Attention to Detail

On Saturday, White Sox rookie Dan Palka got his first major-league hit, then added three more for good measure, including a three-run homer.  The Tribune, which couldn’t be bothered to assign a beat writer to the Sox for part of spring training, misspelled Palka’s name as “Palko,” not once, not twice, not thrice, but, yes, four times, apparently once for each hit.  If misery in fact loves company, at least Palka found himself in pretty good company Sunday, courtesy of WGN-TV producers and the White Sox announcers.

Every broadcast the announcers, who are too cute by half for my tastes, like to play a little game of “White Sox Math,” where viewers are supposed to add this, multiply that, subtract  something else in order to come up with a right answer; the this, that and the other tends to be a mix of Sox trivia and details from recent games.  But on Sunday our clever duo really outdid themselves with their question.

The first clue had to do with shortstop Luis Aparicio’s uniform number (eleven). That figure was then to be added to the age Aparicio would have turned on Sunday his birthday, “if he were still alive,” according to the graphic.  Only there are no if’s, ands or buts about it.  The Hall-of-Fame shortstop did turn 84 because he’s quite alive.  Baseballreference.com even wished Aparicio a Happy Birthday, if only someone had bothered to check.

Usually an inning or two after the question goes up, a second graphic shows the math with the correct answer, though I didn’t see it yesterday, or hear an apology.  Oh, there might have been one, but I tend to watch games with the sound off because I don’t do clever.     

It Could Be Worse

Bulls’ fans may not know where their rebuild is headed, but they do have a sense of what would’ve happened if nothing had happened, starting in 2015.  All they need to do is look at the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team stocked with ex-Bulls, starting with that gym-rat genius, coach Tom Thibodeau.

The T-Wolves hired Thibodeau in 2016.  The team won 31 games in Thibodeau’s first year and 47 this season.  Yes, that sounds impressive, but their 16-game improvement only merited Minnesota an eight-seed in the first round of the NBA Western Conference playoffs.  Two more wins, and Thibodeau might have secured the three-seed, three more wins for sure.  Gosh, I wonder if playing his regulars 40-plus minutes in mid-February left Coach T with a tired team going into the playoffs.

And what a Bulls-like team they were, with ex-Chicagoans Jimmy Butler, Taj Gibson, Jamal Crawford and that most intriguing of late-season acquisitions, Derrick Rose.  They got the band and put it back together, only to lose their opening series against top-seeded Houston, four games to one.  So, this is a team with a roster kind-of-young, kind-of-old, coached by a no-nonsense, defensive guru.  Been there, done that, time to move on.

The 36-year old Dwayne Wade did after one season with the Bulls, to return to his old team, the Miami Heat; they also bowed out in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.          The only prominent ex-Bulls to move on in the playoffs are Rajon Rondo and Niko Mirotic, both of the New Orleans Pelicans.  Good for them, Rondo in particular for showing real leadership skills his only season in Chicago last year.  But I wouldn’t want to go back and have all these guys on the same team again.  Been there, and, like it or not, time to see the rebuild through.

Superstar Time-travel

Thursday, Michele and I saw a dress-rehearsal performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Lyric Opera.  I would’ve preferred watching my daughter bat third, but that ship has sailed.  Still, there was a bit of time-travel involved.

I was a college freshman when songs from the album flooded AM radio; decades later, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and “Superstar” made it onto a CD Clare had to listen to on the way to nationals in Kansas City the summer between sophomore and junior year of high school.  It wasn’t the first time she thought her dad was nuts, just confirmation of the same.

Sitting there at the Lyric, I’d totally forgotten about “What’s the Buzz” and “Everything’s Alright,” both of which nearly gave me goosebumps.  The whole performance brought me back to the spring of 1971, when I mixed Andrew Lloyd Webber with Chuck Tanner, a rock musical with Chicago White Sox baseball.  I wonder if Wilbur Wood or Tommy John ever hummed “What’s the buzz? /Tell me what’s a-happenin’” during a start.  Or maybe Jay Johnstone charged a ball from center field knowing that, in the end, everything would be alright in 1971 or 2008 or ten years after that.

The Last Straw

First a bold rebuild and now this:  The White Sox have banned plastic straws from Guaranteed Rate Whatever.  According to a press release on the team website, “The White Sox will become the first team in Major League Baseball to serve drinks during games without an accompanying plastic straw,” beginning, of course, on Earth Day.  That was last Sunday, when the Sox rolled over 7-1 to the Astros.  Luckily, no aquatic wildlife was endangered by that outcome.  Now, if fans can just break the age-old habit of drinking beer through a straw….

Time's a Wastin'

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters on Tuesday how happy he is with how the new rules for speeding up the game are working so far.  According to Manfred, it’s all part of baseball’s “ongoing effort to make sure we’re producing an entertainment product with as little dead time as possible.”

I hardly know where to start.  “Entertainment product”—baseball used to be the national pastime, and now it’s stuff on a screen in the man cave.  We are not men, we are Devo.  But I digress.  When did MLB become one with MGM and Disney?

As to dead time, the White Sox and Mariners played an afternoon game Tuesday at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, a 1-0 win for Seattle.  Each team managed five hits and a walk, and each team changed pitchers two times with an inning in progress (as opposed to the two Seattle relievers who started an inning).  The game went on for 2:52.  It only seemed like a slow death.

