Chicken-Little Boras

The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!  So says Chicken Little, aka super-agent Scott Boras.  “We have a non-competitive cancer that’s ruining the fabric of this sport” of baseball, Boras is quoted as saying by USA Today’s (very sympathetic, by the way) Bob Nightengale.  Boras has also said recently that so many teams going into rebuild mode is bad for both fans and players, neither of whom likes it.  Well, I’d want to see the polling data on that.

The real problem for Boras is that teams tearing it all down trade away their best players, and after teams have swung deals for a Giancarlo Stanton or Dee Gordon, they won’t want to overspend on a client of Boras.  Oh, boo-hoo.

Boras wants to set up a cockamamie bonus system to encourage winning (so that teams with 82 and 83 wins will delude themselves into thinking they’re one or two free agents away from going to the World Series); the more a team wins, the more it will be allowed to spend on draft bonuses.  How this makes baseball more competitive is beyond me.

Right now, there’s something like 130 free agents out there.  If they can’t get big deals, they’ll have to settle for one-year contracts, which will in turn depress the free-agent market next year when the likes of Manny Machado and Boras-client Bryce Harper become available.  Gosh, I wonder if Boras will steer Harper away from the Cubs or the Yankees in the name of competitive balance.  I wonder what kind of song and dance Boras would do if both players signed with the same team.

What this fan doesn’t like about rebuilds is that ticket prices don’t go down commensurate with the loss of talent.  I also don’t like that baseball owners—and players, for that matter—have foisted the cost of ballparks onto taxpayers.  I also don’t like income tax rates that leave more money for clueless athletes to fool around with, as in the late Jose Fernandez and Roy Halladay.  Lastly, I don’t like a capital gains’ tax rate that allows a clueless owner like the Marlins’ Jeffrey Loria to cash out bigtime when he sells a team.

I happen to think that owners paying their own mortgages is a very good thing, Scott.  It may not translate into higher player salaries, but it will make owners work to keep their ballparks filled.  What do you think, Chicken Little?

Whahoo, Bye-bye

The Cleveland Indians announced they’re retiring the logo of Chief Wahoo, more or less, a decision sure to upset people on either side of the issue.  Me?  I think it’s long overdue, along with the depiction used by the Atlanta Braves.  That one has all the subtlety of a cartoon drawn by a 12-year old.

Starting next year, the logo will disappear from Cleveland uniforms, just as it has the last few years around Progressive Field.  However, the team will still sell some Wahoo stuff because, if it doesn’t, it would lose the trademark on the image.  If that happened, every crank in town could start stamping Chief Wahoo on all sorts of merchandise.  Talk about the lesser of two evils.

No doubt, a whole bunch of Indians’ fans will cling to the Chief because they can’t be told what to do or think.  (It would be interesting to correlate support for Chief Wahoo with that for Donald Trump.)  And there are people out there who see this as just a first step in getting the Indians to change their name.  Maybe.

It is odd that schools and professional teams across America were drawn to the idea of using Native Americans to symbolize strength and ability.  “We like how you guys fight,” the reasoning seemed to go, “and still lost in the end.”  Some honor.

With the Blackhawks, at least, it’s a caricature-free logo linked—unofficially—to a Sauk chief of considerable renown, although the real Black Hawk lost in the end as well.  But I wonder what the reaction would have been if the team had wanted to name itself for Crazy Horse, who beat Custer at the Little Big Horn.

That said, I think mascots and logos should be revisited and revised on a case-to-case basis.  Are we really served as a nation by removing all popular mention of a group?  I would say, No.  But the group in question has to be part of the conversation.  If alumni and fans at the University of Illinois have their hearts set on bringing back Chief Illiniwek, then reach out to the native communities of the state.  Hint:  no self-respecting Native American will accede to a 20-year old undergraduate playing dress-up while acting as if he’s stepping on hot coals at mid-court during a college basketball game.

Not all mascots are bad, not all replacements work.  Stanford used to be the Indians, now it’s a color (Red).  Unofficially, there’s also the Stanford Tree that shows up to games; that I like.  I also like the Minutemen of UMass-Amherst, even if some student-activists don’t because of supposed questions concerning colonization and gender.

I cast my vote for the Minutemen, if not President Trump.

The Doldrums

These are the weeks that try my soul, from the end of SoxFest to the start of spring training in mid-February.  It’s all football and golf for as far as the eye can see.  Short of a blockbuster trade, the sale of the team or the implosion of Guaranteed Rate Whatever, the White Sox will cease to exist on sports’ media until pitchers and catchers report to Arizona.  So, right now the seconds are minutes, the minutes hours, the hours days, the days a visit to the dentist.

The trick, I’ve learned, is not to get ahead of yourself; just let the time crawl along as it wants.  And take heart from such signposts as the Super Bowl; the Chicago Auto Show; Fat Tuesday; Ash Wednesday; and whatever PGA tournaments are happening the next two weekends.  (Is it me, or does every approach shot look the same?  Do golf fans feel the same about every homerun?  In which case, I don’t care).  By the time of the Daytona 500, Michael Koepech will be trying to hit 100 mph on the speed gun.

Right now, I just want to make it to Thursday, February 1^st.  That’s when I’ll treat myself to a visit to the Strat-O-Matic website to see what if any classic season they’re doing in addition to last year.  That’s three days from now, times visits to the dentist.   

What a Fest

By all accounts, this year’s SoxFest has been a sold-out success.  Fans are either drinking GM Rick Hahn’s Kool-Aid, or they believe his rebuild will work.  It’s January, so I’ll go with option number two.

