Jackie Robinson

Today is the 100^th birthday of baseball great Jackie Robinson, whose immediate effect on Chicago baseball can be seen in the careers of Ernie Banks and Minnie Minoso.  That of my daughter’s is still pending.

 

Clare grew fascinated with Robinson all on her own, as a girl playing baseball.  The class reports on No. 42 probably started around the time she was nine, and I’m pretty sure they continued all through grade school.  No doubt, she visualized Robinson when an opposing player shook her hand after a game, saying, “Nice game, bitch.”  That alone would have been enough to foster a connection.

 

On Sunday I noticed a number of young women working SoxFest; they were all Clare’s age and quite possibly White Sox interns.  I asked my daughter where she thought they would end up in the organization.  “How many front-office people had to work SoxFest first?”  We both agreed the number had to be a big, fat zero.

 

Clare has tried several times to get an MLB job, without success.  I would like to think the example of Jackie Robinson helps her handle the frustration in being treated pretty much the same as that kid did after a Bronco baseball game years ago.  But I’m not sure. 

SoxFest, Part 3: In Other Words

Clare wanted to stay for a panel session featuring Adam Engel, Daniel Palka, Michael Kopech and Yoan Moncada.  Someone asked what they were doing to prepare for the upcoming season.  Super-goof Palka instantly turned serious and said he was making adjustments for his second season as a major leaguer, though he didn’t go into specifics.  But Engel certainly did.

 

Hoping he didn’t sound too “nerdy,” Engel talked about how athletes tend to be on their toes, literally.  I mean, what greater dis is there in sports than to be caught “flat-footed”?  Only you can’t hit that way.  Trying to, “You’re missing out on your posterior chain, like your glutes, your hamstrings, things of that nature if your heel’s not on the ground.  That’s been a huge focus of mine,” related Professor Engel, who was quoted in Monday’s Tribune.

 

While Engel was talking, I leaned over to Clare and whispered, “In other words, stay back on the ball, wait for your pitch, and don’t hit off your front foot.”  And, Yes, I have an honest-to-goodness Ph.D.

SoxFest, Part 2

I suspect fan conventions go according to script, intended or not.  The front office and some true believers in the media promise the team is going to surprise people while a player (or two or more) points out that the whole reason for next season is to compete for a championship; it’s an observation—if not exactly a promise—sure to bring cheers.  And at least one player will say how he hates [insert rival here] more than anything. 

 

In other words, a lot of what happened over the weekend with the White Sox probably happened in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Arlington…You have to go prospecting to find any nuggets, which is what life is all about, I guess.  Anyway, I found two.

The first entails rehabbing fireballer Michael Kopech.  He was quieter and more reflective than I had imagined; you don’t expect anyone drafted right out of high school to say he spends part of his time reading, as in books.  That plus the fact that Kopech spoke in complete sentences and was able to convey the excitement of making his major-league debut left me impressed.  Now all I have to do is wait another year for Kopech to go before the cameras to assess his most recent start.

 

So, Kopech surprised while Hillerich & Bradsby delighted.  The maker of the Louisville Slugger had an exhibit complete with bats from their collection.  “You want to swing one?” asked a company representative.  Sure, I said, donning special gloves to keep my sweaty palms from ruining a barnstorming bat belonging to Shoeless Joe Jackson and a more recent model used by Dick Allen.  Oh, the power.  Oh, the weight those guys swung.  Oh, the fun.

 

SoxFest, Part 1

Fan conventions are perfect for anyone who enjoys waiting in line the way Clare and I did yesterday during SoxFest, held at the venerable Chicago (nee Conrad) Hilton downtown.  Per my daughter’s orders, we arrived a half-hour before the 9 AM opening; that was line #1.  The next one formed in front of autographs for Daniel Palka and Adam Engel.  The line was capped at 250, but it felt more like a couple of thousand, with us at 1,999.

 

Since we had nothing better to do than stand there, I told Clare the story about how I almost met Joe DiMaggio a year or two before we were born.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that DiMaggio and I found ourselves in the same room at a memorabilia show in the south suburbs, ca. the summer of 1990.  Only the Yankee Clipper would not allow anyone to catch a glimpse of him without paying first.  To enforce that no-see policy, DiMaggio sat behind an all-encompassing curtain.  The paying customers had their audience (no doubt with a lackey holding a stopwatch to keep anyone from hogging the time) while the rest of us could only imagine.

 

A man behind us overheard and chipped in about how he met Ted Williams as an 11-year old.  Supposedly, the Splendid Splinter was on his best behavior that day.  I’m skeptical because of that story I read about Williams autographing a ball for a kid in Chicago and then throwing it out the team-bus window.  But at least the kid could see the demigod’s face.

 

The wait wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.  When the time came, I snapped a photo of Clare and Palka; my daughter is the one wearing the “Palkamania” tee-shirt.  Yours truly received an autographed picture, signed “To Bukowski from Palka[:] It takes one to know one.  When I said it was because we were both such good basketball players, Palka added a little something tall-tale-ish in nature.  As for Engel, I asked if he knew anything about long-ago White Sox centerfielder Ken Berry.  When he said No, I told him to ask broadcaster Ed Farmer.

 

We were done around 10:30 AM, with the next thing Clare was interested in starting at 1 PM.  And here I thought I was done being a parent who had to keep his kid occupied.

