What a Surprise

The Nats-Phillies’ game Tuesday night ended with the tying run thrown out at third base on a fly ball to centerfield.  Philadelphia pinch-runner Vince Velasquez easily beat the throw, but then again Velasquez left second base early.  In the postgame news conference, Philadelphia manager Gabe Kapler called Velasquez “an inexperienced baserunner,” maybe because he’s a starting pitcher.

And maybe I should mention here that the Phillies carry thirteen pitchers, so it was either a pitcher or the last player on the bench available to run.  Maybe I should mention that not too long ago the Royals carried speedster Terrance Gore to pinch run in critical situations just like the one the Phils found themselves in.  Oh, well, I bet Philadelphia will find another use for those extra pitchers, if you give them enough time.

Of course, that might not include the postseason, because you have to win enough games to get there.    

True Colors

Clare had her surgery at a hospital just off The Magnificent Mile of north Michigan Avenue.  I don’t know what the operating room looked like, but the waiting room was moderately breathtaking with its views of the North Side and Lake Michigan.  Like they say in the real estate business, it’s all about location, location, location.

I brought a ton of stuff to read, including the latest issue of Chicago Magazine.  On the very last page was an interview with Hawk Harrelson.  Of particular interest to me was the sentence in bold face:  “I hate Wrigley Field. I really do.  I will never step foot in it again.”

With a little effort, I probably could’ve located the ballpark from my 12^th floor perch.  Of course, Harrelson hates Wrigley.  He’s smart enough to know the Cubs would be just another team, sort of like the White Sox, but for their ballpark.  That mass of bricks together with the ivy-covered outfield walls and hand-operated scoreboard are baseball in a way no mall could ever be.

Back when Harrelson was general manager of the Sox in 1986, the team had a ballpark the equal to Wrigley, a mass of bricks together with a series of sublime arches in the exterior walls and a centerfield so grand you thought it might be the commons for heaven.  But Hawk must have been too busy screwing up the front office to notice.  His loss, to say nothing of ours.

Surgically Repaired

Nothing like getting up at 5:30 in the morning in order to catch a glimpse of your daughter before she’s goes in for surgery on her shoulder.  Yup, that’s just how I wanted to start the week.

Clare had known about the torn labrum in her right shoulder for a couple of years.  As luck would have it, she works for Northwestern, which connected her to the hospital, and they do nice work, as the saying goes.  And all indications so far is that the surgery was a success.

The tear happened sometime during softball.  Already by sophomore year high school, Clare had terrible pain in her right shoulder.  My guess is a combination of hard throws (she started her softball career with an extended tryout at shortstop) and swings.  We never told any of the coaches school or travel how much Clare hurt because we didn’t want to put the idea in their head that she was somehow “damaged” and at best a dh.  So, my daughter played quietly with the pain.

To see her there in pre-surgery was to see the youngster again with that same worried look on her face, but it had nothing to do with start-of-the-season jitters.  Thoughts of scalpels and anesthesia were a more likely culprit.  Thankfully, the tear is gone now, and in six months the hitter can hit again.  She’ll also be able to pick up a baby without any problem, should that time for parenting ever come.

Wide-eyed Wonder

We live in a world of cool where admitting to butterflies can be taken as a sign of weakness.  The strong shout in celebration of victory, the weak cry in their defeat.  Thank heaven for some recent exceptions, like White Sox rookie reliever Ryan Burr.

Debuting in Detroit last Thursday, Burr admitted “I was shaking a little bit” on the mound when called upon in the seventh inning.  Good for him, and Cubs’ rookie infielder David Bote who last week talked about trying to feel that he belonged in the major leagues, even after hitting his second walk-off homerun this month.  Not only did he admit to having doubts, Bote then gave credit where credit was due in the person of reliever Ian Kintzler, who helped the 25-year old realize that, yes, he does belong.

And let’s not forget White Sox thumper David Palka, who’s been proving he belongs in the big time since late April.  “I still have to sit down sometimes at night, and I go, ‘Wow, this is great,” Palka said in the Sun-Times on Sunday.  “It’s funny.  I still get chills.  Some people have waited forever for this.”

And some people aren’t afraid to show wide-eyed wonder over their good fortune.

Apples and Oranges, contd.

The Bears beat the Chiefs 27-20 in an exhibition game Saturday, and I guess that’s a good thing.  What really struck me, though, is that head coach Matt Nagy decided not to play most of his regulars, even though there are only two weeks to go before the season opener.

