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.