You, Shut Up. You, Keep Talking.

Everything was fine until I started reading the sports’ section this morning.  That’s when I found myself going after fans while supporting an owner.  Really, strange times.

But, no matter how weird things are, you don’t get to pretend racists remarks aimed at a player are OK, because they’re not.  And you don’t get a pass for being cute or creative, like those four Blackhawks’ fans the other week who chanted “basketball” at the Capitals’ Devante Smith-Pelly, who’s black.  To their credit, the Hawks had the four ejected and then informed them they were banned from home games.  Good for the Hawks and the Cavaliers, too, who gave the heave-ho to a clown over the weekend for baiting guard Patty Mills of the Spurs.  Talk about dumb.  The guy couldn’t even figure out Mills is from Australia, not Jamaica.

The idea is for civility in public, folks; dumb down social norms and there goes the glue that binds us together as a society.  But was it free speech sanctioned by the First Amendment?  I’d argue it was intimidation, which qualifies as assault.  And when Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, opened up his mouth to oppose a contract extension for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or support suspended Cowboys’ running back Ezekiel Elliott?  That’s free speech.

Jones has, or should have, the right to express his opinion about how the NFL is operated; he should also have the right to voice support for one of his players, even if that player has been disciplined for violating league rules on personal behavior (in this case, domestic violence).  The NFL has dusted off a rule for collecting damages against an owner for filing suit against other owners.  But Jones didn’t do that; he just spoke his mind on issues of relevance concerning his business.  For that, the NFL wants to slap him with a $2 million fine.

Strange times, strange times.

The Best-laid Plans of Mice and GMs

 With the temperature scraping 60 and snow predicted two days from now, I went out this morning to make war on the sparrows, who are intent on building a nest above our back door; the overhead floodlight makes a nice platform for that sort of thing.  If only the birds were house-trained, we wouldn’t mind so much, but they seem to love nothing so much as a good crap on the back steps.  For me, that’s a definite declaration of war. 

The trick is to anchor stuff—a box wedged against the floodlight and the wall, an empty soda bottle to jam into the space between box and wall—with duct tape.  Only I’ve found you can’t position a ladder on the stairs; it either wants to tip over or crash through the back door.  Today, I tried another approach—a plank between two ladders, one on the porch itself and the other just beyond the stairs.  Naturally, the phone rings while I’m walking the plank, so to speak.  It was Clare with news on White Sox third baseman Jake Burger.

Our #1 draft choice from last June ruptured his left Achilles running out a grounder yesterday in Arizona; see you next year, Jake.  Oh, and fellow minor-leaguer Micker Adolfo, with Ruthian power, screwed up his right elbow swinging; that will mean surgery at some point, though for now the team thinks that Adolfo can keep hitting without suffering further injury.  (But he hurt himself hitting, so that strikes me as a little counterintuitive.)  Oh, and Eloy Jimenez, who mixes Mays with his Ruth, has a sore knee.  Nothing serious, though.  We hope.

The moral of all this is, stuff happens and every organization has to have a Plan B, or C or D and more in order to survive.  Which makes me wonder what plan the Sox filed center fielder Adam Engel under.  You would think that anyone who showed the speed and defense Engel did last summer would have garnered serious attention early on from the big-league club.  I mean, what do minor-league coaches and roving instructors do if not identify and develop talent in the system?  For whatever reason, though, the Sox apparently never thought enough of Engel’s top-level defense to work on his hitting.  That, or nobody in the front office knew about it.

Clare said she read something about how the heir of Landis/Agee/Berry/Rowand worked on his swing in the off-season.  I’ll leave it to my daughter, who’d make a very good hitting coach herself, to see if there’s cause for hope.  All I know is that Luis Robert, on whom the Sox spent in the neighborhood of $50 million last spring to sign, hasn’t even played in A-ball yet.  What he’s shown so far in Arizona doesn’t suggest he’ll be playing center in the big leagues this year or next (or even the one after that). 

Adam, White Sox fans turn their lonely hearts to you.

Slowly But Surely

Slowly But Surely

Chicago Auto Show—check.  Daytona 500—check.  Winter Olympics—check.  Now, if I can make it to Thursday, it’ll be March, when dreams of spring are allowed.

Heck, if I make it to tomorrow, I can watch the White Sox play the Cubs in Arizona.  But the trick is to take things slow.  Tuesday, the temperature is supposed to hit 60 degrees, which will tempt me to take the bike out.  Only, hold on, cowboy.  By Thursday March first, when we get to talk about meteorological spring, the weather folks are calling for snow, anything from a dusting to six inches.  I don’t want to end up with sore muscles made sorer from heavy shoveling (although I went out and bought an electric snow blower that’s just waiting to be tested).

The same goes for the game tomorrow.  It’s only spring training.  If the Sox pound the Cubs, what does it matter, really?  Or vice versa.  I have to remember to pace myself.  Let’s hope Adam Engel gets a few hits and Carson Fulmer doesn’t embarrass himself on the mound.  That’s it.  If they don’t, it’s not even March yet.

Patience, as they say, is a virtue.      

Take a Seat

In that cold, bloodless way that rules over all professional sports, the Bulls have decided to sit two of their best, if not the best, players on the team.  No, center Robin Lopez and forward Justin Holiday did not break any team rules or engage in fisticuffs a la Portis-Mirotic.  Their collective sin is, simply, being veterans.