Nagy explained that he was happy with how his starters performed in practice.  As someone who coached his daughter in baseball and attended numerous softball practices, let me just say, Huh?  Who gets ready for the season by practicing rather than playing?  Football players, that’s who.

Just imagine what would happen if Joe Maddon or Rick Renteria took the same approach to spring training, with the likes of Anthony Rizzo and Jose Abreu missing upwards to half the games because they did so well in fielding drills and batting practice; fans and sports’ media would be up in arms.  Even those last few games before the start of the season (in March, my God!) features a bunch of starters in the lineup given that clubs are basically carrying only three players on their benches nowadays.  Football is an entirely different creature.

In spring training, practice is practice, separate from playing.  In preseason camp, practice is everything, playing not so much.  Go figure. 

The Tweets that Come Back to Bite

 White Sox rookie right hander Michael Kopech becomes the fourth ballplayer this season who has had to walk back racist, homophobic tweets from his high school days.  I wonder how this happens, who gets chosen to be put under the microscope, who gets a pass?

Five years ago, Kopech was a 17-year old yahoo in east Texas.  Now, he’s a public figure made aware of the potential for whiplash inherent in social media.  Kopech’s girlfriend is Vanessa Morgan, a biracial actress.  What would the 17-year old say to that?

Absent proof of membership in a hate group, I think we’d all be better off  keeping in mind Kopech’s age when he authored these tweets and remembering John 8:7, which calls those of us without sin to be first to cast a stone at another.

Courage, and the Lack Thereof

On Thursday, I watched the movie “Dunkirk” for a second time.  Christopher Nolan’s account of the mass evacuation of British and French forces from the French coast in June 1940 is a rumination on the meaning of courage.  That is something no one will ever accuse Urban Meyer of having.

The Ohio State football coach was suspended three games without pay for the way he handled a situation involving an assistant coach; that man may have beaten his wife with some regularity.  The wife sent pictures of her bruises to Meyer’s wife, who apparently didn’t feel the need to call authorities or have her husband do so.  Meyer said he didn’t know the details, then he said he did.  Mistakes were made, and Meyer admits that he followed with his heart rather than his head.  Blah, blah, blah. 

Just imagine Meyer at Dunkirk.  I can’t.

Playing in the Shadows

Clare asked me on Wednesday if I cared that the Bandits got swept in the pro fastpitch softball championship series.  Heck, I didn’t even know they were playing. 

I did know a little about the Sky of the WNBA.  For some reason, women’s basketball in these parts attracts more attention than softball.  The Sky gets what qualifies as pity-coverage in the papers and on local TV.  The team gets coverage, yes, but don’t blink or turn the page without checking for the tiniest of stories.  Then you’ll miss it.

As I’ve said all too often, women’s softball is doomed without a sugar daddy—or mommy—willing to spend bundles of cash on the sport, and even then I’m not so sure.  People who go to baseball games either want to go to a cathedral (Wrigley or Fenway or certain minor-league parks) or the mall (Guaranteed Rate Whatever and most other MLB parks).  The Bandits play in a glorified park-district facility.  If it doesn’t feel “pro,” it won’t draw like the pros.

That’s not the problem for the Sky, who moved into Wintrust Arena on the near South Side this season.  It felt like a pro venue, and some of the players really played like pros, but a 34-game regular season pales in comparison to the NBA’s 82 games.  How do you crawl out from under that shadow?  I’m not sure anyone knows.

Hitting

Clare came by last night for dinner.  With football starting, her husband is a coach in season, which means he’s pretty much gone from sunup to past sundown.  Go, Bluejays.

Next week, my daughter goes in for surgery to repair a torn labrum in her right shoulder; that’s the wages of sports for you.  Recovery time is expected to be six months max, or as Clare put it, “I can start hitting again in February.”  Rather than wait till then, we went to Stella’s for one last round.  With one swing-and-a-miss in 120 pitches, daughter and father had a good time.

I love the batting cages for all the sounds—the ball hitting the backstop (in someone else’s cage); the ball ricocheting off a metal post; the ball hitting the wood canopy over the pitching machines.  Nearly two decades of my life have been filled with such sweet noise, which is to say most of Clare’s life has been marked by it as well.  So, now we pause for things to heal.

And to hold onto the memory of that line drive Clare hit on pitch 120.