Clare was ten when she went to her first fan fest.  As I recall, she wanted to kill the guy who kept soft tossing her balls in the batting cage; even then, she had a thing for fastballs; how much do you think Jerry Manual’s autograph is worth now?  The next time we went, it was either junior or senior year high school; we posed for pictures in front of the 2005 World Series trophy, and Clare made sure to have one taken with Gordon Beckham (oh, how the young and the talented did fall).  Then it was one more time in college so she could pose next to Aaron Rowand for a picture.

That may have been when we bumped into Moose Skowron, who proceeded to give my daughter batting tips; he advised Clare to take the ball up the middle, even if it meant knocking the pitcher’s head off, although he used a few more adjectives in saying it.  And I got Minnie Minoso’s autograph on a special ball that already had the signatures of such White Sox luminaries Luke Appling, Walt Williams, Bill Veeck and Billy Pierce on it.  Fans acted like it was an audience with the Pope, but I’m pretty sure Minnie has better career stats than Francis.

Maybe if the lines weren’t so long, I’d want to go again, or if only Minoso, Williams, Pierce and Skowrown were still around.  Maybe with a grandchild….

Patriots

When my sister Barb moved into her first (and since 1972, only) house, my father bought an American flag as a housewarming gift.  He did the same for me fifteen years later.

I’ve flown that flag so much it’s gone to our tailor’s for repairs and, when that didn’t work, to the Betsy Ross of Wisconsin Avenue, aka my daughter.  Clare worked at the sewing machine in the dining room until I was satisfied that each and every hole was mended.  The flag will be out next on Memorial Day.

That’s also when I trot out a wooden, five-foot tall Uncle Sam flag-stand; his hands come together to hold a flag.  Uncle Sam stays up through Halloween, at which point people start complaining they can’t remember which house on the block is ours.  Come the Fourth of July, I also hang bunting out front.  The American eagle my father salvaged from a bank remodeling stands guard over the backyard all year long.

So, I’m more than happy to stand alongside Uncle Sam and tell people what I think of our President (not much) or those people who consider the phrase e pluribus unum and the term “melting pot” to be micro-aggressions (again, not much).  As for the AMVETS organization pulling its ad from the Super Bowl program, I’d rank them with Mr. Trump and the overly sensitive.

The veterans’ group wanted to run something that included the words “Please Stand,” but the NFL asked it to consider alternatives like “Please Honor our Veterans” or “Please Stand for our Veterans.”  AMVETS is accusing the NFL of “imposing corporate sponsorship” against veterans who have fought for our rights.  Sorry, guys, but you’re being too cute by half.

“Please Stand” is meant to draw attention to those NFL players who haven’t this season during the playing of the National Anthem.  Last time I checked, though, their protests focused on police brutality against minorities had absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. armed forces. 

Or is AMVETS unable to tell the difference between Dallas and Afghanistan?  It sure looks that way.

Phone Call, Contd.

When Clare called me on Wednesday with news of the HOF voting results, she sounded nearly as happy for what didn’t happen as for what did—PEDs’ poster boys Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens failed to get in.  With candidates needing 317 votes from eligible baseball writers, Clemens managed 242 (a pickup of three from the year before) and Bonds 238 (the same as the previous year).  “You know how I feel about that,” said my daughter about steroids as well as the people who take them.

I couldn’t help but think of those “see no evil” MLB.com writers, Joe Posnanski in particular.  Prior to the announcement of the HOF vote, Posnanski wrote, “I voted for Bonds and Clemens because I believe that they’re two of the 25 greatest players in the game’s history.”  Then, in assessing the vote, he cited Joe Morgan’s keep-the-cheats-out letter as a momentum killer for the Steroidic Duo.  And that was it.  No impassioned defense of these two purported greats, no “J’accuse” hurled at the baseball establishment for blackballing B and C from getting into Cooperstown.  With friends like that, Bonds and Clemens don’t have a chance.  Thank God.

It really doesn’t matter what dinosaurs like Posnanski and I think.  What matters is what a young person such as my daughter thinks.  Clare harbors a very strong dream of becoming an athletic director and coach, perhaps; either and both would put her in a position of power.  She could look away on the issue of PEDs, or she could make it her business to tell players and coaches why juicing is wrong.  What it all comes down to is Clare never believed that the desire to win entitled her to cheat.

Neither should anyone else.  

Two Calls

Clare called twice yesterday, the first time to tell me about the Field of Dreams’ movie site in Dyersville, Iowa.  It seems some moron drove a vehicle across the field, starting midway between home and first base then out into center and left fields; the tire tracks go as much as four inches deep.  The owners set up a Go-Fund-Me account to help pay for an estimated $15,000 in damages, including the sprinkler system that keeps the outfield grass a beautiful Iowa green in the summer.  Softie that she is, Clare contributed $15.

Twice we took her to the field to hit; the second time in particular I remember, when my sixth grader nearly took my head off with a line drive up the middle.  When she was done trying to injure her father, we walked out to the edge of the outfield, where I took a picture of my daughter coming out of the corn.  You could say we have a connection to the place.

And to Jim Thome, too.  After all, Thome spent just under four full seasons with the Sox, long enough for him to hit 134 of his 612 homeruns for the South Side.  Clare called as soon as the results were made public, which was a testament to Thome’s humble, winning demeanor.  I say this because my daughter started off hating Thome, who cost us Aaron Rowand and Gio Gonzalez to acquire from Philadelphia.  That was dumb, given that we had a surplus of highly touted outfielders (Chris Young and Brian Anderson) who could’ve gone in place of Rowand.  Dumber yet is that the Sox and Cubs passed on Thome—from downstate Peoria, a couple of hours southwest of Chicago—repeatedly.  Thome didn’t go to the Indians until the 13^th round of the 1989 draft.  Oh, well.