Another Long Count

The two best at-bats I’ve ever seen were Hernan Perez of the Brewers fouling off five 100 MPH-plus pitches from then-Cub Aroldis Chapman in 2016 before singling on a changeup and Clare last fall at the Elmhurst varsity-alumni game fouling off eight pitches in a twelve-pitch at-bat that last lasted four minutes and seventeen seconds before ending in a lineout to center field.  So, I would’ve liked to have seen the Giants’ Brandon Belt on Sunday when he fouled off eleven straight pitches during a 21-pitch at-bat against Jaime Barria of the Angels that also ended with a lineout, this time to right field.  Of course, baseball being baseball, those seven extra pitches Belt saw as compared to my daughter translated into an at-bat of twelve minutes, 45 seconds.  Baseball can’t seem to do anything in a timely fashion anymore. 

But credit Belt with a throwback approach to hitting.  There’ve always been hitters known for their ability to foul off pitches to keep an at-bat alive; the White Sox Luke Appling was considered among the best.  Of course, Appling retired in 1950, and launch angles aren’t exactly retro.

Still, maybe Belt will start a trend, an Appling-like revival.  Next, players could start making like Appling’s onetime Sox teammate Nellie Fox, who struck out all of 216 times in 10,351 plate appearances.  A guy can hope, can’t he?

Bad, in Context

This has not been a good spring by any stretch of the imagination.  I heard somewhere that we’ve gone through the worst spring weather since 1881.  In that case, the 19^th century is welcome to it.

Worse, I can’t follow my daughter’s athletic career anymore.  That’s done, finito, thank you very much, oh mighty patriarchy.  The five years of travel ball kept me from focusing on the White Sox for most of 2006-10, and what Clare did in college the next four years was enough to keep me from obsessing over the Adam Dunn Era.  But softball’s out of my system, even if Clare isn’t.  The vaunted White Sox rebuild fell to 4-14 (before a win Monday night against Seattle) after a weekend sweep by the Astros, who outscored the Sox 27-2.  If only visions of high draft choices would dance in my head.

Instead, I watched a crappy game Friday night, unaware of how much worse it was for Sox reliever Danny Farquhar.  In the dugout after pitching the top of the sixth inning, Farquhar suffered a brain hemorrhage; according to team vice president Kenny Williams, doctors had to do “surgery, cracking his skull open, and putting a clamp on it.  My God.”  Indeed.

When I was seventeen, Sox pitcher Paul Edmondson died in a traffic accident just before spring training started in 1970; Edmondson had celebrated his 27^th birthday the day before.  Last fall, ex-Sox pitcher Daniel Webb died in an ATV accident; Webb was all of 28.  Farquhar is 31.

The cute thing here would be to talk about some sort of White Sox curse, only people die all the time.  But fans of other teams can recite the names of other young men, starting with Ken Hubbs and Tony Conigliaro, denied the chance to grow baseball old.  This White Sox team has started off terribly, but there are worse things in life, as Danny Farquhar, Paul Edmondson and Daniel Webb remind us.

Buck Rogers, MLB

Here are two interesting hires by MLB announced in last Friday’s Transaction notices in the Tribune, a guy as “senior vice president of games and virtual reality” and a woman as senior vice president of marketing.  And all this time I thought baseball was an activity grounded in the here and now, intensely physical and nothing if not three-dimensionally real.

But whatever realm the American pastime is entering, a male will basically be in charge.  A woman can market what the guy’s up to, but she still can’t play the game in this realm or the virtual next.  This isn’t the kind of tradition that a hip and relevant national pastime ought to be associated with.  But I’m just an old bird.

Transactions

Major-league baseball is, first and foremost, a business; fans and players forget that reality at their own risk.  If the White Sox think they’ll be better without infielder Tyler Saladino, they’ll get rid of him, as happened Thursday when they shipped the 28-year old to the Brewers.  My input on the matter doesn’t count any more than Saladino’s.

For what it’s worth, here are some of the reasons I liked him, starting with last season’s Fu Manchu moustache, along with the updates NPR did on the progress of his minor-league career.  And let’s not forget the tattoo across his back in memory of his best friend, killed in a traffic accident.  Add to that Saladino’s twitter account, which shows him holding what looks to be a sawfish (Saladino’s father runs a fishing boat out of San Diego, if I’m not mistaken).  Did I mention his last two twitter messages?  One is a Thanksgiving Day shout-out to American servicemen and women stationed away from their families.

The last message goes like this:  “I don’t come on here cuz Twitter bullies smell like old shoes.  But White Sox fans, you definitely don’t.  I love you all and wish I could meet every one of you and shake your hand or high-five you.  I hope to do so one day.”  Until then, Tyler, you should get a chance to work your way into the Milwaukee infield.  May you beat the Cubs singlehandedly five or six times this year.

But, if Tyler Saladino is gone, outfielder Trayce Thompson is back on the South Side after being traded in a package of prospects for Todd Frazier following the 2015 season.  Thompson, 27, is a graceful outfielder with power.  Alas, he’s never hit for average outside of his rookie year with the Sox in ’15.  The following season he managed 13 home runs playing part-time for the Dodgers before tailing off last year, so I imagine the hope is he’ll pick up where he left off with his first team.   