Thomas Paine

 

These are the times that can try your soul—late January, with the thermometer going more negative than a Chicago mayoral race.  Did my daughter ever play a spring sport?  Will the Pro Bowl end before Groundhog Day?  Is watching the Bulls lose to the Cavaliers in the last seconds a good use of one’s time?

Sometimes, all the answers seem to be, No.    

Hogging All the Space

Judging by today’s Tribune, you’d think the Bears were still playing.  Story on the front-page of sports with all of pages two and three devoted to the Monsters.  Wow, just what I wanted as the temperature promises to dip below zero most of next week—“an 11-part review of the 2018 Bears season.  Coming Sunday:  Defensive line.”  Today’s installment was on tight ends.

 

Meanwhile, some of us who march to the beat of a different drummer will be bundling up to venture out to SoxFest tomorrow.  Clare wants to be there for the 9 AM opening and a chance to meet the (Daniel) Palka.  It appears the boy is Polish, and that’s a good thing in this household.

 

Clare came across an online NBC Sports feature where Palka says his name means “club” in Polish.  Well, that helps explain the attraction.  The story also notes that Palka’s father told him it was a good thing the Cubs didn’t claim him off of waivers from the Twins because “‘you never would fit in on the North Side.’”  Oh, yeah. 

 

In the story, Palka claims to take his bat everywhere, to the grocery or L.A. Fitness, on the basketball court.  “I play basketball while holding my bat.  I play one-handed the whole entire time.  I’m still better than anybody.”  Maybe the word “Palka” also can mean “Paul Bunyan.”

 

Then again, I know a certain child of mine who in high school put her new bat next to her in bed while she studied.  Again, the connection between these two is becoming clear to me.

Two for One

You really have to hand it to the Bulls.  Not only are they circling the drain, they’re stinking up whatever premises they play in, too.

 

Consider that the team is 11-37 after having lost eleven of their last twelve games.  Seven of those losses have been by twelve or more points (28, 17, 12, 37, 30, 14, 20).  Head coach Jim Boylen thinks his guys have to play harder.  Boylen also wants them to play slower, which helps explain why their 101.1 scoring average ranks second from the bottom in the NBA.  Boylen is basically trying to run a half-court offense with a run-and-gun roster.  Good luck with that.

 

And good luck with trying to avoid team shellshock.  Zach LaVine is getting that thousand-yard stare, at least around reporters, and Kris Dunn may not be far off.  This is some of the collateral damage of tanking, if only sportswriters were honest enough to admit it.  Losing now for future gain is always risky business.  To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I’ve seen Theo Epstein, and neither John Paxson or Gar Forman is any Theo Epstein.  But there is a bit of good news for Bulls’ fans, and it comes courtesy of the United Center.

 

Right now, the team ranks seventh out of thirty in home attendance.  The worse that gets, the more Bulls’ ownership feels it.  That’s because Jerry Reinsdorf is part-owner of the UC, along with Rocky Wirtz of the Blackhawks.  (Technically, the Bulls and Hawks share ownership).  Unlike with the White Sox, the public hasn’t giftwrapped a stadium for Reinsdorf and Wirtz; there’s no sweetheart lease to insulate them from falling attendance.  More losses translate into smaller crowds and a bigger drag on revenue.

 

That, if nothing else, will motivate real change.  I think.

Walk Away

Lindsey Vonn had to pull out of a ski competition in Italy last weekend after injuring both her knees.  She then broached the subject of retirement only to walk it back, as much as she could while wearing braces on both her knees. 

 

“I am taking things day by day, and we will see what happens,” Vonn was quoted in yesterday’s NYT.  Day by day, after four surgeries on her right knee and severe ligament damage to her left?  Vonn, who wants to break the record for most World Cup wins by a skier regardless of gender, would do well to consider the example of Muhammad Ali.  Athletes who compete too long risk more than just blows to their ego.

 

Ali should have walked away from the ring long before he survived 548 rounds over 61fights.  The three Joe Frazier matches alone were enough to ensure his status as greatest heavyweight boxer of all time; unfortunately, it didn’t make—or keep—Ali rich.  Losing to the likes of Leon Spinks and Trevor Berbick not only tarnished that legacy, it probably helped ruin Ali’s health.  Maybe the Parkinson’s resulted from earlier fights, maybe these.

 

Vonn shouldn’t have money worries; she’s personable and could grow quite wealthy from endorsements.  But there’s a record, a challenge, a fight.  There always is and always will be.  

HOF Tallies and Predictions

My daughter called yesterday, as is her wont, while I was in the shower.  You fathers and husbands out there living in one-bathroom domiciles probably know what I mean in saying that it’s better to hold off on showering until the other folks are out of the house.  Clare is long gone, but the late afternoon shower has proven a hard habit for me to break.

 

Anyway, my daughter was calling with the Hall-of-Fame voting results, less for who got in—Mariano Rivera along with Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina—than for who didn’t.  In Clare-land, that would be Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both of whom managed a fraction over 59 percent of the vote.  You need 75 percent to make Cooperstown, and the PEDS Duo have only three more years on the ballot.

