick Kevin White, or that they really did comment by signing 30-year old receiver Victor Cruz?  Now you do.  

What kind of readers-fans-people care about this stuff, before Memorial Day?  Why does baseball have to worry about the whims and idiosyncrasies of millennial fans but football doesn’t?  Why don’t the Bears just go away, at least until after the Feast of the Assumption?  I wish I knew.

I Stand Corrected

Maybe I spoke too soon about the NFL being the first pro sports’ league to go belly up.  The New York Times today did a story on the Yankees, who have seen their ticket and luxury suite revenue drop by 42 percent, or $166 million, since Yankee Stadium III opened in 2009.  The story offered two possible reasons for the decline.

For openers, there’s the cost of going to a game, or, as one analyst put it, Yankees’ management “priced a perennial contending team into their tickets and suites.”  What happens is, once a team stops winning, their “aggressive pricing” strategy can bite back bigtime.

Related to this is the realization offered by Yankees’ managing partner Hal Steinbrenner, who said, “Baseball I think, has somewhat struggled with the millennial [fan] problem.”  And guess what?  Millennials are in the habit of deciding on their purchases at the last second, so forget about offering season-ticket packages to them.  Oh, and they like bargains.  Hence, the bite-back of “aggressive pricing.”

From my perspective, here’s the good news in this so-called millennial problem—diminished attention span.  The game may have to pick up its pace to maintain the interest of its younger fan base.  Any thoughts, Commissioner Manfred?  

Celebrate This

Football Commissioner Roger Goodell has decided the NFL needs to lighten up, so he’s implementing new rules in keeping with the need to “deliver a more exciting game experience” for fans, as Goodell put it in an open letter this week.

Hear ye, hear ye, the poohbahs are “relaxing our rules on celebrations to allow players more room to have fun after the[y] make big plays.”  Back are such fan favorites as the football used as a prop; “celebrating on the ground” (as opposed to the air, apparently); and “group demonstrations,” provided they don’t lead to a stronger players’ association, I’ll bet.  I may be mistaken, but I think Walter Payton, who didn’t do any of the above, said a player after scoring a touchdown should act like he’d been there before and was going to be there again.  Well, it’s not Walter Payton’s NFL anymore.

On a related note, I was standing in line Saturday afternoon outside of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Huertley House, his 1902 masterpiece with the low, brooding eaves, and, as God is my witness, three people behind starting talking about which professional sport will collapse first.  Their consensus was the NFL.  Just thought you’d want to know, Commissioner.  Maybe there’s a dance to prevent it.   

Behind a Mask

I drove by a girls’ softball game the other day and caught a glance of the right fielder.  She was nine, maybe, and a little tall for her age.  What really stood out, though, was her mask.  It was the first time I ever saw an outfielder wearing one.  Maybe she’d seen a friend without one take a ball to the face in a game.  

Softball players often wear masks playing the infield or pitching.  Two years ago, when I was scoring games for Elmhurst College, I saw the same pitcher get hit in the face twice; when she came back, it was with a mask, and who could blame her?  But an outfielder wearing one struck me as odd.

So, I called the resident softball expert in the family, and she agreed.  Clare and I both felt this was someone who really didn’t want to be playing softball; the mask was probably the only way her parents could get her to do it, and the odds for a shift to the infield were somewhere between slim and none, with slim just having walked out the door.  My advice would be for a family conference to see if there were another sport that might work out better.

I also think everything in softball should be lengthened.  Forty-three feet from the pitching rubber to the plate in college?   C’mon.  You put somebody 6-feet tall or more in the circle, and her stride almost puts her within striking range of the hitter’s bat.  Anyone lucky enough to get a bat on the ball, and that ball just may be headed for the pitcher’s head.  And with base paths only measuring 60 feet (versus 90 for baseball), any third baseman charging in for a bunt better be wearing a mask; the batter hits away instead, and that third baseman could be toast.

If they’re not going to switch over to baseball, can’t the softball powers that be at least consider changing the dimensions?  Schedule exhibition or non-conference games with baseball pitching and base path dimensions.  It can’t hurt, unlike the game that requires so many masks for its young players.          

A Bad Influence

Clare texted Friday night during the Sox-Mariners’ game to ask, “Who’s that broadcasting with Hawk Harrelson?  He’s terrible.”  Former Sox player and broadcaster Tom Paciorek was back in the booth for the Seattle series.  Paciorek did the color on Sox games from 1988-1999.

Clare was catching Paciorek at his worst, which is to say alongside Harrelson.  Basically, everything that came out of Paciorek’s mouth was a variation of “You’re right, Hawk.”  Worse, he joined in on Harrelson’s journeys into the baseball twilight zone.  For example, “Wimpy” and “Hawkeroo” [the nicknames they call one another by] went on over the course of two nights on the subject of “short arms” and hitting.  From what I could gather, it matters where you place your elbows.  Who knew?

