Cry Me a River

These are ghost days for me, with April memories of a softball-playing daughter and the playoff-bound Bulls appearing as they will.  I even have a memory of Clare hitting a mammoth homerun—260-plus feet—in Appleton, Wisconsin, the same day Derrick Rose suffered his first knee injury.  But most of all, I remember “my” Bulls, those toughs (although I’m sure the opposition preferred “thugs” and other such names) coached by Dick Motta in the first half of the 1970s.

 

There was Chet Walker and Bob Love and Tom Boerwinkle and, oh yeah, Jerry Sloan and Norm Van Lier; more on those last two shortly.  How I would’ve loved to see that team match up against the Houston Rockets led by James Harden, a guard whose immense talent is lessened, at least for me, by his constant whining about the refs.  “I just want a fair chance” Harden complained about calls and non-calls he thinks caused his team to lose Sunday against the Warriors.  Oh, give me a break.

 

Harden is the only player I’ve ever seen charge backwards into a defender to get a foul called; Bulls’ players are forever falling off Harden’s back as the refs whistle them for a foul.  A fair chance?  Well, maybe what goes around comes around.  Harden should just be happy he’ll never be double-teamed by the likes of Van Lier and Sloan.  They would’ve constantly picked his pocket while taking him to school over the course of 48 minutes.

Back and Forth

Here’s another reason I’d sit through a game longer than two hours—the home team, my team, strikes out 20 of the opposition.  That’s what happened yesterday at Guaranteed Rate Whatever as Reynaldo Lopez punched out 14 Tigers in six innings of work on way to his second win of the season, by a score of 4-1.  Lopez’s 14 strikeouts plus six by three relievers tied a major-league record for most strikeouts in a nine-inning game.

 

As soon as a record is challenged in baseball, people start talking about it, which means at some point Sox announcer Jason Benetti mentioned that the Sox record for strikeouts by a pitcher is 16, set by Jack Harshman against the Red Sox at Fenway Park on July 25, 1954.  What kind of baseball fan would I be if I didn’t check on that game, courtesy of baseball-reference.com?  

 

The Red Sox team Harshman faced may have stunk (they’d go 69-85 on the season), but the lineup included the likes of Jackie Jensen, Jimmy Piersall and Ted Williams, all of whom struck out at least once against Harshman.  Then in his first season both with the White Sox and as a starting pitcher, Harshman was already 27.  He’d go 69-65 on his career, which included 192 homeruns in the minors.  That’s as a hitter, not a gopher-ball feeder.

 

The things you learn—Harshman was also married five times—looking up baseball records.    

Words of Wisdom

It will be thirty years ago this October that I met White Sox HOF shortstop Luke Appling at a memorabilia show in downstate Lewistown.  Why anyone would bring Appling to a small town smack dab in the middle of rural Illinois beats me, but I’m glad they did, because I had Appling all to myself for a good ten minutes.

 

Old Aches and Pains, who spent twenty seasons on the South Side 1930-50, told me three things that had the ring of truth to them—he once found the lid from a tin can poking out from the infield dirt at Comiskey Park; he hit a ball down the third-base line that should have been called fair in what would be Bob Feller’s 1940 Opening Day 1-0 no-hitter; and it snowed all the time when he played short in Chicago.

 

Let it be noted Chicago had a record 1.9 inches of snow yesterday, April 27.  The Sox-Tigers’ game had to be rescheduled.  Somewhere, Luke Appling is smiling.   

Time Well Spent

Well, if you’re going to spend most of an evening, four hours and two minutes to be exact, going back and forth between watching a ballgame and reading the paper, you could do worse than last night’s 12-11 White Sox win over the Tigers, decided on a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth by the flipper in chief, Sox shortstop Tim Anderson.  Considering that the home team was down 8-1 going into the bottom of the fourth inning, it was a pretty satisfying result.

 

Unlike the performance of that lefty enigma, Carlos Rodon, who yielded eight runs (all earned) on nine hits and three walks in three innings; don’t let me forget the three homeruns Rodon coughed up, either.  Speaking after the game on the team website, Rodon said of Sox starters “Recently, we have not been good.  I hope to see us improve.”  Me, too.  The 5.68 team ERA rates as the third worst in baseball.

 

As it is, Rodon wins the “James Shields crappy pitching can hurt a teammate” award.  On homerun #3, rookie left fielder Eloy Jimenez crashed into the fence and had to be helped off the field with what was termed a sprained ankle; we can only hope it’s not worse.  If it is, Charlie Tilson, winner of the initial Shields Award, can tell Jimenez what it’s like to lose a chunk of playing time chasing after an extra-base hit.  Come to think of it, that happened against the Tigers, too, back in 2016.