The Bulls’ front office announced after the All-Star break last weekend that the team wanted to look long and hard at other young players beyond their core of Kris Dunn, Zach LaVine and Lauri Markkanen.  Anyone with a spark stays, the rest get thrown overboard to make room for two #1 draft picks that should be pretty high now that winning has been taken off the table for the rest of the year.  So sorry, Robin and Justin, but please take a seat as we do our evaluations.  And, if you’re good, we’ll either bring you back next year or trade you in the off-season.  Whatever.

To their credit, Lopez and Holiday have sucked it up and gone along with the program, which is kind of ironic.  Had they gone ballistic, thrown a chair or issued an ultimatum, they’d be playing right now, somewhere if not in Chicago.  So, hats off to these guys for showing a bit grace under pressure.  Bulls’ management may not particularly care or appreciate it, but I do.

I have to wonder, though.  If they’re going to treat the rest of the season like training camp, shouldn’t they roll back prices?  That would be the classy thing to do, no?  

My Olympic Moment

The 1968 Winter Olympics were held in Grenoble, France; I was a sophomore in high school.  The games had some kind of effect on me and my friends; we were forever calling “Gold!  Silver!  Bronze!” after completing one stunt or another.

It had to be a Friday or Saturday night, because my parents didn’t let me go out on school nights.  Not that I would’ve gotten into big trouble with the three guys I hung with.  No, we were the halt, the lame, the painfully shy around all females, just the kind of guys who threw snowballs in the alley on the weekend.

We were either aiming at a sign or the telephone pole it was attached to.  I mean, this was serious stuff, an imaginary medal going to the first three of us who could hit the target.  (Maybe this made us back-alley biathletes in boots, no skis or guns.)  We kept firing away, oblivious to the cold or the dark or the sad appearance we must’ve presented to anyone who looked out their back window.  Then I did it.

Let me explain here that Chicago alleys put a premium on throwing or hitting a ball straight; anything else risks going into a yard, where the neighbor may have locked the gate to keep out kids or keeps a hatchet at the ready to take care of any balls that land on perfectly cut grass; there was actually a guy on our block who did that, throwing back a rubber ball in quarters or eighths to the owner.  Twice, errant throws got me into trouble.  When I should’ve thrown straight, I went crooked, and, when I should’ve gone crooked, I went straight.        

Around the time I was in sixth grade, I hurled an empty aspirin bottle as far as I could, only it ended up going through a neighbor’s back-porch window; my weekly allowance went to paying off the cost of replacing said window, oh, for about the next five years, or so it felt.  And on that night in February 1968 with my friends, a snowball that should’ve veered left or right instead went straight down the alley to the junction of the “T” (most Chicago blocks have alleys with long and short sections that form the letter T), slamming into a passing car full of less than pleasant people, one of whom got out to dismember me.

My friends being pragmatists, they took a pass on doing the Spartacus thing; I stood alone, ready to meet my fate.  Then, at the last second one of the thugs recognized Matt, brother of Pete; thug and Pete were on good terms, so thug and Matt were on good terms, so I lived.

And that was how I won a gold medal in survival one winter’s night long ago.

 

Good News

Clare called from work Wednesday afternoon with what she termed “good news.”  I immediately thought of my daughter’s plans for world domination, but no.  “The White Sox are on the radio Friday.”  Yes, the team oddsmakers and sabermetricians hate and fans—myself included—constantly disparage will make their spring training debut today on a new radio station.  If only WGN would go with a tagline like “The Few, the Proud, the South Side,” Sox fans would probably start lining up for Opening Day right now.

As luck would have it, there was still more good news.  “I think we can go hitting,” I was informed.  My child with the vicious swing has a delicate back which may or may not have anything to do with her athletic career.  Either way, it’s been bothering her the past few weeks.  But this is the end of February, when varsity starts and college teams have been practicing or playing for weeks already.  The need to play gets into your bones, or those of a certain baseball-loving veteran of fastpitch softball.

I must have done something right as a parent.

Not One More Visit, I Say

In his never-ending embrace of half-measures to speed up the game, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has decreed that, starting this year, teams will get six sanctioned non-pitching-change visits to the mound per nine-inning game (and one more per inning for extra-inning contests).  Anything after that, and the homeplate umpire takes on the role of bouncer.

Yo, Robbie, listen up.  This is a joke, an unfunny one at that.  You want to speed up the game?  Fine, then do something about the number of commercials.  You lack the spine for that?  OK, then have the umpires do their job.

Baseball revolves around hitters hitting and pitchers pitching.  The constant adjusting of batting gloves and shaking off of signs from the catcher should have been addressed decades ago.  Mike Hargrove earned the nickname of The Human Rain Delay for his fidgeting in the batter’s box.  Umpires let him get away with it, and anyone else who wanted to follow in Hargrove’s footsteps, which, by the way, he stopped making as a player in 1986.

As much as it pains me to admit, players like Jon Lester and Willson Contreras of the Cubs are right about people using technology to steal signs; worse yet, the cheating can entail more than intercepting the centerfield TV feed that shows the catcher relaying signs.  I went online and found that there are apps and software for lip reading.  And here I thought pitchers and catchers were being paranoid when they put their gloves over their mouths to talk.

So, I was wrong, just like the Commissioner is in thinking his latest half-measure will work.

This Means War

This Means War

Norway wins!  Norway wins!  And when they took home the gold in this week’s Olympic 500-meter speed-skating competition, winner Havard Lorentzen rubbed more than a little salt in the wounded pride of Team Holland.  “We don’t like it when the Dutch win that much,” Lorentzen proclaimed.  “It is good to beat them.”

And the U.S. too, from the looks of it.  Norway, with its population of 5.3 million hearty souls, is having its way in Pyeongchang at the Winter Olympics.  As of this morning, Norway has eleven gold medals to five for the United States.  Think of it—a little over five million people generate eleven gold medals; a tad under 327 million people manages five gold medals.  Go figure.

