Just Desserts

My, my, speak of the Knickerbockers:  Phil Jackson, the coach with 11 NBA championships earned with the Bulls and Lakers, is stepping down—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he’s being forced to step down—as president of the Knicks.  The genius behind the triangle offense assembled teams that went 80-166 in the three full seasons he ran the operation.   

Jackson could do no wrong as a coach.  Something about having Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant brought out the genius in him.  In the front office, though, Jackson proved to be as inept as Jerry Krause in his post-Jordan (and –Jackson) phase.  Jackson signed Carmelo Anthony to a five-year, $124 million deal, throwing in a no-trade clause to boot, then this season tried to get Anthony to accept  a trade.  He drafted forward Kristops Porzingis, who is actually good, so good in fact that he got sick of losing and let Jackson know about it.  Apparently, Jackson went into last week’s draft trying to trade Porzingis.  One man’s attempted revenge is another’s victory, you might say.

Jackson and the Celtics’ Red Auerbach engaged in a public feud over who was the better coach; Jackson figured he won that contest, 11 championship rings to Auerbach’s nine.  Only Auerbach moved into the Boston front office and won another seven rings.  Advantage, Auerbach, I think.   

 

And They Can Spell "Cat"

The Knicks invited the son of former NBA star Rick Barry to play with their summer league team.  The interesting thing for me about Canyon Barry, a guard, is that he’s working on his master’s degree in nuclear engineering.  According to a recent story in the NYT, Barry is maintaining a 4.0 GPA.

I love smart athletes, the ones who challenge themselves in the classroom as well as the gym or weight room.  With Clare, we insisted she do well in school.  Don’t get me wrong, our daughter was her own person; unlike her parents, who were liberal arts’ majors to a fault, she was more attracted to the sciences, and that was fine.  If she could understand the physics of hitting, so be it.

In time, the nerd and jock coincided nicely.  As a senior in high school, Clare attended a National Honors Society event straight from a game, in uniform (this after hitting her ninth homerun of the season).  At Elmhurst, she was a finalist for senior of the year.  The college even president held a luncheon for the finalists, but Clare couldn’t attend.  As I recall, she had a doubleheader at the University of Chicago that day.  Talk about irony.

Athletes have a way of looking at the world that’s different from other people.  With luck, they can make use of that viewpoint even after their careers are over; they just need to have a skillset ready.  It looks like Canyon Barry and Clare have that in common. 

 

Keep on Peddlin'

I marvel at people who go on week-long bike rides through Iowa.  Distances don’t bother me.  With nothing else to do for 8-12 hours, I’m pretty sure I could do 80 miles, 100 if all the stars and planets align perfectly, which is to say no headwinds or scorching overhead sun.  AND NO HILLS.

Yesterday, I took the one area trail with real hills.  Actually, it’s two trails, the first being the Illinois Prairie Path, “prairie” being the operative word.  I start in Wheaton, college home of Billy Graham, and work my way north for about 14 miles along a tree-canopied path that brushes a whole lot of wetlands.  I turn left at the big dairy farm in South Elgin; say Hello to the cows (they actually lift up their heads to looks as I pass them); switch over to the Fox River Trail; and prepare myself for the two rises.  Springsteen ought to write a song.

The first rise is maybe a third of a mile long, give or take (and I’m inclined to give).  Ten years ago, when I first started doing the trail, I’d get maybe halfway up from the river before throwing in the towel.  Now, I do it or die trying.  Since I’m still here, I must’ve done it yesterday.  The payoff comes at the end of the rise.

The trail there follows along a rural road.  After a thousand feet or so, I can stop peddling because everything turns into a gentle descent.  Eventually, I’m doing anywhere between 20-25 mph downhill, whizzing along to the second rise, because the trail insists on following the Fox.  Only this rise isn’t.

It’s more of a switchback; think of a flight of stairs, a landing, then another flight.  I finish that (and it’s no more than 20 minutes after the first rise), and my thighs have gone to Jello.  One problem, though, is I have about another 15-20 miles of riding to do to get back to Wheaton.  I do it because someone has to spit into the wind, but I can’t imagine a day of challenging the rolling landscape of Iowa.  At the end of the day, I’m just a flatlander, thank you very much.    

      

The Oracle of Delphi

Last week, Matt Davidson of the White Sox told a Sun-Times reporter he has to fight tensing up at the plate.  Before this season, Davidson said he “would get tense, not from a stress standpoint but from trying to do too much, and that makes me make bad decisions,” known to us laypeople as striking out all the time.

There’s more.  Davidson went on to say he’s now trying to “get the tension out of my shoulders and arms and just try to be in my hands.  When I get long or slower or tense up, I will foul those pitches off or swing through them.”