The thing of it is, Paciorek can be very good.  He has what we in the tribe of Polonia appreciate as a sharp wit, and a self-deprecating one at that.  Last year, Paciorek was also paired for a few games with new Sox announcer Jason Benetti, and it was a revelation, the best television I’d heard on a Sox broadcast in decades.  Paciorek can tell a story, e.g., facing Goose Gossage at Yankee Stadium, that leaves me wishing Harrelson had been the one to leave in 1999.

On top of that, Paciorek demonstrated extraordinary courage in 2002 when he came out and accused a Catholic priest of abusing him and three of his brothers.  When Paciorek learned that the priest had been appointed pastor to a parish in rural Michigan [the Pacioreks grew up in and around Detroit], he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.  The priest was removed.

So, I cut the man some slack and hope that he finds his way into the booth again to pair up with Benetti for Sox home games.  Hope springs eternal, as they say.    

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

 Ask Clare, and she no doubt will tell you one of the best days of her life also happened to be one of her worst.  Both parts involve me.

It happened July 2004, the summer between sixth and seventh grade.  Clare had spent the previous eight weeks proving girls could play a boys’ game.  She hit a walk-off homerun the last game of the season of Bronco Ball and then took part in the homerun hitting contest the next day.  Let me note here that she was the only female among 25 contestants.  We all felt pretty good about her finishing fifth, and this going up against a bunch of travel-team boppers.

Right after that, we took a driving vacation, from Springfield to St. Louis to Galena.  In Springfield, we toured the Old State Capitol, walking where Abraham Lincoln walked and listening to a reenactor talk about that young politician; for a fleeting instant, I thought my daughter might follow me into the history profession.  Then it was off to St. Louis for its Arch and The Hill, the blue-collar Italian neighborhood where Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up.  Don’t let anyone tell you a Chicago bungalow is narrow, not compared to the shotgun house a young Yogi lived in.

After St. Louis, we drove up to Galena, in the northwest corner of Illinois.  For people from Chicago, the hills around Galena are our idea of mountains; a couple of hundred feet high is fine, thank you very much.  We’d been to Galena before, loved it, and planned a few days of exploring.  The very best and worst day-trip a 12-year old could take was in and around the town of Dyersville, Iowa.

The adult portion of the day unfolded 45 minutes west of Dyersville, which itself is a little west of the Mississippi River.  We were headed to a speck of a town by the name of Quasqueton.  It was a place straight out of Thornton Wilder, with dirt road and Civil War Monument—the right kind, to the Union veterans buried around it; our daughter was not impressed.  So much for that history idea.

 We drove outside of town a short ways to tour a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in his post-WWII Usonian style.  Wright was in the neighborhood of 83 when the house was finished in 1950.  If he had lost anything to age, it didn’t show.  Not to go off the deep end here, but the thing about Wright is his ability to combine intimacy with light.  Walk into one of his homes and it feels like a near-death experience with a happy ending:  Yes, it’s a bright light and, Yes, it’s just for you and, No, you won’t die if you walk into it.

Of course, Clare hated every second of it.  Wright built the house on the banks of the Wapsipinicon River, and that might have been part of the problem.  Michele and I were not above quizzing our daughter about stuff—why was the movie good or the restaurant bad, what was the best part of the museum?  She might have been petrified we were going to give hera pop quiz in spelling.  The word is “Quasqueton.”  No, make that “Wapsipinicon.”

Thank God for Dyersville, or Clare could have gone all Lizzie Borden on us.  For anyone from another planet, Dyersville is the site of a cornfield from a certain movie about Shoeless Joe Jackson and friends.  Nothing like pitching a little BP there to lighten your daughter’s spirits.  As I recall, Clare lined one ball at my head and hit a couple of shots that rolled to the corn.  As you might expect, we took a picture of her stepping out of said corn.

Yesterday, Michele and I spent a rainy Saturday traipsing through the village of Oak Park to tour yet more homes designed by Wright.  Six hours in, as we waited outside our last house of the day, Clare called to tell me the White Sox were about to sign 19-year old Cuban phenom Luis Robert to a contract that could go well north of $20 million.  Our daughter says none of her friends’ parents do the kind of stuff we do.  It was the best of times after the rainiest of days.   