I think Thome started to change Clare’s mind with that homerun he hit in 2008 in the one-game playoff against the Twins the Sox won, 1-0.  That was, as they say, clutch.  And then there’s Thome’s personality, which is more than a little endearing.  “Everything starts at your roots,” Thome told reporters after getting the call from Cooperstown.  “I’m proud I grew up where I did.  Peoria is a special place” in part because “that’s where it all started.  Every Midwest kid can dream of a day like this, and I’m living it today.”

Let it be noted that Thome and his lookalike, the animated action hero Mr. Incredible, have never been seen together in the same room.

Surprise!

I wonder if Julie and Zach Ertz want to start a family.  She plays for the U.S. women’s soccer team while he plays tight end for the Super-Bowl bound Eagles.  The kid(s) would be in possession of some interesting genes to say the least.  Just so nobody expects to have another athlete in the family.  With kids, you make ’em, but it’s best not to force ’em.

Considering that Michele and I have five college degrees between us, you might think we’d have ended up with a pointy-headed little scholar on our hands, not Janie Jock.  OK, she’s got two degrees now, too, which is a good thing in today’s job market.  Still, this wasn’t the kind of kid we expected to raise, which was pretty clear by T-Ball.

By that, I mean T-Ball represented more organized sports than I played in my entire life, or that my wife and I played in our lives combined.  Then, add Mustang Ball; Bronco Ball; Pony Ball; travel ball; varsity; and college, which comes out to more of an athlete than I’d be over the course of nine lives, if only I got the chance.  Oh, and before she became little Miss Slugger, Clare was a fish who made enough of a splash at the local YMCA pool someone asked us if we wanted to have our daughter join a swim club.  No, but thanks for asking.

We like to tease Clare that her kids will want to take ballet or play an instrument.  You never know.  That’s exactly what I’d tell Julie and Zach Ertz.

Vote Fraud

If the Trump administration wants to investigate vote fraud, it ought to look at how sportswriters go about electing people to baseball’s Hall of Fame.  Something stinks.

MLB.com printed the selections of thirteen of its writers; twelve of them picked “juicers” Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens; only Phil Rogers, bless him, did not.  Yeah, let’s see the dynamic duo of Bonds and Clemens on the dais at Cooperstown.  Wouldn’t their speeches be something to behold, all full of humility and the admission of guilt?  Just kidding.  These clowns want those clowns in the HOF?  Be careful what you ask for.

If nothing else, this reduces the list of unmentionables on the MLB website to one—you can now write about steroids but not the public funding of privately-used stadiums.  I must be the only person who can see a connection.

Apples, Oranges and Bulls

Follow the Blackhawks and no one quite knows what’s up with goalie Corey Crawford because: A) the team prohibits the use of phones to stay in contact with players; B) Crawford is undergoing treatment too unconventional to bear scrutiny; or C) the NHL allows teams to treat the public with contempt.   Start with C, and you can’t go wrong.

Now compare Crawford’s situation with that of Bulls’ guard Kris Dunn, who crashed to the floor mouth-first after dunking in last Wednesday’s game against Golden State.  Dunn was evaluated; two of his front teeth were stabilized (from the looks of it, Dunn literally bit the floor on landing); was put in the league’s concussion protocol; and kept at home during the current road trip.  How do I know all this?  Because the Bulls issue regular updates on their injured player.  Unlike their hockey counterparts, the Bulls think their fans deserve to know what’s what.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t extend to the state of the team’s rebuild.  After starting the season a woeful 3-20, the Bulls have gone 15-8, with the somewhat older players meshing well with the young core.  Folks in the media who want more tearing down want to trade the likes of Robin Lopez and/or Nikola Mirotic; a high draft choice would be nice, but, hey, it’s the losing that counts in the race to the top via the bottom.  Count me out after watching the Bulls’ latest win against Atlanta.

The final score was 113-97, with the final margin whatever the visitors wanted.  Atlanta looked bad to stinking bad.  If the team has a core, how will it shake off the bad habits of 2017-18?  And, if it doesn’t have a core, why should fans bother to show up?

The problem with tanking is that teams always find themselves behind the eight-ball.  They trade away the veteran talent for draft choices and/or to enable losing that leads to improved draft position, then wait for the core to develop.  But the core gets old as the latest round of draft choices learns the rope.  Only the most adept organizations don’t fall into this trap.

Right now, it’s “Look out below!” for Atlanta.  (And if losing can rub off on players, what about coaches?)  The Bulls need to be extra careful they don’t trade themselves into a similar fall.

Scandal, with Questions

The world of U.S. gymnastics is being rocked by a sexual abuse scandal of mind-numbing proportions.  How could one abuser have so many enablers?  Because Larry Nassar did (courtesy of Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee), young gymnasts were put at risk, if not outright abused, as a matter of course.  So far, 130 women have stepped forward to claim abuse by Nassar, who will be spending the rest of his life in prison after his conviction for possession of child pornography.

Any parent who reads the details can’t help but seethe.  For parents of athletes, there’s more to the story, a mix of doubt and fear that leads to certain questions: Did I subject my kid to a similar situation?  Did I ignore signs of something bad happening?  Was I being told about it in a roundabout but not too roundabout fashion?  Why did I trust those people in the first place?

