A Year and a Day

A year ago yesterday, I walked my daughter down the aisle and then told the reception audience how that day marked the ninth anniversary of Clare hitting five homeruns at a travel tournament.  Yesterday, we were both in downstate Carbondale to celebrate a relative’s wedding.  Of course, I reminded Clare that it was now ten years since she’d put on that offensive show in Joliet.

 

It takes around five hours to drive from Chicago to southern Illinois.  Not one softball or baseball diamond we passed on either day was in use; that’s worrisome.  The White Sox called up Dylan Cease, who’ll start on Wednesday; that’s exciting.  I learned the news driving home.  My daughter called my wife, who put her on speaker phone.  I guess you could say we’re a family of serious baseball fans.

Random Thoughts

I wonder if there’s a correlation between how a fan felt about the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” in basketball and ballplayers celebrating homeruns.  I didn’t particularly like the Dream Team, and I certainly don’t like the celebrating.

 

As for the Olympics, start off with the fact that it was never a fair fight, Michael Jordan and friends against mere mortals.  The Olympic ideal at one point was rooted in an athlete’s amateur status, Soviet Union and satellites excepted.  That’s what made beating the Russians in hockey in 1960 and 1980 so much fun, our amateurs upset their de facto professionals.  To me, the Dream Team was a bunch of Americans acting like Soviets on the world stage.  As for bat flips and whatnot, well, this is an old dog unwilling to go with that new trick.

 

All of which leads to the U.S. women’s team in the World Cup.  To me, they’re acting too much like the Dream Team.  Celebrating every goal in a 13-0 blowout of Thailand?  Really?  I get wanting to be seen as an equal to male athletes.  I didn’t know that meant acting like male athletes at their worst.

 

Good and Bad, Happy and Sad

We had dinner with our daughter and her husband last night, which is to say the self-designated Palka Sleuth was on the trail.  “He didn’t start for Charlotte tonight.  Do you think he’s been called up?” asked my one and only child.

 

Check and see if the opposing pitcher was a righty or lefty, I told her.  “Righty.”  Is Matt Skole, another lefty power hitter for Charlotte, starting?  “Yes.”  Then I’d say Palka is being recalled.  And about a half hour ago, it became official.  In case I missed it, Clare called with the news.

 

Great for Daniel Palka.  He took the demotion back in April without making a scene and now has hit his way back.  Palka both got and deserved a second chance.  Now he has to do something with it.  The White Sox don’t care how popular he is with fans; they want immediate results, the more the better because they’re not invested in him the way they are with players they’ve drafted.  Tomorrow, I have to go to a wedding in the southern tip of Illinois.  My daughter is going, too, so the two of us will be sitting at a reception checking Game Day to check on our boy’s progress.

 

The Sox also brought up—purchased the contract of—33-year old left-handed pitcher Ross Detwiler, who has a career mark of 23-42 to go with a 4.36 ERA.  In other words, the organization is not developing young pitchers ready for the majors.  No doubt they’re all too busy checking boxes to learn how to pitch effectively.

 

But we can always hope for lightning in a bottle. 

 

Wavelength

Wavelength

 

I can’t listen to baseball on the radio anymore.  For a while now, it freezes me up.  I’m serious.  I can be driving in the car, and Ed Farmer or Darrin Jackson is describing the action, and that’s all I hear, as opposed, to say, the guy in back of me pounding down on his horn.  For better or worse, I am now at a point in my life where I prefer to watch the game on TV, the sound mostly off.  Turn the sound off the radio, and, well, you get the point.

 

Yesterday, though, I had to drive with the Sox-Sox, Chicago-Boston game on.  I was going to lunch with two of my oldest friends, and they’re not the type to humor a person, even if it is his car.  So, I got to listen to the eighth inning, when the White Sox defense combined with the relief pitching to turn a two-run lead into a one-run deficit.  But at no time did I wrap the car around a lamppost, then or in the ninth inning when manager Rick Renteria called for the hit and run with Leury Garcia, only there was no hit from Yolmer Sanchez; Garcia out at second.  Again, no driving the car into a lamppost.  Then Sanchez singled and, wouldn’t you know it, we arrive at our destination, a place so hip they wouldn’t think of having a TV turned to the Sox game.