Kopech-o-Mania

And so it begins, the marketing of a rebuild wunderkind.  The White Sox on Sunday announced the call-up of Michael Kopech via Twitter.  If nothing else, the news seems to have fueled the Sox to score six runs in the fourth inning in their comeback 7-6 win over the Royals.

As for yesterday, Kopech’s major-league debut took place before 23,133 excited fans at Guaranteed Rate Whatever.  Amazing how many fans the TV cameras spotted wearing Kopech jerseys.  The cynic in me thinks the young Kopech checked all his Rick-Hahn boxes long before the jerseys were ready.  But this is not a time for cynicism, or wouldn’t be if only GM Hahn would call up slugging outfielder Eloy Jimenez to join Kopech.

Now, for the particulars.  Kopech needed 50 pitches to get through two scoreless innings; four of the six outs were strikeouts.  This being the White Sox and God not being a particular fan of the South Side, the game was delayed by rain after Kopech retired the Twins’ Joe Mauer on a called third strike to end the Minnesota and didn’t resume for a good—or bad, depending on your allegiance—52 minutes; the length of the delay meant Kopech was finished for the evening.  But the right-hander definitely showed enough for me to start counting down the days to his next start.  That would be Sunday in Detroit, if I’m not mistaken.

Clare called in the afternoon to tell me that James Shields picked up Kopech at the airport.  My daughter wondered if Shields might be transitioning to a career as an Uber driver.  I was more worried he might expose the rookie to a bad case of gopheritis.  Luckily, my fears were unfounded, at least on a rainy Tuesday night on the great South Side of Chicago.

Where Have All the Children Gone?

 I like to think that I’m immune to nostalgia if for no other reason than that asthma nearly killed me when I was a kid.  In my case, memories of “the good old days” can include just a whiff of the Grim Reaper.  But I am human, and I do reminisce from time to time.  The trick is to remember to wheeze in order to keep perspective.

That said, I want to know where all the kids are in the summer.  Doesn’t anybody play outside anymore?  No, I’m not going to say I was out the door from sunup to sundown, but I did manage to fill up a summer’s day by spending more of it outside than in.  For all of twenty-five cents, a rubber ball was good for at least three physically challenging, fun games that I can think of.

For openers, running bases.  You’d pick two cracks in the front sidewalk to represent bases, have two fielders and as many runners as you had friends on hand.  If and when that got old, we might switch to three outs.  You threw that rubber ball against the front stairs, and your opponent tried to catch it before the ball could drop in for a hit.  The sidewalk might be a single, the front grass a double, the sewer cover a triple and the street a homerun.

If you were old enough, fast pitching was the challenge of challenges, usually played in a school yard.  Somebody marked a strike zone in chalk on the wall, everyone agreed on where the pitching rubber should be, and various landmarks constituted hits, like in three outs, only a lot further spaced out because you were hitting the ball.  This was a game I played to at least my 40^th birthday.

Now that I look back at things, Clare must’ve been the only kid on the block to do anything remotely like the above, and she did it with her old man.  We played catch in the backyard, and I pitched to her out front, until she showed she could hit a rubber ball as far as the houses across the street.  By the time she was in second or third grade, we found a school yard where I could pitch to her; kids watched on in amazement.  Then came Pony Ball, then came travel, and the girl stopped doing much of anything outside around the house except for the occasional game of catch (yes, with me) in the alley.

No one has taken her place.  Kids either save all the summer athletic stuff for travel sports, soccer included, or they sit inside playing on their zombie-box or working their zombie-phone.  The asthma medication that exists today represents real progress from what I had back in the day.  How kids spend a summer day, I fear, is a change for the worse.

Coming and Staying Away

Call it coincidence or call it kismet—on the same day Cubs’ starter Yu Darvish pulls himself early from a rehab start the White Sox announce the call-up of flame-throwing phenom—don’t you just love the language of baseball?—Micahel Kopech.  Insert jokes about checking all the boxes here.

Darvish is more of a nightmare than a joke to the North Siders.  Signed for six years at $126 million, the right-hander hasn’t pitched for his new team in three months.  Yesterday, he stopped after an inning of work at Class-A South Bend.  This is not what you would call a very good sign.  Darvish has been complaining about elbow pain for months now.  What doesn’t go away is a sign of significant damage, in my humble opinion. 

The moral of the story is, develop your own pitching and hang onto it.   That’s what the White Sox did with Chris Sale, at least for seven years until the whole house-of-cards approach to roster building came crashing down end after the 2016 season.  So, then we traded Sale to the Red Sox for minor-league talent including Yoan “Strike Three” Moncada and Kopech.  You could say we kind of developed those two.