I feel bad, kind of, for American athletes; being the parent of a dedicated jock, I know what training entails and have a pretty good idea what disappointment in the face of defeat looks like.  That said, this relative lack of medals couldn’t happen to a more deserving host network.  NBC hasn’t been content to devote prime time to Americans in also-ran mode; the network uses its national and local news to promote that night’s contests.  Gosh, all those human-interest stories on people who don’t medal.  How considerate.

This is what happens when the “peacock” network tries to lay a golden egg.  Never mix metaphors, guys, not in business or Olympic sports.  

Fly, Fly Away

I was driving along Harlem Avenue this morning when two Presidents’ Day memories dropped into the car for a visit.  There used to be this bowling alley on Harlem, the Mont Clare, that we’d go to on said holiday when Clare was in grade school.  Truly, the family that bowls together either collapses under the weight of all the bowling balls members throw at one another, or it grows stronger from the shared adversity, or everyone laughs their heads off.  We pretty much did the second two.  They tore down the Mont Clare a few years ago and put up an apartment complex that looks to be modelled after a New York City tenement.

So, if you’re going to have one Presidents’ Day memory, you may as well have another.  Number two for me derives from Clare’s sophomore year of high school; the travel coach wanted to play in a holiday tournament.  Where, you may ask given that Chicago in mid-February can pass for Siberia?  Inside?  No, in beautiful sunny Orlando.  Just hop on a plane and pay, pay, pay.

Travel softball for us was one sticker shock after another.  If the coach had had his way, the team would’ve gone to Orlando in February and Colorado in July, for a major college exposure tournament; the nationals’ tournament—and I have no idea why they called it that since there were any number of them—was scheduled for Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a week or so after Colorado.  Talk about frequent-flyer miles.

Long story short, parents and players voted against Orlando, and we opted out of going to Colorado.  In the perfect world, we would’ve done both, which is what the top-tier teams do, costs be damned.  The idea behind travel sports is for kids to play as much as possible (that is, if they’re good enough to start.  Otherwise, bench players tag along for the geography lesson and an occasional at-bat.).  Bigtime youth sports is just like bigtime poker; you ante up either way.  We just didn’t have the money to play that game.

I wonder how many high school teachers this morning confronted classrooms full of students groggy from three or four days of sports and travel?  The dealer takes two cards….   

Try Looking in the Backyard First

There I was, minding my own business, walking through Walgreen’s after church, when a copy of Street and Smith’s Baseball—“America’s Baseball Bible”—jumped off the magazine rack and practically forced its way into my hand.  What could I do but buy it?

I’ll save the predictions for later.  What struck me right away was the front-page headline for one of the feature stories, “Pure Colombian: Exploring the rise of the next great baseball-producing country,” Colombia, to be exact.  I have no doubt MLB scouts are readying a D-Day intense invasion, minus bullets, as we speak.

Maybe they could stop in Florida—or Texas or California—on their way.  College softball has started.  I hear tell some girls can sure hum that pea while others can hit it.  You know, it never hurts to take a look.  At least that’s what they say about male talent.

The Next Step

LeBron James wants the world to know, “I will not just shut up and dribble,” as he put it during a recent podcast in response to criticism from conservative pundit Laura Ingraham. The ever-so-polite Ingraham had in fact expressed the opinion during a recent show that James and fellow NBA star Kevin Durant ought to “shut up and dribble” and “keep the political commentary” to themselves.

James responded with, “I will definitely not do that.  I mean too much to society.  I mean too much to the youth.  I mean too much to so many kids that feel like they don’t have a way out and they need someone to help lead them out of the situation they’re in.”

Good for James, because he doesn’t want to be another Mickey Mantle or Wilt Chamerblain, neither of whom seemed much aware of the world around them.  And good for Ingraham, because she’s letting James know he’s going to have to step up his game if he intends to argue ideas and issues with the likes of her.  The world of social commentary ain’t beanbag, folks.

Right now, James gets to talk about things in his comfort zone, whether police brutality or the dog-whistle racism of President Donal Trump.  But at some point he’s going to have fully formed positions on issues like immigration and trade, both of which affect the African-American community.

Does James believe in the value of education, given that he skipped college to play in the NBA?  What are his views on STEM?  Does he back the Dreamers and, if so, to what extent?  How many relatives should get to stay in/come to the U.S.?  If education is key, what to do about the H 1-B program that allows college-educated immigrants to fill high-tech job vacancies?  With H 1-B, what’s the motivation for poor kids to crack the books if Silicon Valley can hire an immigrant instead?  What about trade?  Is free trade good, or does it cost Americans too much in lost wages and jobs? 

These are questions I struggle with every day.  And they’ll be waiting for LeBron James as soon as he steps off the court.

Sleeping with the Enemy

Thanks to the bankruptcy that claimed the parent company of radio station WLS early this month, the White Sox have themselves a new home on the AM dial.  Talk about trading mud for gold.  Pass through a viaduct or cross the Cook County line, and WLS basically disappeared.  Listen to anything on the station other than a ballgame, and you were left feeling all dirty in a Rush Limbaugh sort of way.  To jump from there to powerhouse WGN, well, that’s the gold standard of Chicago radio.  It’s also a little weird.

WGN last broadcast Sox games in 1943.  For just about any baseball fan in these parts, WGN was synonymous with the Cubs, which it carried from 1958-2014.  Trust me, a whole lot of Sox fans out there are going to tune in and half-expect to hear Jack Brickhouse or Ron Santo behind the mic.