 

Something I’d never seen before, a homerun that turned into an out, occurred in the bottom of the seventh inning, when Jose Abreu hit what looked to be a three-run shot.  Only, somehow, he passed up Anderson on the base paths.  Abreu took full blame for the mix up.  I say he could’ve shared it with Anderson.  Both should have been paying attention.

At least this bat flip coincided with the game winner.    

Time Flies

Time Flies

 

Oh, to be one of the 23,417 fans in attendance at Petco Park Wednesday when the hometown San Diego Padres shut out the Mariners, 1-0.  Twenty-three year old rookie right-hander Chris Paddack picked up his first MLB win pitching seven innings with nine strikeouts, a hit and a walk, all this on 83 pitches.  Did I mention the game took 2:05 to play?

 

Imagine that, on your way home in just over two hours.  I love it, though the Padres probably wanted the game to go long enough so they could’ve made a bigger dent in that day’s concession supplies.  In which case, I give you Wednesday’s 7-1 win by the Astros over the Twins.  The game took 2:28, which is phenomenal considering that it featured four homeruns out of fourteen total hits.  Jogging around the bases, with or without a bat flip, pads the game time.

Still, this was a game where everybody went home happy, except maybe the Twins.  Fans got plenty of offense; ownership sold more concessions than in San Diego; and the game still ended well under three hours, per the wants of Commissioner Rob Manfred.    Personally, I’d settle for that every game, even though I rarely eat and drink at the ballpark.  I do cheer home-team dingers, though.  

Poorly Developed

Back in the day, Oriole Park at Camden Yards was the standard of new, or should I say new/old, ballpark construction.  When it opened in 1992, Camden Yards was hailed as a throwback to Comiskey, Ebbets et al (even though the absence of loadbearing posts made any such comparison meaningless) and an engine of economic development for central Baltimore.  Even now, mlb.com calls Camden Yards “the ballpark that forever changed baseball.”  And I am the walrus.

 

Show me a new stadium that has pulled the surrounding community out of poverty, and I’ll show you the first of its kind.  By the way, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park don’t come close.  Both those venerable venues are privately owned and have been renovated with private funds.  You could argue that having to put their own money on the line is what made the Ricketts family so aggressive about redeveloping the area around Wrigley.  And Baltimore?

 

Well, I’m sure that when the Orioles were drawing, it was good for nearby businesses but the entire city of Baltimore?  Not so much.  The O’s have started 2019 by going 3-10 at home, with six games drawing fewer than 10,000 fans.  It shouldn’t too hard to get a table at a Baltimore restaurant these days when the team’s in town.

 

According to ballparksofbaseball.com, 96 percent of the $110 million cost for Camden Yards was publicly funded; that’s close to $199 million in today’s dollars, and it doesn’t include debt service.  Imagine—which I’m sure Baltimore residents and leaders oftentimes do—what that money could pay for in terms of city services.  But, hey, the Orioles are in serious rebuild mode and should be back in contention in a few years, maybe.  Give or take Chris Davis’s contract. 

Say What?

I always try to say what I mean and mean what I say.  Put another way, words matter to me, and they always have.  That’s why I find this Tim Anderson/N-word thing so confusing, especially after Anderson told the Sun-Times Tuesday, “I didn’t mean anything by it [calling Royals’ pitcher Brad Keller the N-word after Keller hit him with a pitch], but that’s just in my language.”  Pardon me?

 

The word means something, or it doesn’t.  It can’t simultaneously be the spoken embodiment of all the suffering African-Americans have experienced and just a curse word, like “damn’” or “sh*t.”  Any number of sports’ figures, including players like Micah Johnson and Adam Jones, have spoken out on this subject.  Do they agree with Anderson, and, if so, why?  Better yet, how can they?

 

Again, the word in question has meaning, or it doesn’t.

Can't Be Bothered

In a way, it was unfair since I knew how Clare would react—part shark, Old Faithful and Mt. Vesuvius.  “Here,” I said after Easter dinner, “read this,” a reassessment of the movie “Field of Dreams.”  Wait for it, just wait, now:  “Why did you have me read this?”  Just toying with you, child.

 

Paul Newberry, an AP writer, must have run out of column ideas, so he decided to pick on this now 30-year old classic starring Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones and Burt Lancaster.  Newberry wasn’t buying any talk of baseball or FOD being “some sort of timeless metaphor for connecting to your past and understanding what America is really all about.”  No, sirree.  “In reality, it’s just another terrible film.”

 

Outside of noting how the movie avoids any mention of baseball’s color line, Newberry doesn’t offer much in the way of substantive criticism.  Oh, wait, he thinks Roy Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson was trying out his wise-guy persona that would inform “Goodfellas” a year later.  Now, most fair-minded critics of FOD have a different problem with Liotta’s portrayal of Shoeless Joe, playing him right-handed while the real Jackson threw and hit lefty.  Oh, well, by his own admission Newberry says he belongs to a group commonly known as “lazy sportswriters.”  Indeed.