Updates

This is a sure sign I’m on the threshold of advanced middle age:  The White Sox are playing on the West Coast, and I’m in bed at 11.  They blow the lead in the 11^th Tuesday night to lose to the Angels?  I didn’t find out until I checked on the computer late Wednesday morning (because the soon-to-be-extinct hardcopy sports’ sections can’t be bothered with West Coast scores).  They hit three homers to tie it up against the Mariners only to lose with two out in the bottom of the ninth on Thursday?  I was under the covers when Dan Jennings was showing why he ought to get his ticket punched to Triple A.

Ah, but my poor daughter, child of social media that she is.  Clare told me that when she woke up Thursday for work, “I had fifteen updates on my phone,” which will happen when your team coughs up 12 runs while scoring eight against the Halos.  Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

Do-overs

In my next life, more than anything I’d like to be able to ice skate, just like Hans Brinker.  There aren’t any canals a la Holland in these parts, but there’s a long tradition of skating on park lagoons.  I’d like to think I could read the sign and avoid any thin ice.

But in this life the best I could do was walk upright on my skates at an ice rink during a class outing in eighth grade.  An unnamed acquaintance of longstanding couldn’t even manage that; it was more ankle scraping than anything.  Then there was the time a whole bunch of us played hockey in the alley.  Nobody wore skates, everybody swung their sticks.  Bob thought he was a lumberjack.  Talk about bloodlust.

Would I also want to be able to swim?  I don’t know.  There are probably too many unpleasant memories to overcome.  Let me put it this way—I was born a rock in human form.  Around the time I was nine, the doctor told my mother swimming would be good for my asthma, so off to the Y we went for lessons; whatever they were paying the instructors wasn’t nearly enough with me in the pool, usually on my way to the bottom.  So, of course when the lessons were over, my mother signed me up for more.

The result of this water torture is that I did learn how to swim, sort of.  If the boat or plane goes down 20-40 feet from shore, I’m good; otherwise, we’re talking recovery, not rescue.  The good news, though, is that our one and only did not inherit her father’s lack of ability on the ice or in the water.  Clare skates just fine, and she was asked to join a swim club years before she made her first travel team.

But the old man can parallel park circles around her.

Doubles

Lucky for me Samuel Johnson was long dead before I started playing tennis.  Otherwise, I might’ve bumped that dog walking on two feet to become part of one of Mr. Johnson’s crueler observations.  Same for my friend Bob.

Neither of us was a natural, or an Ashe, to be period specific.  But summers during high school, we walked the mile and a half to Marquette Park and tried to muscle our way onto the tennis courts.  In those days, the courts were most popular with players from the neighboring Lithuanian neighborhood; outsiders were made to wait, and wait, and wait some more, which we did if only to be difficult.  When our turn finally came, we proceeded to hit tennis balls the way Harmon Killebrew did a baseball.  No fence could hold our drives.

We became proficient (enough) after a while and continued playing into college.  I remember one summer we drove up Lake Shore Drive to the North Side; there were a bunch of courts off of Addison.  I hope we played better than at Marquette Park, but I can’t say for sure.  What I do remember was the drive back; at some point, I stuck my hand out, fingers to the roof, the way people used to in the days before air conditioning.  Imagine my surprise to be grabbing onto not a bit of roof but Bob’s tennis racquet, which he had left up there while looking for his car keys.

Then there was the time I visited Bob in college one weekend.  I took a Greyhound bus for the first and only time in my life up to Madison, where Bob attended the U of W.  Saturday afternoon we watched a Badgers’ basketball game, then had a quick hamburger, then played tennis indoors in a monster facility.  Bob might not have beaten me that night, but he was lucky enough not to have been given the hamburger I ate; talk about food poisoning.  Nothing like taking the bus home knowing you won’t puke because you left it all behind in a dorm bathroom.  And here everybody thought I’d been drinking.

You do certain things with certain people.  For me, it was tennis and Bob Dietz.  Later, I played a little with Clare, and she had potential, but she was a ballplayer at heart; hitting a tennis ball over the fence never seemed to bother her.  She moved on to baseball and softball while retaining a love for the Williams’ sisters.  The big summer tennis tournaments will be starting soon.  My daughter will ask me if I’m watching, which I might, but in truth I’ll be thinking of other times and other people.

The Sun Rises and Sets on Yankee Stadium, Not

 

There was a better chance of Donald Trump saying he’s sorry or wrong about any single thing in his life than ESPN passing on the hoopla around Derrick Jeter—excuse me, Derrick Jee-taah—having his #2 retired Sunday night at Yankee Stadium.  Let’s just say Jeter didn’t come close pulling off a Lou Gehrig with his remarks.

How sad that we in Chicago were denied the greatness of such a shortstop.  No, the best we could do was Luke Appling, Luis Aparicio and Ernie Banks.  As anyone at ESPN could tell you, Jeter stands alone.  I won’t deny that Jeter belongs in the Hall of Fame, but as to the Yankees, allow me to quote the estimable Jimmy Cliff, give or take a word:  The bigger they are, the harder they fall, one and all.