In a lifeboat full of Sox fans, I doubt anyone would bother to make room for either Brickhouse or Santo.  Brickhouse pretended to be a Sox fan when he did games, and Santo pretended to be a South Sider in 1974, his last year as a ballplayer, but it was pretty easy to see through both acts.  The thing about Santo is he seems to have been scarred by his one season with the Sox.

He never talked about it directly, but his dislike of Chuck Tanner, the Sox manager, was pretty obvious.  When Tanner moved on to the Pirates, the disdain oozed out of Santo’s mouth anytime Tanner stuck his head out of the dugout.  My guess is Santo didn’t like the preferential treatment Tanner showed Sox slugger Dick Allen, but who knows?  Maybe Santo kept getting lost on his way to the ballpark.  Either way, Santo never had anything good to say about the other side of town.

So, I’ll do my best to tune out the ghosts while listening to Ed Farmer and Darin Jackson starting next week.  Hey!  Hey!  Oh, no.

Walking the Walk

This week, the White Sox signed 30-year old lefty starter-reliever Hector Santiago to a minor-league deal with an invitation to spring training.  There are any number of reasons to hope that Santiago makes the Sox roster.

For openers, consider that Santiago may be the only pitcher over the last decade or so to feature a screwball among his pitches.  When Santiago is on, that screwball is ridiculous, and, when he’s off, he can’t find the plate for the love of money.  I know this because Santiago, a 30^th round draft choice of the Sox, pitched for them in 2012-13 before being traded as part of the Adam Eaton deal.  Did I mention Santiago has a 5-1 record against his former team with a 1.59 ERA?  Well, he does.

The native of Newark New Jersey and son of a carpet installer also gives of his time and treasure to various causes, too many to list here.  What I recall from his first stint with the Sox is that Santiago volunteered to go to Newtown, Connecticut, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.  Nobody asked, he went on his own to give comfort.  Such a player stands out, whether or not anyone knows.

And now Anthony Rizzo has done the same after the shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School, his alma mater in Parkland, Florida.  Rizzo left camp in Arizona as soon as he heard about the carnage that left 17 dead; the Cubs’ first baseman knew at least two of the victims.  His remarks at a vigil Thursday night showed a young man speaking passionately about a place he loves and still calls home in the offseason.  I’d be willing to bet Rizzo wrote each and every word he spoke.  And no publicist would ever let a client tweet “our country is in desperate need for change” as Rizzo did before he left.

Each in his own way, Hector Santiago and Anthony Rizzo show what’s expected of us, not as ballplayers or fans, but as Americans.    

Cry Me a River

Cry Me a River

Notre Dame president the Rev. John J. Jenks thinks the NCAA is treating his school unfairly because of its refusal to reinstate 21 football victories that were nullified in the wake of a cheating scandal.  Basically, Jenks feels the cheating wasn’t that bad since there were no “serious forms of institutional culpability,” as he wrote in a statement released this week.

No, there was just a “full-time undergraduate who had part-time employment” helping athletic trainers.  That student did school work with or for eight Notre Dame football players that the NCAA found objectionable.  By singling out a student for blame, Jenks showed where his priorities lay.  That wouldn’t be anywhere close to those of former president the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh.

Early on in his tenure, Hesburgh made it clear that football was subordinate to the university and not the other way around.  That dictate as much as anything led coach Frank Leahy with his 87-9-11 record to move on.  Poor Leahy, born too soon.  He and Jenks would have been made for each other.  What Jenks fails to realize is that there are a whole bunch of people out there—like me—who aren’t particularly fond of his school.  Hesburgh, though, commanded my respect as a principled administrator who transformed his school into an academic, not simply an athletic, powerhouse.

If you didn’t like Hesburgh’s Notre Dame, shame on you.  If you don’t like Jenk’s Notre Dame, I can definitely see why. 

Humility

Clare and Chris stopped by last night to help put the fat in Fat Tuesday, with hot dogs from Lucky Dog followed by paczyki from the Oak Park Bakery.  (If you have to ask, you’ve spent way too much of your life in darkness.)  We then rolled into the living room to watch Olympic men’s halfpipe.  And here I thought we already had enough ways to kill ourselves in winter.

The competition was just what NBC paid all that money for—the once teen prodigy Shaun “Flying Tomato” White now trying at age 31 to win a gold medal in his third Olympics.  For a little added drama, there was the film clip of White being airlifted to medical treatment after a crackup—oh, that halfpipe—last fall in New Zealand.  But the mishap wasn’t enough to win Clare over, not completely.  “He’s not humble,” my daughter said before White’s third, gold-winning run down the halfpipe.

There are two kinds of humble athletes, I think, the Walt Williams and the Walter Paytons; Clare was always more of a Payton.  Walt Williams was this incredibly shy outfielder for the White Sox who could barely bring himself to look into the camera during an interview, which was always punctuated with “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” all this despite the fact that Williams had more talent in his little finger than Jack Brickhouse could ever amass during two lifetimes as a broadcaster.  That wasn’t Walter Payton or my daughter, for that matter.

They were more “hard-ass” humble, no-nonsense athletes who wanted to get the job done, let somebody else do the celebrating.  Clare never showboated during her homerun trot any more than Payton did after scoring a touchdown.  Funny, I loved Walt Williams, had my daughter meet him even when she a little girl, but I raised a Walter Payton instead.  Go figure.

What a Load

My parents never let on that we pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck.  There was always food on the table, my two sisters and I were dressed decently, and nobody got cheated on their birthday or at Christmas.