 

What I really didn’t like was his recommendation of “Bull Durham,” what he considers a Costner baseball movie “with some entertainment value.”  Oh, really?  Because we all want our daughters to grow up and be baseball Annies or that’s how we ought to see women in general?  Thanks, but no thanks.

For me, it’s not so much the what of “Field of Dreams” as the where, that converted cornfield outside of Dyersville, Iowa.  We took Clare there twice, the second time when she was twelve and had just hit her first moonshot of a homerun, this in Bronco baseball.  I’d brought along a bucket of baseballs and proceeded to pitch a little BP to my daughter; she nearly took my head off on one line drive.  The ball rolled nearly to the corn, and I think I saw a hand reach out and try to take it.        

 

My Two Cents

Tim Anderson calling a white player the N-word last week has generated a whole bunch of responses pro and con, including one from Blue Jays’ pitcher Marcus Stroman.  “You can’t suspend someone for language,” Stroman contended.  “That’s ridiculous.  Also what he said is normal slang trash talk in our culture.”

 

Only the trash talking didn’t take place in what could be called an African-American cultural setting; it happened at a MLB park in Chicago, which qualifies as the most public of settings.  Anderson’s language then has to be judged accordingly and from multiple perspectives.  For instance, how should children and adolescents, regardless of race, understand Anderson’s action:  It’s OK because the speaker is black?  If he can do it, I can?  It’s just a word ballplayers use?

My take is, you don’t say that in public.  As my parents would say, you can act one way at home but not when you walk through the front door.   Out there, it’s a whole different ballgame.       

Words of Wisdom

Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon offered some of the best perspective I’ve come across concerning Tim Anderson of the White Sox.  Anderson was suspended a game, not for his bat flip but his mouth; our shortstop uttered the N-word at Royals’ starter Brad Keller, who hit him.  Let it be noted here that Keller is white.

 

Maddon told the Tribune yesterday he came to the Cubs “trying to flip the culture here, being more professional, looking and act[ing] like you’re going to do it [hit a homerun] again.”  Amen.

 

Maddon went on to say, “For me I’d prefer our guys didn’t do that.”  He spoke of wanting kids liking baseball “because it’s an interesting game and it’s intellectually stimulating,” as opposed to the “histrionics” that come with what you might call the flipping culture.  As for his own bat flippers, starting with Javy Baez, Maddon said he leaves them alone—unlike those times early on when he called out Junior Lake and Welington Castillo—in the hope that players will see that and “return more respect and discipline” his way.

 

As for Anderson, Maddon thinks players as a group, not the commissioner’s office, should come up with the appropriate response.  In that light, “I’d be curious to see if [Anderson] ever does that again based on the result [from] the other day.” 

 

Me, too, Joe.  Me, too.   

Good Friday

Clare and Chris came over yesterday, Good Friday.  We ate pizza, meat-free, watched the White Sox beat the Tigers 7-3 and colored Easter eggs.  And in the spirit of growing up in a family where you had to find your Easter basket hidden somewhere in the house, what surprises we have in store for the adult child when the two return for dinner on Easter.

 

Of course, a ballgame will be on.  It’s Easter.  The Lord is risen, ham and Polish sausage are on the table, lamb cake for dessert.  Did I mention the surprises?

Great Minds

Fans lead with their hearts as much as with their heads, which helps explain why Clare and I root for Daniel Palka as our favorite player on the White Sox.  If Palka’s loved ones have suffered with him through his horrific 1-for-35 start to the season, so have we.  In fact, Clare was so upset by it she wanted Palks sent to the minors more than a week ago.  Instead, the Sox waited until Wednesday’s 4-3 loss to the Royals.

 

Addressing reporters after the game, Palka could have been reading from a script prepared by my daughter.  “The numbers kind of speak for themselves.  So, competitively speaking, I myself would have done it earlier.  I’m glad I got a chance.  I’ll be working.”

 

This is the good soldier, humbled even.  For a 27-year old athlete to say he should have been demoted sooner than he was speaks to character.  Now, take a breath, Daniel, and follow the ball to the bat.  Your presence is missed at 35^th and Shields.

Whose Game, Whose Rules?

Yesterday afternoon, Tim Anderson of the White Sox did something I very much liked, hitting a gargantuan two-run homer in the bottom of the fourth inning against Kansas City.  Then, Anderson did something I didn’t like, flipping his bat in the direction of the Sox dugout and shouting.  Then, he reacted to something he should have known was coming, when Royals’ starter Brad Keller hit him square in the posterior two innings later.

 

After the game, which the Sox lost 4-3 in ten innings, Anderson was quoted in the Tribune (thank goodness it was a home game the Trib could afford to send someone to), “I’m going to continue to be me and keep having fun.  Our fans pay their hard-earned money to come to the ballpark to see a show, so why don’t I give them one?”  Hmm.