 

I love reading sportswriters debate whether or not the dopesters belong; they hardly ever ask actual ballplayers for an opinion.  And the pro-dope voters never bother to consider what the consequences of Bonds and Clemens in Cooperstown would be, not just the surly acceptance speeches, but the green-light sent to high school and college athletes.  I guess there isn’t column space or podcast time available for that sort of thing.

 

This is what you’d call a good Clare phone call, then.  Next year, with Paul Konerko of the White Sox debuting on the ballot, I’m not so sure.  I just read Cliff Corcoran in The Athletic, and he says “the only new candidate likely to receive more than the five percent of the vote required to stay on the ballot” will be Derek Jeter.  I also saw Jasen Vinlove of USA Today write, “439 homeruns is pretty awesome but not good enough” and predict Konerko won’t make the cut.

 

No, I’m supposed to get all excited about Larry Walker with his career .313 BA.  Never mind that Konerko tallied more hits, RBIs and homers than Walker; it’s all about WAR, man, and Walker tops Konerko 72.7 to 27.7.  I swear, you play for the White Sox, and they should give you a Rodney Dangerfield CD.

 

The South Side just don’t get no respect.

Check Your Monthly Calendar

Because I am the kind of husband who cares what his spouse wears (and because my wife likes to take a week off of work every January), I found myself leafing through a magazine while Michele tried on clothes at Talbots earlier today.  Imagine my surprise to find that a magazine named for the pricey Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, not too far from where we were shopping.

 

I happened on the things-to-do calendar for January, you know, the fundraiser for wayward polo ponies and homeless Picassos, that sort of thing.  Lo and behold, they had the Cubs Convention listed, but not SoxFest.  This struck me as interesting for two reasons, the first being the Sox-Hinsdale connection.

Both the Comiskey and Veeck families lived there at one time, so you’d think that might be enough to get SoxFest on the calendar, but no.  Which leads me to think that a certain group of people (think very, very well-to-do) consider one and only one Chicago ball club to be properly posh.  Oh, well.      

A Good Mouthpiece

In Chicago, politics trumps sports, even, so it should come as no surprise that a little politicking broke out at the Cubs Convention over the weekend.  At issue was who should represent the ward home to Wrigley Field.

 

The incumbent is Tom Tunney, who’s represented the 44^th Ward since 2003.  Tunney is a native South Sider, which may be part of his problem with the Ricketts’ family.  He’s also a small businessman, another possible reason he has a bullseye on his back.  Tunney has defended food and entertainment venues that haven’t jumped on the Ricketts-Wrigleyville development bandwagon for fear that it will roll over them.  And the Cubs don’t like that.

 

Why, Wrigley Field is a “huge economic driver for this city,” team president of business operations Crane Kenney said at the convention on Saturday, and you wouldn’t want to mess with that, now would you?  Julian Green, team VP of communications, thinks Tunney spends too much time on Wrigley-related issues.  “Why is he focused more on the Cubs versus crime, schools and education?” Green was quoted in Sunday’s Tribune.

 

As if the folks at Clark and Addison could give a hoot about crime, schools and education.  They initially wanted Wrigley Field’s renovation to be done on the public dime, which would seem to take away money available for schools and police.  And these are the people who want to shut down traffic around the park, fallout on North Side traffic patterns be damned.  So, forgive my skepticism over this sudden outburst of civic-mindedness.

The Cubs are accusing Tunney of being beholden to special interests in the ward.  If they were being honest, the Ricketts would admit they’re upset Tunney isn’t beholden to their special interests most of all.  

Transparent

Poor Kris Bryant.  He wants to say “collusion,” but can’t.  Bryant was quoted in Friday’s Tribune on the continued availability of free agents Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.  “Two of the best players in the game, and [teams] have very little interest in them, from what I hear,” Bryant commented during this weekend’s Cubs Convention.  “It’s not good.  It’s something that’s going to have to change.  I know a lot of the other players are upset about it.”

 

Yo, Kris, “little” is in the eyes of the beholder.  Last time I checked, Harper walked away from a ten-year $300 million offer (and that’s at minimum) from the Nationals while Machado isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to sign a seven- or eight-year deal with the White Sox in the neighborhood of $175 million.  When players say “No” to $25 million to $30 million a year, that will give an owner to pause, I bet.

 

Here’s a suggestion to any player upset over the paucity and size of offers—demand transparency.  It’s all the rage in business and government.  Applied to baseball, it would require owners to open their books, the real ones, not the ones purporting to show how teams are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.  Make this a key demand, no, the key demand, for the next labor agreement starting in the 2022 season.  No open books, no play.  It’s that simple.

 

The Ricketts family, Bryant’s current employer, may be rolling in the dough, or they could be leveraged to the hilt; there’s only one way to find out.  Like they say, knowledge is power.  Maybe if the Yankees’ finances, along every other team’s, goes public, we can all get a better handle on things.

It sure beats almost saying “collusion.”       

 

 

Practice Makes Perfect

There was a story in yesterday’s NYT sports’ section that caught my eye.  It seems that Serena Williams has spent the past month practicing against five male tennis players.  She’s already used retired players as part of her routine, but these were current players ranking as high fifteenth on the men’s circuit.  This could start a trend, given that some of the leading women’s college basketball teams also scrimmage against men.  This is what you call upping your game.