Now, I realize there were certain “tells” otherwise—my father wasn’t so much moody as he was exhausted from sometimes working thirteen straight days; my mother literally counted pennies, so that when I bought Hostess Twinkies for myself (or lost the $10 she gave me to go to the store) it took a real bite out of the family budget.  But then God looked down on them and smiled.  My parents were relatively well-off by their old age and quite happy to shower their only grandchild with presents, to say nothing of affection.  That’s how it’s supposed to be, I think.

As parents, Michele and I never cried poor in the presence of our daughter; if Clare ever noticed money was tight, it’s because she figured out the “tells” at an earlier age than I did.  No, there was always food on the table; our child never lacked for clothes; and she never got cheated on her birthday or at Christmas.  And did I mention softball?

What did Heminway say in The Sun Also Rises when one character asks another how he went bankrupt?  Oh, right:  “Two ways.  Gradually and then suddenly.”  That, my friends, is youth sports in a nutshell—first, you get nickeled and dimed, then you get whacked over the head by this, that and the other.  Travel ball and hitting coaches don’t come cheap.  But you do it because your kid is really good, and the sport makes her really happy.

Only it shouldn’t cost so damn’ much all the damn’ time.  Batting gloves, sliding shorts, bats.  Oh, my God, bats.  When did they start going for $300?  At one point, we had five-figure, credit-card debt.  Softball alone didn’t put us there, but it sure helped.  In passing, my parents bequeathed their children a final gift, and we used mine to erase all debt.

Not that Dick’s Sporting Goods helped any.  No, that place was more interested in meeting quarterly profit projections, and if we couldn’t afford their stuff, well, too bad, try Play It Again Sports (and we did).  And now Dick’s has the nerve to take out a full-page ad in the paper to proclaim “United in Sport.” 

Wow, I never knew that, “When we are united, together, we are at our best.”  Thank you, oh “proud sponsor of Team USA,” for telling me that and how your company is “fortunate enough to see humanity at its very best every single day” on all the venues that sports can be played on (with Dick’s merchandise, of course).

But, guys, your stuff is damn’ expensive and made it hard for us to equip our daughter so she could achieve her best on one of those venues.  Why don’t you skip the ad and lower your prices?  No can do?  In that case, you can take your ad and….

Never Mind

Did I just say the Cubs owed it to their fans not to do anything dumb this offseason?  Never mind, because they just went dumb by signing Yu Darvish for six years at $126 million.  

Everything I wrote about Darvish the other day still holds—he’ll turn 32 in August, by which time he should have added to a rather modest career win total of 56 games.  After winning 16 games his rookie year in 2012, Darvish managed 13, 10 and 7 the next three years; he missed 2015 because of Tommy John surgery.  He won 10 games last season while losing 12 for the Rangers and Dodgers.  Like they say, nice money if you can get it.

The weather this past week has been absolutely brutal, so that may factor into media hysteria over the signing; anything baseball promises spring.  According to the people I read, the Darvish contract will have no bearing on the Cubs going after Bryce Harper when he becomes a free agent at the end of the upcoming season.  Right, and Ben Zobrist and Jayson Heyward will have bounce-back seasons, too.

Did I mention that Tyler Chatwood, another “stud” starter signed in the offseason, went 8-15 for Colorado last year or that he has a career record of 40-46?  Or that Brandon Morrow and Steve Cishek, who are expected to start the season sharing closer duties, had a combined three saves in 2017?  No?  Silly me.

Check that, silly Chicago sports’ media.

Respect

Respect

I am by nature a critical person, which is no excuse for giving into snark.  That nearly happened Friday night while Michele and I sat on the couch to watch the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics.

A South Korean take on American pop culture is not exactly my cup of tea; as for the Korean cultural flourishes, I have yet to do anything in my life “gangnman style.”  South Side, by all means yes, gangnman, alas, no.

But who am I to judge?  There is no “right” way to do the Olympics, though keeping Matt Lauer away is definitely a good start.  But going in the opposite direction of pop culture could lead straight to Leni Riefenstahl, and who wants another “Triumph of the Will” or “Olympia”?  No, let the South Koreans have their way on their day.  They are, after all, paying for it.  Critics like me can just switch the channel if they don’t like it.

Homecoming

The Timberwolves visited the United Center last night, and it was homecoming for all those ex-Bulls gone to Minnesota (with Derrick Rose rumored to be on his way north, too).  I miss Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson, but Tom Thibodeau, not so much.

There was Thibodeau patrolling the sidelines in perpetual grimace, an act that grows old, or will.  One of the ESPN commentators predicted the T-Wolves will be dangerous in the playoffs.  Express that as a bet, and I’ll take the other end.  Thibodeau teams underperform in the postseason.

Part of the reason is that he runs them into the ground.  Guess who leads the NBA in minutes played?  That’s right, Jimmy Butler at 37.2; not even LeBron James goes that long.  Two other Minnesota starters are averaging 35.2 or more minutes a game.  You can’t run an unimaginative offense when you’re gassed.  T-Wolves fans will see that soon enough.

The Bull were on a seven-game losing streak, which in a way has turned out to benefit their rebuild plans.  The losing streak pretty much coincides with the loss of guard Kris Dunn, who suffered a concussion after losing his balance on a slam dunk against Golden State.  Until then, the Bulls looked entirely capable of sneaking into the playoffs.  Minus Dunn and the subsequent trade of Nikola Mirotic, the baby Bulls can now concentrate on how to close games while they await two #1 draft choices once the season’s over.