 

Sox manager Rick Renteria defended his shortstop, saying, “Timmy wasn’t showing them up or showing the pitcher up.  He was looking into our dugout, getting the guys going.”  Question, Rick: how is Kansas City supposed to know Anderson’s intent?  Also, isn’t the fourth inning awfully early for so big a show of emotion?

 

Couldn’t something like that fire up the opposition?  You said in the Sun-Times that if a team doesn’t want Anderson showing off, “Get him out.”  What does that say about Anderson, who got kicked out of the game by Joe West after being plunked?  Using your logic, if he didn’t like getting hit, shouldn’t he have kept his mouth shut, trotted down to first base and do everything in his power to score the go-ahead run in a tie game?  Doesn’t Anderson hurt his team by getting ejected?  Won’t teams continue to throw at him so that he charges the mound and gets tossed on a regular basis?

 

By my count, Anderson has ticked off three starting pitchers since last year, Trevor Bauer of the Indians, Justin Verlander of the Astros and now Keller of the Royals.  That’s an impressive list, to which you can add KC’s catcher Sal Perez, who went at it with Anderson last year.  Here’s something else that would be impressive, Anderson channeling his emotions.  After putting his team ahead in the fourth, Anderson then let an easy groundball get by him for an error.  Instead of an inning-ending double play, Kansas City went on to score two runs and tie the game. 

For the record, Anderson has five errors on the season to go with his four homeruns.

 

 

Concern

Sometimes, I tape a ballgame, and sometimes I alternate between watching a program and catching up with the game courtesy of the half-hour backup feature that Comcast offers for any channel.  So, when Clare called yesterday night, I hadn’t yet seen Leury Garcia and Yoan Moncada go back-to-back in a 5-1 White Sox win over the Royals.  But I got to it soon enough.

 

Clare’s worried about right fielder Daniel Palka, he of the oversized personality and power potential.  Palka, who hit 27 homeruns as a come-out-of-nowhere rookie last year, has started the season off 0 for 32.  This is not good.

 

Our favorite White Sox is in hitter’s hell, swinging at pitches he shouldn’t, missing pitches he should crush.  Having gone through this herself, Clare doesn’t sympathize with Palka, she empathizes.  I point out that he’s walked six times and he has an OBP 179 points higher than his batting average, so that’s something.  But if this keeps up, I wouldn’t be surprised if my daughter went down to Guaranteed Rate Whatever to toss Palka some BP and go over his video.

 

A fresh pair of eyes never hurts, especially with a slump.

Another Jackie Robinson Day

Yesterday, MLB patted itself on the back as it does every April 15, anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color line with the Dodgers in 1947.  Guys, if there’d been no color line in the first place, this would all be unnecessary, sort of like having Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis—who kept baseball white during his tenure, 1920-1944—in Cooperstown.

 

Anyway, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida University used the occasion to release its annual report card.  Gender hiring in major-league baseball received a C, not to be confused with the C- for gender hiring in senior team administration (think VPs) and a D+ for gender hiring in team professional administration (think front office).  As I recall, Clare got one C in high school and college.

 

Guys own teams, so they basically hire guys to run teams; that’s the way things have been in baseball since…forever.  My daughter would like to work for an MLB club in a capacity that doesn’t involve charity, community outreach or marketing, the trifecta of gender pigeonholing.  Nobody’s breaking down her door with offers.

 

Of course, women have a place in baseball.  Too bad it’s as spectators only.    

Head Games

The athlete’s mind is a fascinating thing, sometimes unable to cope with success, other times refusing to accept defeat.  One such mind—a pitcher’s, no less—controlled events yesterday at Yankee Stadium.

 

White Sox starter Carlos Rodon, he of the great stuff that comes and goes, gave up single runs in two of the first three innings and was lucky to be down by just a 2-0 score when Sox shortstop Tim Anderson helped the cause in the fourth inning with his first career grand slam.  From that point on, Rodon was virtually unhittable and retired the last 11 batters he faced in a 5-2 Sox win.

Does this mean Rodon can pitch from behind, should pitch from behind?  I don’t know, but the difference before and after Anderson’s blast was impossible to ignore.  I would prefer Rodon pitch this way all the time, but if Sox hitters can get his attention, fine.  Of course, Sox hitters have done their job with Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito on the mound, and it hasn’t mattered.  But we take baby steps during the rebuild.

From the Other Side of the Fence

Clare and I met up yesterday afternoon to watch her alma mater play.  It was a mostly sunny Saturday, with a biting wind only some of the time.  Through a scheduling quirk, it was Senior Day, even though Elmhurst’s softball season has a few more weeks to run.