I can answer that last question—because we have no choice, really.  There comes a point in your child’s athletic—or artistic, for that matter—development where you stop being the coach.  With Clare, it started as soon as she made her first travel ball team.  All of a sudden,  what Coach says, not what you say, matters above all else.  The more unscrupulous the coach, the more that playing time can be used as a weapon. 

Clare never had coaches who showed a Nassar-like interest in her.  She did have coaches who were absolute, total jerks, little Napoleons whose moves were certainly questionable and whose personalities brooked no questions.  Those coaches I learned to fight with.

The Harvey Weinstein stuff, though, never happened to my daughter as a player, although it does in softball.  (Men coaching young women?  Oh, yeah, it does.)  No, the Weinstein scenarios didn’t start until graduate school.  Maybe Clare extrapolated from dealing with jerks when she had to confront wolves in men’s clothing.  Luckily, so far so good. 

Good Luck with That

After the Pirates traded star outfielder Andrew McCutcheon this week, fans were so upset they started an online petition urging MLB to force Pittsburgh owner Bob Nutting to sell the team.  As of Wednesday, the petition had some 28,000 signatures.  Funny, but MLB.com didn’t have anything about it, and neither did the Pirates’ website, for that matter.  No doubt they said something about it on MLB Network.

Anyway, the Pirates went twenty seasons, 1993-2012, playing under .500 ball.  They followed that with three straight playoff appearances good for one advance and now they’re back to losing.  How often do you think the term “rebuild” has been spoken by the various owners and members of the front office the past quarter century?  How often do you think media and industry types crowed about the success of the latest rebuild?  Probably close to 28,000, I’ll wager.  Still, a petition, no matter how many signatures, won’t accomplish much on its own.  Someone with money would have to step up and buy the team.

The Pirates have had three owners/ownership groups during their travails; money alone won’t solve the problem.  The team needs not only new deep pockets, but a brain to go with the pockets.  Good luck with that.

Bigger, Not Better

I must’ve been out of the room back in October when Baseball America ran a story on MLB realignment, predicated on two expansion teams (say, Portland and Montreal) increasing the franchise total to 32.

In that case, BA contributor Tracy Ringolsby proposed four eight-team divisions based on points of the compass, more or less—north, east, west and midwest.  (I hope people in the South won’t be too offended at not getting a division of their own).  For added measure, a Trib columnist this week suggested the DH rule be added to the changes, so the Cubs could hang onto Kyle Schwarber.

Allow me a few observations here.  First, it would be nice if the Tribune sports’ section stopped shilling for the North Side baseball team; newspaper and franchise are no longer owned by the same entity.  It’s OK to think on your own now, guys, not like when Sammy Sosa juiced up with nary a word of comment.

Second, playing the other divisions is a terrible idea, an NFL idea, if you will.  What’s the greatest Super Bowl game of all time?  Arguably, III, when Joe Namath and his distinctively AFL Jets’ team beat a distinctively NFL Colts’ team that had Johnny Unitas on it (though he didn’t start).  All this realignment does is take interleague play to its logical—and destructive—end.  Let the NL have the pitcher hit; I don’t care.  Let the Cubs and Cards have their own division separate from the Sox and Tigers; on that I do care.  Just don’t homogenize baseball more than it is.

Finally—two more teams.  Think about it.  That means fifty more major-league roster spots on top of 150 minor-league ones (not counting rookie-level), plus coaches and scouts.  How many of those spots would go to women, do you think?  How many blowhards out there would rather complain about how the new 32-team setup further dilutes weak pitching rather than consider the possibility that a female or two might be able to get the job done?  Just wondering.

Spinning Room

Yet another virtue of baseball (and in this instance, basketball) is that it’s hard to lie or hide injuries the way they try in football and hockey.  With the NFL at least, I get the strategy, to keep the opponent from practicing for a particular player or players.  Since teams only play each other at most twice in the regular season, it’s a real disadvantage not knowing who you’re going to face on Sunday.

But why do it in hockey?  After the first week of saying So-and-so has an “upper-body injury,” you risk coming off stupid, as Blackhawks’ coach Joel Quenneville has ever since goalie Corey Crawford was put on the DL last month.  (Hawks’ senior advisor Scotty Bowman joined the dumb-club by casting doubt on the below report, but he can’t say for sure what’s ailing Crawford because, as he admitted in today’s Trib, “I’m not a doctor.”  OK, but is he at all curious to find out after all this time?  Does he own a phone so he can call the team doctor?  Or maybe the Hawks employ a shaman instead.)  Quenneville still doesn’t want to talk about it, even with reports circulating that vertigo could keep Crawford out the remainder of the season.  If that’s the case, I can empathize.

I’ve suffered vertigo twice, the first time coming less than 24 hours before Clare’s graduation from Elmhurst.  This was probably my psyche protesting the end of my daughter’s athletic career.  Trust me, that was a mistake.

I happened to be in the basement reading email when all of a sudden I broke into a sweat.  A few minutes later, the room started spinning, like in the movies, only it didn’t stop.  I lay down on the floor to see if that would help; it didn’t.  This went on for maybe 20 minutes, with me thinking, How can it possibly get any worse?  I should’ve kept my mouth shut, because that’s when the vomiting started.

The good news was I had a wastepaper basket nearby.  The bad news was I couldn’t sit up to use it.  No, I could only lay on my side and hurl into the can, so to speak.  This went on long—and loud—enough for Clare to come downstairs to see what all the racket was.  Long story short, I ended up in the emergency room.  Oh, and the second episode wasn’t nearly as long and didn’t involve Clare (I think.)