Try to be in his hands?  You have to hope Davidson brings an interpreter to his visits with hitting coach Todd Steverson.  Clare used to get like this, talking hitter-gibber.  I probably drove her nuts by saying, “See ball, hit ball.”  But it’s true, simple and true. 

This Day in Our Family's Sports' History

 Michele and I spent Saturday at someone’s summer home on a lake in Wisconsin.  A steady 30-mph wind postponed my debut on a jet ski (hold onto your tickets for that show, though.  Believe me, it’ll be death-defying.).  So everybody over the age of 16 passed the time in conversation, during which Michele mentioned how much I miss watching Clare play travel ball.  The next day I gently reminded my wife that I don’t miss travel.  It was too much Dickens and Darwin for any sane person to enjoy.

What I do miss are the individual at-bats.  What will my daughter do now?  It’s 0-2.  Will she know to protect?  Will the ump ring her up because he’s hot and wants to go get water?  Why is it always 0-2?  I learned to savor the time between pitches.  That way lay eternity.

After I delivered my little reprimand, it suddenly occurred to me that we were at the anniversary of the one travel tournament I would very much like to relive.  Clare’s team won it in large part due to her five homeruns and 12 RBI’s.  Those figures are all the more impressive given that she only pinch-hit in the first game—her punishment for me getting us there late—and then batted in the six-spot the rest of the tournament.

.I called my daughter with this now eight-year old memory, and she was impressed enough to offer one of her own.  “Do you know where I was four years ago today?”  Where?  “Amsterdam,” which is how this whole thing got started.   

The Bigger They Are...

The Cubs on Thursday sent Kyle Schwarber, their 235-pound struggling leadoff batter (!), to Triple A Iowa to regain his swing.  Schwarber leaves with a .171 batting average on the year and .207 for his career.

If we were to apply the thinking on Gordon Beckham to Schwarber, the Cubs shouldn’t have brought up their prospect so soon, barely a year after drafting him in 2014.  But they did, and Schwarber proceeded to hit five homeruns over the course of the next two postseasons.  There weren’t any homeruns in the 2016 World Series, but Schwarber still managed to go 7 for 17, this after missing all but two games of the regular season to a knee injury.

Again, going back to Beckham, you could say that Schwarber didn’t get a chance to fail in the minors, which would better prepare him for adversity in the majors.  Only that’s gibberish.  Schwarber was everything a contending team could want as a midseason call-up and a hero in not one but two straight postseasons.  The ability to handle the pressure that goes with trying to break a 108-year drought of World Series championships has to count for something.

Personally, I lay a good deal of the blame at the feet of Joe “The Genius” Maddon, who left Schwarber in the leadoff spot way too long.  Oh, and he never should have been there in the first place.  (The same goes for the new leadoff batter, Anthony Rizzo.)  A good manager would have started the season with Schwarber in the middle of the lineup and then moved him down in the order once he started to slump.  But I’m not a genius, or a Cubs’ fan.

With luck and discipline, Schwarber should figure it out in Iowa.  For what it’s worth, I like his stance with feet wide apart and slightly open; to me, a big left-handed hitter with his front foot already pointed to first has a needed advantage propelling himself out of the box to first. Somebody suggested to me that Schwarber swings like Adam Dunn, but I don’t see it.  Dunn is the only ballplayer I ever saw with a mope in his swing; Schwarber is fast and fairly compact.  His problem is pitch selection.  If he can fix that, he’ll be up hitting balls off of scoreboards in no time.    

Media to Sky: Bye or Die

 The Tribune used 20 words—including first and last names and numbers in the score—to report on yesterday’s  82-78 win by the WNBA Chicago Sky over the Atlanta Dream.  The simplest of obituaries are longer, but then again people have to pay for those.

Keep Your Shirt On

One year in high school, Clare posed for a softball picture, her bat behind her back and cradled in the crux of her arms.  The effect was to make a certain body feature stick out, for what in the old days would have been referred to as a “cheesecake” shot.

Women athletes are forever facing whispers about their sexuality, which they respond to with cheesecake, viz., the inevitable swimsuit photo shoot and/or calendar.  If only looking at bare skin made men more amenable to the notion of social equality.  I doubt that it does, but ESPN evidently thinks otherwise.  How else to explain its magazine’s “body issue”?

It features both male and female athletes in the buff, with the naughty bits (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) artfully concealed.  This year’s edition will include Javy Baez of the Cubs.  No doubt, Baez will say all the right things about body image and how we should all accept ourselves.  But that won’t change the fact he’s turned himself into a kind of cheesecake that should have spoiled a long time ago.         

A "Level" Playing Field

A “Level” Playing Field

The NBA, NFL and NHL have bluffed and bullied and b.s.’d their way to a hard salary cap while MLB maintains a soft one in the form of a luxury tax.  The Republican Party may love a flat tax, but baseball owners have had no problem embracing a steeply progressive tax on payrolls.  Go figure.