 

Somewhere between the poutine and the main course, my one friend got a text the Chicago Sox had won; the two-run homer by Jose Abreu that followed Sanchez’s single I didn’t get to hear on the radio.  Oh, well, you take the good with the bad.  The White Sox don’t drop three in Boston, but they finally decide to drop Yonder Alonso from the roster.  [As I write these words, my daughter calls from work with the news.  These are indeed happy times for one White Sox family.]  That means Alonso final at-bat with the White Sox will be a pinch-hit double play in the eighth inning.  How sadly appropriate.

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“Do I dare think it?” Clare asked over the phone.  Palka back in the bigs?  We can only hope.  If the White Sox can rectify one mistake, maybe they’ll go for two.  Anything is possible in a rebuild.     

Mission Accomplished

Last week, the White Sox were hovering around .500, and skipper Rick Renteria didn’t want his players to lose their focus on the task at hand, which is a rebuild.  If the team were to break .500, how could the front office maintain the fiction that it was too early for moves to get into the postseason?  Well, mission accomplished.

 

Right now, the Sox are five under and have a good shot at nine under by the end of the weekend; that should be enough cold water to put things back in order.  Only one problem, though.  Bad things have a way of happening when you mix in mediocre—and I’m being charitable here—pitching with your position prospects.  Yes, it’s what I call the Shields Effect for how Charlie Tilson got injured chasing down balls hit against then-Sox starter James Shields.

 

This year, Eloy Jimenez injured himself banging into a fence trying to catch crap thrown by Carlos Rodon.  Now, you can add shortstop Tim Anderson to the list.  Last night, the White Sox decided to go with starter-by-committee, a sure sign that there isn’t much pitching talent in the minors, Dylan Cease excepted, and we all know he’s busy checking his boxes.  How fun it must be for Anderson, Jimenez, Jose Abreu and Yoan Moncada to watch the likes of Juan Minaya and Jose Ruiz turn a lead into a deficit at Fenway.  Or not.

 

Anyway, Ruiz had just given up a double and two-run homer in the fifth inning when J.D. Martinez hit a ball in the hole that Anderson reached and got to first with an off-balance throw.  But wet infield dirt made for treacherous footing and led to an ankle sprain.  Maybe it was inevitable.  Or maybe if Ruiz was the power pitcher general manager Rick Hahn thinks he is, he would have retired the side on two punchouts and a popup.  We’ll never know.

 

Theoretically, injuries can turn into opportunities, and the White Sox could call up a prospect like Danny Mendick or Nick Madrigal.  Then again, they may not be done checking their boxes.

Coach

Clare first went to her hitting coach the summer between eighth grade and high school.  She’d fallen into a rut, game after game of hitting the ball back to the pitcher, and one of the dads on the travel team suggested she go to the same hitting coach his daughter used.  My daughter fell in love with the idea of an hour’s worth of uninterrupted batting practice.  I tried not to sour on the idea of having to pay $60 an hour for someone else to pitch my kid.

 

Truth be told, Clare and Coach formed a bond that lasted through college.  The first three years of high school, she pretty much did things on her own, outside of what her varsity and travel coaches preached.  Senior year, though, she wanted back with Coach and even offered to help pay for lessons.  So, back she went.

 

They talked about “visualizing” at-bats, “power loads” and the “power triangle.”  I had little idea what any of it meant, but, given the number of homeruns my daughter hit over the next five years, I had little reason to complain.  Then Clare graduated, and, suddenly, there was no need of a hitting coach.  Coach had mentioned at one point how he might branch off on his own and wanted to hire Clare as an assistant.  Now, that would have been interesting.