The same holds for blowhard sports’ networks.

A Chip off the Old Block

There have been times when I’ve advised my daughter to watch what she says at a ballgame; she wears her White Sox allegiance on her sleeve, so to speak, along with an intense dislike for a certain North Side team.  But Saturday Clare and her fiancé Chris were going to Guaranteed Whatever Field, so I knew anything uttered about the Cubs would fall on friendly ears.  Little did I know just how positive a message she would wear.

Yes, wear, because Clare had on a tee-shirt inscribed, “I still call it Comiskey.”  People went up to her and told her how much they liked it, as well they should.  The White Sox used to have a ballpark; now they have a name problem, among so many others.  I dream of a day when all those bricks from the park that were given away will become part of an effort to rebuild what was hailed as the “Baseball Palace of the World.”

Speaking of which, Cubs’ TV announcer Len Kasper said something on the air Sunday that verged on blasphemy.  Kasper said that if he were to build his dream ballpark, it would have posts so that the upper deck could extend down to the edge of the field.  This was the first time I ever heard an announcer, for any team, venture an opinion so far off the beaten path of conventional sports’ wisdom.  If Kasper isn’t careful, the MLB Thought Police will drag him away to a reeducation camp, to learn the benefits of the cantilever, and how sad that would be.

Better Late than Never

Before Saturday’s game at whatever they called the White Sox home field these days, Jose Abreu took an extra 45 minutes of infield practice.  It may have something to do with him dropping an easy throw that led to four unearned runs in the first inning against the Twins the other day or the fact that his five errors ties Abreu with Matt Carpenter of the Cardinals for most errors by an MLB first baseman.  So, it can’t hurt, I think.  

Ever-positive Sox manager Rick Renteria lauds Abreu’s work ethic and thinks at least part of the problem may be equipment-related.  Renteria said in a story on the Sox website that the webbing of Abreu’s mitt  may be the culprit “because the balls roll around a little too much more than I would like.”  Me, too.

A very long time ago when I was but a boy Dick Stuart played first base, mostly with the Pirates and Red Sox.  Like Abreu, Stuart could hit the ball far, as in 228 career homeruns.  But it was Stuart’s defensive play that earned him the nickname of Dr. Strangeglove.  It was the ’60s, after all.   

Now, what’s that saying, Everything old is new again?  And everything Abreu is Stuart, too. 

Keeping Tabs

Chris Sale pitched seven innings yesterday for his new team, the Red Sox.  Sale struck out 12 in seven innings on his way to a 6-3 win over Tampa.  For the season, Sale is 4-2 with a 2.15 ERA and 85 strikeouts over 58.2 innings; his walks and hits per inning pitched, or WHIP, stands at .77; that basically means the opposition can expect to get three-quarters of the way to first base every inning.  It was the seventh consecutive start in which Sale has struck out 10+ batters, one short of the major league record shared by Pedro Martinez and…Chris Sale.

Meanwhile, Yoan Moncada, the prize acquisition in the package of players Boston sent to the White Sox in exchange for Sale, went 0/5 in last night’s Charlotte Knights’ 4-2 win over the Louisville Bats.  Despite taking the collar, Moncada is batting .338 with 27 runs scored, 6 homeruns, 12 RBIs and 10 stolen bases.  If they wanted to, the Sox could call up Moncada later next week and maintain an extra year of control over him, like the Cubs did with Kris Bryant in 2015.

At the present rate, Sale will pitch himself into Cooperstown—whose hat would he wear, do you think?—while Moncada could go down as one of the greatest players in minor league history, all thanks to the questions that Sox GM Rick Hahn wants answered.  When my father got disgusted with things, he made this face, like he was in the presence of crap.  If Moncada stays in Charlotte much longer, I’m going to start practicing that look in the mirror.

 

Football 24/7, Until Death Do They Part

 This being the day before Mother’s Day, the Tribune naturally ran a page-one photo of Bears’ #1 draft pick quarterback Mitch Trubisky, to go with a story in sports about the team’s three-day rookie camp.  As the piece noted, the Bears won’t be playing any kind of game for another four months.  Not that the Trib cares, not that the fans they want to reach care, either.

Buried in the back of the sports’ section was a Washington Post story about Nick Buoniconti, the star linebacker from the undefeated 1972 Dolphins.  Tasks as simple as putting on a shirt and hanging up the phone are now increasingly too much for Buoniconti to accomplish on his own.  I would say that at least he’ll always have memories of that one incredible season, one that no doubt contributed to his current physical state, if only that were true.  In football, too often the mind goes along with the body.