The main argument for a cap is that it maintains competitive balance—how else to keep franchises afloat in places like Columbus and Green Bay?  Nothing could be worse for fans—and it’s always about the fans, right?—than a Yankees’-like dynasty.  Hmm.

Since 2010, the Giants have won the World Series three times along with four other teams.  During that same timeframe in the NHL, the Black Hawks have won three Stanley Cups to two for the Penguins and Kings.  In the NBA, the Heat and Warriors have won two apiece in finals that have featured Miami four times with Cleveland and Golden State three times (the last three finals, against one another, no less).  It only seems like the Patriots win every Super Bowl.

What’s my point?  That contrived brakes on spending in pro sports don’t work as promised.  What nobody talks about in baseball is the punishment meted out to teams that spend wildly.  When was the last time those salary-busting Yankees won a World Series?  Why, it was in 2000, or 17 long seasons ago.  As for the Giants, they have the second-worst record in baseball (after the ever-rebuilding Phillies, which is a story for another day).  Who wants to take on Hunter Pence’s contract?  Or Jeff Samardzija’s?

So, the Warriors went out and got Kevin Durant at the end of last season, and he helped them win their second title in three years.  So much for competitive balance.  Also keep in mind everything else a salary cap  involves.  Besides Durant, the Warriors’ front office identified talent, acquired it and then grossly underpaid it (thank you, NBA collective bargaining agreement).  In the end, it’s not how much you spend but how smart you are spending it.

Lunch

I had lunch Monday with Euks, Clare’s coach from high school.  I also have lunch from time to time with Mike, Clare’s coach from Elmhurst.  It’s time travel either way.

With Euks, I have to go way back.  Clare’s freshman year at Morton was 2006-2007.  Do you remember the Riverside-Brookfield playoff game when they started to pack up their gear in the seventh inning?  You mean the game where freshman Clare started the 4-run, winning rally with a single on a 1-and-2 pitch?  Yes, I do.  Do you remember the game senior year when Clare hit a game-tying homerun against St. Ignatius off the daughter of the DePaul softball coach, who happened to be in attendance?  Yes, I do.

After we revisited these and some other of the good times, Euks told me the last time he saw Coach Mike (they used to play 16-inch softball together).  “He always talks about Clare’s homeruns.”  You mean the one that went at least 275 feet in the conference tournament her sophomore year?  “Yeah.”  Now, let me tell you about the one she hit a week before….

This is how a father relives those glory days, as Bruce Springsteen put it.  I can only hope the ex-player has a way of doing it, too.  I know one of her old coaches would love to have lunch with her.

Why I Hate Cubs' Fans

This is a textbook example of how Cubs’ fans act.  In last night’s 3-2 Cubs’ win over San Diego, Padres’ hitter Yangervis Solarte homered to left.  It wasn’t enough for the Cubbie troll to throw the ball back on the field (Note to Cubs’ fans: the run still counts), no, he had to flip Solarte a double bird.  Never has a TV camera cut away so quickly.

And what is the proper way to deal with an opponent’s homerun ball, you might ask?  Why, on the South Side we know not to throw away any souvenir that falls from the sky.  We accept any and all such gifts and will even sing our thanks with serenades of “Na-Na, Hey-Hey, Goodbye.”  Sox win, Sox win. 

Apples and Oranges

The White Sox had a runner on third base in the ninth inning of their game in Toronto on Saturday.  Tim Anderson led off with a double and was sacrificed to third.  That brought up Yolmer Sanchez.  Somebody flashed the suicide squeeze sign, and it unfolded perfectly; Anderson had to be no more than 25 feet from the plate when Sanchez laid down his bunt.  The young man from Maracay, Venezuela, drove in the young man from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.   

Basketball has the give-and-go or the pick-and-roll as an equally simple, satisfying play (oh, and the Sox won 5-2), but what about football?  It’s always 11 people having to do what the play calls for, or it’s a wasted down.  How complex, how exhausting, how sad.

Father's Day

I have two memories of my father from the summer of 1964.  Naturally, both involve the White Sox.

We went to a game, maybe around Father’s Day, maybe just a father-son special event.  Anyway, the Sox players had their sons on the field with them before the game.  I distinctly remember Minnie Minoso and his boy.  According to baseballrefernce.com, Minoso was with the Sox from April through the middle of July, so it was most likely sometime in June.  The Minosos were throwing the ball to one another, like the other fathers and sons.  For reasons I can’t explain, my father and I never played catch.

We also went to the last game of the season, the Sox shutting out the A’s 6-0 for their 98^th win of the year.  Too bad it was one less win than the Yankees, who went on to the World Series.  It was an overcast Sunday afternoon in early October, with a feel to it more football than baseball.  My father didn’t say much that day; he spent most of his life hoarding words.  Anyway, what do you say when your team loses ten straight to the Yankees at one point in the season, that they didn’t deserve to go to the Series?  So, we walked back to the car in silence, the 12-year old and his 51-year old father.  People say I tend to hoard my words, too. 