 

I threw my daughter into the deep end of the pool, metaphorically speaking, when I had her play baseball for five years.  Softball simply didn’t register with me, and it didn’t with Clare until her male counterparts started acting like jerks.  “Nice game, bitch,” she was told during handshakes after one game, just what you want your middle-schooler to hear.  That helps explain the switchover to softball.

 

The interesting thing was that parents and coaches could tell she’d play baseball.  Part of it involved her swing.  Apparently, softball swings are geared to rising pitches, baseball swings to sinking pitches.  Despite that purported handicap, the girl holds the single-season and career homerun marks at Elmhurst College.  Lucky for pitchers in the CCIW that Clare batted with such a profound flaw in her mechanics.  Otherwise, we might be talking real Ruthian numbers.  Just kidding.  I think it was the baseball swing that made the softball swing so potent.

 

But there was something else, attitude.  Again, people would tell me they could tell Clare played baseball by her aggressiveness.  I took that as the highest of compliments.  Only the child was that way as soon as t-ball.  Clare didn’t need to be as aggressive as the boys.  She simply needed to be herself in the presence of boys.

 

But the male competition made her better.  Too bad adolescent misogyny got in the way.

Déjà vu All Over Again

A stat in today’s The Athletic really popped out:  in losing 135-105 to the  Nuggets last night, the Bulls suffered their ninth double-digit loss under new head coach Jim Boylen (not to be confused with their ninth straight loss overall), and six have been by at least 25 points (see above).  Ouch.

 

So, in 21 games under Boylen, the Bulls have gone 5-16, which means not only do they lose, they can be expected to lose badly.  On top of that is Boylen, given to odd substitutions (see the 133-77 blowout to the Celtics on December 8^th) and odd comments (see just about any interview).  Hmm—a Jerry Reinsdorf team, a weird hire to lead things.  Why, Boylen could be the second coming of Terry Bevington, onetime manager of the White Sox.

 

Bevington was hired early in the 1995 season to replace Gene Lamont.  Over the course of two-plus seasons, Bevington amassed a 221-214 win/loss record, including 85-77 in 1996 and 80-81 the next season.  That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize he had Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura in their prime, along with a young Ray Durham plus a cast of characters that included one-season performances by the likes of Danny Tartabull and—wait for it—Albert Belle.  So, you could say that Bevington underperformed given the talent on hand.

 

He was also generally acknowledged to be a jerk, at least with the media, which no doubt endeared him to Reinsdorf.  You see, Mr. Reinsdorf likes to think himself a genius of an owner, the man who won championships behind such surprise front-office picks as Jerry Krause and Kenny Williams, neither of whom would qualify as media darlings.  Yes, you could argue Reinsdorf was just broken-clock-twice-a-day right, but he was right nonetheless and so felt emboldened to hire a Bevington and a Boylen.  The one was stopped-clock-wrong while sure looks to be an exact twin.

 

Somebody needs to shake that clock to get it ticking again.

OPs

In another life, I drove a forklift for a company that sold wire by the coil.  It was at the company warehouse that Eddie, our truck driver, told me that the best cigarettes in all the world were “OPs.”  When he saw the confused look on my face, Eddie explained, “Other people’s.”  More than forty years later, this remains one of the great lessons in my life.  Human beings like nothing so much as using other human beings’ stuff, or pretending they are.

 

I was reminded of that after reading a column in today’s Sun-Times by Rick Morrissey, who thinks, “The Cubs have the money to sign [Bryce] Harper.”  The problem, according to Morrissey, is that, “They don’t want to spend the money to sign him.”  Too bad Morrissey can’t prove it.

 

Oh, he says that the Cubs are worth $2.9 billion and he quotes a team official who said in 2015, “Basically, my job is [to] fill a wheelbarrow with money, take it to Theo [Epstein’s] office and dump it.”  But where’s the budget for 2018, showing income and expenditures?  Has anything changed for the Ricketts’ family since 2015?  Have their investments taken a beating or gone through the roof to the point they could sign five Bryce Harpers?  Real journalists would address those questions.

 

Like most sports’ columnists, Morrissey is lazy and can’t be bothered to back up his opinions with facts.  What he wants is for the Cubs to turn into the Yankees back when George Steinbrenner signed players on a whim.  Then, when it turns out to be an Ed Whitson or Jason Giambi, Morrissey can write how stupid the Cubs are throwing around money when they should be developing talent from within.

Opinions are easy to come by, especially when you don’t have to bother with facts.  Personally, I think the Cubs can afford to sign someone like Harper, but I don’t know that for a fact.  Neither does Rick Morrissey.  

 

 

Of Doghouses and Blacklists

For the first time since 2011, ex-manager Ozzie Guillen is set to appear at SoxFest.  Ironically, the same could be said of me.

 

As a Sox fan, I tended to blow hot and cold in re Guillen.  I thought he did great managing in 2005 and 2008, taking one team to the World Series and employing smoke and mirrors to get another into the postseason.  In eight years as Sox manager, Guillen went 678-617, finishing above .500 five times.  But the last three seasons, 2009-2011, it was like Guillen couldn’t be bothered.  Everything, including a September 2010 sojourn by Manny Ramirez, was treated like a joke.  Guillen definitely wanted out in 2011, and I was happy to see him go.