Butler scored 38 points while Zach LaVine—acquired for Butler with Dunn and Lauri Markkanen—managed 35.  LaVine scored the winning points at the free-throw line in a 114-113 final while Butler’s desperation heave from the corner missed.  Desperation, Thibodeau—sometimes it’s good the past is past.     

Other People's Money

Sportswriters are forever spending other people’s money.  Yesterday, it was Chicago Sun-Times’ columnist Rick Morrissey, hard at work trying to convince the Cubs to sign Yu Darvish or Jake Arrieta.  The back-page teaser headline for Morrissey’s column read, “MONEY STALL—Less than a week before camp opens, Cubs still haven’t splurged on the big-ticket pitcher they need.  What’s taking so long?”

Baseball free agents and their agents are all aghast that the big contracts this offseason have been far and few between.  Apparently, they—along with Morrissey—think that overpaying for a player is the (good) norm while holding back constitutes collusion on the part of owners.  Take Darvish and Arrieta, please.

“The argument in some corers of Chicago [exactly where goes unsaid] is that it’s too risky to give any pitcher a five-year plus deal, arms being as unreliable as they are,” writes Morrissey.  “I’d argue that it’s riskier to go into the heart of [Theo]  Epstein’s window [of opportunity for winning another World Series] with a big hole in the rotation.”  You see, the Cubs have to do something because “The time to act is now.”  There’s even a moral imperative for Morrissey, who asks, “Don’t the Cubs owe it to their fan base to do whatever it takes to try to win every year, especially after trying not to win during the rebuilding years?”

To which I would answer, the Cubs’ front office owes it to their fan base not to be dumb, as in signing the pitching equivalent of a Milton Bradley or Alfonso Soriano.  What’s so impressive about Darvish, who’ll be 32 in August?  He’s won all of 56 games since 2012, and never more in a season than the sixteen he recorded as a rookie.  And how about that 0-2 record in last year’s World Series, along with the 21.6 ERA?  Only a fool—or a sportswriter—splurges for a player with those numbers.

The same pretty much goes for Arrieta, who turns 32 next month.  Arrieta has managed 88 wins over his career, with 22 of them coming in 2015.  The win totals have gone down (and the ERA up) in each of the past two seasons.  Arrieta has Scott Boras for an agent, and the last time I checked Boras tries to get his pitchers six-to-seven year deals.  If Arrieta went 14-10 with a 3.53 ERA in 2017, what will he do in 2022?

The Cubs are top-heavy with talented young position players.  The smart move is to trade some of them for talented young pitchers, not overpay for middle-of-the-rotation starters.  But, hey, I’m not a sportswriter.

Bobsled This

Bobsled This

For some reason, the only winter Olympic sport I like to watch is the bobsled, in teams of two, three and four sledders.  It starts with a sprint on an ice track sloping downward, everyone pushing the bobsled to get a head start, then jumping in one by one to form an aerodynamic mass.  Better yet, the track looks like it’s based on a gopher burrow with the top peeled off so people can watch the lunatics speed by as they try not to crash or fall out of the bobsled.  Now that’s entertainment.

Clare and I used to do something like this when she was small.  There’s a bluff not far from us in Riverside that leads down to the Des Plaines River, and it’s perfect for sledding, for anyone not afraid of killing themselves; of course, my child wasn’t.  No, we’d get on our sled and hold on for dear life as river’s edge came ever closer, or so it seemed.  Two or three times down that bluff, and I was ready to update my will.

I never knew snow could be so bumpy.  We’d be zooming downhill, and all of a sudden it felt like we were going over railroad tracks at 60 mph; oh, and there was an invisible gorilla on my shoulders, too.  Dad, let’s go again!  Ok, but we have to get Mr. Peeps back to the zoo before it gets dark.

Thank God for softball.  Once I saw that Clare had some talent, that was the end of  sledding for us.  I didn’t want my daughter spending the season with a cast on her leg, or me trying to navigate the bleachers wearing one, or two.

John Mahoney

The actor John Mahoney died on Sunday, which is fitting.  Mahoney attended Mass at a nearby church we sometimes attend.  He was even said to go to ours on occasion.  Mahoney always looked to be the kind of guy you’d want to shake hands with after the Our Father.

I ran into Mahoney once, in the parking lot at the Sports Authority by our house.  He was getting out of his Jeep, I was walking back to my car, probably after picking up yet another pair of batting gloves for Clare.  Neither of us tried to make eye contact.  We were just two middle-aged guys running errands.  For me, that was normal.  That Mahoney would be doing the same was refreshing.

Mahoney learned to act on the Chicago stage, Steppenwolf to be exact, and could have relocated to the West Coast a long time ago.  His role as Martin Crane in the popular television series “Frazier” necessitated long stretches in Hollywood, but he always came back.  “I can’t tell you why my heart is so full of Chicago,” he was quoted in the Tribune yesterday, “but it’s where I want to be.  When I’m not here, I’m not as happy.”

Early on as a stage actor, Mahoney was pretty anonymous on the street.  Chicaogans aren’t likely to stop and point to anyone who moved them in the second act of last night’s play.    Even after his movie and television success, people here didn’t make a big deal out seeing a movie star (e.g., see Sports Authority, above).  Maybe no one wanted to risk frightening away an actor who (as today’s NYT noted), in character as Martin Crane, chided his son Niles for saying a restaurant had “food to die for.”  The answer could’ve come straight from my own father:  “Niles, your country and your family are to die for.  Food is to eat.”  Just speaking that line gave Mahoney a whole lot of cred.