My father was much more talkative around his granddaughter, never more so the day we went over to visit when she was five.  It was summer, and we went out into the backyard, me to pitch, Clare to hit and Grandpa to call balls and strikes.  My mother watched from the porch.  When my father threw the ball back to me, did that count as playing catch?  I wonder.

He Who is Rick Pitino

I went to a school, DePaul, that had one major sport, men’s basketball.  During my four years as an undergraduate, the Blue Demons under coach Ray Meyer were forever David in search of Goliath—or Marquette—on the hardwood floor.  Then I graduated, Meyer sold his soul to see what it felt like to be Goliath and college sports drifted out of my life until my daughter played softball.

Clare went to a school, Elmhurst, a fraction of the size of DePaul.  If you added up all the Bluejay athletes to figure what percentage of students played varsity sports, Elmhurst would be a sports’ powerhouse on a par with USC or Notre Dame.  That next to nobody goes pro only makes the dedication of Elmhurst athletes all the more impressive.

And then we have Rick Pitino, a men’s D-I basketball coach who corrupts people and institutions wherever he goes.  Right now, it’s Louisville, which has been hit with sanctions by the NCAA for violations by the...men’s basketball program under “Coach” Pitino.  A little sex scandal involving recruits, players and at least one assistant has led to a five-game suspension for Pitino, among other punishments.

Pitino complained in the wake of his suspension that, “I’ve lost a lot of faith in the NCAA.”   Not me, Rick, not today.       

 

Blimp Ears

Clare called yesterday afternoon wanting to know if I’d heard about the blimp that had crashed in Wisconsin while covering the US Open.  In our neck of the woods, this isn’t supposed to happen to a good luck charm.

 Clare saw her first blimp at the age of 2-1/2 on her way to her first-ever baseball game in July of 1994.  We’d thought about getting tickets to the White Sox, but new Comiskey, as it was then called, was not nearly as friendly to seniors as old Comiskey had been.  It used to be you could walk in off the 35^th Street, cross the concourse and climb four stairs, at which point you were pretty close to a nice box seat (this near-extinct experience is still possible at Wrigley Field and, I suspect, Fenway Park).  At age 76 in 1990, my parents could and did do precisely that, but the design of a ball mall is not nearly as welcoming to anyone 80-years old, as both my parents were in 1994.  So, we settled on the Kane County Cougars instead.  I think it was the Fourth of July.

I was amazed at all the different brands of bottled water that were available, and I’d never seen hotdogs shot out of an air cannon before.  Neither had my father, though he looked rather unimpressed.  The level of play was pretty good for A Ball, possibly a reflection of the Cougars having 12 players who would make the majors.  Anyone remember Mike Redmond or Felix Heredia?  I’m pretty sure Clare can still remember the Met Life blimp.  Snoopy in the sky with goggles does make an impression.

Seeing that blimp from her travel seat left a lasting impression on my daughter.  After that, she could never get enough of blimps.  We lived just off the Eisenhower Expressway at the time, and blimps would follow the Ike from where they were moored in DuPage County east into downtown, turning left at the Junction for Wrigley and right for either Soldier Field or Comiskey.  “Daddy, I have blimp ears!” she would shout on hearing a blimp approach.  I was not so endowed.

The week Clare tried out for travel ball at the start of eighth grade, a blimp flew by the house.  “That’s a good sign” I informed Clare, and indeed it was.  She made not one but two teams, and nothing has ever been the same.  We can only hope the pilot of that Wisconsin blimp recovers from his injuries.        

 

Seeing the Light, Maybe

To his credit, White Sox third baseman Matt Davidson hasn’t let adversity get the best of him.  The Sox traded closer Addison Reed to the Diamondbacks for Davidson, at the time a 23-year old can’t-miss prospect.  Only Davidson didn’t make the team out of spring training 2014, after which he fell into the abyss.  By that I mean two Triple-A seasons of no better than a .203 batting average combined with a total of 355 strikeouts.  But last year Davidson put it together (.268 BA with 10 homeruns) and was called up midway through the season.  He promptly hit an RBI single in his second at-bat and just as promptly broke his foot running to first.  Maybe this is where I should mention I was ready to send Davidson back to the minors last week.

Why?  Because he did something my daughter did back in sixth grade, swinging at three consecutive pitches that weren’t in the same zip code as the strike zone.  But something switched back on after that sorry performance, and this week Davidson’s hit three homeruns for a total of 13 on the still-young season.  The best of the three Davidson hit was a grand slam after working the count full.  Like they say, it takes a village to raise a hitter.  Kudos to any and all coaches who’ve kept after Davidson levelheaded and away from the abyss. 