 

Well, life certainly teaches us lessons, doesn’t it?  Guillen got a big contract to manage the Marlins, and we got Robin Ventura as manager.  Guillen then said nice things about Castro, which didn’t exactly go over well with a south Florida audience; ownership didn’t much like his 69-93 record.  Guillen was out after a year (while Ventura kept going for five agonizingly miserable seasons).  Still, at the age of 48, Guillen seemed a sure bet to manage again.  So, why hasn’t he?

 

Consider the following managers:  Clint Hurdle; Gabe Kapler; Dave Martinez; Don Mattingly; Scott Servais; Ned Yost.  Guillen isn’t better than any or all of them?  Yes, Ozzie had a big ego, and it cost him, just as his feud with Kenny Williams did.  But every indication is that Guillen’s mellowed.  For God’s sake, this Venezuelan makes his year-round home in Chicago.  Really, the January cold will change a person, as it seems to have Guillen.

 

Would I want Guillen over Rick Renteria?  Hmm.  Throw in Bryce Harper, and my answer would be, Yes.  But that’s just me.  MLB front offices seem to think otherwise.  It’s almost like Guillen has been blackballed.  Must be the cold affecting my thought processes.

 

The Upside Down

Bears’ general manager Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy met with reporters yesterday.  They shouldn’t have.  The more the duo talked, the more it sounded like they didn’t have their priorities straight.

 

Granted, kicker Cody Parkey is a problem that won’t go away, that is, until the Bears cut him.  Nagy in particular was upset over Parkey’s decision—made without asking permission from the Bears’ front office—to appear on the Today show last week.  “We always talk about a ‘we’ and not a ‘me’ thing [as a team],” was how Nagy put it.  “I didn’t think that [Parkey’s TV appearance] was too much a ‘we’ thing.”

 

No, it was all “me,” as in, I don’t want this to affect me the rest of my life.  Nagy appears to want what most Bears’ fans want—for Parkey to wear sackcloth and ashes until the team gets around to cutting him.  Keep Robbie Gould, and your head coach doesn’t have to go all “me” and “we” on the media.

 

But, whatever you do, don’t sign former Chiefs’ running back Kareem Hunt, not after he was caught on camera kicking a woman and then pretty much lying about it to team officials.  For that matter, don’t talk about how you called to check up on Hunt last week, as Nagy did.  Nagy coached Hunt with the Chiefs in 2017 and found him to be a “really, really good kid.”  Really?  Then take another look at the video.

Then ask team owner Virginia McCaskey what she thinks.        

State of the Rebuild, Contd.

The 10-32 Bulls lost on the road to Golden State Friday by a score of 146-110.  The heirs of Jordan were outscored in the opening quarter 43-17, for the biggest first-quarter deficit in team history.  But what did Bulls’ coach Jim Boylen focus on?  Why, the second quarter, when the Bulls bettered the Warriors 38-33.  “I think you’ve got to talk about that,” Boylen was quoted in the Tribune.  “Win the next moment.  Break it down.  Try to win two of four quarters, three of four quarters.”  Yo, Jim, how about a game?

On Saturday, the Bulls travelled to Utah for a contest against the Jazz.  Let me quote the headline from the team website:  Improved Bulls Come Up Short in 110-102 Loss to Jazz.  Chicago’s seventh straight loss puts their record at 10-33.  But is the Bulls’ front office worried.  Apparently not.  The Sun-Times reports that Coach Boylen has earned himself a raise, no doubt for that “improved” play.

 

The Bulls embarked on their rebuild with the Jimmy Butler trade after the 2016-2017 season.  Only forward Lauri Markkanen looks to have regressed from an impressive rookie season, and guard Zach LaVine has yet to show much interest in defense; only guard Kris Dunn is playing anything close to a complete game.  Then again, the Bulls could’ve kept Butler.

 

I’ve always liked the guy from his rookie season back in 2011; he was starting off in the NBA just as my daughter was starting her second year of college softball.  Butler also went to Marquette, just like my late nephew, except my nephew never took to dressing by himself away from other players the way Butler came to do in Chicago.  A hardworking rookie turned into a hardworking young veteran turned into a head case.

 

Things didn’t work out much better Minnesota.  Butler decided his teammates were soft and coach Tom Thibodeau wasn’t going to make them much tougher.  After just one season, Butler wanted out, went on a publicized tirade or two and forced a trade to Philadelphia.  Thibodeau’s inability to handle his onetime Bull cost him his job.  Oh, and Butler is reportedly unhappy in Philadelphia.

 

So, like I said, it could be worse for the Bulls and their fans.

 

Slip of the Tongue

Pardon the cliché, but my jaw pretty much dropped to the kitchen table the other morning after I read a comment in the Tribune by White Sox general manager Rick Hahn.  Commenting on signing free-agent outfielder Jon Jay, Hahn added, “At some point over the course of the year, not at the start, but...we expect to have Eloy [Jimenez] join us as well.”  Excuse me, but did Hahn just come out and admit that the Sox didn’t call up Jimenez in September and won’t have him break camp out of spring training because they want another year of contract control over Jimenez?

 

And here I thought it was all about checking boxes and nothing more.  

SOP

SOP

 

When the White Sox signed free-agent outfielder Jon Jay this week, they had to put him on the 40-man roster, which was already full.  That meant taking someone off.  Outfielder Charlie Tilson drew the short straw and was designated for assignment.  This was all standard operating procedure for a major-league ball club.