 

I had my memories, and I’m sure Clare had hers.  Chris was there, too, so we all played a game of “Remember When” she did this on her senior day.  Julie, an old teammate, joined in the fun, saying how her dad “will ask me, ‘Do you remember that at-bat against Millikin, the count was 2-2,’ and I say, ‘No.’”  How could he forget, why would she want to remember?

It has to be a tossup as to which is worse, going through your own senior day or watching someone else’s.  I distinctly remember Clare doubling in two runs in her final college at-bat, to win the game against, yes, Millikin.  She remembers it, too, and who knows how much else she doesn’t tell me on a pleasant Saturday afternoon in April.  Boys play on, girls move on.  Fathers like me are left to remember all the games, with the counts and the final scores and hitting totals and temperatures…  

What Goes Unsaid

Ballplayers this spring spent a whole lot of time complaining about the slow free-agent market; the Cubs’ Kris Bryant and a host of others apparently think owners should jump at the chance to sign just about anyone, say, like the Orioles’ Chris Davis.  Funny how players don’t talk about the seven-year, $161-million deal Davis signed back in 2016.  Here’s why.

 

In his walk year, Davis hit 47 homeruns with 117 RBIs and a .262 BA.  In the first year of his new contract, Davis went 38/84/.221.  In 2017 those numbers shrank to 26/61/.215 and last year to 16/49/.168.  This season, you could say the O’s first baseman has picked up where he left off, going a combined 0 for 54 since his last hit in 2018.

A stupid deal like this—nobody really wanted to sign Davis for big bucks, which means Baltimore could’ve gotten him for considerably less or, better yet, seen what everybody else did and taken a pass—does have repercussions that discourage repeats, such as plummeting attendance along with purges in the front office.  But it also sends panic through the ranks of ownership.  Even if it was only an indirect one, Davis’s contract has affected salary arbitration.

Well if a guy like Chris Davis can have such a big contract, an arbitrator will reason, then this first baseman who can actually hit should be paid something, too.  Hint to players—this is part of the motivation for owners to play hardball with them and to act like children passing around a plastic victory belt when they win.

 

I don’t have a dog in this fight—players and owners are the combatant elephants, we’re all the grass that gets trampled on.  But I hate seeing players pretend not to know why the other side is behaving the way it does.

Changing of the (Shin) Guard

In Wednesday’s 9-1 loss to Tampa, Welington Castillo was batting in the bottom of the ninth, two out and two on.  It wasn’t so much rally time as one of those times no one blames you for trying to pad your stats, and Castillo desperately needs to pad his.  Right now, he’s batting .095, 2 for 21, with 2 RBIs.  Anyway, he hit a sharp groundball to shortstop Willy Adames, who booted it.

 

From the sound of his voice, Sox announcer Jason Benetti expected a close play at first base, but either Castillo wasn’t running the ball out or he couldn’t.  I’m more inclined to the former.  Sorry, players who get caught taking PEDs forfeit the benefit of the doubt.  Let’s just say Castillo was out by a comfortable distance. 

 

Sox GM Rick Hahn signed Castillo to a two-year, $15 million deal in 2018, and so far that’s translated to six homeruns and 17 RBIs, plus an 80-game suspension.  If it ever happened that I was the GM who signed Castillo and my father was owner of the team (trust me, things would never be dull then), he would’ve asked me what I had for brains before showing me the door.  Lucky for Hahn he works for such an enlightened owner as Jerry Reinsdorf.

 

But here’s a thought—why not buy out the remainder of Castillo’s contract?  Between them at Triple-A Charlotte, catchers-of-the-future Seby Zavala and Zack Collins have combined for five homeruns and thirteen RBIs; Zavala is hitting .280, Collins two points less.  I mean, the front office has got the money, right?  If the Sox were going after both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, there has to be piles of cashing laying around.  Use a tiny portion of it to buy out Castillo, and then promote a catcher.

 

If that works, pay catcher James McCann the $2.5 million he’s due and send him packing, after which you bring up the other catcher.  Isn’t that sort of what Hahn did with James Shields?  No, wait, the Sox kept Shields around for every last day of his deal rather than admit what a colossal mistake acquiring him was.  Expect more of the same with Castillo and McCann. 

Just don't expect a whole lot of production or hustle out of the catcher's spot, at least half of the time.

Cockeyed Optimist

To the untrained eye, optimistic White Sox fans can come off as stoics while realistic Sox fans act like fatalists.  But with the team off to a 3-8 start, I’m downright excited.  How could you not be?

 

Look at some of the stats after 11 games.  The pitching staff has the worst team ERA in all of baseball (6.94) and the seventh worst bullpen (5.91).  A steady stream of errors translates into a tie for fourth worst fielding average.  Our catchers have allowed 11 stolen bases without throwing out so much as a single baserunner.  Oh, and let’s not forget how our pitchers and catchers have worked together to make possible eight wild pitches, good for a four-way tie for most/worst.