. Asked after Tuesday’s game against the Orioles how he’s put it together (13 homers, 34 RBIs, a .253 batting average and somewhat alarming 68 strikeouts), Davidson answered, “I know my swing now,” something he says he didn’t in previous seasons.  OK, I’ll buy that as long as he resembles 20-year old Clare Bukowski rather than the 12-year old.  That older version of my daughter could really hit.      

MLB Draft, or NFL?

The MLB is nothing if not a NFL wannabe.  This week’s draft is a case in point; both sports must use the same television production crew.  What’s next, Commissioner Manfred announcing plans to move the Reds and Pirates back into multi-use stadiums?  Riverfront and Three Rivers, here we come, as soon as we can get the respective cities to foot the bill, of course.

One thing of interest for me, though, is that for the second year in a row the White Sox demonstrated they have an idea where the Midwest is located.  In last year’s draft, they took pitcher Zack Burdi from Downers Grove in the first round and this year third baseman Jake Burger from suburban St. Louis.  Somehow, Burger grew up both a White Sox and Blackhawks’ fan, in which case he’s come to the right place, assuming he can hit his way here.

Back in spring training Sox third baseman Todd Frazier said he was a .250 hitter, the kind of admission no ballplayer should make.  That’s why I was impressed to read Burger say, “I’m not [just] hitting .280.  I’m hitting for average with the home runs as well.”  From his lips to God’s ears, as my father-in-law would say.

The Sox also drafted Evan Skoug, a power-hitting catcher from TCU by way of Libertyville.  So, something I’ve been complaining about for ages may finally be changing—at least one local team is paying attention to talent based closer to home; the Sox also drafted two pitchers from Louisville and an outfielder from Indiana, this all in the first ten rounds.  Too bad there was no repeat of 1993, when the Sox became the first-ever MLB team to draft a female.  That would be Carey Schueler, daughter of then-GM Ron Schueler.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?

 

The King is Dead

Without dynasties, what fun would sports be?  Who would we root against, which may be as important as the team we root for?

Growing up, I learned to hate the Yankees.  Then came the Packers, and, after them, the Lakers.  For other fans in other places and other times, there were Celtics and the Canadiens and, no doubt, the Bulls (though never the Knicks, despite what Spike Lee and Woody Allen might be deluded to think).  Presently, the Patriots do nicely as a despised dynasty and, off of last night’s dispatch of the Cavaliers, the Warriors.  Kevin Durant, meet Tom Brady meet Whitey Ford.  

A dynasty embodies the quintessential “other” to the point of perfection: Mickey Mantle, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell.  The dynasty comes to town, and it’s always David vs. Goliath, which is good for ticket sales, if not won-loss records.  On paper, your team doesn’t stack up, doesn’t stand a chance, but maybe, just maybe, this time with this starting pitcher or quarterback will be different.

And when the dynasty shows otherwise, we hate them all the more while identifying ever more strongly with our team.  Because of the Yankees no less than my father, I am a White Sox fan.  Because of the Yankees no less than her father, so is Clare, I think.

Winning for Losing

These are strange times in Chicago sports.  The Cubs are in trouble because they keep falling below .500 while the White Sox are encouraged to fall as far below .500 as athletically possible.

The Cubs’ troubles are their own and beyond my concern.  I’m a Sox fan and enough of a competitive human being to dislike losing.  Ah, but the esteemed sportswriter in Saturday’s Tribune reminded me how the more losses this year means higher draft choices next June.  Whoopee.  Two things Mr. Sportswriter missed, starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that went 20 straight years—1993-2012—with a losing record; ten of those years the Pirates lost 90-plus games, which should have translated into all sorts of talent to build on but didn’t.  Moral of the story for me is that losing begets losing.

Bad teams can be counted on to waste draft position, which is what I worry about with the White Sox.  Good teams scout and draft talent in all the rounds, not just the top ones, if only Mr. Sportswriter would’ve noted.  The Sox drafted Mark Buehrle in the 38^th round in 1998, a sign that their general manager at the time, Ron Schueler, valued scouting.  The choice for the White Sox rebuild is either the Pirates’ way or the smart way, and any team that sticks with Robin Ventura in the dugout for five miserable seasons would seem to have a lock on dumb.  I’d love it if they can prove me wrong.  Today’s the draft, so go out and get another Buehrle, guys.    

Smaller and Smaller

When Clare was a junior and senior in high school, I “did the book,” as the saying goes.  That meant scoring games, keeping team stats, rating the umpires and calling the newspapers with capsule summaries of our wins.  Nowadays, anyone keeping the book wouldn’t have to bother calling the papers.  Why?  Because they couldn’t care less, at least not about girls’ softball.