At the very least, Crawford would get a whole lot of sympathy from the public if he’s suffering from vertigo.  As it is, the Hawks aren’t doing themselves any favors playing dumb.  Do that, and you risk having some very nasty stuff land on your face.

A Godly Umpire?

 

A Godly Umpire?

Hall-of-Fame umpire (now, there’s your textbook example of an oxymoron) Doug Harvey died over the weekend at the age of 87. For reasons unclear, some players referred to him as God.  The NYT obit yesterday included a story that may have told more about Harvey than he ever intended.

Supposedly, the young Harvey was behind the plate in St. Louis calling balls and strikes for only the third time in his career.  It was the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two out and Stan Musial up.  Musial worked the count full.  This is what you might call a tense moment, one that apparently got the best of the rookie ump.  Harvey rang up Musial on a pitch that looked like it was going to be a strike but in fact sailed well outside.  Musial calmly informed the young umpire that the plate was only 17” wide, and Harvey learned a valuable lesson—take your time in order to make the right call.  Too bad it never happened.

I was curious to see who the pitcher was, which took me to retrosheet.org.  The first thing I saw was that Harvey’s third time ever behind the plate was a Phils-Colt .45s game.  He did call balls and strikes in St. Louis his next turn, but that was a 14-3 beat-down of the Reds.  According to retrosheet, Harvey called eight Cardinals’ games in ’62 and rang up Musial twice, both times leading off an inning.  Maybe Harvey misremembered; it happens to some people.  Let’s say he was right, and I’m the one who can’t read things correctly.  In that case, lucky Harvey to learn such a valuable lesson at the start of his career.  As for Stan Musial, too bad, buddy.  Grab some bench.

So, now that that detour is over, let me get back to what I wanted to say in the first place—get Doug Harvey and every other plate umpire out from behind the catcher.  Either go with an electronic balls-and-strikes system or position the ump just back of the pitcher off the mound, to the left or right.  My guess is you’ll get fewer blown calls.

Say, why don’t they try that in spring training, pair the electronic system with the other two ways?  Unlike almost every ump who’s ever worked a game, I’ll be happy to admit if I’m wrong.

Flashback

It’s been snowing on and off for the past 40 hours, a real Chicago treat along with a nice, nippy wind-chill factor.  This is what you could call perfect travel-ball weather.  Seriously.

Right about now back in the day, Clare would be spending her Sunday mornings January through mid-February practicing indoors at a high school fieldhouse a few suburbs over.  She and her fellow Blazers fielded balls just about every which way they could be tossed or hit under a roof.  The laps were just for fun, or punishment.  This went on till the start of the high school softball season the third week of February.

The team also had a weeknight practice that we went to maybe four times in three years; they were mostly at a grade-school gym a good 45 minutes from our house in good weather.  Fielding balls off a hardwood floor didn’t strike me as particularly skill-building, and, even if it was, Clare always had homework.  She was a good enough player to get away with not coming, although I’m sure that wouldn’t have been the case if it had been one of those elite teams that all but promised to get their players a scholarship somewhere.  I guess we’ll never know.

The point here is kids are practicing double plays and pickoff moves, winter or not.  You just have to know where to look.

A Mashup on Your Radio Dial

A Mashup on Your Radio Dial

Yesterday afternoon, Michele and I went to my sister’s, a good half-hour drive from us.  A Sunday afternoon in January, it was NFL playoff time.  I’d forgotten how good sports can sound on the radio.

The Jaguars and Steelers were trading touchdowns on the way there, while Drew Brees was throwing interceptions on the way back.  I got back home to see Case Keenum hit Stefon Diggs with pretty much of a Hail-Mary pass of 61 yards to win the game with no time left on the clock.  Whoa, Nellie!  But Keith Jackson did television, right?  I bet he grew up listening to football on the radio, though.

A very long time ago when I was dumber than I am now, I was driving with a friend through a mountain range out West, at night.  An Oakland A’s game faded in and out, depending on the curve and elevation of the road.  A few inches too far to the left or the right, and that game could’ve been the last thing we ever heard in our lives.  Instead, some forty years later, I’m driving along the Stevenson Expressway listening to an announcer describing cold, snowy, foggy Minneapolis-St. Paul.  Oh, my.

Change of Venue

The DePaul Blue Demons, my alma mater, lost to Providence at home Friday night by a score of 71-64.  The box score didn’t include attendance at the new Wintrust Arena.  Oh, for the days of Alumni Hall.

Once upon a time, DePaul students could walk to a men’s basketball game from class or the library or the dorm.  But Alumni Hall only seated 5,300 people, and my alma mater had visions of going bigtime like Marquette or Duke, even.  So, the men split for suburban Rosemont and the Allstate Arena in 1980. 

The only problem was that venue had all the intimacy of an airplane hangar.  A Tribune columnist speculated yesterday that the Northwestern men’s basketball team may be underperforming in part because they’re playing home games this season at “dank Allstate Arena” while Welsh-Ryan Arena, NU’s Alumni Hall, undergoes renovation.  Maybe I should mention here that Allstate is miles and miles away from the Northwestern campus in Evanston.

DePaul men’s basketball no longer calls the dank hangar home.  Both the men’s and women’s teams now play in the publicly subsidized Wintrust Arena.  It’s more intimate than Allstate with a capacity of just over 10,000 vs. 17,000-plus, but it’s seven miles away from the main campus, on Chicago’s South Side.  Only DePaul is a North Side school, the main campus part and parcel of the Lincoln Park neighborhood.    Expecting students to take the “L” to Wintrust, while feasible, is hardly more realistic than it was expecting them to find their way to Rosemont.