 

Yesterday, starter Reynaldo Lopez gave up eight runs, all earned, on ten hits over 4.1 innings and 104 pitches.  Lopez has yet to win any of his three starts, possibly in light of his 12.15 ERA.  And still I’m excited.  Know why?  I’ll tell you.

 

Either things get better, and fast, or they don’t, which means they will, soon enough.  Either the Sox right the ship, or the rebuild comes crashing down.  I figure another five-ten losses in a row and the coaching staff can say bye-bye.  Another 100-loss season, and the front office could be shown the door.  And if fans boycott Guaranteed Rate Whatever all season, you have to wonder how much longer Jerry Reinsdorf can hold on.

 

All in all, Sox fans have plenty of reasons for optimism.  So, climb aboard.  The change train’s leaving the station.    

The End of the (Baseball) World as We Know It

 How nice of the Tribune to devote some of its scarce resources to covering a baseball team, even if it was the Cubs on their opening day Monday.  But the front-page story about the new Catalina Club at Wrigley Field was definitely worth reading.  Two paragraphs in, and I knew that the end of baseball as we know it is just about here.

 

The club is located behind home plate in the upper deck, where one fan said he used to have four season tickets.  Those cost him $18,000 a year, unlike the $106,000 he said they were now going for in the new club format.  (The Cubs, naturally, declined to comment.)  And here I thought having $18,000 spent on season tickets qualified you for membership in the one percent.

 

Baseball is well on its way to generating multiple revenue streams for every game played.  The extremely well-heeled can go to the ballpark, sit in a seat or in a club.  Everyone else can pay for the privilege of watching the same game on TV, and I don’t mean free-TV, like in the olden days of Channel 9.  No, the Cubs will be off of free-TV, except for the occasional game of the week, come next year, and fans can expect their cable providers to pass along the cost of carrying the Cubs’ new channel.  That just about does us freeloaders in.

No, wait, there’s still radio.  I figure at some point within the next decade one team will lead the move from radio to streaming, for a fee.  What a brave new world we’ll be in then.  All the commissioner will have to do at that point is find a way to erase bleachers and knotholes from public memory.          

 

Agony, Hold the Ecstasy

So far this young season, White Sox pitchers have walked in four runs, including two yesterday against Tampa Bay.  Carson Fulmer I expect to be wild, but not Carlos Rodon.

 

Ever since he was drafted third overall in 2014, Rodon has been touted as a future ace, but a 27-31 career record with a 3.99 ERA would hardly justify the hopes, projections and, possibly, the fantasies of GM Rick Hahn and the rest of the Sox front office.  Against the Rays, Rodon gave up 4 runs on 8 hits and five walks; he was lifted after 111 pitches, with two out in the fourth inning.  Those are not exactly ace numbers.

 

The Sox lost the game, 5-1, with the hitting about equal to the pitching.  Fourteen strikeouts, zero walks—too bad those are Sox batting, not pitching, stats on the afternoon.  I could note how the Sox had runners on the corners with no outs in the bottom of the sixth and the score 4-1, only for Rays’ starter Blake Snell to strike out Jose Abreu, Welington Castillo and Yoan Moncada in succession, but I won’t.  I’d rather talk about rookie Eloy Jimenez.

 

So far on the season, Jimenez is batting .257, going 9 for 35 with 2 RBIs.  Not Robin Ventura’s 0-for-41 to start off a career, but not exactly what fans were expecting, either.  By the way, all nine hits have been singles.  What is it about Sox talent that so often disappoints?

 

Could the front office be wrong in judging players, or coaches ill-equipped to teach skills on the major-league level?  I’d say it’s a little of both.  But for argument’s sake, blame the coaching.  Don Cooper has been the pitching coach since July of 2002.  Who’s he developed in all that time?  Not Mark Buehrle, who debuted in 2000.  Not Jon Garland, a good pitcher who could have been very good, or better, had Cooper been able to crack that Alfred E. Neuman persona of Garland’s.

 

Come to think of it, Rodon comes off just the same as Garland did.  The Sox either have to acquire pitchers with a different personality or get themselves a pitching coach capable of handling disparate personalities.  Who and what they got now ain’t working.  Ditto the hitting.

 

But the season’s young, and maybe I worry too much.  We’ll see.

Trading Curses

This is what I think has happened to the 2-7 Cubs—they traded curses, a repeat for a billy goat.  If I didn’t know better, I’d even go so far as to say the crossroads’ demon has come early to collect on his deal.

 

Consider how everything the Ricketts family did to win a World Series now seems to be working against them, starting with the moves engineered by team president Theo Epstein.  Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist made 2016 possible; now, their salaries—along with those of Tyler Chatwood and Yu Darvish—are so much deadwood, or worse.  Aroldis Chapman was the  rent-a-player de jure in 2016, but Chapman’s gone back to the Yankees, who took Gleyber Torres while they were at it.  Then, Epstein thought Jose Quintana of the White Sox was the final piece for a second straight championship in 2017, only he was wrong, and it cost him Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease.  We on the South Side say thank you.