Kopech, who starts Tuesday, will join a young staff that includes Lucas “Who, Me Worry?” Giolito and Carlos Rodon.  Meanwhile, the Cubs are left to wonder what went wrong with their winter acquisitions of Darvish and Tyler “Walk Man” Chatwood.  Kismet, I say again.   

A Real Head-scratcher

Because I am a glutton for punishment (and every bit an “authentic fan” that our local cable sports’ channel is looking for), I was watching the Royals-White Sox game Friday night.  What struck me about Avisail Garcia’s one and only at-bat is how bad he looked in flying out to short right field, not how slow he ran out of the box.  Sox manager Rick Renteria felt differently and benched Garcia for lack of hustle.

Garcia said after the game he felt both “a click” and “a little pain” in a bulky right knee that will probably require postseason surgery.  I would tend to give Garcia the benefit of the doubt here.  According to James Fegan in The Athletic, Garcia had the third-most infield hits in baseball last season with 27.  I have never seen a player so big—Garcia is listed at 6’ 4” and 240 pounds—hustle down the line the way he does.  Renteria said, “I didn’t think he had given me an effort on the Texas Leaguer [in question].”  Renteria went on to say that Garcia “does have a knee that’s bothering him a little bit.”  Huh?     

Bench Garcia for needlessly risking further injury, but don’t say he needed to hustle more regardless the level of injury.  That’s just showing up a player and sounding dumb.  I wonder, when Eloy Jimenez gets called up sometime before his 30^th birthday, will Renteria do unto Jimenez as he’s done unto Avisail Garcia?

Fair is fair, after all.

A Perfect Example

This is exactly what I was just talking about the other day: after hitting Braves’ leadoff man Ronald Acuna Jr. at the start of Wednesday’s game, Marlins’ pitcher Jose Urena was suspended six games and fined (how much exactly we’re not allowed to know).  But his employers got off scot-free.  How come? 

Is Commissioner Rob Manfred afraid of going after a franchise that has ex-Yankee great Derek Jeter as its public face?  Or is the commissioner simply afraid that owners will turn on him should he hold them accountable for the on-field actions of their employees?  If you want bad behavior to stop, then you have to pursue it up the corporate ladder.

Eventually, the powers that be will get the message.

Chain of Command

Too many colleges and universities seem to regard athletes as a means to an end.  Abuse and injury, if not worse, too often don’t enter into the equation.  It’s time they did.

An assistant coach or anyone assisting a team who engages in or turns a blind eye to wrongdoing should be fired and face legal consequences.  Any coach who engages in wrongdoing or turns a blind eye to it should also be fired and face any legal consequences.  The severance package should consist of a plaque bearing those four words made famous by Harry Truman:  The buck stops here.

Any athletic director whose programs have been marred by wrongdoing that leads to the dismissal of a coach or other personnel and the filing of criminal charges should also be fired; ditto college and university presidents.  Their severance package should consist of a plaque bearing the four words made famous by Harry Truman:  The buck stops here.

Fans who rally to the defense of coaches and programs that have done wrong should look in the mirror and wonder why they don’t resemble Harry Truman in any way, shape or form.

Speaking Truth to Power

Speaking Truth to Power

I want to say that there have been ballgames where I’ve seen evidence of milk and cookies on Ben Zobrist’s beard, but that would be a lie; Zobrist would never do anything like that to dishonor the game.  There’s squeaky clean, and there’s Ben Zobrist.

So, when the thirteen-year veteran earned his first-ever ejection in Tuesday’s Brewers-Cubs game, that was news.  What did the Cubs’ second baseman say, exactly?  Did any of the words begin with the letter F?  No, they did not.  More like the letter E.

 After the game, Zobrist told the Tribune “I just basically said, ‘That’s why we want an electronic strike zone.”  Give home-plate umpire Phil Cuzzi credit, though.  He made a bad call ringing up Zobrist to end the sixth, but he waited two whole innings before giving him the heave-ho.  Joe West would’ve sent Zobrist to the showers in a heartbeat.

I can’t wait for the day when Cuzzi and West get together to reminisce about the good old days when guys liked them dressed in blue used to stand behind the catcher and pretend to know what they were doing.

A Useful Comparison

People keep wondering about White Sox second baseman Yoan Moncada, whether or not he’ll reach his potential, which his defenders insist is sky-high.  That’s a mushy term for me.  I prefer to know if Moncada will be as good a player as ex-Sox Ray Durham.