Saladino played smart and hustled; the same for Thompson, as I recall.  It’s too bad that, in the business of baseball, you can’t have two players like that on your bench.

Problems and Fixes

Tim Dahlberg of the Associated Press wrote a column the other day on baseball’s lagging attendance at the start of this season.  He thinks a big part of the reason is, “Baseball has changed, and not for the better.”  His culprits include defensive shifts; analytics; a shift in strategy away from the sacrifice bunt to the almighty homerun.  He offered ten changes to improve the game.  Only four of them are outright dumb.

Those would be a ban on shifts and instant replay; a minimum of three batters faced for every pitcher brought into a game; and the requirement every team carry a two-way player like Shohei Ohtani.  Considering the jury is still out on Ohtani, why base such a big change on what one player has done in the first two weeks of the season?  Get back to me at the end of next season.  If Ohtani has 40-plus career wins to go with 40-plus career homeruns, we’ll talk.

But I wouldn’t include a ban on the shift or replay in our conversation.  Every time a team employs a shift, the hitter can beat it by hitting the ball the opposite way—end of shift as a strategy.  But if hitters insist on being as bullheaded as Ted Williams was in facing the shift, well, shame on them.  As for instant replay, anything that shows Joe West to be the mediocre umpire that he is I’m for.

Dahlberg would also limit the number of relievers a club could carry, but, like the shift, the solution is out there, just waiting to be tried.  And it even includes the sacrifice bunt of which Dahlberg is so enamored.  As soon as one or more teams show that you can win more games with extra players—including those who can bunt and run—as opposed to extra pitchers, pitching staffs will undergo a miraculous contraction. 

Now, for the three ideas that make the most sense (and, yes, agree with what I’ve been saying for years).  For starters, free the game of excess commercials.  Dalhberg thinks at least ten minutes could be shaved off the length of a game; I think it’s more if MLB advertisers were made to adapt a crawler format.  In addition, Dalhberg wants umpires to call a uniform, letters-to-kness strike zone; oh, don’t we all.  Lastly, Dahlberg wants every team to play at least four doubleheaders a year so as to start the season in April, not March.

To which I say, what’s wrong with eight twin-bills a season?  Ernie Banks knew what he was talking about.  Let’s play two, a lot.   

Losing isn't Winning, Ever

 This is the state of sports writing in the second decade of the 21^st century.  A columnist for the Tribune offers, “While you were sleeping, young White Sox starter Reynaldo Lopez delivered a quality start [in Oakland Monday], allowing just two runs in six innings and then the bullpen and defense turned into a joke, giving up six runs in the seventh and eighth innings to make sure the Sox couldn’t steal it.  That’s pretty much the ideal game for a tank season.”

“Tank season?”  Says you, buddy.  This kind of mindset is toxic.  The more Lopez loses close games, the more he’ll be tempted to push himself to be perfect the next time out, which for young pitchers means wanting to throw fastballs and hard curves or sliders.  That’s a recipe for injury.  But, hey, injuries translate into defeats, and defeats cement a good place in the next draft, right?

I wonder how often managers, coaches and front offices fall victim to that mindset:  Not this guy or this year, but those guys in the pipeline, next year and the year after.  Before you know it, you’ve had five drafts in a row where 90-100 loss seasons should’ve netted you a boatload of talent.  Only players get injured or fail to develop or don’t mesh with teammates.  At the risk of repeating myself (yet again), consider the track record of a team like the Pirates.  And that rebuild in Kansas City sure had a short shelf life. 

It’s not how you lose that counts, it’s how you draft and trade and sign free agents, regardless your record.  In the long run, rebuilds are for losers and snarky sportswriters.

No Hot-dogging Allowed

Like all real athletes, my daughter is competitive to an extreme.  I think the first time we realized it was during a family game of Sorry.  Talk about a nasty laugh after sending your parent’s piece back to Start.

Clare was the same way in softball, only infinitely more intense.  Losing made her moody, which made her ever so much more intense for the next game.  I remember one time her senior year of high school, when the first homerun hadn’t happened according to schedule; I sat in the dugout that spring, keeping score and keeping my distance.  When Clare did hit her first homer, she nearly took off my hand high-fiving me.  Now imagine college.  Hint: the player in question didn’t exactly mellow out.  There was a bat-poking-in-my-ribs incident that won’t get repeated here.

I was reminded of all that when Jose Abreu of the White Sox hit a homerun Monday night in an 8-1 to the A’s.  Abreu had made an error—one of four by the Sox in the game—and didn’t see any reason to act like he’d won the World Series (or scored a meaningless touchdown in the way of countless players for another Chicago team).  How odd that manager Rick Renteria thought otherwise.

Renteria explained to reporters, “I told him, ‘Let me tell you something.  It’s not necessarily the homer that you celebrate.  It’s the fact that you keep fighting.”  Wrong.  Abreu knows what counts, just as my daughter did, and does.

Spring-like

Yesterday, for the first time in five days, the sun put in an appearance.  (Note: unlike today, cloudy with a chance of snow.)  It was first-week-of-March warm, so accommodating that the snow from the past few days was able to hang on in the shadows, but still, it was the sun, in April, in Chicagoland.  I could barely keep from building an altar for an animal sacrifice, but I didn’t want the neighbors to talk.  So, instead, I drove to my favorite bike shop.