Which brings us to Loyola University.  The Ramblers play at Gentile Arena (capacity 4,500), on campus; I pass it every time I cut through Loyola on my bike going to Evanston.  Funny how it reminds me of Alumni Hall.       

Temper, Temper

Temper, Temper

Ex-Bull Jimmy Butler told a Sun-Times’ sports’ columnist yesterday that he’s not mad at the Bulls, but he is.  Confused?  Don’t worry.  Butler sounds that way, too.

He told ESPN in November, “I said from the beginning, it was either gonna be me or the Fred Hoiberg route.”  Reminded of the comment by the Times’ Joe Cowly. Butler said he didn’t mean it as “an ultimatum or anything like that.”  Huh?

Cowly’s column also touched on something I’d long suspected, that we had a whole lot of Battlin’ Bulls on our hands the past few seasons, Butler and Pau Gasol vs. Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah in Hoiberg’s first season as head coach, and Butler with Dwayne Wade vs. Rajon Rondo last year.  You can’t win with divided clubhouses.

Butler noticed how the current, very young roster is perfect for Hoiberg, allowing him to teach; this is what he did with his teams at Iowa State.  Kris Dunn, Zach LaVine and Lauri Markkanen, the three players obtained from the Minnesota Wolves for Butler and the Bulls’ #1 draft pick, look to be good students.  Butler looks to be a good soldier who’s moved on while wishing things could have gone better with his first team.  I do, too.

The Bulls’ dysfunction in the front office cost them a quality athlete in Butler.  They seem to have lucked out after trading him for two, and possibly three, promising players.  Now, the front office needs to show it’s done with dysfunction.  If not, you can expect Dunn, LaVine and Markkanen at some point to sound as confused as Jimmy Butler.  

Brian Downing Schwarber

Video of a slimmed-down Kyle Schwarber is making the rounds on local sportscasts and the Cubs’ website.  Now, if only someone would ask what exactly a thinner, stronger Schwarber means.

Well, with luck, he won’t eat himself out of the league the way reliever Jonathan Broxton seems to.  A fit Schwarber should also translate into a player who can avoid repeated stints on the disabled list; no quad or hamstring problems for the new Adonis, maybe.  But other than that, what?

How will lifting weights and eating right help Schwarber in left field?  Will it mean having softer hands and getting a better break on balls?  Will Schwarber now be able to block pitches in the dirt when he catches?  Will his throwing arm be stronger or more accurate?  I doubt it, but we’ll see.

To me, the best comparison would be to Brian Downing, another of those star-crossed young White Sox players—star-crossed, that is, until they were traded, like Bucky Dent and Goose Gossage and Terry Forster—of the 1970s.  Downing came up in 1973, a catcher/third baseman/outfielder.  He played five years with the Sox before being traded to the Angels.  With the Sox, Downing was an energetic but not necessarily focused player.  Who knew he’d play another fifteen seasons, thirteen with the Angels and two with the Rangers, or that he’d finish with 2,099 hits?

Early on during his Angels’ tenure, Downing took to weight lifting, thus earning the nickname of The Incredible Hulk; an ankle injury forced an eventual shift to the outfield.  You would never consider Downing a great fielder, behind the plate or in left; it’s doubtful the weight training had any effect there.  But hitting, who knows?  He sure hit better with the Angels than he ever did with the Sox.  You could even argue that the weights’ regimen allowed Downing to play until days before his 42^nd birthday.

So, the “new” Kyle Schwarber may end up being a better hitter.  Just don’t expect a leaner frame to lead to any Gold Gloves.

Family Feud

Chicago hates New York in a way that ought to worry the Big Apple, if only it could be bothered.  And, when it comes to baseball, why would it?  The Cubs and White Sox are the lapdogs of choice for the Mets and Yankees, respectively.

Ah, but basketball, that’s where we hit the five boroughs where it really hurts.  New York is never so full of itself as on the subject of basketball.  Woody Allen, Spike Lee and company act as if the game were invented there and brought to perfection by Red Holzman.  Alas, Michael Jordan and his Bulls belie that notion. 

And, now, so do the kiddie Bulls of Fred Hoiberg.  His team beat the host Knicks 122-119 in double overtime at Madison Square Garden, which Hoiberg called “the world’s most famous arena.”  I think that was the Iowa State Cyclone in Hoiberg talking.

Just for fun, I went online to see what the New York Post—all invective, all the time—had to say.  Oh, the Post was not happy, heading its story “Knicks drop double-overtime crusher to nemesis Bulls.”  Lauri Markkanen scored 33 for the visitors, which led the Knicks’ beat writer to declare the 7-foot rookie from Finland looked “like the best European big man on the floor.”  In case you were wondering, that was a dig at 7’3” Kristaps Porzingis, normally the pride of the Garden by way of Latvia.  A Post columnist called Markkanen “the Bulls’ unicorn.”  High praise, indeed.

The Bulls are 3-0 against New York, with one more game to go in the regular season.  If things keep going the way they have, the nemesis will have itself a patsy.

Pecking Order

The artwork on page one said it all, the Bears’ “B” turned on its side to resemble a heart.  The Chicago media really does love the Bears, or wants to. Newly named head coach Matt Nagy should enjoy the honeymoon.  If past it prelude, it’ll last a long time.  

That B took up the top half of page one of the Trib’s sports’ section.  In all, there were 4-1/2 pages devoted to the Bears, with another half-page going to NFL news.  The Bulls made page six and the Blackhawks page seven.  The back page was split between the Cubs and White Sox, with ¾ of it going to the North Siders, most of that devoted to where manager Joe Maddon spends the offseason (Answer: Tampa).  The Sun-Times did pretty much the same, minus any local baseball news.