Durham was a 23-year old rookie when he cracked the Sox lineup in 1995.  That first year, he batted .257 with seven homeruns, 41 RBIs and 68 runs scored.  Moncada already has fifteen homers, 46 RBIs and 56 runs scored; call those glass-half-full numbers.  On the other hand, Durham struck out 83 times in 471 at-bats his rookie year; right now, Moncada is at 169 strikeouts in just 430 at-bats.  That would suggest a glass half-empty.

In his third year, Durham started a streak of six straight seasons scoring 100-plus runs for the Sox on his way to a 14-year career that included 2054 hits and 1249 runs scored for four teams.  Technically, this is Moncada’s second year with the Sox after playing in 54 games last year.  So, the question becomes:  Does Yoan Moncada turn into another Ray Durham in year three, or does he go bust?

Inquiring minds want to know.

A Fine Mess

A Fine Mess

It appears that after close to a month, the Bears and their first-round draft pick, linebacker Roquan Smith, have come to an agreement on his contract.  The standoff was a matter of principle on both sides, I’m sure.

Smith is a hard-hitting—dare I say “headhunting”?—player who feared that the Bears would dock him his guaranteed money if he ran afoul of the NFL’s new helmet-contact rules; he also didn’t want to lose money if he were fined for other on-the-field offenses.  The Bears, of course, were looking for ways to send Smith in a time machine back to the days they could sign a player for a fraction of his worth.  For me, this is a tough fight to pick sides.

It’s funny, though, how professional sports are moving in a direction the justice system is extremely slow to go.  Teams and leagues will penalize players for off-the-field conduct that would be criminal if only a judge and/or jury ruled it as such.  Ah, but work behavior, that’s where it gets murky.  Who’s going to pay that fine for head butting?  Or for taking out a player driving to the basket?  Or for intentionally throwing at a batter?

Here’s an idea—why not fine both the team and the player for bad behavior during the course of a game?  The player is an employee for the team and acting as a representative of said business.  If he’s going to do something that combines dangerous, hurtful and dumb, then his employer should share in the liability for allowing a particular incident to occur.  This happens all the time in the real world.

If any Bear—or Bull or Blackhawk or Cub or White Sox—is fined during the course of the season, determine the fine as a percentage of the player’s salary and level a similar penalty against the team’s gross earnings.  That would either improve player conduct or unite players and management against commissioners in a way never before seen.

On the Beach

To Chicagoans of a certain age (like me), the city beaches represent a summer refuge from bungalow heat.  Houses built of brick may keep the big bad wolf at bay, but they can also turn into a kiln come June and July.  It was two or three buses for us to get to Rainbow Beach, where I turned into a master of sandcastles and waist-deep wading.

Michele and I hit the beach yesterday, sans shovel and pail, but we brought along plenty to read along with a radio.  Our destination was Kathy Osterman Beach on the North Side, about a mile from where we parked.  The weather was beautiful with a breeze off the lake, so we didn’t mind the walk from Foster Avenue.  Note:  If you want to remember where you parked the car in the lot, line it up with the trapeze school operating steps from the lakefront.  Those daring young people flying through the air all but shout—you parked here.

I only listened to the White Sox game long enough to hear Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson scratch their heads—how could I tell without seeing?—over the mystery that is Dylan Covey.  A few months ago, the right-hander seemed to have it figured out, but that was then and this is now, with Covey sporting a 4-9 record and 6.06 ERA after being lifted in the third inning of the game against the Indians.  I can listen to the Sox lose anytime while we only get to the beach a few times a year.  I shut the radio off, the better to hear the waves.

I didn’t expect the game to be on still when we got home at 4:30.  Lo and behold, the White Sox rallied from a 9-1 deficit to lose by a more or less respectable score of 9-7.  Lo and behold, Adam Engel denied a third batter—Yonder Alonso—a homerun in the course of a week.  Engel even went three for four with a triple, homerun and three RBIs.  He is now hitting .224.

Hope springs eternal on a Sunday afternoon in mid-August.

A Question Unasked

Softball star pitcher Jennie Finch threw out the first pitch (overhand, by the way) at the White Sox game Friday night and put in an appearance in the TV booth for a half inning, during which time Jason Benetti asked the former Olympic gold medalist about how she got interested in sports.  Growing up with brothers helped, and so did attending Dodgers’ games.