There’s an honest-to-goodness Schwinn dealer twenty minutes from the house.  The place has a rather unique vibe, with orange shag carpeting on the floor and a mullet atop the owner’s head.  But I’ve come to trust the guy, as evidenced by how he handled my question if was time to get new tires.  Two of the Kevlar-reinforced ones I wanted would cost in the neighborhood of $100.

The dealer took a look at the front tire I’d brought along and told me I didn’t need to replace anything yet, but he did recommend repacking the axle wheel bearings (at $25, a veritable steal).  I’ve gone elsewhere to have a spoke replaced and been pressured to get an entire new wheel rim, so Mr. Schwinn is a business I make sure to patronize, sketchy neighborhood and all.

Walking to the door, I caught a whiff of rubber from all those bicycle tires crammed into a pretty tight space; it was a strong odor, sharp but not unpleasant.  I’d smelled it ever since I first walked into a bicycle shop looking for a Schwinn 10-speed to mark my eighteenth birthday.  In fact, you could go back another ten years, to those visits to the basement at Sears on south Western Avenue.  The bicycles lined up between the toys and sporting goods gave off that same smell, the way car showroom does.

I’ll probably have the bearings in the rear axle repacked, too, although it’s a pain getting the chain in sync with the gear shift.  Maybe by the time I finish wrestling with that devil, the real sun will be out, to warm things up enough for a good bike ride.  Hope, as they say, springs eternal.

 

Ten Times Worse Than Stated

The announced attendance for last Monday’s Rays-White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Whatever was 10,377.  But somebody from the Tampa Bay Times with nothing else to do came up with a corrected figure of 974 souls in the ball-mall.  Sad to say, I have to agree with that second total.  Television cameras don’t lie, right?

Saturday was another absolutely miserable day in Chicago, temperature in the forties, a nasty wind to go with the afternoon drizzle that followed early AM showers.  And still the Cubs played to an announced crowd of more than 36,000 people.  Again, judging by the TV cameras, there was nowhere near that number of people shivering in their seats, but I’d guess the crowd started out in the neighborhood of 15,000 or so.  These numbers could double as canaries for their respective coal mines cum ballparks.

The White Sox are betting that fans will come out in force once the weather changes and the rebuild progresses.  But what if the temperature heats up and the Sox don’t?  We didn’t trade Chris Sale to get Yoan Moncada in order for him to start the season fanning 24 times in 49 at-bats.  At least, I hope we didn’t. 

The notion of a rebuild needs to be applied to the area around 35^th and Shields.  For the past quarter-century, the Sox have been content to fiddle with the design mistakes of their stadium.  Only a total rebuild in that regard would suffice.  Until it happens, someone in that organization needs to wake up and see the need to create a neighborhood around the team.

A “Soxville” doesn’t need to be a clone of Wrigleyville.  What it needs to do is give fans a reason to come early and stay late, whatever the state of the current rebuild.  Anything less is just whistling past the graveyard. 

I Love New York (and Boston), Not

I have no one to blame but myself.  If I didn’t read the New York Times, I wouldn’t get irritated by it.  No, Friday’s sports’ section online would’ve gone unread, with my happiness left intact (maybe).  Then again, Tyler Kepner’s column was a textbook example of why so many people hate the East Coast.  Personally, I don’t mind the area, it’s the people.

Take Kepner, writing about the recent Yankees-Red Sox series that saw lots of action with fists as well as gloves and bats.  Wow, like that never happens between the White Sox and Royals.  Oh, but it’s ever so different when the combatants are the Red Sox and Yankees, baseball’s “two glamour franchises,” according to Kepner.  From the lofty vantage point of Times Square, it’s good for the game when the New York and Boston rosters are loaded with talent that’s not too fond of the other team.

“Purists love seeing the Kansas City Royals and the Houston Astros in the World Series,” writes Kepner with a condescension he doesn’t even bother to hide.  Oh, yes, let the little guys in flyover land win once in a while.  “But when the Yankees and the Red Sox are this good—and the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani captivates fans with his two-way magic in greater Los Angeles—the sport thrives on a bigger scale.”

That’s Goliath talking, or a shill for all things plutocratic.  Give me David any day, from the South Side most of all.

J.B.'s Back

One of the things I love about baseball is being able to follow the career of journeymen players.  Why?  Probably because that’s what I would’ve been, if I’d been blessed with—literally—a ton more talent.  My daughter, who is in fact significantly more gifted athletically than yours truly, has picked up that habit as well.  We even share a player of interest in J.B. Shuck, a left-handed hitting outfielder who played for the White Sox in 2015-16.

At the time, the Sox where Shuck’s fourth organization, after the Astros, Angels and Indians; there would be another two—Twins and you’ll find out soon enough—following the 2016 season.  Probably the reason Shuck has always found a home is he can provide a spark off the bench.  In an earlier era, he might have excelled at pinch-hitting.  As it was, the Sox were probably one of the few teams to have an outfield with two native sons of Ohio when they paired Shuck (the pride of Westville) with Adam Eaton (from Springfield).

Shuck had one good season and one bad season on the South Side, the second of which got him released.  Such is life nowadays for players not blessed with launch-angle potential.  Imagine my surprise, then, to read in the box scores Saturday morning that the 30-year old Shuck has resurfaced in Miami, where he debuted by going four for four with a triple and scoring from second base on a sacrifice bunt.  That’s certainly one way to get noticed and keep the baseball checks coming.