In the seven years since Clare graduated Morton West, softball has virtually disappeared from the sports’ pages of the Sun-Times and the Tribune.  Yesterday, Oak Park-River Forest—one of our big non-conference rivals—won the big-school state softball championship; according to Clare, the winning pitcher is going to Auburn, which should qualify as big news.  In the Tribune, it was worth one sentence (as it was for boys’ baseball).  The Sun-Times didn’t even bother reporting on softball.

Over on the pro side, the WNBA Sky are back to sentence-paragraph coverage; the earlier stories were just a dead-cat bounce, the extra space devoted to the Sky playing their ex-star, Elena Delle Donne.  You’d almost think the papers don’t care.

But wait, they cover the French Open, if only with wire stories.  Do you think it has anything to do with getting to run photos of leggy women athletes the way the Times did today?  Nah.   

 

Hidden Under a Basket

I saw a video clip on the White Sox-Indiana game, of all places.  Claire Eccles, a 19-year old female knuckleballer from the University of British Columbia, debuted Wednesday in the West Coast League, a wood-bat summer league for college players.  Among the WCL alums of note are Chris Davis and Jacoby Ellsbury.  Eccles pitched two innings, yielding two runs on a hit and a walk.

There was nothing on the MLB site about it, although I did see stories about two ducks in the outfield at Wrigley Field yesterday and a new commercial featuring Chris Sale and David Price dressed up as soda jerks.  So, there you have MLB’s priorities on full display.  If you knew Eccles’ name, though, you could search the site for a short MLB Network piece on Eccles’ debut, which is better than nothing, I guess.   

New Age

Baseball took a backseat to real life at Wrigley Field yesterday after a Facebook allegation that Cubs’ shortstop Addison Russell physically abused his wife in front of their two children.  The 23-year old Russell denies any wrongdoing, and the Cubs have alerted MLB, which is now investigating.

 It pays to keep in mind that the charge against Russell is no more than an accusation.  Even if he’s charged with spousal abuse, it remains an allegation.  As ever, the challenge is to get the aggrieved party to press charges (see Aroldis Chapman and ever so many others).  Without that, there’s nothing to go on.

Even then, formal charges don’t equate with guilt.  Defensive end Josh King, until a few days ago a Michigan State football player by way of Hinsdale Central, has been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault.  In this case, the alleged victim is pursuing action, and King may have recorded himself having sex with her.  But, still, guilt can’t be presumed.  It has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

I keep harping on this because I don’t want third parties doing the work of the legal system.  King and two co-defendants also accused of sexual assault have already been kicked off the Michigan State football team; the NCAA doesn’t care about due process.  Presumably, the MLB Players’ Association does and has negotiated a protocol to be followed during any investigation.  That said, I’m uncomfortable with baseball doing the punishing while the courts won’t.

Yes, take away their careers and lock them up; just make sure you can prove they’ve done something wrong first.  Along the way, the NCAA and all the professional sports may want to start collecting data on domestic abuse by athletes.  Is it on the rise or being reported more?  I’d say several factors have fueled a significant increase in the number of incidents.  For openers, American athletes are pampered beyond belief.  We love sports and those who play them.  That leads to the mistaken belief that physical talent translates into moral goodness, or even worse, that it merits a pass regardless the transgression.

With football, the glorification of violence seems to have affected the ability of many players to leave work at the office, so to speak.  If you get paid to hit on the field, the temptation is to do the same at home.  The Michigan State coach said his team had received lectures on proper behavior.  If so, the instruction is in serious need of revision.  Alumni and pro fans who care more about winning than morality are a major component to the problem.  Coaches look the other way because there’s so much pressure on winning.  What matters is my Saturday and Sunday, not her broken jaw.

Long story short, I want to see athletes guilty of sexual assault doing prison time.  That’s a far more meaningful message to send than any suspension.

Who We Are, What We Want

The Cubs are very excited about their Wrigley Field renovations, and the media is more than happy to run puff pieces on the “premier experiences” that will be offered at four new premier—naturally—clubs all set to open around the ballpark by 2019.

But fear not, everything is just like it was in 1969 (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).  “We’re not changing the dynamics of who’s coming to Wrigley Field,” said a team official.  And I am the walrus. 

Back in 1910, a sports’ editor waxed eloquent in Harper’s Weekly on the democratic nature of baseball:  “Businessmen and professional men forget their standing in the community and, shoulder to shoulder with the street urchin, ‘root’ frantically for the hit needed to win the game.”  And now baseball says to its working-class fans, go eat some cake, as if they could afford to.  Come the revolution, those premier club members could find themselves in a whole bunch of trouble.

Home Alone

Every June since eighth grade, my daughter has insisted I watch the NCAA Division-I softball World Series with her.  But she doesn’t live here anymore, so, out of habit as much as anything, I watched alone.