 

Tilson, from the North Shore suburb of Wilmette, gambled that he had enough baseball talent to enter the 2011 MLB draft right after high school; the Cardinals took him in the second round.  Then the injuries started, first a dislocated shoulder requiring surgery followed by a broken foot.  In sports, too many injuries, and by that I mean more than one, give coaches and front offices pause.  I know my daughter never told anyone about her shoulder.  It started hurting the summer of eighth grade and kept hurting until her surgery for a torn labrum twelve years later.  But it’s hard to hide injuries once you turn pro.  When the Sox acquired Tilson in 2016 for reliever Zach Duke, St. Louis may have been more than happy to unload a player they considered injury-prone.

 

Tilson made his major-league had the misfortune of making his major-league debut in a game James Shields started, which is to say Tilson did a lot of running that August night in Detroit; one Shields’ base hit too many led to a torn hamstring for the rookie center fielder; so much for making an impression with his new team.  Things didn’t get any better for Tilson in 2017; foot and ankle injuries basically cost him the season.  In total, Tilson has lost close to 2-1/2 years to injuries.

 

Ironically, Jon Jay’s game—left-handed bat, speed, defense—was what Charlie Tilson’s game projected to be before the injuries accumulated.  Where does a 26-year old ballplayer go after being DFA’d?  Probably to another organization, or, if no opportunity presents itself, Japan or an independent-league team.  Baseball doesn’t feel the need to give local players a break because a pro team is just a business.

Still, the one thing Tilson has going for him is the game he’s good at.  Baseball allows players to find or reinvent themselves in a way football doesn’t.  To be cut from an NFL team at age 26 is pretty much a ticket to retirement, as it is in the NBA (though pro basketball players have been known to come back off the scrap heap).  Tilson is a local kid who plays hard.  Maybe his next break won’t involve any bones.  I hope so.   

Be Careful Who(m) You Draft

It looks like Oklahoma quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray is going to declare for the NFL draft.  That would seem to be a no-brainer, only the Oakland A’s made Murray their #1 draft pick last June.  Now the A’s may have to share one of their top prospects with a sport heavy on injury potential.

 

There is precedent for two-sport players. Deion Sanders did it; ditto Bo Jackson.  Sanders was a better football player, and Jackson suffered a hip injury playing for the Raiders that ultimately ended his career in both sports.  If he had picked one or the other, Jackson might have been a hall of famer.

 

Brian Jordan faced a choice just as Murry will; a defensive back with the Falcons, Jordan walked away from football for a baseball career that included 184 homeruns and 821 RBIs.  If Murray is leaning in the other direction, he would do well to consider Russell Wilson, another 5’11” two-way athlete.  Wilson played a couple of years of minor league ball before deciding to concentrate on throwing a football.  The Seahawks are happy he did.

 

An athlete is entitled to pursue any and all dreams (see above, plus Danny Ainge and Gene Conley).  Professional teams, though, are advised to beware.  The problems, to say nothing of the dangers, are obvious, or should have been to the A’s.  If Murray decides to play football instead, he has to give back his baseball signing bonus, but that’s it for Oakland’s compensation.

 

In which case, they will have wasted a top draft choice on someone else’s dream.     

Pound Foolish, and Pennywise, Too?

I keep waiting for answers to questions that don’t get asked, as in, “If the White Sox sign Manny Machado, where does he play?”  The Sox have a hole at third base, but Machado wants to play short, currently occupied by Tim Anderson.  Who, what, gives?

 

And, while we’re at it, what does the Sox pursuit of Machado say to top-prospect Eloy Jimenez?  While the Sox are ready to throw the proverbial ton of money at Machado, they aren’t expected to call up Jimenez until late April, in order to get an extra year of service time.  What kind of message does that send to their young left fielder?

 

It’s interesting to watch the Sox front office try to win over Machado by acquiring brother-in-law Yonder Alonso and friend Jon Jay.  Wouldn’t having Jimenez break camp with the team have the same effect on their young outfielder down the line when he considers free agency?

 

I can ask the questions, but somebody else has to answer them.

Past, Present, Future

By location and choice, the White Sox have always defined themselves as Chicago’s blue-collar team.  Ivy and everything nice went north, bruises and hustle resided south.  Go-Go, Winning Ugly, Big Hurt—this was the language of 35^th and Shields.

 

But I must be stuck in the past.  Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is 82, and he wants to win another championship, immediately if not sooner.  Maybe a younger owner would stay the course of a rebuild, but not Reinsdorf.  He wants to speed up the process, jump from year three of the plan, which allows for another season of losing, straight to contention.  Wouldn’t we all, but at the price of Manny Machado?

 

The Sox have traded for Yonder Alonso, Machado’s brother-in-law, and now they’ve signed good friend Jon Jay (to go with Burr and Hamilton, for any U.S. history buffs out there), both in an apparent effort to entice the 26-year old to choose the South Side.  But Machado suffers from foot-in-mouth disease, as evidenced by his tone-deaf “Johnny Hustle” remark, along with a reputation for play more dirty than hard-nosed.  The bigger the contract Machado signs, the more he’ll be expected to become the face of his new franchise.  Just one of the guys he cannot any longer be, if he ever was.