But, hey, four months and counting, Bear fans.  I can’t wait.     

Down on the Farm, But Why?

 White Sox GM Rich Hahn doesn’t want to bring up top prospect Yoan Moncada—setting AAA Charlotte on fire these days with a .347 batting average—anytime soon.  Hahn put it this way while talking to reporters the other day.  “He’ll be here when he answers all the questions we have for him with the developmental standpoint at the minor league level.”  Come again, Rick?  What, pray tell, are those questions?

Hey, I’ve got one.  Why are the Sox so concerned about rushing Moncada, given that Chris Sale, the guy they traded away for him, spent all of two months in the minors after being drafted in June of 2010?  Eleven games split between high-A and Triple A was all it took for Sale to get the call to the bigs.  He must’ve answered every last question.

Here’s another one: Does Hahn know that the 30 games Monacada has played at the AAA level is more than Albert Pujols, Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, Bryce Harper and Mike Trout had, combined?  Yup, those worthies were judged ready to go, questions answered.  Moncada will turn 22 at the end of the month, the same age as Thomas when he was called up; all the other players mentioned above were younger at the time of their MLB debut.  Oh, and Sox first baseman Jose Abreu never spent a day in the minors.  The Sox deemed his time in Cuba sufficient for him to take over from Paul Konerko in 2014.

It may be that Hahn doesn’t want to bring up Moncada right now because that would necessitate other moves.  For instance, if Moncada goes to second, what about Tyler Saladino and Yolmer Sanchez?  Which one leaves?  On the other hand, if Moncada moves to third, then Todd Frazier has to go, and how many third basemen batting .183 with 11 RBIs are going to bring anything in return?  If Hahn does nothing, Frazier disappears at the end of the season as a free agent; ditto left fielder Melky Cabrera, who’s not exactly tattooing the ball with a .235 average.  Hahn would rather wait for the July 30 trade deadline, when he could move Frazier and/or Cabrera should they remember how to hit. 

Hahn could also trade away any of a number of pitchers at the deadline, which could mean calling up other prospects.  That’s assuming they’ve answered all the right questions, of course.       

Climb Every Mountain

A 23-year old woman from nearby River Forest was found alive yesterday after spending nearly seven days lost in a wilderness area not far from Glacier National Park in Montana.  The parent in me wants to go ballistic and scream, “What were you thinking?” while the kid in me has to admit, “Been there, done that,” sort of.  I just didn’t become part of the local news.

Back in the summer between college and law school, I went out West on vacation.  None of my friends were willing to go with, so I went alone.  My parents lent me the Galaxie 500, probably telling themselves, “Well, at least he won’t be on that motorcycle he wanted.”  And off I went.

I remember reaching Kansas City and getting caught in the afternoon rush; I had the radio turned on to a station that was hyping an Eric Clapton concert that evening; to this day, hearing “I Shot the Sheriff” makes me long for the sound of fingernails on chalk board.  To borrow a line from Canned Heat, I was going up the country, Rocky Mountain National Park, to be precise.

We’d gone on a family vacation there five years earlier, and I wanted to relive the triumph of hiking circles around my parents.  I had a fancy new backpack which I filled with goodies and soda; what a snack the bears could have had if things had gone differently.  Without any thought to safety or time, I sat off on a trail—without telling anyone, of course—one morning.  Oh, how I communed with Nature.

I still have the pictures of mountains rising against sky and clouds.  If there was anyone else on the trail that day, I don’t recall.  It was just me going fifteen miles to get up above the tree line, the only sound from out-of-sight jets passing overhead.  I found a spot Thoreau would have approved of, ate and rested up.  The dumb stuff started on the way down.

For openers, there was an icy snow patch maybe 100-150 feet long that beckoned.  I left the trail to slide down it, which was the easy part.  I only thought of having to stop with about 20 feet of snow left; the rocks would have done a real number on me if not for a frantic, Fred-Flintstone imitation.  Saved from a stony embrace, I stuck to the trail.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t reckoned on the sun setting.  That eventuality came to me only as the shadows deepened across the valley I was descending.  Dusk turned to night before I could reach the trail head.  You could say that luck was with me, in so far as the trail was well marked and it would’ve have been impossible to wander off unless I were a mountain goat.  While my head may have been clueless, my feet knew what they were doing, and I reached the trail head an hour or have after dark.  Some combination of God, Nature and the bears all took pity on me as they did on that girl in Montana.

When I came home, my father helped me unload the back seat of the car.  Back then, Midwesterners crossing the Mississippi were expected to fill up with cases of Olympia Beer, which wasn’t distributed in these parts.  In a commercial, I would’ve shared a beer with the old man while regaling him with the story of my misadventures, only I knew what he would’ve done had I told him—yell at me while thinking of the time he nearly drowned in Lake Erie at nearly the same age during a squall.