 

Several years ago, Coach had a family tragedy that put the world of athletic wins and losses into perspective.  And now a son of his has hit a homerun in the NCAA D-I Baseball World Series.  Clare couldn’t be happier for her old coach.  Maybe she even visualized doing the very same thing herself.

Tapping the Brakes

Oh, we wouldn’t want the White Sox to get ahead of themselves with their rebuild, now would we?  Things were apparently getting out of hand last week after Eloy Jimenez hit a ninth-inning homerun to beat the Cubs and move the South Siders to within one game of .500.  According to yesterday’s Tribune, that’s when manager Rick Renteria stepped in to slow things down.

 

“I have to defuse [expectations] a little bit, trying not to get these guys too pumped up, allow them to stay focused on the job they need to do between the lines.  And I hope that makes sense.”  It really doesn’t matter one way or the other.  Renteria is a good company man doing what the front office tells him to.  If general manager Rick Hahn didn’t write those words, Renteria did a spot-on impersonation.

 

How exactly do you keep a team from getting ahead of itself?  Why, you start Odrisamer Despaigne and play Yonder Alonso against the Rangers in Texas, that’s how.  Despaigne, he of the 0-2 record and 9.45 ERA in three starts, was staked to a 4-0, first-inning lead, only to give it all back by the third inning in a game the Sox lost, 6-5.   Despaigne called giving up the lead “unacceptable.”  No kidding.

 

As for Alonso, he’s living proof that the Sox will never admit to an error in acquiring a player (See: Adam Dunn).  He’s making $8 million this year, with a $9 million option for next season.  The buyout will cost the Sox $1 million, a bargain given that Alonso is hitting .178 with 53 strikeouts in 214 at-bats.  It only seems that he’s hit into that many double plays.

 

Yesterday, Alonso made a two-out error in the second inning that preceded a two-run homer.  Then, in the top of the eighth innings, runners in scoring position with one out and the Sox down by a run, Renteria kept the left-handed hitting Alonso to face lefty reliever Brett Martin.  Texas was playing the infield back, conceding the tying run.  No matter.  Alonso struck out on a 2-2 pitch.  Oh, and he hit into a double play in an eventual 7-4 Sox loss.

 

So, that’s how you keep a team from getting ahead of itself.  Again, I blame this all on my daughter.  If she had found a way to keep playing softball, I’d have something better to do than watch this “rebuild.”  Remember to dot that I.

Too Young?

I’ve always liked professional golfer Michelle Wie, who happens to be two years older than my daughter.  Raising a jock, I probably encouraged Clare at some point to model herself after Wie.  I only wish Wie’s parents had tried to slow down their daughter’s ascent into the pro ranks.

 

Wie started golfing competitively at the age of 13 and professionally at 16.  She’s tall (six feet); attractive; and extremely skilled, a combination that has thrust her in the spotlight for more than half her life.  There had to be extreme pressure to succeed from the start, which may be a factor in the number of injuries she’s suffered.  For example, recent surgery on her right hand contributed to Wie shooting a 12-over-par 84 Thursday at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in Chaska, Minnesota.

 

If Clare could hit a golf ball the way she has a baseball and 12-inch softball (and, God help us, she’s starting to golf with her husband), I would have kept everything age appropriate, having her try out for the high school and college teams.  Wie, in comparison, attended Stanford, but her pro status precluded her from joining the Cardinal golf team.  No, she was always competing against the best professionals from the start.  In the survival of the fittest, I wonder if there’s such a thing as being too young to get started.

 

My question has little to do with gender.  The NBA does the same thing, allowing 18- and 19-year olds to enter the draft.  It’s one thing to be the best or among the best as a freshman in the ACC and then jumping to the pros; the fish and the pond both get real big real fast.  Just ask Wendell Carter Jr. of the Bulls (and, after their first season, maybe the Bulls’ Coby White and the Pelicans’ Zion Williamson, too.  Sorry, but to me Williamson looks like Larry Johnson, plus an inch).  I have to think something like this happened to Wie, and that’s too bad.