 

My hope, and my daughter’s and I expect a whole bunch of other Sox fans, is that Machado goes elsewhere.  Alonso and Jay would constitute no harm, no foul; both are decent players who can help in the season, if not enough to reach .500, then at least to come close.  And when the next group of free agents hits the market, Chris Sale should be among them.

 

Sale a Pale Hose—call it my blue-collar dream.

Just Desserts

The Timberwolves fired head coach Tom Thibodeau on Sunday and ex-Bulls’ coach Fred Hoiberg is being mentioned as a possible replacement.  Thibodeau treated every game of the regular season like it was game seven of the NBA Finals; he also acted with all the grace of Bill Belichick, but none of the championships.  He won’t be missed, at least not here.

 

As for Hoiberg, hmm.  He wasn’t the right fit for a rebuild, even with his experience as a college coach having to handle young players.  The Timberwolves are young, but not baby-Bulls’ young.  And the Minnesota players may play hard for anyone not named Thibodeau, at least this season.  Stay tuned.      

Double Doink

We go through life fighting failure.  We win some, we lose some, day after day until we run out of days.  Sports offers relief from the daily grind while amplifying it at the same time.  Except in sports, success after failure is called “redemption.”  Don’t ask me why.

 

Bears’ kicker Cody Parkey had a chance at redemption last night against the Eagles.  Parkey is the latest in a line of kickers who’s proven unable to replace Robbie Gould, released before the start of the 2016 season and in the stands at Soldier Field yesterday as a fan.  The thing about Parkey this year as opposed to the other replacement kickers in other years has been the number of kicks to hit the uprights, five (three PATs and two FGAs).  Last night made six, a 43-yard attempt in the final seconds that hit the left upright, then bounced off the crossbar.  If the ball goes backwards, the Bears win; it bounced forward.  Hence, that’s the way the ball bounces.

 

There was plenty of non-kicking blame to go around for the loss.  That vaunted Bears’ defense allowed two touchdowns exactly when Philadelphia needed them; both times, Eagles’ quarterback Nick Foles operated in a pocket that kept the Bears far, far away.  And let’s not forget the offense.

 

Head coach Matt Nagy got conservative at the worst time.  I counted at least four sideline and shuffle passes.  Why?  Those could have been four carries by Jordan Howard to establish the run or, better yet, four throws over the middle by Bears’ QB Mitch Trubisky.  Why better yet?  Because Trubisky showed he could perform under pressure, completing 13 of 20 second-half passes for 198 yards and a touchdown.  Why couldn’t Trubisky do that in the first half?  Because his coach was enamored of shovel passes to go with sideline throws and end-arounds.

 

Nagy learns from this and lets Trubisky throw downfield more (you know, like Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady or Drew Brees), or he wears out his welcome within the next two seasons.  That said, let’s not forget the good news to come out of the game—Manny Machado was rumored to be at Soldier Field in the company of White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

 

 Now, that would’ve been depressing if true, and it wasn’t.

Invisible

Clare is all excited because a clever White Sox tweet of hers netted two tickets to SoxFest three weeks from today.  Two tickets, father and daughter, no spouses.  We’ll go looking for Daniel Palka, and, who knows, maybe run into Bryce Harper or Manny Machado.

 

Not to sound too preachy here, but this is a perfect example of how sports and women interact in America; it’s almost all one-sided.  My daughter can root for her baseball team and come over today to root for the Bears in their playoff game against the Eagles.  She’ll see all sorts of women during the game—in the stands and in commercials.

 

They’re the ones—sitting or standing next to guys busy, of course—wearing, drinking and/or eating NFL-approved stuff.  Maybe the NFL will have one of its female referees working the game.  There are a handful of female assistant coaches in the NFL, but don’t expect any at Soldier Field on Sunday.  I wonder how many times the camera will find Bears’ owner Virginia McCaskey?

 Of course, the NFL isn’t the only sport of interest.  Right now, we’re smack dab in the middle of the college basketball season, and hockey, too.  I think women play those sports, though I couldn’t find any evidence of that in the sports’ pages today or local sports on TV yesterday.  But I’m sure something will turn up.  It can’t be all-Bears (and all guy athletes) all the time.  Can it?      

 

Cry Me a River

I honestly don’t get sportswriters.  They always seem to take positions a universe away from mine.

 

Like Ken Rosenthal in yesterday’s The Athletic; he’s worried that baseball’s in trouble because Bryce Harper and Manny Machado haven’t signed megadeals yet.  “If Harper and Machado cannot get the deals they want, who can?” asks Rosenthal, who goes on to use Alex Rodriguez as his basepoint.

 

Rodriguez signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers after the 2000 season when baseball was generating revenue of $3.5 billion.  The deal proved too rich for Texas, who traded A-Rod to the Yankees in 2004.  Rodriguez exercised his opt-out right in 2007, and the Yankees rewarded him with a 10-year contract at $275 million, this at a time when baseball revenue was in the neighborhood of $6 billion.  With revenue now reaching $10 billion, Rosenthal figures Harper and Machado should get deals commensurate with their abilities, however that’s measured.

 

It would be nice if Rosenthal had bothered to check and see how much the industry’s costs have gone up since 2000; that would at least suggest a little objectivity on his part.  No matter.  Let’s assume revenues have outpaced costs by a lot over the past eighteen seasons.  In that case, so what?  Rather than take the players’ side (Rosenthal wants free agency changed so players can benefit from their peak-production years), why not take my side?  Please.