As a Sox fan, I could complain about media bias from now to kingdom come, but it wouldn’t do any good.  Anybody who wants to follow the Sox is forewarned that there won’t be a lot of coverage unless the team wins big.  That’s the way it is and has been for as long as I can remember.  So be it.  Just don’t tell me it’s my imagination.

Six Degrees of White Sox Connection

 A few years ago, Michele and I watched the documentary “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29,” about the 1968 football game that saw Harvard score 16 points in the final minute against an unbeaten Yale team.  Among the film’s pleasures was listening to one of the Harvard offensive lineman, a guy by the name of Tommy Lee Jones, yes, that Tommy Lee Jones.

Harvard scored as the clock expired to pull within two points; the rules allowed for them to try for the extra point(s).  Harvard got the two points—and, with it, the tie—with a pass to the tight end, a guy by the name of Pete Varney, yes, that Pete Varney.

Varney had a few call-ups with the White Sox in the mid-70s.  I always remembered him as being pretty decent, but the ’70s were a dark cloud for Sox prospects—infielder Lee “Bee-Bee” Richard was a bust; outfielder Nyls Nyman broke his leg (I think); pitcher Bart Johnson hurt his arm and Varney just faded away after being traded to Atlanta in 1976 for John “Blue Moon” Odom.

Up until that night watching the movie, I had no idea Varney also played football or that he went to Harvard.  Regardless, he was good enough to get drafted six times in high school and college before the Sox picked him in 1971.  Like I said, the ’70s were a dark cloud for many Sox prospects.  .  At least this one managed to go on to a 34-year career as baseball coach at Brandeis University.

I was reminded of Varney again last week when Carmen Cozza, the coach of that Yale team, died at the age of 87.  Cozza may even have his own White Sox connection, or not.  Obituaries mentioned that he played in the Sox minor-league system in the early ’50s, but I couldn’t verify that with baseball-reference.com.  The Superior Blues were a Sox affiliate a year before Cozza arrived, but are listed as unaffiliated for the season—1953—that Cozza played with them.

But he played baseball, and Pete Varney played baseball, and maybe Tommy Lee Jones should have, too.

Reading the Tea Leaves

According to news reports, TV ratings for the NFL during this past regular season slipped 9.7 percent.  The question is, Why?

Some critics cite too many games on too many different days of the week.  But what difference does it make if all the games are on Sunday or some on Monday and Thursday?  Is it in any way better to sit through a full slate of Sunday games?  I doubt it.

Another possibility is a backlash over player protests during the National Anthem.  President Trump certainly thinks so, but I beg to disagree.  Personally, I’m a lot more turned off following a touchdown when players form a Rockettes’ kick line or pretend to be bowling pins getting knocked down.  I thought football was supposed to be a man’s game.  Then why are they acting like children?

The real answer may be in the adage that goes around comes around in this world.  Baseball long ago was labelled as boring for a lack of action.  Lo and behold, the same thing is happening to football; commercials are killing the game’s continuity.  That needs to be fixed.  Then, there’s the matter of injuries.  People see an ex-baseball player, and they’re likely to go nuts.  People see an ex-football player, and they’re likely to gasp.  I nearly did seeing former defensive end Jim Marshall on the sidelines of the Vikings-Bears’ game last month; it looked like the 80-year old former “Purple People Eater” could barely walk.  At 80, Minnie Minoso probably thought he could still play.

Factor in all the worries over possible brain damage, and I think the NFL is losing fans, both young and middle-aged; this is something baseball has never had to worry about.  The violence that the NFL once sold to gain national popularity, as in the Purple People Eaters, is now coming home to roost.  The ratings may never recover. 

Mark Prior

There was a note in the paper the other day that ex-Cubs’ pitcher Mark Prior was named bullpen coach for the Dodgers.  Prior is as star-crossed an athlete as you’ll ever find, a pitcher who seemed destined for greatness until the injuries started and kept on coming.

His best year was 2003, when he went 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA.  That was the year I took Clare to Wrigley Field the first time; it just so happened to be a game Prior started against the then-NL Brewers.  The 22-year old righty struck out 16 batters in eight innings, which may be why we left after the Milwaukee eighth.  Oh, ye of little faith.  Cubs’ manager Dusty Baker brought in Joe Borowski—no relation, folks—to close the ninth, only Borowski gave up a three-run homer to Geoff Jenkins for a Brewers’ 5-3 win.

Baker has been criticized for letting Prior run up his pitch counts in starts.  Lord knows Prior was on the mound in the 2003 NLCS against the Marlins when Moises Alou and a certain fan gave us the latest and possibly last installment on the Cub Curse.  Cursed or not, Prior only pitched three more seasons in the majors.  You can only hope he has better luck coaching. 

Off the Stove into the Fire

Off the Stove into the Fire

So, one day after I write about White Sox rumors, they go out and trade for two relievers, including veteran Joakim Soria.  Even if Soria flops out of the pen come spring, it should still help.  He has a lifetime 3-2 record against the Sox with a 2.34 ERA and 22 saves.  Sox hitters used to swing and miss at Soria’s fastball.  The last few seasons, they’ve done it against his junk.  If nothing else, then, this will be subtraction through addition.

My only regret is that the Sox gave up Jake Peter, a Triple-A prospect.  They’d left him off the 40-man roster before the winter meetings, so I figured something had to be up.  What’s so big about a 24-year old infielder with a career .283 BA in the minors?  Well, Peter struck me as a grinder whose hitting helped moved him up the ladder and didn’t complain when he had to go back down that ladder.  Peter made it to Triple-A Charlotte in 2016, only to be sent back to Double-A Birmingham last season when the Sox got Yoan Moncada.  Such is the business of baseball.