That was a story he saved for much later.

Sharing the Road

I asked my parents for a motorcycle on my 18^th birthday.  When they were done laughing, I asked for a Schwinn, and they said, Yes.  It set them back in the neighborhood of $87.95 (you can find Schwinn ads on eBay), which comes out to $552.28 now.  All I can say is they must have liked me.

That venerable Schwinn and its equally venerable rider are waiting for a break in the weather; right now, Chicago appears intent on disproving all evidence of global warning.  If and when it gets warm, I’ll be riding by all sorts of people and conveyances—bicycle, skateboard, rollerblades.  For the most part, I’ll live and let live, provided nobody tries to cut me off.  The pretty boys in their spandex racing outfits are prone to do that, so for them I’ll save a few choice words.

In contrast, the rollerbladers are pretty harmless, though the unsteady ones do tend to drift into my lane from time to time.  It’s the skateboarders I can’t get a good read for.  They’re as standoffish as the pretty boys on their $$$ bikes, yet with a defensiveness about them.  Their skateboard is some sort of statement they want everyone to get, only they don’t make eye contact and tell you what it is.  So, we pass one another, the wary cyclist and the guess-what-I’m-thinking skateboarder.  Ships in the night we are, each on our way to important places, or so we think.

His Baseball Diary, and Mine

 One of my favorite baseball books is My Baseball Diary by Chicago writer James T. Farrell, who is now remembered mostly for his Studs Lonigan trilogy.  The book was initially published in 1957, a year or so before I acquired the skill of reading and more than a few years before I would throw a baseball.  The various entries are more Ruth and Comiskey than Mantle and Veeck, not that I care.  What draws me to the book is Farrell’s ability to make a distant past accessible, or as he says in one passage, “Today, when I go to Comiskey Park or Wrigley Field, I do not merely see the game in progress.  I remember the games I saw decades ago.”  That would include his encounter with Browns’ third baseman Jimmy Austin, the pride of Swansea, Wales.

In August of 1911, the seven-year old Farrell attended a White Sox-Browns’ game where his uncle managed to sneak him into the visitors’ dugout.  Chicago being Chicago, the weather was off, and the young Farrell was chilled to the point of discomfort.  “Jimmy Austin, St. Louis third baseman, put his sweater on me.  I swam in it, and sat huddled on the bench, shy but impressed and wanting very much to be noticed.  Austin asked me several times if I was warm enough.  The other players scarcely noticed me.”

For whatever reason, that passage has always stayed with me, which may be why I bought a photo of Austin on eBay last week.  After an 18-year career as a player and coach with the Browns, Austin hooked up with the White Sox in 1933 and coached on the South Side for seven years.  The youngest he could have been in the photo was 53, but what a 53.  Austin exudes pure joy, left hand in glove on hip, right hand holding a bat as if it were a rich man’s cane.  And the smile—here was a man happy beyond belief to be wearing a baseball uniform (this one with S-O-X in capitals at a downward slant, a baseball inside the “O,” all three letters superimposed on a bat).  Austin poses with his back to those glorious outfield arches that I once sat in front of.

There’s a rather famous picture of Ty Cobb sliding into third base in a cloud of dirt if not spikes; the third baseman trying not to be run over is Jimmy Austin, then of the New York Highlanders (now Yankees).  I went to look at the picture today in Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig’s The Image of Their Greatness, a nice picture history of the game.  Inside, I found five baseball cards from 1970 and a small poster for Braves’ pitcher Phil Niekro.  There was also a Christmas card, signed “Bob—Enjoy the ‘Mets.’”  One of the baseball cards shows Tommie Agee and teammates celebrating their “Incredible” 1969 season.  Bob, a diehard Cubs’ fan, has been dead now for almost fifteen years.

Thank you, Jimmy Austin, for the chance to reconnect with an old friend.

The "Sport" of Kings

The hoopla over the Kentucky Derby, and all horseracing for that matter, escapes me.  I don’t envy the swells with the disposable income to waste on parties and three-year olds, and I thank God I don’t feel the need to pull off a daily trifecta.  It’s all the stuff they don’t show at the Derby that bothers me.

A very long time ago, I was a reporter for a suburban Chicago newspaper, which covered the wonderful town of Cicero.  For some reason I can no longer recall, I found myself at Sportsman’s Park race track.  What I do remember are the track’s dirt—the same color brown as in the infield at Comiskey Park—and the backstretch, where track workers lived.  It looked like Skid Row in cinderblock. 