 

The girl definitely had game.  With luck, she still will.

Truth to Power

Talk about your silver linings.  The White Sox game against the Rangers went extra innings and didn’t end until around 10:45 PM, so the Tribune couldn’t be bothered to run a hardcopy story on the Sox 5-4 win in ten.  But the filler piece was interesting, nonetheless, a column by Mac Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

 

Engel isn’t excited about the Ranger’s new stadium, which he dubbed “Tax Hike Friendly Park,” and he doesn’t buy the excuse given for the Rangers’ so-so attendance, that being the lack of air conditioning.  It’s not the heat, Engel argues, because Dallas-Ft. Worth has enjoyed a cool spring, and fans haven’t exactly been flocking to the old ballpark.  What gives?

 

Engel thinks, “We have reached a point when fans are saying ‘No mas’ to paying for the insulting price to attend a big-league game.  The cost to attend a big-league game is too much, and teams are now seeing that.  No new stadium can fix that, and neither will air conditioning.”  Amen to that.  Ditto “Attending a baseball game should feel like fun rather than extortion.”

 

Sportswriters tend to pick a side in baseball, labor or management.  They rarely look at the game from the perspective of fans on a family budget; it just doesn’t interest them.  Neither do the economics and politics behind stadium building.  If they can’t write about X’s and O’s and K’s, sportswriters generally can’t be bothered.  Hats off to Engel for showing otherwise.

 

It’d be nice to know how much money baseball franchises generate, but, alas, the concept of transparency has yet to be applied to the national pastime.  I’m guessing every team does quite well, with publicly-built stadiums and sweetheart leases adding to the bottom line.  Imagine if they didn’t, and owners had to worry about meeting the mortgage the way their fans do.  Oh, well.

 

Mac Engel thinks a price-induced malaise has come to baseball.  Looking at markets like Texas, Miami and Tampa, he could be right.  If so, the owners may yet regret the day they signed up for free stuff courtesy of taxpayers while at the same time passing costs on to fans.  Eight bucks for lemonade?  What goes around comes around, guys. 

 

North of the Border?

Oh, this is sweet—MLB has given the Tampa Bay Rays permission to look into the possibility of playing some of their games in Montreal, former home of the Expos-now-Nationals.  Rumor has it the team could split its home schedule between the two cities.  Won’t players and coaches just love having to rent two apartments instead of one?

 

Back in the late 1980s when they held up the Illinois General Assembly for a publicly-financed stadium, the White Sox let it be known they’d move to Tampa if they didn’t get what the wanted.  If I recall correctly, the team even lent a front-office person to advise the folks in Florida on the construction of what is now called Tropicana Field, a dump by any other name.

 

So, I’m the fan of the MLB team that encouraged Tampa-St.Pete to build a stadium another MLB team desperately wants to leave.  I’m so proud.

 

It's a Business

After he suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm in April 2018, White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar received a good deal of media coverage.  There were updates on his condition followed by stories about the Yankees signing him to a minor league contract this offseason.  The accent was always on the positive. 

 

The 32-year old reliever was released this week after giving up seven earned runs in three innings over two appearances for New York’s Triple-A affiliate.  That the Yankees signed him in the first place struck me as odd.  They are not exactly a franchise given to nurturing players. Just ask outfielder Clint Frazier.  The 24-year old was sent to the minors after New York acquired Edwin Encarnacion last week, this despite a .283 BA with 11 homeruns and 34 RBIs.  From that perspective, Farquhar’s release was a transaction waiting to happen.

 

When he came to the Sox in July 2017, Farquhar was looking to restart his career.  Relievers over the age of 30 catch lightning in a bottle with a new pitch and/or delivery all the time; think along the lines of Anthony Swarczyk.  But it didn’t happen, and the feel-good stories in the wake of Farquhar’s recovery have run their course; MLB.com and the Yankees’ website didn’t exactly lead with news of his release.  This is where the grind of everyday life takes over.  You can only wish Farquhar the best as you look up from your own problems for a second.