 

Remember when Joe Maddon seemed the perfect fit as Cubs’ manager?  When exactly did players start to tune out Maddon, midway through last season or at the start of this one?  Maybe if Maddon were still in full control, he could’ve gotten Kris Bryant to stop fixating on the free-agent market and play baseball.  Now, Bryant seems to be in a funk, along with the bullpen.  Maddon was such an innovator, batting pitchers eighth and sticking them in the outfield for a batter or two, but now, nothing.  He’s just a guy filling out a lineup card.

 

And once upon a time, the Ricketts were the toast of the town.  Not anymore.  Chicagoans are tired of family patriarch Joe and his racist emails.  Those folks living in Wrigleyville also didn’t take kindly to the Ricketts’ attempt to defeat Ald. Tom Tunney in the February primaries.  They might have had their way if the election had been three months after the World Series parade, but it was more along the lines of two-plus years.  So much for voters acting like loyal fans.

 

Epstein, Maddon, the Ricketts—they all seemed to have the Midas touch not so long ago.  Times change, windows close.  Dare I say Rebuild #2 looms on the horizon?            

In Memoriam

As part of opening-day ceremonies Friday, the White Sox did a video presentation to honor former players who’d died over the past year.  That was nice.  Showing reaction shots of current players who couldn’t possibly have known Joe Stanka or Don Eddy was dumb.

 

I remember Eddy from high school.  He was part of an earlier rebuild, you could say.  As a 22-year old starter in 1969, he posted an 18-3 record for the Appleton Foxes and appeared to be on his way.  Eddy moved up to Triple A the next season while Appleton welcomed the likes of Bucky Dent, Terry Forster, Rich Gossage and Lamar Johnson.  There wasn’t a bum in that bunch.

 

Something happened to Eddy, injury or ceiling, unlike another player honored.  After their World Series loss to the Dodgers in 1959, the Sox decided to trade John Romano, a young catcher, along with Norm Cash and Bubba Phillips in a deal that brought Minnie Minoso back to the South Side.  Veteran catcher Sherm Lollar then got old fast while Romano hit 91 homers for the Indians over five seasons before the Sox reacquired him in 1965 along with two rookies, Tommy John and Tommie Agee.  Two years later, the Sox traded Romano to St. Louis in exchange for a pitcher and a young outfielder by the name of Walt Williams.

 

I’m not aware that any Chicago media outlet noted the passing of Eddy at age 71 last October or Romano at age 84 in February.  Their loss, and ours.      

Count to Thirteen

In yesterday’s White Sox home opener, Seattle dh Dan Vogelbach led off the eighth inning with a single.  Vogelach, who is listed charitably at 250 pounds, stayed in the game and advanced to second base on a groundout to first.  Vogelbach then tried to advance on a grounder to the right side by Mallex Smith, only to be thrown out at third by second baseman Yolmer Sanchez, whose across-the-infield throw nailed Vogelbach by a good 10-15 feet.

 

Why in heaven’s name didn’t Mariners’ manager Scott Servais lift Vogelbach for a pinch runner, you ask?  Well, Servais’s bench was stretched thin, from all of one move, when Dee Gordon suffered a muscle strain early in the game and had to be replaced.  That left Seattle with two—count them, two—position players, the second-string catcher and 36-year old Edwin Encarnacion, who tips the scales at a robust 230 pounds.  Or Servais could have tried using one of those thirteen relievers he’s carrying. 

But, hey, the Mariners needed a deep pen to turn a two-run lead into a two-run loss.  Welcome to baseball in the 21st century.            .         

Held to Account

Today’s lecture concerns the subject of accountability in sports, the willingness of athletes to own up to actions or not, with consequences hanging in the balance.

 

On Monday in Cleveland, the White Sox bullpen was tasked to hold a two-run lead.  Lefty reliever Jace Fry proceeded to walk the first batter, lefty-swinging Leonys Martin, on five pitches.  An out and a double later, in comes Dylan Covey, who fared worse than Fry.

 

Covey issued an intentional walk, followed by an error by second baseman Yolmer Sanchez.  Now, it’s a one-run lead, time for Covey to bare down.  Did he?  You be the judge—a single on the first pitch to Max Maroff followed by a four-pitch walk  with the bases loaded.  Exit Covey, enter Caleb Frare.  Love the name, hate the control, as Frare walked in another run, this time on five pitches.  White Sox lose, 5-3.

 

I know that after the game Fry said walking the leadoff hitter was unacceptable; maybe Covey offered something of the same about his performance.  Whether or not he did, he’s gone, optioned to AAA Charlotte.  That’s how it’s got to be, with Fry and Frare close behind if they don’t produce.