Hardly anybody in horseracing makes money, but somehow breeders manage to live a whole lot better than the stable boys.  The same goes for the horses.  Sea Biscuit, Secretariat, Man ’O War—only the winners get remembered in a sport that punishes its also-rans.  Athletes retire to a new life; retired horses can only hope they get to live with an owner who has the means and desire to care for them.  Why do you think it’s so hard to close down horse slaughterhouses?

So, pardon me if I didn’t watch the Derby and don’t know the name of the winner.  But I do wonder about the seventeen horses that finished out of the money. 

 

Of Pitchers and Lightbulbs

By my count this morning, the Cubs were carrying 14 pitchers on their 25-man roster.  They must need all 14 to change a lightbulb in the clubhouse.

Joe the Genius Maddon wants that many—and more—to get through a game.  Citing a stretch of close and extra-inning contests, Maddon last night called on catcher Miguel Montero to pitch the ninth in a 11-6 drubbing by the Yankees.  So, that makes 15 pitchers with an asterisk.

This way leads to madness, folks.  The Cubs sent down Matt Szczur (who should give the White Sox a call and vice versa), which leaves them with four outfielders, and that’s including Kyle Schwarber.  Talk about a lack of flexibility, or a disaster waiting to happen.  I sure wouldn’t want Schwarber risking injury running around where he doesn’t belong in late innings.

The next big thing in baseball will be to think of pitching in terms of quality, not quantity (see Cubs, above).  If you’ve got bad pitching, the solution is not more of the same.  Conversely, good pitching should free up a roster for talented role players like Matt Szczur.  Oh, to own a baseball team and impose my will on it.  Maybe in my next life.     

"Exit Velocity"

The term de jure on baseball broadcasts is “exit velocity,” or how fast a homerun ball leaves the yard.  I was going to say this is a meaningless stat, a homerun’s a homerun, but that would be wrong.  If you think about it, the idea of “exit velocity” is pure poison.

Look at how EV to came out of nowhere to become part of instant replay.  Americans love things fast, fast things and now, thanks to a new gadget or a new readout from an old one, fast-moving homeruns.  How much you want to bet there won’t be a top-ten list at season’s end for fastest EV balls?

What’s the harm with that? you might ask.  Just this:  the faster the speed, the more likely the hitter was tall and strong.  The equation EV=Height and Muscle will will affect entire lineups.  This is not a good thing for 5’ 9” (yeah, right) Dustin Pedroia or 5’ 10”Andrew Benintendi or anyone who wants to follow in their footsteps.  And “EV” may as well be scarlet letters branded on the forehead of any female athlete who wants to play professional baseball.

Just remember that the next time the EV number flashes on the screen after a homerun.

For Show and For Real

MLB had a story and video clip on its website about the couple who lives together and hits homeruns together, that being the Ozunas, Marcell and Genesis.  Marlins’ outfielder Marcell Ozuna hit a mammoth, 468-foot shot against the Rays at Tropicana Field Wednesday, but wait, there’s more!  This was a gender doubleheader.  In game one, Rays-Marlins’ wives and girlfriends squared off in a 12-inch softball contest, during which Ozuna’s wife Genesis lined a two-run homer to left.  If I had a dime for every time someone watched the video…

Only this was unlike any softball game I ever watched my daughter play in high school or college.  Since when does the pitcher lob the ball underhand?  And since when doesn’t the score count in a game?  In all the stories I read online about Genesis Ozuna, nobody bothered to mention the score.  Why, because it was girls and/or softball?

Speaking of softball, I came across an item that didn’t receive nearly as much attention as the Ozunas.  Back in January, MLB appointed Olympic softball gold medalist Jennie Finch its “youth softball ambassador,” a position which includes reaching out to girls who play baseball.  Huh?  Jennie Finch and baseball?  Yes, I know she’s married to former major-league pitcher Casey Daigle, but promoting that game to girls might seem like an act of treason, not to me so much as Finch and her psyche.  And yet she seems to be doing it.

Lost in all the annual Jackie Robinson hoopla last month, MLB and women’s USA Baseball sponsored a three-day baseball tournament in Compton California open to girls 16u and 12u, from the U.S. and Canada.  The tournament drew 96 players, and there was Jennie Finch saying how great it was for baseball-playing girls to see they’re not alone.  I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.

Too bad MLB didn’t publicize it the way it did the Ozunas.   

 

Good Things, Bad People

I nearly did a full Danny Thomas at the breakfast table Sunday while reading something in the sports’ section.  How I kept from spraying my coffee across the kitchen qualifies as something of a minor miracle.