Oklahoma beat Florida two games to none in a best-out-of-three format.  Why does the premier event in all of women’s softball (unless you think the pros count, in which case explain to me the packed stands in Oklahoma City, site of the Series) settle on three instead of seven games?  The whole point of women’s softball is to offer a sport the equal to baseball—as witnessed by Jessica Mendoza comparing one of the Oklahoma pitchers throwing 74 mph from 43 feet to Aroldis Chapman throwing at 100 mph from 60 feet 6 inches—so it would seem the final series should have the same number of games as the NCAA men.

Maybe it’s just as well Clare wasn’t here.  That way, she didn’t have to listen to me complain about the left-handed catcher and why offering equivalences isn’t really a compliment or an indication of true equality.  If the young woman can throw 74mph with a windmill delivery, let’s put her on the mound and see if she could throw a baseball submarine style.  I’m sure Branch Rickey would have done it, to which my daughter would say most softball players don’t want to be baseball players, and then we’d raise our voices…

God, I miss those fights.

Jimmy Piersall

Jimmy Piersall died over the weekend at the age of 87.  Never was an ex-ballplayer, or anyone else for that matter, so unfit for the broadcast booth, but Bill Veeck put him there anyway. 

Veeck thought it would be fun to pair the opinionated Piersall with the opinionated Harry Caray, sort of like pairing nitro with glycerin in a Bumper Cars’ ride.  Once Caray and Piersall got started, no player or coach was safe, or owner’s wife, in the case of Mary Frances Veeck.  Piersall went after her for reasons best known to himself.

The obits and columns on Piersall, who suffered from bipolar disorder, have been overwhelmingly positive, though nobody bothered to get a comment from the sportswriter Piersall once tried to choke, or from former Oriole infielder Lenn Sakata, either.  Piersall once blamed Sakata for having something to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The irony is that you can draw a straight line from Piersall to Hawk Harrelson, from unyielding criticism to kneejerk homerism.  We need some sort of rule to bar ex-Red Sox players from taking broadcast jobs in Chicago.        

Expert Opinion

Clare likes the idea of going in on season’s tickets, just as soon as she can pay off her student loans (very doable, in large part because she was a smart student with generous parents) and have enough for her wedding next summer.  With the White Sox, really, what’s the rush?

Forget, if you can, their current five-game losing streak, because it’s all about the future, not these Sox but those down the line.  Why, at the start of spring training MLB Pipeline had the Sox with the third-best minor league system while Baseball America had them fifth and some other outfit put them at fourth, up from 24^th the year before.  What sages these folks be, or not.

Here’s a breakdown of that vaunted minor-league system: the Triple A team is 26-29; Double A, 19-35; high A, 19-38; and low A, 29-25.  Yoan Moncada, the consensus best minor leaguer around, is batting .291 at Triple-A Charlotte, one point below Jacob May, he of the disastrous 2-for-36 MLB debut, so that makes you wonder.  So does the fact that there’s nobody in Double A hitting above .249.

Here’s another headscratcher: Luis Robert, the 19-year old who is going to cost the Sox in the neighborhood of $50 million once the MLB tax is added on, has been assigned to play summer ball in the Dominican Republic.  Huh?  Dominican players dream of leaving the island in pursuit of a professional career, and we’re sending our phenom to play with people not ready for rookie ball?  How is he going to progress?

Let’s hope Robert makes his way to the U.S. to play somewhere in the Sox system before the end of the season.  Otherwise, Clare is better off putting her money away for a house.  Like I said, there's really no rush.

Let Me Get This Straight

I made the mistake of sitting on the couch Friday night to watch the White Sox-Tigers’ game, a mistake because the Sox were in the process of being dismantled, 15-5 (not to be confused with Tuesday’s 13-7 loss to the Red Sox or yesterday’s 10-1 embarrassment).  The carnage was interrupted from time to time with a recap of the Charlotte Knights’ game against the Buffalo Bisons.  From what I saw, top prospect Yoan Moncada was having a good night down on the farm, and starting pitcher Carson Fulmer, too.

So, if Sox fans are supposed to get all excited about the Knights (and a number of their games are being broadcast), why not bring up those prospects?  With Moncada, we could shuffle the infield and show Todd “I Did It My Way” Frazier—batting .179(!) at the end of Friday’s game—the door.  We could also use another starter, say, like Fulmer.  But, No, GM Rick Hahn doesn’t want to rush his prospects.  He won’t reveal his timetable for them, which could mean Hahn is doing a Potter Stewart (the Supreme Court justice who famously said he couldn’t define hard-core pornography but knew it when he saw it).  Patience, my little White Sox peasants, I mean, fans, the front office folks know what’s best, even if they are the ones who screwed up the team in the first place.

That’s the key difference with the Cubs’ rebuild—the screw-ups, from the owners to the front office, were all gone, and new guys put in charge.  But it’s the same old same old with Sox management.  Trust us, they say.  Why should we, I wonder?  Oh, by the way, Charlotte gave up seven runs in the late innings to lose, 9-4.     