 

So, maybe the rebuild has progressed to the point there’s talent enough in the system to hold players accountable; at least I hope it has.  Along those lines, God-with-a-glove Adam Engel gets his first start of the season in today’s home opener.  Engel has to produce, too, and not with the glove.

 

It’s time for people to be held accountable, and I mean players, the manager and coaches, the front office and ownership, too, while we’re at it.  Otherwise, what’s the point of tearing it down to build anew?

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

White Sox batters have struck out ten or more times in three of five games played so far this season.  That would be enough to set me off on a tirade, if not for the Yankees.  Yesterday, the Bronx Bombers fanned 18 times against Tigers’ pitching.  Did I mention it was Detroit pitching?  Detroit’s team ERA last year was a pretty robust 4.58, tenth out of fifteen in the American League, and their pitchers ranked twelfth in total strikeouts.

 

Consider this by way of comparison: in 1941 Joe DiMaggio struck out 13 times in 622 plate appearances.  In other words, the Yankees struck out more in one game than DiMaggio did in the 139 games he played that year while batting .357 with a .440 OBP.  DiMaggio never struck out more than 39 times in a season, and he did that his rookie year.

Launch angle and exit speed, anyone?

Florida Fiasco(s)

You might think I’d want to go after the Tribune for devoting the back page of today’s sports’ section to football (80 percent Bears, 20 percent to something called the AAF, a new league already gone belly up), but that would be just more of the same.  We shouldn’t repeat ourselves, too much, especially when there’s talk about MLB and expansion.

 

The subject has been kicking around the last few months for reasons that  me.  Take baseball in Florida (please).  That dog don’t hunt.  Yesterday, the Rays drew 10,933 fans for their game against the Rockies.  And the Marlins?  Why, they packed in 5,934 faithful to watch the Fish lose to the Mets, 6-5.  This comes after Marlins’ CEO Derek Jeter saying in an interview the team has made progress in reconnecting with fans.  I don’t think so, Derek.

 

I never get tired of pointing out how the White Sox threatened to move to Tampa back in the late 1980s if they didn’t get a publicly built stadium.  Dumb politicians, greedy owner, clueless baseball establishment.  The commissioner needs to find new homes for the Marlins and Rays before taking on the question of expansion.  But I won’t hold my breath.    

He's No. 1

I prefer my basketball professional style; that way, I don’t have to choke on the hypocrisy of the “student-athlete” label the NCAA likes to throw around come March Madness.  My, my, so many one-and-done student athletes these days, I must say.

 

The latest one of note appears to be Zion Williamson, out of Duke.  The 6’7” small forward is the consensus No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA draft.  Williamson will likely sign a pro contract at the age of 18 and, barring injury, play as a 19-year old rookie.  Good luck with that.

 

I happened to catch the end of the Michigan State-Duke “elite eight” game Sunday, a 68-67 win by Michigan State.  If my eyes didn’t deceive me, Williamson was walking around the court immediately after the game with the bottom of his jersey tucked in his mouth.  Losing is rarely fun.

So, now it’s onto the NBA draft, where the frontrunners to pick Williamson are the Knicks, Cavaliers, Bulls and Suns.  I wonder how equipped a 19-year old will be to handle losing day-in, day-out while playing against people his size and bigger.  I guess we’ll find out soon enough.            

A Little Misdirection

You probably thought off the past few days I was going to start ragging on the Tribune again, but you’d be wrong.  Oh, I admit it’s tempting to poke fun at Sunday’s two-page spread about…Benny the Bull, the venerable 50-year old mascot of the otherwise woeful Bulls.  But, no, I will pass on such tidbits as Benny now getting health coverage and a possible six-figure salary (in which case, nice work if you can get it) to focus on one of the pictures, of Benny with two assistants.  One of them could have been my daughter.

 

The young woman shown in the photo is either an intern or, possibly, the person who got the job Clare interviewed for with the team several weeks ago.  Only it would’ve meant a pay cut in the vicinity of $20,000.  So, goodbye, Benny.

 

On a related note, I was watching the White Sox game yesterday when who should pop into the broadcast booth but the team vice president for community relations/director of White Sox charities.  She had big news:  the Opening Day “split the pot” drawing would be $50,000!  Let me note here that this person is the senior-most woman working for the organization, whose board of directors has zero, as in 0, female members.  I sometimes think the only thing worse than being a female baseball fan is being a female member of the Catholic Church.

 

Back to the Bulls, they actually have a female associate coach, Karen Stack-Umlauf.  From everything I read and see, she’s the real deal, doing what NBA assistants are supposed to do.  I wonder, though, what goes through her mind on the sideline or in the team huddle when the cheerleaders run out to perform.