 

But, hey, the Yankees have themselves a veteran DH.  

Choke

I try not to be the kind of blowhard who fills up the airwaves of sports’ talk radio.  I value opinion, most of all when touched by intelligent thought.  When you’re wrong, admit it as a sign of intelligent thought.  All of which is to say maybe I’ve been more wrong than not about White Sox hitting coach Todd Steverson.

 

Ever since I complained about Steverson’s lack of visible effect on Eloy Jimenez, the Sox rookie has gone on a tear, including last night’s two-run homerun in the top of the ninth to give the South Siders a 3-1 win at Wrigley Field.  Jimenez’s twelfth homer is his fifth in his last eight games.  As the Sun-Times noted today, our very own Lou Brock is 11 for his last 29, and I think every one of those five homers has come against good teams.  But wait, there’s more.

 

Sox catcher James McCann, to be exact.  McCann singled ahead of Jimenez’s blast to left field, and he did it choking up on the bat with two strikes.  Talk about old school.  Maybe McCann decided to do that all on his own, or maybe his hitting coach suggested the idea.  Either way, McCann is batting .330 and has a shot at making the All-Star team.

 

A few more homeruns against the Cubs, and maybe Eloy does, too.

 

He Gone

Hawk Harrleson crawled from under whatever rock he’s taken to in retirement to show up at a White Sox-sponsored golf event yesterday and run off his mouth.  The subject was ballparks, as in Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.

 

“That place sucks,” Harrelson said of Wrigley.  Although he never played a game there, the Hawk feels bad for all those players who’ve had to deal with the cramped quarters of the visiting clubhouse.  Renovations on the clubhouse have been completed since the Hawkeroo’s full retirement this season, not that it matters.

 

Oh, he admits, “Now for the fans, it’s great” and concedes Wrigley is “beautiful, and once you get on the field, it’s great.”  So, what’s your point, Hawk, beyond comparing the Cubs’ home to that of the Red Sox and to declare “Fenway sucks, it really does”?  Give Harrelson the money to build his dream ballpark, and he’d do about as good a job as he did as Sox general manager in 1986.

And we all know how that turned out.

Losing Ugly

The sheer genius of White Sox general manager Rick Hahn was put on full display yesterday before 37,277 fans at Guaranteed Rate Whatever as the Sox dropped the finale of their four-game series with the Yankees by a score of 10-3.  Why genius, you ask?  Because we pitched Odrisamer Despaigne again.

 

“I was feeling good at the beginning of the game,” Despaigne told reporters afterwards.  Yes, everything was fine until the third inning when “I started falling behind in the counts.  I was trying to fight back, and I couldn’t.”  No kidding.

 

Despaigne gave up nine hits in 4.1 innings along with four walks and seven earned runs.  His record now stands at 0-2 with a 8.71 ERA.  Wow, if we’d just waited a day, he could’ve pitched in Wrigley Field.  I’m sure a whole bunch of Cub fans will be upset not to see our latest addition to the Sox starting staff.  I’m just upset this is how the “rebuild” is going.   

Crashing Down

Well, so much for Don Cooper being any sort of pitching whisperer.  And I doubt employing a megaphone would’ve changed anything, not when it comes to Reynaldo Lopez, who gave up five earned runs in six innings against the Yankees last night.  That translates into an 8-4 Sox loss in front of just over 36,000 fans.  Nothing like laying an egg before a full house.

 

Lopez’s record now stands at 4-7 with a 6.31 ERA, which to Sox manager Rick Renteria means “there’s hope for this young man.”  I think they said something similar about Custer before his last stand.  What the team sees in Lopez as opposed to Dylan Cease is beyond me.  No doubt, they’ll point to Cease’s last few mediocre starts and say that’s proof he’s not ready.  Maybe it means he’s tired of Triple A.