I also happen to like that Peter went to Creighton and was born in Mason City, Iowa.  Haven’t been to Mason City?  Well, you should, especially if you’re a fan of Prairie architecture.  There’s a Frank Lloyd Wright hotel there and a house along with a subdivision by Walter Burley Griffin, a onetime employee of Wright.  The Prairie School and baseball, it all makes sense to me.  Zachary Taylor Davis, the architect of Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field, adorned Comiskey with some Prairie motifs on the exterior walls.

I’ll be keeping an eye on how Peter does with his new team, the Dodgers.  They’re ranking him as their 30^th best prospect.  That should be good for an invitation to spring training.

Hot Stove

Clare called from work Wednesday morning to alert me to an on-line ESPN story speculating that the White Sox could be a dark-horse contender for free-agent third baseman Mike Moustakas.  Given the bone-chill I get every time I step outside, anything from the hot-stove league is a welcome distraction.

Even if the story makes little sense.  Moustakas is 29 going on 30 come September.  He had a career year with 38 homers, but only 85 RBIs and so-so defense.  To me, it makes a whole lot more sense to shift Yoan Moncada to third and put Yolmer Sanchez at second.  Matt Davidson could rotate from first to third to DH.  Problem solved, and you wouldn’t be on the hook for whatever Moustakas wants.

What I should do now is return the favor to Clare and call her about another suggested trade—Sox shortstop Tim Anderson and three top prospects for Marlins’ center fielder Christian Yelich.  You’d be surprised how good my daughter is at judging talent; she did, after all, spend a summer helping recruit softball players to Valpo.  If she’s anything like her old man, she’d turn this deal down flat (and maybe help its author in from the cold, which must be affecting his thinking). 

But, again, it’s January, and you take your baseball where you can.  I seem to remember growing up that, come January, the White Sox were always rumored to be interested in Twins’ outfielder Jimmy Hall.  Nothing ever happened, but the rumors always got me into February, the sainted month when spring training starts.  If Mike Moustakas—or Manny Machado—rumors can do the same, I’m all in.

Tell the Truth

Truth-telling in professional sports is a relative thing.  Coaches, managers and general managers rarely come out and admit they were wrong about something, but the good ones at least find ways to imply it.  Think Rick Hahn of the White Sox saying his team was stuck in a rut.  That signaled the old ways had failed, and Chris Sale was as good as gone (which he was by December of 2016).

Theo Epstein of the Cubs is a relative truth teller; ditto Fred Hoiberg of the Bulls, Rick Renteria of the Sox and Joel Quenneville of the Blackhawks.  Bears GM Ryan Pace?  Not so much.

If anyone should throw himself at the feet of his fans and beg for mercy after making so many gaffes, it should be Pace, he of the 14-34 record over his first three seasons; only in McCaskey Land does that record merit a two-year extension, as happened Monday.  Not only has Pace sounded less than contrite on the mistake—or would you say “disastrous mistake”?—of hiring John Fox, he was downright unapologetic on giving Mike Glennon $18.5 million guaranteed to play quarterback for one season before deciding—out of the blue, because Pace doesn’t like talking to the media—to draft Mitch Trubisky in April.

“With the quarterback position, I have no regrets in us being aggressive in attacking that position—it’s that important,” Pace was quoted in yesterday’s Tribune.  “We all felt confident in Mike, and sometimes in our business, things don’t work out.  There’s a lot of factors.”

Not as many as you might think, Ryan.  The Glennon decision—all eight turnovers vs. four touchdown passes of it—rests on you.  If you can’t admit that upfront, then don’t be surprised when the fans start shouting “Dilly, dilly!” the next time you show yourself in public.  Even Bears’ fans have a b.s. limit, and right now you’re pushing it.  Dilly.

Perfect

This year, our Christmas tree turned out perfect.  I knew it would from the second I clipped on the star.  Everything followed from that—the lights, the ornaments, the gift boxes under the tree; we could have been giving a tutorial to Martha Stewart.  Our living room looked straight out of a colorized version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

This happens to me once every blue moon, the perfect pick the perfect timing the perfect whatever.  That explains my wife and child, and what success I’ve had as an armchair general manager.  I see a player for the first time and go, “Wow.”  Again, that explains my daughter.  Clare could hit from the start, before she reached her fourth birthday even. 

I felt that way about Bill Melton and Bart Johnson as well as Frank Thomas and Chris Sale.  Clip a star on them, they’re perfect, or would have been barring injury. 

Flea Circus High-Wire Act

High-Wire Act, Flea Circus

A day after the Bears’ eleventh loss of the season, a 23-10 sleep inducer to Minnesota, GM Ryan Pace woke up from hibernation to fire “coach” John Fox.  According to the Tribune, Pace hadn’t spoken with the local media since September 6.  Fear not, Bears’ fans, for the boyish-looking and ever-sincere Pace promises to get it right this time.  Until he does, I am the walrus.

The good thing about this is that Pace has no place to hide anymore.  He hires the right guy, or he’s gone.  The weird thing about this is all the attention it gets.  Forgive this very old-school measurement, but I think it’s worth something—not only did the Trib devote the first five pages of today’s sports’ section to the Bears, it put the story above the fold on page one.  Our Lord should get that kind of coverage for the Second Coming.  Of course, if He timed the return during football season, nobody would probably notice, anyhow.