Finch said she grew up wanting to pitch for the Dodgers.  Benetti could have but didn’t ask what it felt like when she first realized that wasn’t going to happen.  I would have liked to hear what one of if not the most talented fast-pitch softball player of all time had to say about that.  Oh, well, maybe next year.

Daniel, Again

For the second time in a week, Daniel Palka of the White Sox struck out in bunches before hitting a meaningful homerun.  Four strikeouts on Sunday in Tampa before the eventual game winner, three times at Guaranteed Rate Whatever last night against the Indians before a walk-off shot for a 1-0 win.

Palka basically repeated what he said Sunday, “I just went back to my old routine, and I kinda forgot the first 8/9ths of the game and made 1/9^th of the game count.”  A one-and-two count, a homer to the opposite field—what else could you ask for?

A call-up of Eloy Jimenez, perhaps.  But we wouldn’t want to get ahead of ourselves, now would we?

Stan Mikita

Stan Mikita was a comforting presence in my life, like a favorite restaurant or movie house; you didn’t have to go to enjoy.  I never saw Mikita play, but I’m sure happy he did for the Blackhawks.  The Hawks’ Hall-of-Fame center died Tuesday at the age of 78.

Mikita spent his entire 22-year playing career, from 1958 to 1980, with the Hawks (and for a while he lived in the suburb of Berwyn, just like me).  What always stood out for me, an admitted hockey agnostic, was how Mikita and Chicago were made for one another.  He was an immigrant from what is now Slovakia by way of Canada.  If you saw that face of his, you knew it as an immigrant’s face, the kind I grew up with on the South Side.  And if you heard Mikita talk, you knew he was pure Chicago.

Mikita mixed smart-ass with humble; in New York, they only care about the first part.  Mikita was Chicago in the way that DePaul basketball coach Ray Meyer was Chicago, and my father was Chicago.  What I liked most of all about Stan Mikita was how much he reminded me of my Uncle Art.  They could have been brothers, they looked so much alike.

My uncle was a WW II veteran and Chicago cop.  For no good reason I can think of, he took a liking to me.  My father was detached; my Uncle Art was not.  In seventh grade, I broke my arm and ended up in the hospital for several days.  My uncle came to visit, baseball magazines in hand.  I think I still have them, from 1965, somewhere in the basement.

As long as Stan Mikita showed up at golf tournaments or Hawks’ games, it was almost as if my uncle hadn’t died in 1989.  Now, he’s gone for good.

What a Waste

I’ve more or less stopped writing about Adam Engel because he’s dead to me, or at least his bat is.  But how can you ignore someone who puts on a clinic in centerfield the way Engel did the first two games of this week’s Yankees-Sox series on the South Side?

In the first game, Engel challenged the wall to deny Greg Bird a three-run homer.  The next game, he jumped even higher to bring back a line drive by Kyle Higashioka.  Two plays good for four runs saved.  Take that, Willie Mays.

Here’s the sad part:  Mays at the age of 41 hit better than Engel at the age of 26.  If Engel could hit .250 the way Mays did in 1972, Sox fans would go wild in jubilation.  Unfortunately, Engel right now is batting .217 compared to Mays’ .211 as a 42-year old part-time player for the Mets in 1973.

Talent like Engel flashes in the field is rare.  I can’t remember anyone for the Sox playing that position better, and all the metrics point to Engel has one of the best outfield defenders in all of baseball.  But he can’t hit.  Upper cut, upper cut, lunge outside, take a called third strike:  it gets monotonous after a while.  What to do?

If the Sox were my team, I’d have Engel going through eight hours of hitting instruction a day with his batting coach; I think we have one, though you’d never know it from looking at Engel or  Tim Anderson (.240 BA, 106 strikeouts in 408 AB) and Yoan Moncada (.218 BA, 163 strikeouts in 418 AB).  Anyway, I’d level out that swing and teach plate discipline every day, game in and game out until Mr. Engel got it.  If nothing else, I’d make him bunt for a hit at least once a game at the risk of a fine if he didn’t lay a bunt down.  Then, once every two games after he showed some progress.

But that’s just me, and the White Sox are ever so much smarter.

 

Bright Ideas

The White Sox spent last weekend in Tampa, facing off against a Rays’ team that basically has abandoned traditional notions of a starting staff.  Twice, Tampa starters lasted less than two innings for no other reason than that’s what their manager wanted.  In the third instance, the starter went four innings.  The Sox won all three games, each time by a run.