 

I’ve been all over hitting coach Todd Steverson lately, but pupil Eloy Jimenez finally seems to be listening.  Jimenez “only” tallied two singles last night, but one of them was a line drive hit so hard it didn’t have a chance to elevate.  Instead, the ball hit off the wall and bounced right into the glove of left fielder Brett Gardner.  Trust me, that ball had “homerun” written all over it.

 

But what kind of carping fan would I be without pointing out the fifteen strikeouts Sox hitters piled up against the likes of Chad Green, Nestor Cortes Jr. and Jonathan Holder?  Green, who had an ERA somewhere in the eights, opened the game, facing seven batters.  He struck out six against one single.  Some  game plan.

 

As I recall, didn’t Mr. Gump say something along the lines of .500 is as .500 does? 

Homer Happy

Well, now we know the White Sox won’t be any worse than two games under .500 when the Yankees leave town.  Last night, they beat the visitors from New York by a score of 10-2 in front of a crowd of more than 31,000 delighted fans. According to the AP, this is the first time the Sox have been at .500 after 68 games since 2012 while The Athletic notes this is the latest they’ve been at .500 since July 26^th of 2016.  

 

There were players new and old to take note of, starting with Eloy Jimenez, he of the two three-run homeruns.  Jimenez has now posted two two-homer games against the Yankees in his young career.  I can only hope there are many more to come.

 

One shot came off of starter CC Sabathia.  How the mighty have fallen.  It wasn’t that long ago Sabathia merely needed to throw his glove on the mound to get a win against the Sox with a career record of 19-7 going into the night’s action, but the soon-to-be 39-year old lefty is almost literally on his last legs.  Note to all you young pitchers out there—put 300 pounds on your frame, even if it’s 6’6”, and it’ll catch up with you; with Sabathia, it’s his knees.  He looked in discomfort with every pitch, and I have to wonder if he’ll make it through to the end of the season.

 

That’s New York’s problem.  We have more immediate worries, as in which Reynaldo Lopez shows up to pitch tonight.  I’m willing to admit being wrong on Todd Steverson in re Jimenez, who’s now at 11 homers and 25 RBIs with a .247 BA.  Oh, to be wrong about the teaching talents of Don Cooper.  We’ll see.

Wisdom

With experience comes wisdom, or should.  The last time the White Sox opened a four-game series at home against a bigtime Eastern Division team was in early May, when they beat the Red Sox on a Nicky Delmonico walk-off homerun.  How I crowed, only to have my Sox then get a Beantowner beat-down the next three games.  Oh, and Nicky Delmonico was released last week.  So, even though the Sox came back from a 4-0 deficit against the Yankees yesterday for a nice 5-4 win, there are three games to go.

 

No crowing here, but it was nice to see Leury Garcia finish an 11-pitch at-bat against Adam Ottavino with what proved to be the winning (home)run leading off the bottom of the seventh, and how nice to see Tim Anderson hit a three-run shot to tie the score in the fifth.  And how nice to see Aaron Bummer pick up the save, his first-ever, by striking out the last two batters, both right-handed.  Bummer has been used more as a lefty specialist, but that could change.

Lastly, how nice to see more than 25,000 in attendance.  I trust the Yankees’ fans were treated with all the courtesy and respect they deserved.            

 

The Yankees are Coming! The Yankees are Coming!

So, by the time the Yankees leave town on Sunday, the White Sox will be anywhere from two games over .500 to six under.  Here’s hoping.

 

If it seems like Sox fans are big haters, well, that’s true as far as the Cubs and Yankees go; we want our success to happen not only in the face of their failure but as a result of it.  That said, I’m grateful to have such inviting targets.

 

Charles Comiskey double-decked the outfield at Comiskey Park after the 1926 season because fans couldn’t get enough of Babe Ruth.  Then it was  Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter….You can also toss in Moose Skowron and Bucky Dent with one team or the other.