J.B. always exhibited a “happy to be playing” personality that I first saw so long ago with Walt Williams.  Those are the kind of guys I want to see capture lightning in a bottle, force their way into baseball history by breaking up a perfect game with two out in the ninth (regrettably, Ed Fitz Gerald of the Senators against Billy Pierce at Comiskey Park, 1958) or having an incredible World Series (Billy Hatcher going nine for twelve for the Reds against the A’s in the 1990 World Series).  They deserve it.

Keep on truckin’, my score-box friend.

Let's Play Two

Yesterday afternoon in this, the spring that has yet to arrive, I happened to be driving through a neighborhood on the far northwest edge of Chicago, on our way to my in-laws.  Some fifteen miles away was our daughter, riding a bus through the catacombs of lower Wacker Drive.  Clare being Clare, she called Michele with a question for me.  Delivered over speaker phone, it was: Should they start the baseball season later?  No, I yelled into the phone.  (Oh, those new-fangled contraptions.)

 Here’s my reasoning—play more doubleheaders.  Given that the White Sox will most likely lose three out of four games this weekend to the weather in Minneapolis, they’ll be doing it anyway.  By scheduling five to ten day-night doubleheaders a season, MLB can start the season a little later and even plan short breaks for teams throughout the season.  Back-to-back doubleheaders might be unheard of these days, but so would having the two consecutive days off in a week.

All it would take is expanding the roster by, say, four players for every doubleheader date; it could be two pitchers and two position players, three pitchers or four, whatever a team wants.  There’s even a precedent for expanded rosters other than September call-ups.  If I’m not mistaken, ball clubs used to carry extra players the first few weeks of the regular season before getting down to the 25-man limit.

So, let it snow; find the players some off-time in the season; and give the minor-leaguers a chance to contribute.  All you have to do is play two, that is, more than once or twice a season.

 

To Tank, as in Toilet

The Cubs went through a rebuild.  The White Sox are going through a rebuild.  The Bears are always going through a rebuild, even if they don’t know it.  And the Bull just finished their season with a 27-55 record, which screams “Rebuild!” along with a few other things.

Unlike those Bulls’ fans who booed when the team won at the United Center, I can’t bring myself to accept losing in the name of winning.  It goes against my nature and defies logic (see Pirates, Pittsburgh).  You embrace losing, it embraces you.

 Bulls’ executive vice president John Paxson said in today’s Tribune the idea of losing “goes against everything as a competitive person that you believe in.  But it’s the way the system is set up.”  In that case, maybe it’s time to consider changing things.  Let’s go old-school and abolish the draft in pro sports.

Think about it.  No more gaming the system by sitting your best players a la the Bulls after the All-Star break, and no more talking gibber about what’s best for the organization or the sport.  You want ’em, you sign ’em, just like the Yankees did back in the day.  But didn’t deep-pocketed clubs have an unfair advantage before sports adopted the draft system?  To which I would say, which teams benefit from outrageous cable contracts?  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

So, the Yankees and the Giants and the Knicks could go on spending sprees.  Big deal.  All that would do is force other teams to be smart, scout and sign and trade for the right players.  The White Sox did that all the time in the ’50s.  And, while the Yankees won the pennant eight out of ten times that decade, things were different in the National League.  The Dodgers and baseball Giants got nothing out of their New York location and moved.  Out in small-market St. Louis, the Cardinals have always done well, with or without a draft.

Turn back the clock, I say, and let’s see what happens.  It can’t be any worse than what’s going on now in Chicago.    

What You See is What You Get

Yesterday was the first decent day in, oh, months, with a temperature that actually hit 60 degrees and sun into the late afternoon.  That translated into a crowd of 10,401 fans at Guaranteed Rate Whatever for the White Sox 2-1 win over the Rays.

By evening, the clouds had rolled in to produce sprinkles, at least in our speck of Cook County.  That didn’t keep 35,596 people from crowding into Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs beat the Pirates, 13-5.  The disparity in attendance figures should give the Sox “brain trust” pause.

There’s everything to do in Wrigleyville, even go to a ballgame.  At Guaranteed Rate, all you can do is watch fair-to-middling baseball.  Food?  Only if you want to pay for overpriced ballpark fare.  Entertainment?  On the field, not onstage down the street.  A hotel room across from the park?  The Sox never bothered to replace McCuddy’s saloon, let alone think of building a boutique hotel to anchor neighborhood development.

The Cubs will be opening up the “1914 Club” soon—$32,400 buys you a season’s pass, and the 700 or so memberships have been sold out.  This kind of thing gives me the willies, baseball for the one-percent.  But give the devil, or the Ricketts, their due.  The new owners of the Cubs have turned their team and ballpark into a virtual gold mine.  No free agent or extra scout or extra coach should ever be out of their price range.

Meanwhile, the owner of my team sits in his ball mall, reminiscing yet again about how Jackie Robinson impacted his Brooklyn youth.  Jerry Reinsdorf is very respectful of history, except when it came in the form of a ballpark where Larry Doby broke the color line in the American League, Joe Louis won the heavyweight title and Minnie Minoso won over the hearts of a white fan base.  That bit of history he couldn’t wait to tear down.