Not to boast, but I did this twenty years ago in Strat-o-Matic baseball (if you have to ask, shame on you).  It worked pretty well, if only because paper cards representing pitchers won’t wear out as quickly as real pitchers.  I more or less went with the same three or four pitchers in a seven-game series.  In contrast, the Rays seem to be using as many of their thirteen pitchers as they can over the course of a season.

Does it work?  Well, they’re one game over .500, and sixteen games better than the Sox.  On the other hand, the third-worst team in baseball swept them at home.  If nothing else, what it shows is that pitchers can go more than two innings in relief.  Somewhere, Lindy McDaniel and Bob Stanley are smiling.

Eli Maybe, Eloi Not Yet

White Sox outfielder Leury Garcia was put on the ten-day disabled list after hurting his left hamstring over the weekend in Tampa.  This gave the Sox the opportunity to call up Eloy Jimenez, hitting .376 with eight homeruns at Triple A vs. .317 with ten homers at Double A.  Fans were hopeful.

Jimenez would have had the chance to face the visiting Yankees in his major-league debut.  He might have homered in his first at-bat, or struck out.  Either way, he would have been in the bigs, and the team would have made a statement on the progress of its rebuild.  But no, a 29-year old journeyman was called up instead.

There are boxes to check, hopes to quash.

Cultured

We are who we are.  I can no more imagine life without baseball than I can without culture.  The stage, the screen, the ballfield—these are where great performances happen.

This connection for me between baseball and culture started back in freshman year of high school.  It was late September 1967, and my mother took me downtown to see “Sand Pebbles,” starring Steve McQueen and Candace Bergen.  “What the hell happened?” More than 50 years old and still a great line.

As I recall, the White Sox beat the Indians that day, to draw within one game of first place with five games to go, two against last-place Kansas City and three against eighth-place Washington; naturally, the Sox lost all five games (and the first ten of the 1968 season for added measure).  What the hell happened?

Three years ago, we heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra play at Morton Arboretum; the Sox lost.  Two years ago, we went to an outdoor jazz concert at Elmhurst College; Cleveland demolished the Sox, 13-2.  A little over a month later, we went to see the Broadway-bound musical “War Paint,” starring Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole.  Good show, interesting game.

I parked the car amid reports Chris Sale wouldn’t be starting; that was the day Sale took a pair of scissors to 1983 throwback uniforms he didn’t want anyone to wear.   For added excitement, David Robertson of the Sox gave up three homeruns in the top of the ninth.  I tuned in just in time to hear the Sox had rallied for the win in the bottom of the ninth.  Ask me about Lupone, and I’m likely to talk about Sale.

Yesterday, Michele and I went to see “Pamplona,” a one-man production about writer Ernest Hemingway at the end of his life, starring Stacy Keach.  Last summer, Keach suffered a heart attack on the play’s opening night, onstage no less.  There were no such problems yesterday, I’m happy to report.

When we got back home, I went downstairs to check on the score of the White Sox-Rays game.  Because I am at heart a child, I scrolled down the scoreboard to the Sox game and then counted the runs they had as the visiting team.  That would be eight, maybe enough with James Shields pitching, maybe not.  Then I scrolled down to count how many runs Tampa scored.  That would be seven.  White Sox win.

The Sox pulled ahead for good on a two-run home run by Thor the rookie, aka Daniel Palka, who launched a 439-foot shot for his 17^th homer of the season; before that, Palka had struck out four straight times.  “I just had to forget the first eight-ninths of the game and move on from there,” Palka told reporters after the game.

Hemingway couldn’t have said it better.

Apples and Oranges

For their first exhibition game Thursday night in Canton Ohio, the Bears played just two regulars.  The opposing Baltimore Ravens also kept most of their starters off the field.  This is normal for football.

In baseball, spring training is all about playing.  The rookies want to show what they’ve got, and the veterans want to show what they haven’t lost.  Nobody wants to get injured, but most everybody wants to play.

In football, it’s almost the exact opposite.  Nobody really wants to play much in the preseason for fear of injury.  What an odd game, at least compared to the one I hold dear.  And, then to read that Vikings’ safety Andrew Sendejo wore a cap in camp with the message “Make Football Violent Again,” well, it made me want to put Sendejo in touch with former Raiders’ safety Jack “The Assassin” Tatum, who made football violent and then some for receiver Darryl Stingley with a tackle in a 1978 preseason game that left Stingley a quadriplegic.  But Tatum died in 2010 from a host of health issues.                  