Sea Change

Something’s afoot with press coverage of the WNBA Chicago Sky—you can actually find it.  Yesterday, I read a 10-paragraph story in the Tribune about the Sky-Phoenix Mercury game.  Ten paragraphs, and a box score to boot.  It would behoove the Sky to play better than 1-6.

With its perpetual shoestring budget, the Sun-Times is still going with the 50 words or less approach to the Sky, although it did include a box score.  And I’ve actually seen highlights on the nightly sports.  Alas, the pro-softball Bandits are nowhere to be seen.  They opened their season at home two days ago with a 3-2 win over the Akron Racers, not that either Chicago newspaper cared.  I’m guessing none of the TV stations did, either.

Wouldn’t it be something if a daily paper took the plunge and assigned a beat reporter to cover one or both of the women’s teams?  Act like something matters, and it will, or should.

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, Come Sit Here Next to Me

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Come Sit Next to Me

Hawk Harrelson announced this week that he’s only going to do 20 games next year, and that’s it, a broadcast career of 34 years with the White Sox will draw to a close.  Too bad it’s 34 years too late.

I have no problem with Harrelson being an unabashed homer; that’s not a bar to greatness behind the microphone.  What I’ve never been able to abide is what a company man he always was.  Consider a story he told on the air last year, about the 1994 baseball strike.  The Hawk claims that, on the eve of the strike, players were coming up to him and asking him what they should do.  Why, don’t blindly follow their leader Donald Fehr, of course.  No, players should have submitted to a salary cap, as Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wanted.  Reindsorf is credited with being one of if the biggest power behind the throne sat upon by then-commissioner Bud Selig, and what a load of bad advice Jerry the Puppeteer gave.

The owners didn’t get their salary cap, but they did get a damaged product once play resumed the next spring.  (Just to show what a bad sport he could be, Reinsdorf stuck it to the other owners by signing Albert Belle to a $55 million contract.  So much for the idea of salary control).  The Sox had a wonderful team in 1994, good enough to be in first place in their division.  Could they have made it to the World Series?  We’ll never know.  With an alienated fan base, baseball leadership sat by as players took it upon themselves to “juice up” the game, so to speak.  Could the Steroids Era been avoided had there been no strike?  We’ll never know.

But one thing is for certain: Hawk Harrelson will never entertain the possibility, not as long as he’s on the air.

Sampling

On Monday when we walked the 606, Michele said how she liked “sampling” the music people on the trial were listening to.  We went from rap to R and B to Puerto Rican pop with a dash of rock.  Today, I sampled conversations.

Rather than spend close to 45 minutes driving to the South Side this morning, I settled on 20 minutes to get to the 606 and do my biking there.  What I heard was mostly young mother stuff and young people stuff and maybe a word or two in another language.  The serious types, all in trousers or dresses, talk too softly for me to hear anything as I whizz by on my Schwinn.  They’re all planning The Next Big Thig, no doubt, details and location to be announced at a later date.

I pushed it because I’m not getting any younger, and I hate making concessions to the inevitable.  Around the fifth or sixth circuit (each one 5.4 miles), I started thinking about all the bikes I’ve had.  Basically, there were three before the Schwinn, the first two of which were second-hand.  I grew up with hand-me-downs and not-new things because there were three kids—one of whom, me, generated a ton of doctor bills with his asthma—in the family and my dad didn’t make a lot of money as a Chicago fireman; this was in the years before Daley I saw the light on city salaries.  We weren’t poor, just blue collar, and by counting their pennies my parents made sure there was always enough come birthday time and Christmas.

Anyway, my dad had good taste in bikes.  The first one he spray-painted electric blue while turbocharging the pedals; I could race cars with that bike, I swear.  When I got bigger, he switched Blue Boy for a Sherman tank; it got the job done and made me feel a whole lot tougher than I was.  The third bike was a charm, new, a three-speed from Sears; this is the one I rode out to Brookfield Zoo with a friend one summer Sunday.  How we managed not to get killed on Harlem Avenue remains one of life’s great mysteries.

And number four, of course, is the Schwinn Varsity.  By the time I hit circuit nine, I was imagining the city and suburbs knit together with trails like the one I was on, elevated, zipping past homes and factories.  This has to be the future of Chicago in the 21^st century, if it’s going to have a future.  Right now, we have a billionaire governor with a billionaire pal happy to bankroll him when necessary.  We also have a billionaire governor wannabe from the other party.  How I wish these men would have Jonathan Edwards-like dreams, of being suspended by a single thread over the fiery pits of hell.  What will save them eternal damnation?  Maybe if they stop wasting their money on vanity politics and instead pool it to help construct the city of trails.  Otherwise, let the threads snap.