But all those empty blue seats in the mall really do show up plain as day on TV.

PEDs Say the Funniest Things

In an interview with the Athletic, admitted PEDs’ user Mark McGwire says he could have won the single-season homerun record without benefit of steroids:  “Absolutely.  I just know myself.  I just know.”  The question is, McGwire knows what?  Squat, I’d say.

Consider that all the players who’ve hit more than 61 homers in a season—McGwire, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa—are either admitted or suspected Peds’ cheats.  Now consider Jimmy Foxx and Hank Greenberg, who both hit 58 homeruns in a season.  Does McGwire really think he could hit better if clean of steroids than those two, or Giancarlo Stanton, who clubbed 59 last year?

Babe Ruth hit 60 homeruns in 1927.  I’d argue that stands as the all-time record for two reasons.  First, Roger Maris hit his 61 in a 162-game season (1961), and, second, those other 60-plus guys are cheats pure and simple.  Maris should be acknowledged as the record holder in a 162-game format, and everyone else shown the door.  (I’d also argue that all single-season records should be divided into 154- and 162-game categories.  Any player from a 162-game season who broke a record in 154 games or less would be acknowledged as the all-time record holder.  But I’ll save that argument for another day.)

McGwire, who was nothing if not fragile in his playing days, contends in the interview, “The only reason I took steroids was for health purposes.”  And let’s say they worked, keeping him off the DL, sometimes.  Would a “clean” McGwire been able to stay healthy long enough to hit 62-plus homers in a season?  As it was, McGwire went on the DL ten times in his sixteen-year career. 

It’s entirely possible, then, that a “clean” McGwire would’ve had a considerably shorter, injury-plagued career than the “juiced” McGwire.  All things considered, that might not have been a bad thing.

Joni Mitchell Was Right

For the past week, there have been all sorts of stories on the improvements in and around Wrigley Field.  Mix that with a comment someone made Sunday on WGN Radio, and I think about what might have been had the White Sox done the right thing—which also happened to be the smart thing—with Comiskey Park.

I’m pretty neutral on the Wrigley stuff, don’t much care for the upscale add-ons, though I am impressed by the team’s commitment to maintaining a classic ballpark.  The White Sox looked for excuses to tear down their onetime “Baseball Palace of the World” while the Cubs have been fairly relentless in finding ways to keep their ballpark around for another hundred years.

It’s not like the Sox were clueless; I was part of a group that proposed turning Comiskey into a working national monument devoted to baseball.  But the late ’80s were the heyday of “mall thinking,” and what killed Main Streets across America destroyed classic ballparks, too.  The Sox got their mall, the Cubs an entire neighborhood.

I was reminded of all this Sunday when a sportscaster on WGN said he’d like to bring back Comiskey Park and the Stadium; the malls now known as Guaranteed Rate Whatever and the United Center have grown as stale as their retail counterparts.  There is no there there in the upper decks that scrape the sky, only vertigo to go with the knowledge that history was bulldozed to make way for luxury suites.

Ted Lyons and Bobby Hull are memories shorn of context.  That’s what happens when mall-makers get their way.

Chances

You only get so many chances in life, the exact number known but unto God.  White Sox reliever Juan Minaya lost his chance of sticking with the team by walking four consecutive Tigers Saturday in the ninth inning of a 6-1 Sox loss.  The Sox sent Minaya to the minors after the game and called up Bruce Rondon, a 27-year old who throws as hard as he is big.

Baseball-reference.com lists Rondon at 6’3” and 275 pounds, but some of those numbers strike me as a little low.  Anyway, Rondon had plenty of chances to establish himself with the Tigers; after five years of waiting and getting a 4.94 ERA in return, Detroit released him at the end of last season, and we signed him in February.

Like Minaya, Rondon faced four Tigers in the late innings; unlike Minaya, Rondon struck out all four batters, including future HOFer Miguel Cabrera.  So, Rondon got another chance and did something with it.  If he’s smart, he’ll keep pitching like this is his last chance because, God knows, it could be.        

Porter Moser

Loyola men’s basketball coach Porter Moser is the pride of underdog NCAA D-I programs everywhere with the Ramblers’ Final Four finish based on a five-player approach to both offense and defense.  That’s sometimes called “suburban” basketball or even “white” basketball, which I’ll address shortly.

First, though, let me offer Moser as the new and improved Bobby Knight, minus the ego; temper; screaming; and incessant need to humiliate.  Moser is none of that, but he and Knight do share that same five-player approach to the game.  What makes the Ramblers’ Final Four appearance all the more impressive is that they did it with players who probably don’t see themselves playing in the NBA.  Despite all of Knight’s yelling and chair tossing, Indiana players (Quinn Buckner, Scott May, Isaiha Thomas) could still realistically dream that dream.

There is an element of race to Loyola’s success that has basically gone unnoted.  Three of the starters for the Ramblers this year were in fact white and all from suburban schools.  Two of the three graduating seniors who had significant playing time were black, which means those two players did not go the one-and-done route on their way to the NBA.

For me and other people who watched the tournament, that’s great, a true testament to the notion of scholar-athletes.  But, in truth, it’s easier for white players likely to come from middle- to upper-middle class backgrounds to buy into Moser’s approach.  Other players come from different, more precarious, circumstances that dictate they minimize their time in school and take a chance at the NBA.  It’s not just about them, it’s about people who depend on them.