As I said, an odd game.

Evermore Tour de Me

For whatever reasons, I seem to be biking more this year than most summers previous.  Call it a second wind in semi-retirement.

On Wednesday, I did the lakefront, down to 91^st Street close to the Indiana border and up to Ardmore, not far from Evanston.  Call it an easy “45,” and by easy I mean my palms don’t get blisters from leaning on the handlebars for so long and the serrated edges of the pedals don’t rub my feet the wrong way.  That all changes—for the worse—if I do 60 miles.

I also got to race people for the first time in memory.  On the way up, I followed a chiseled-physique guy for twelve miles, from 55^th Street up to Belmont; I got close but could never catch him.  On the way back, I kept playing tag with a girl Clare’s age.  As that was going on, a guy in full racing attire passed both of us, so that faux-Clare and I spent miles passing one another as we tried to pass him.  After four or five miles, the girl dropped out, leaving me to go after Mr. Speedo alone.

It pains me to admit he could’ve my age, or older; you just don’t want to get passed by an elder.  Twice I passed my opponent, and twice he quickly pulled ahead.  This went on for probably close to fourteen miles until the other guy pulled off the trail; he looked totally gassed.  So, I either outraced someone my own age or made an old man cry “Uncle.”

You take your wins where you can get them.

Why Bother?

White Sox manager Rick Renteria pulled shortstop Tim Anderson in the bottom of the sixth inning Tuesday night when Anderson failed to get out of the box on a soft line drive to third he thought had been caught but the umpire ruled a trap. More embarrassing still, the Royals went around the horn to get Anderson at first.

So, Renteria yet again pulls a player for not hustling; I’ve lost count exactly how many over the last two seasons.  Oh, and starter Reynaldo Lopez admitted to reporters the other day he’s lost his focus over his last few starts.  I thought Ricky’s kids don’t quit.  What exactly do they do?

A shortstop batting south of .250 in this his third season at the major-league level; a pitcher who basically forgets how to pitch: how much worse can it get for this rebuild?  How about a second baseman, aka Yoan Moncada, whose 14 homeruns pale when compared to his 16 errors?  Out of the 141 players to appear in a game at second, Moncada ranks 124^th with those errors accounting for a .957 fielding average.  That’s the worst among all MLB starters at the position.  And let’s not forget the 149 strikeouts in 393 at-bats or .226 BA.  Those are the kind of numbers that make a person miss Chris Sale all the more.

Regardless, Sox fans are supposed to embrace different names now.  I was reminded of that when Michele put the radio on Wednesday as she made dinner; WGN was doing the White Sox pregame.  Yet again, I was given the scores of the top four Sox minor-league affiliates.  Yet again I was encouraged to hope reinforcements were on the way.  But when, and will the parent team have the coaching staff up to the task of getting the most out of the new players?  

They’re sure not doing it with the nearly new ones.

Echoes

Monday was my birthday, two-thirds of the way to the devil’s number, as one friend joked (I think).  The devil or boxcars, it wasn’t enough to keep Clare and Chris from coming over for steak and cake.

I can see that my role as in-law and, maybe eventually, grandfather will include the television turned on to some sporting event; as long as it’s not golf, I’m OK with that.  Both before and after birthday candles (Full Disclosure: the second verse of Happy Birthday in our house starts with “May the dear Lord bless you.”) Clare sat next to me on the couch watching the Red Sox-Phillies’ game.  Every so often, a hitter would take a vicious cut at a pitch and someone, either father or daughter or I think once both of us together, let out a little gasp, as in “Ooh!”

You can take the girl out of the house, but you can’t take the upbringing out of the girl.

A Rustling of Pitchforks

You can tout your minor-league prospects for only so long until people start wanting to see them up close.  The White Sox months-long game of “they’re really good/they’re not ready yet” seems to be wearing thin with the media.  Finally.

Last week, a sportswriter called out Sox GM Rick Hahn after Hahn alluded, yet again, to the “checklist” of accomplishments that prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Michael Kopech are being held to.  “They know what’s on the list,” Hahn was quoted in yesterday’s Tribune.  “I’m not going to sit here and tell you things our players can’t do.”

Why not, Rick?  The TV announcers tell us virtually every miserable broadcast how great Jimenez and other prospects are doing, and they show film clips as proof.  A fan can watch Adam Engel strike out just so many times before dreaming about alternatives.  You provide faces and numbers to those dreams, you risk creating a mob.  The townspeople are getting restless.