I’ve read a number of retrospectives on Mahoney’s career; everyone seems to have a favorite stage or screen performance.  Nobody, though, has picked out mine, as White Sox—or should we say Black Sox?—manager Kid Gleason in John Sayle’s movie version of “Eight Men Out.”  Mahoney portrays Gleason as an honest man in an impossible situation.  More than anything, he wants to believe his players are honest, too.  At one point, he calls them the greatest bunch of players he’s ever seen, as if talent and virtue are synonymous.

John Mahoney was an English immigrant.  The role of Kid Gleason made him a Chicagoan.

Trending Down

If for wildly different reasons, the Mets’ signing of Todd Frazier should bring cheers from the baseball establishment as well as Cubs’ and White Sox fans.  Here’s why.

Player agents and their clients have been grumbling all offseason about possible collusion among team owners.  Frazier is reported to have signed a two-year deal worth $17 million.  For those so inclined, this may be the start of something big.  MLB.com certainly makes it seem that way, but then again if someone acquired the rights to Adolf Hitler, the online story would note how the onetime Führer would bring “a veteran presence” to his new team.

Cubs’ fans hate the Mets (think 1969), so they’ll love this move because it’s bad.  It’s bad because, as any White Sox fan could attest, Todd Frazier swings a mostly-broken bat, as attested by a batting average that’s gone down each of the past three seasons.  The soon-to-be 32-year old Frazier hit .213 last year with the Sox and Yankees, with 27 homeruns and 76 RBIs; somehow, despite lunging at anything outside, the “ToddFather” managed a .344 on-base percentage.  What’s not to love…to hate?

According to the MLB.com story, the Mets are expected to have an infield that includes 32-year old Asdrubal Cabrera and 35-year old Adrian Gonzalez to go with Frazier; depending on who they get for second base, the Mets could sport a geriatric infield at four out of five positions.  With Jay Bruce (30) and Yoenis Cespedes (32), the New York outfield also can be expected to creak in the wind.  Oh, and the Mets signed 32-year old Anthony Swarzak for their bullpen.

I’d give anything to be 32 again; heck, I’d take 35 with no complaints.  You’re still a relative baby in your 30s, provided you’re not a professional athlete.  But the thirtysomethings on the Mets are athletes, unless they’ve stopped and don’t know it yet.  In recent years, that was the problem with the White Sox (with Adam Dunn, James Shields, Adam LaRoche….).

So, Mets’ fans, don’t say I didn’t warn you, and don’t be surprised by those howls of laughter coming out of the stands at Wrigley Field when your team comes to visit.

Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been....

 Not watching the Super Bowl in this age of Trump would be like joining the Communist Party in the 1940s or ’50s.  So, yes, I watched the Super Bowl last night.

It was exciting, kind of.  I mean, baseball and more recently the NFL have moved to shorten the length of their games, but the Super Bowl?  Never mind.  By my unofficial clock, the game timed in at 3:50.  That’s ten minutes short of four hours, folks.

The idea behind sports is to play the contest until one side wins; victory is dependent on action; commercials interrupt the action and delay the whole purpose of the game.  That’s why fans have grown tired of ad-a-thons during regular season broadcasts.  But the Super Bowl is, literally, all about the ads.  It’s hard—at least for simple me—to focus on the game, switch my attention to the commercials, then go back to the game.  That’s why I can’t really say the Eagles beating the Evil Empire of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick was totally satisfying.

Don’t get me wrong.  Anytime that talking turd of a head coach has to face the media after a big loss is fun to watch; why God put so much talent in so miserable a human being is beyond me.  So, Belichick and the always-smug Brady losing I do count that as a good thing.

On the other hand, the half-time entertainment is just a thing.  This year Justin Timberlake went through the motions.  If he’s not on Saturday Night Live, I don’t find Timberlake that engaging.  A certain daughter I have is reported to have been dancing on the couch in her apartment during Timberlake’s performance.  To each his or her own, I guess.  

In Memorium

Everything is connected.  Ex-White Sox outfielder Oscar Gamble dies this week, and I reach for my copy of Official Baseball, the 1945 edition.

This is what happens to people drawn to the past; something happens to make them want to poke around in all sorts of dusty places.  With me, it’s about wanting to better understand the world my parents lived in, and their parents.  But I don’t have a clue why anyone would be interested in the Middle Ages.

Would my father have bought this compendium of baseball facts?  Probably not; he never showed much interest in that kind of thing that I can recall.  Would he have known any of the players listed in the Southern Association or International League?  Maybe, because he did mention knowing Bridgeport boys who played pro ball.  Would he have gone to Comiskey Park in 1945?  Well, duh.

The book starts off with an honor roll of ballplayers in the armed forces.  There are Robert Feller and Theo. Williams, Henry Greenberg and Joseph DiMaggio, as well of a host of players I’d never heard of, like Ardys “Art” Keller, a catcher in the St. Louis Browns’ organization.  Keller was killed in action September 29, 1944, in Vosges, France.  On the next page are the names of Elmer Gedeon and Forrest Brewer, both in the Senators’ system.

A centerfielder, Gedeon had his cup of coffee with Washington in 1939.  Baseball-reference.com included a picture, so I could see he was an officer.  According to Wikipedia, Gedeon died on April 26, 1944, when the B-26 he was piloting was shot down over St. Pol, France.  Oddly enough, I’m reading a book right now about pilot who flew B-26s.  Everything is connected.

As for Forrest Brewer, he never made it out of D-ball, even after going 25-11 one year as a starter.  Brewer died at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.  For some reason, Baseball 1945 missed Harry O’Neill, who caught an inning for the A’s in 1939.  My guess is the magazine went to press before O’Neill, a first lieutenant, was killed on Iwo Jima, March 6, 1945.