It’s just that you never read a sportswriter actually calling out an owner for business ethics, but here it was, a Tribune columnist ripping into the Marlins’ Jeffrey Loria, widely regarded as one of, if not the, worst owner in baseball.  Loria ran the Montreal Expos into the ground, prevailed upon Commissioner Bud Selig to have MLB buy the Expos and allow him in turn to buy the Marlins while the Marlins’ owner bought the Red Sox.  In Miami, Loria extorted the construction of a mostly publicly funded $639 million ballpark, something he failed to pull off in Montreal despite his best and thuggish efforts. 

Loria is now expected to sell the Marlins for north of $1 billion.  Owners who would love to slap a salary cap on players have no problem with the dirty windfall going Loria’s way.  As Tribune writer Paul Sullivan put it, “Another proud day for baseball.”

Indeed.

Remind Me Again Why We Traded Chris Sale

 In the top of the first inning of last night’s Orioles-Red Sox game, Red Sox fans gave O’s outfielder Adam Jones a standing ovation to show that they weren’t all racists, at least not all of the time.  Red Sox starter Chris Sale did his part by stepping off the mound to allow the applause to continue, after which he struck out Jones swinging.

Sale then threw a pitch behind the next batter, Manny Machado, to let Machado know it’s not a good idea to spike a teammate of Chris Sale while sliding; Machado did that last week to Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia.  After Sale’s little warning, Machado was called out on strikes.  Sale pitched eight innings to pick up the win in a 5-2 game.

For the year, Sale is 2-2.  Off his stats, it should be 4-0.  In 45-2/3 innings, Sale has a 1.38 ERA to go with 63 strikeouts along with a .166 opponents’ batting average and a WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) of .74.  Did I mention that he struck out 11 Orioles, the fifth straight start he’s punched out 10+ batters?  That makes Sale only the second Red Sox pitcher in franchise history to do so, after Pedro Martinez.

That makes Sale the second coming of Sal “The Barber” Maglie, if with infinitely more talent.  And that could make Sale the White Sox version of Babe Ruth, only this time the talented left-handed pitcher goes to, rather than leaves, Boston for a pittance.  I hope not, but have this sinking, Lou Brock-like feeling in my stomach.   

The People's Court

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing,  and all the more powerful when the speaker isn’t afraid to show his/her face.  Pro tennis player Eugenie Bouchard of Canada qualifies as one such person.

Bouchard spoke out last week on the subject of Maria Sharapova’s reinstatement after serving a 15-month suspension for drug use (it was an accident, I’m so sorry….).  Bouchard called Sharapova “a cheater and so, to me, I don’t think a cheater in any sport should be allowed to play that sport again.  It’s so unfair to all the other players who do it the right way.”  Maybe a tad extreme, but upfront and not an opinion delivered troll-like.

There was also an interesting incident during the NFL draft in Philadelphia last week.  Fans in the audience booed when the Cincinnati Bengals picked Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon, who in 2014 was caught on camera punching a woman in the face.  The whole thing was spontaneous, and nobody threw any bottles, so I’m OK with that reaction.  (Unlike what Orioles’ outfielder Adam Jones experienced at Fenway Park last night: fans taunted him with a racial slur, and someone threw a bag of peanuts at him.  Red Sox management apologized for their fans’ troll behavior this morning.)  Even better, a Cincinnati TV station broadcast an editorial urging Bengals’ fans to boycott the team and donate the money saved to groups that work to combat violence against women.  Again, an upfront expression of opinion.

For his part, Mixon said, “I come here to work and to be the best teammate, the best person, and try to do whatever I can around the community and get everybody together.”  Well, he’s sort of done that already.  The trick will be to win over his critics, both the loud ones and the articulate ones.   

Extra! Extra!

Read All About It: 21^st Century major-league manager uses pinch runner for star player in extra inning game!  Move works!!

In Saturday’s White Sox-Tigers contest, Sox first baseman Jose Abreu walked in the tenth inning, following a solo homerun by Melky Cabrera.  Sox manager Rick Renteria then used a pinch runner, who scored on a triple by Avisail Garcia.  If Abreu had been running, that would’ve been a double by Garcia, with third base occupied.  Detroit has two players, first baseman Miguel Cabrera and DH Victor Martinez, who are both older and slower than Abreu, yet I’ve never seen the Tigers pinch run for either, so this was fairly big in terms of strategy.

The use of a pinch runner also meant that the Sox had to insert a new first baseman at the bottom of the inning.  Todd Frazier switched from third to first and Tyler Saladino from second to third while Yolmer Sanchez, the pinch runner, went in at second.  The net result—better infield defense in what turned out to be a 6-4 Sox win in ten.

It would’ve been really nice if the Sox were so old school they had a six-player bench with a first baseman ready to go instead of having to play a game of musical chairs on the infield.  But I’ll take my old school where I can get it.