And let’s be clear that “one-and-done” has a lot more to do with class status and financial need than it does with character.  Kevin Garnett never went to college, and no one ever questioned the character he demonstrated on (and off) an NBA court over the course of 21 seasons.  Whether or not the NCAA wants to admit it, a college degree is the furthest thing on the minds of many—half, more than half?—men’s D-I basketball players.  For those players, “college” is basketball, a pro contract their diploma.

So, Porter Moser will always have a challenge recruiting players into his system; the likes of Jabari Parker or Lauri Markkanen will probably never commit to the Ramblers.  That said, I’ll be rooting for him while withholding judgment on players who decide to chase the brass ring elsewhere.   

Market Discipline

Right now, the MLB Network is in love with Shohei Ohtani, who’s followed up an atrocious spring with a hot start to the season.  None of the talking heads seems nearly as interested with Yasmany Tomas, whom the Diamondbacks outrighted to their Triple-A affiliate on Tuesday.  But I bet MLB Network couldn’t say enough about Tomas back in 2014.

That’s when Arizona signed him to a six-year, $68.5 million contract with expectations that the 24-year old Cuban national was the next big thing; only he wasn’t.  In three seasons, Tomas has hit .268 with 48 homeruns and 163 RBIs.  If his offense has been OK, his defense has proven considerably less, with failed tryouts in both the infield and outfield.  So, rather than play the contract, Arizona has in effect admitted its mistake, which will still require them to pay off the entirety of Tomas’ contract.

This is why baseball is superior to pro football, were teams can wiggle out of a bad deal by guaranteeing only a portion of a player’s contract.  Baseball may be a boys’ game (and for that I apologize to my daughter), but it still makes front offices take responsibility for grown-up mistakes.

Too bad that sense of responsibility only goes so far.  There’s a link, direct or otherwise, between the Diamondbacks signing Tomas and then trying to force changes in its lease agreement and improvements to Chase Field.  In my fantasy world, where girls get to play baseball through college and beyond if they want, Congress would pass legislation requiring a professional sports’ team to pay back the construction costs of its publicly funded stadium out of the proceeds stemming from the team’s subsequent sale.

Now, that would instill real market discipline, just like what happens around kitchen tables all across America when folks sit down to pay their bills.  No bailouts or do-overs for us, then none for you.  

Ozymandias

The problem with social media falls somewhere between the “me” and the “i.”  The problem with selfies and selfie-sticks is, well, pretty obvious.  We live in a world that counts by ones, with little interest in the other.  So, I was surprised to read that the NHL has a little-noted policy that strikes at the heart of me, i, self and one.

The team that wins the Stanley Cup gets to parade the Cup around in the weeks following; each player gets his turn.  It’s virtually impossible not to see video or pictures of players posing with the Cup in some odd place, either alone or with fans.  The result is a whole lot of selfies get taken.

Another tradition has the winning team’s roster etched into a silver band beneath the Cup, which is actually a replica of the original deemed too fragile for all that hoisting.  If I’ve read things correctly, what players have been showing off since the 1990s is the replica Cup with five attached silver bands.  Once a band gets filled up, a new one is added and the oldest one removed.

According to yesterday’s Sun-Times, the band with the names of the 1961 Blackhawks, featuring the likes of Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, is the latest to be removed (and put on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame).  So, no matter how great the player, his name will eventually be removed from the trophy everyone wants to be photographed with.

For some reason, this reminds of a line from Shelley’s “Ozymandias”:  “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;/Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!’”  But no one remembers Ozymandias, and even names like Howe, Hull and Richard are removed from Lord Stanley’s cup.   

The Proverbial Punching Bag

I understand how Joe Maddon doesn’t want to hear boo-birds every time he visits the mound; who would?  But major-league managers are paid enough to deal with such a slight and still have enough cash left over to ponder the motivations of those who boo.

A good part of it goes back to the start, I think, when parents first hand over their kid(s) to someone else to coach.  Every slight our kids feel, we feel, more so even.  I’m convinced a whole bunch of people boo at an MLB game because of the actions of a youth-sports’ coach somewhere.  So, Maddon and Gabe Kapler are in some respects victims of transference, if you will.  If that sounds too technical, feel free to go with “punching bags.”

Was I inclined to boo Ozzie Guillen and Robin Ventura because of stuff that happened to Clare?  You’d have to ask my “shrink,” if I had one, and (s)he would just cite doctor-patient confidentiality, anyway, so let me offer a definite “Probably.”  I’ll even throw in a few reasons why I might have.

Clare’s first travel coach was known to kick fathers out of practice if they dared question his moves; I know he banned a player from the organization because her father didn’t like how she was being used.  Better for Clare if I booed Ozzie Guillen.

Not that I ducked all parent-coach fights.  One time I let another coach know Clare thought he was being arbitrary with playing time; things worked out because that coach was a decent guy who let his player explain her side of things.  Another set of coaches were anything but decent, and I let them know it, as did Clare.  This one guy went so far as to tell her she’d never hit in college.  Trust me, he was no better at handling pitchers than he was in judging talent.  So, Ozzie may have taken it on the chin on account of a travel coach who didn’t know a bat from a hole in the ground.  Such is life.