It’s snowing out, Oscar Gamble died, and I took out Baseball 1945.  There are so many connections.  

Cyber Me This

The White Sox and MLB.com ran a story the other day about Sox centerfielder Adam Engel.  According to the gibber folks at Statcast, Engel was tied for third among centerfielders last year in recording sixteen Outs Above Average and in catch probability.  Now, let’s try translating that into English.

I take my cybermetrics with a huge grain of salt, namely that any measurement of performance based on an “average” baseline isn’t in the least bit objective, as in one and one are two.  No, the measurement reflects the biases of the person(s) defining the parameters of the measurement.  That said, Statcast may prove Engel deserves a Gold Glove.  Whatever he accomplished happened over little more than half a season, 95 games to be precise.

In terms of Outs Above Average, Statcast rates Byron Buxton of the Twins as the best, with an OAA of 25 in 137 games played.  So, I wonder what Engel would do in 137 games, or 162.  Or compare Engel to Braves’ centerfielder Ender Inciarte, who finished Buxton with a 19 OAA.  Inciarte did that in 156 games.  Again, you can only imagine how Engel would do playing that many games.

Buxton and Inciarte were Gold Glove winners in their respective leagues last season, with Buxton recording 400 chances to Inciarte’s 420.  By my primitive calculations, Engel would manage 443 chances in 162 games, considerably more than Inciarte (vs 473 for Buxton over a full season).  The man may not be able to hit it, but he sure can pick it.

One last thing.  According to Statcast, Engel played the second shallowest centerfield in all of baseball, on average standing just 305 feet from the plate.  That’s one foot less than the leader, Billy Hamilton of the Reds.  My point?  I just hope the kid learns how to hit before he’s relegated to spending the rest of his career as a fourth outfielder.

Wither Softball?

My God, the proverbial tree in the forest toppled over, and not a person heard.  In other words, women’s pro softball all but imploded earlier this week when National Pro Fastpitch tossed out the Houston-based Scrap Yard Dawgs, the 2017 league champion, for purported rule infractions.  That’s the equivalent of MLB bouncing the World-Series champion Astros.

Clare told me about it on Monday.  Go to the NPF website, and they basically say the Scrap Yard Dawgs were forced out; go to the SYD site, and they make it clear they jumped.  But wait, there’s ever so much more.  Starting this year, three of the NPF’s five teams will exist in large part to train other countries’ athletes.

According to an online story at espnW, three teams basically will be comprised of either Chinese or Australian players; the Chicago Bandits are one of the two franchises where American college graduates will have even the faintest chance of continuing to play.  I can’t wait for President Trump to hear about this.

Playing in the U.S. to hone their skills will be very good for the Australians and Chinese, assuming the NPF season goes forward.  (The SYD sound as if they’re going to become an international barnstorming team.  Good luck with that.)  What’s wrong with this sport?  A comment in the espnW story offers a clue.

Joey Arrietta, former minority owner and general manager of the Akron Racers, noted that, “Our game is wildly successful at the collegiate level.  It just blows my mind that there is not that transfer of collegiate interest [to the NPF].”  Indeed.  Last year, something like 32,000 female athletes played college softball in the U.S., on top of 374,000 in high school.  That would seem to be a nice foundation to build on.  Or not.

For openers, Clare thinks the game is pitched to middle-school fans rather than adults like her; from the Bandits’ games I’ve attended, she may be right.  All the between-innings’ promotions and gimmicks may be fun for eighth graders, but they leave a decidedly minor-league feel to anyone interested in a serious game of softball.  (The same hold for minor-league baseball, the romance of which escapes me.)  The whole approach to the game needs to change.

Only, it may be too late for that.  In fifteen years, the league has never had more than seven teams.  Seven in a country of 300 million people, half of them female?  “At the end of the day, corporate America has to wake up to this women’s sports’ platform,” argues Arrieta.  What if it has?

What if corporate America has seen the future, and it doesn’t include professional women’s softball?  So far in American sports, women’s national teams—including basketball, ice hockey, soccer and softball—attract strong interest and the financial support that comes with it.  But try and extend that interest to pro leagues, and it pretty much disappears.  The WNBA is a poor relation of the NBA, and the other women’s sports are virtual orphans.

What do women sports’ fans want?  I don’t pretend to know, though for softball I have some ideas of my own.  The NPF has to model itself after major league baseball, with plenty of teams to insure geographic balance and a schedule of at least 100 games, if not more.  If equality between the sexes means women showing they can accomplish what men do, the closer to 162 games the better.

Softball also needs its landmarks in the way of Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, places that will give the sport a sense of tradition and permanence.  This is an architectural problem that goes back to my basic problem with softball—the dimensions are too short for players so good, especially pitchers.

In professional baseball, the stands follow the contours of the field.  The same is true in softball, with far different results because softball doesn’t have dead centerfields of 400 feet (or 300, for that matter).  Ballparks in baseball have seating for anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 fans.  That translates into upper decks and heft, if you will.  The Chicago Bandits play in a stadium that seats all of 2,000.  We can get almost that many people into our basement, which doesn’t turn our bungalow into a mansion.  The solution?

Well, softball could change its dimensions.  Have pitchers throw from 50 feet instead of 43, and increase the length of the base paths from 60 feet to 70.  That in turn could lead to pushing the fences back; if it doesn’t, then I’d consider making the ball smaller.  Smaller balls go farther when hit, which then means a bigger field/stadium footprint.

Or maybe the NPF should just throw in the towel and tell women it’s time to play baseball.  Trust me, they have the talent to do it.  Just ask my daughter.