 

Any sport generating $10 billion a year doesn’t need my help in building stadiums.  A good deal of that money is a de facto subsidy from taxpayers.  You want these guys so much, fine, then sign them.  But pay for your own ballpark first.  If welfare is so bad, practice what you preach.

 

That $10 billion may also represent the point at which the golden goose starts choking.  Before I read Rosenthal, I saw a story in the Tribune that MLB attendance was down four percent last season, and TV ratings took a beating compared to the NFL’s, with forty out of fifty of the most-watched sporting events in the U.S. last year being football games.  How is making Harper and Machado incredibly rich going to change that?  

 

What I want more than anything is for baseball to be our national pastime by reflecting American life.  Most Americans live within budgets, work hard and hustle.  They care very little about launch angles.

Fingers Crossed

News reports indicate that the White Sox  have made a formal offer to free agent Manny Machado, he of “Johnny Hustle” notoriety.  Among the many Sox fans who want to know why their team is bothering with Machado and hoping he won’t take the offer (in the area of $200 million for a possible seven years) is my daughter.

 

Clare didn’t have to hustle, not really.  Her high school softball coach had known her since third grade and in all likelihood spent the next six years on his knees praying she’d go to his school; I do know he let her play on his summer high school team after sixth and seventh grade.  And Elmhurst College came after her, not the other way around.  But none of this is to say the girl was to the manor born.

 

I remember two college camps where she was expected to dive in the dirt after balls; one of the times she risked infection because a thigh was all scraped up.  But dive the girl did.  And there was another drill where she and a partner had to run to the fence after a ball while a third participant tried to circle the bases before the other two could touch the ball.  Go fetch, and they did, beating the runner.

 

We drove home after the Loyola University camp, the father all proud at how well his daughter had done, the daughter an exhausted and sweating in the back seat.  Clare played with the same intensity for her high school team, her college team, her travel teams.  It’s become a part of her.  God forbid she runs across someone she thinks isn’t giving a full effort; that person is dead to her.

 

Think Manny Machado.

Breaking News, or Not

Bryce Harper updates are God’s way of telling you to get a life.  A friend told me yesterday that he saw on a local sports’ website that the White Sox were willing to offer free agent Harper a ten-year deal.  By the time I checked out the story, another one, filed four hours later, cited “high ranking industry sources” who said the Sox would go no more than seven years.

 

Today, just for fun and possibly because I don’t have the necessary life, I checked the site again to find that the seven-year length could be—as opposed to “is”—a compromise between ten years and early opt-outs.  Another story pointed to free-agent outfielder A.J. Pollock as a consolation prize if the Sox strike out on Harper and/or Manny Machado.  It appears that anything baseball from ESPN does not require much if any sourcing.  If ESPN says so, it must be true enough.  Or not, because none of the writers look willing to let a lack of facts get in the way of some fun speculation.

 

I have got to get a life.

Book Report

After the novelist Philip Roth died last spring, I told myself it was time to read more Roth.  Either I was wrong, or I picked the wrong book to start with.  Roth’s The Great American Novel is nothing short of a disaster. This isn’t a story about baseball so much as it is an exercise in clever self-indulgence.

 

The novel details the disappearance of professional baseball’s third league, the Patriot League, due to a WWII-era scandal with Communist overtones; maybe I should note here that the book was published in 1973, as the Cold War continued to play out.  The problem with this Novel is that, after 400 pages, you don’t care that the league folded and was erased from public memory.  You might have if Roth had bothered to throw in a sympathetic character or two, but he didn’t.  Everyone from Word Smith (yes, a sports’ columnist, one famous for his powers of alliteration) to one-legged catcher Hothead Ptah—not to be confused with one-armed outfielder Bud Parusha—is portrayed without the least bit of empathy.  And virtually every female character is referred to as a “slit.”  Enough said.

 

If Roth was taking aim at Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, he missed; that book succeeds because Roy Hobbs is truly a flawed hero.  There are no heroes in The Great American Novel, just a bunch of clowns, dopes and caricatures of historic figures; even the midgets come off poorly.  In Novel, Roth shows himself to be a gifted writer with prose that gleams like a new car.  Only who wants to drive anything from the 1970s? 

 

Roth’s story has more the feel of Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., published in 1968.  Where Roth writes about a league gone missing, Coover tells the story about a league and universe at first imaginary, then real, maybe, depending on the state of the protagonist’s mind.  J. Henry Waugh’s sanity hangs by a thread; the richness of his imaginary baseball world makes you care.

With Philip Roth, by the end I couldn't have cared less.

The Saddest of Tea Leaves

Mlb.com’s need for “content” has come to this—Manny Machado’s social media preferences.  In a story today, it was noted the free agent had started following the Yankees’ main TV outlet the other day; then, a little over two hours later, he unfollowed them.  A supposed sports’ journalist reported on both events.

 

Guys, Machado’s just a ballplayer soon to be grossly overpaid.  He might hit a homerun for a sick little fan of his new team, but we’d all be better off with the cure for cancer, not the gesture.  Maybe this silliness explains why I had a dream last night about former White Sox catcher J.C. Martin.  Sometimes, the past isn’t nearly as irritating as the present.