But I promise you this: if I boo anyone nowadays, it has everything to do with them, I swear.

Best Not to Draw Attention to Yourself

 Gabe Kapler of the Phillies had himself a tough start an MLB manager last week.  In one game, Kapler yanked his starter in the sixth inning, even though he’d only thrown 58 pitches and had a 5-0 lead; the Phils proceeded to lose, 8-5.  In another game, a 15-2 loss to the Braves, Kapler went through five relievers, including one he didn’t bother to warm up.  The Philadelphia faithful are not amused.

Enter the Cubs’ Joe Maddon.  For reasons best known to himself, Maddon took Kapler’s side in today’s Sun-Times, saying “the only part [of the game] I think a lot of fans really understand is bullpen decisions,” hence the rush to judgment on Kapler.  Other managerial moves like positioning fielders, playing the infield in and pinch-hitting are part of what Maddon called “the nuance of the game.”  Those moves don’t get judged nearly as often “most of the time because people don’t understand that.”  Thank you, Mr. “let’s have Aroldis Chapman keep pitching in the ninth inning when we’re ahead 9-2 in game six of the World Series so he won’t be fresh in game seven.”

Joe, stop while you’re ahead.  

The Few, the Proud, the Parents

I was driving down Harlem Avenue yesterday on my way to picking up Michele at the train; call it a very late afternoon, the Monday after Easter.  The temperature readout in my car indicated a brisk 43 degrees for April 2^nd.  Whatever benefits to the sun being out were erased by a “brisk” northeast wind off of Lake Michigan.  In Chicago, we use “brisk” as a euphemism for “we’re freezing body parts here, buddy.”

I slowed down to catch a glimpse of the high school baseball game going on at the Morton Field, the Mustangs against somebody I didn’t recognize.  There were maybe thirty or forty people in the stands behind home plate.  With spring sports, it’s all about loved ones.

I couldn’t tell you the score because the scoreboard wasn’t on; that, too, is a spring constant.  And I couldn’t tell you the outcome because the Chicago papers no longer bother with decent coverage of high school baseball and softball.  At least when Clare played, I could find game summaries tucked away among the box scores and standings.  This morning, the Tribune was up to its old tricks of snipping away at those box scores it deigned to print while the Sun-Times ran the betting odds on today’s pro games and the NBA G League standings.  The Morton game was the proverbial tree falling in the forest, unwatched and unremarked upon by sportswriters or stringers.

But the parents didn’t care; those were their boys on the field, cold be damned.  No doubt they knew that the weather for the week is only supposed to get worse, with a chance of snow—flurries or showers, take your pick—mid-week.  If the game was on the schedule, they had to be there.  So, mothers and fathers settled in with whatever defenses against the cold seemed to work best; Michele and I went to most of Clare’s games wearing long underwear and sitting huddled together, a wool blanket wrapped around us.  It always worked, at least for a few innings.

A mother or father may been warmed by the knowledge that Luke Gregerson, the Cardinals’ new closer, pitched on the very same mound for Morton not so long ago, just as I knew one of Clare’s baseball friends at Morton was drafted in 2009 and 2010.  So, scouts do come to the field at 26^th and Harlem.

But not until it gets a whole lot warmer.

That'll Work, Too

In my war-to-the-death (figuratively speaking, of course) against baseball by launch angle and pitching matchups, I forgot about another weapon to employ.  My thanks to Kevin Pillar of the Blue Jays.

In a one-run game against the Yankees (best team of this century if not others, blah-blah-blah), Pillar singled in the bottom of the eighth inning and proceeded to steal his way around the bases to an insurance run.  The throw home by reliever Dellin Betances was a textbook example of how not to do it.

Pillar reminded me that Jackie Robinson stole home in the first game of the 1955 World Series.  Although the Dodgers lost that game 6-5, they won the series in seven games, which makes me go, Hmm.  Having the opposition steal home has to demoralize a team bigtime.

Consider that Robinson did it 19 times and Lou Gehrig 15 times.  Yes ,you read that right.  “The Iron Horse” stole home 15 times to go with his 493 homeruns.  How incredibly depressing that must’ve been for the opposition, to have the big guy beat you with his legs as well as his bat.   Or having to deal with Robinson’s antics on the base paths as well as the power of Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Carl Furillo

Now, imagine teams today having to deal with a steady diet of knuckleballers and base stealers.  Everything old would be new again. 

Dumbing Down, Part II

In their second game of the season, the Cubs lost to the Marlins in Miami, 2-1 in 17 innings.  Cubs’ Manager Joe Maddon went through all 12 of his position players and six pitchers.  Eddie Butler got the loss despite yielding just one run in seven-plus innings.  Here’s the dumb part—Maddon also used six pitchers in an 8-4 win in nine innings the day before.

This is what happens when you start going to the bullpen in the fourth inning on Opening Day.  You either make sure your relievers pitch two or more innings or you risk a 17-inning game the next day.  Four of the five relievers Maddon used the first game went just one inning; the fifth threw 1.2 innings.  Maddon gambled and lost.

Dumb, but not just Maddon.  Baseball is beset with the affliction known as creeping pitching staff.  Managers and front offices will look at that 17-inning box score and say, “The Cubs ran out of rested arms” and wonder if their team shouldn’t go with fourteen pitchers.  Again, just plain dumb.