 

I never got to go to the great games from the early ’50s to the mid-’60s, and by “great” I mean in terms of 30,000-plus attendance; the SOBs from the Bronx were too much in the habit of winning.  But as a 12-year old in the summer of 1964 I definitely enjoyed listening to the games on the radio when the Sox swept those nasty visitors four straight games in mid-August to move into first place, if for just a day.

 

That Sox team ended up losing the pennant—yes, to the Yankees—by all of one game.  That’s enough baseball heartbreak in one lifetime for me.  I don’t expect the Sox to sweep or even take three out of four.  But Eloy Jimenez hit a 462-foot homerun on Tuesday.  I’d like to see multiples of that over the next few games.    

A Quick Stroll

Ten years ago this summer, my daughter was leaving it all on the field for her travel team and college coaches.  It was the best of times and the worst of times.  We’re coming up on the anniversary of one of the unhappy tournaments.

 

Clare had two travel coaches that summer who were jerks.  One said she was bad defensively, and the other told her she’d never hit college pitching.  They didn’t say a whole lot the tournament she hit five homeruns with 12 RBIs.  If only a D-I college coach had shown up to watch.

 

Oh, one of them said she’d come to a tournament, and two others wanted to see her schedule, but they were all no-shows; this is how recruiting works for all but the most-anointed ones.  If you’re really pretty good, coaches will string you along.  If they can get someone better, it’s “Clare who?”  If not, it’s “Hi, Can I speak to Clare, please?”  I sometimes wonder how Clare got through it, and, now, suddenly, ten years have passed.

Other coaches we didn’t know about saw our daughter play and contacted us after nationals that July.  She called one of the coaches back, and that changed everything.  Clare is sightseeing today at Lake Como in Italy with her husband, someone she met in college.

 

One phone call and everything in a life changed, almost ten years ago.  It seems like yesterday.    

Your Chicago White Sox

The White Sox were 31-33 heading into last night’s game against the Nationals.  Keeping in mind that the team hasn’t finished above .500 since 2012, that might seem an encouraging mark, but I doubt it.  Why?  Because Sox GM Rick Hahn just doesn’t care.

 

If he did, why would 32-year old Odrisamer Despaigne have gotten the start?  After the loss (more on that shortly), Despaigne has a career mark of 13-25 with a 4.93 ERA.  But, hey, he only gave up three runs in six innings.  Not that Rick Hahn cares.

 

If he did, how come the Sox managed only four hits and a walk off of Anibal Sanchez, who came into the game at 1-6 with a 4.19 ERA?  Sanchez throws junk, which means hitters have to wait him out, make him throw strikes and look for a particular pitch to drive.  That was too much to expect of Sox hitters, but then again, they may just have been doing as the hitting coach tells them, and Todd Steverson doesn’t seem to have much to say, or teach.  Exhibit A: Eloy Jimenez.

 

Take away the 2013 draft—based on a plus-.500 finish in 2012—and this year’s, the Sox still have had five drafts where losing records put them in a good position to net talent.  Yet Odrisamer Despaigne had to be signed as a free agent to plug a gap in the rotation.  Where are the talented minor-league starters?  Oh, that’s right, either they’re recovering from Tommy John surgery (Michael Kopech and Dane Dunning), or Hahn doesn’t want to bring him up.  You know who you are, Dylan Cease.

 

The Sox were down 3-1 going into the seventh, but the final score was 12-1.  What kind of relievers do the Sox have?  Consider the ERAs of three of the relievers from last night: 5.14; 6.20; and 9.64.  Somebody with a 2.16 ERA also pitched, but, trust me, the more he pitches, the higher that ERA will go.  Consider his career 1.37 WHIP and the fact he felt compelled to walk a batter before giving up a grand slam to Kurt Suzuki.  What Red Sox fans say about Bucky Dent we could about Suzuki.  Not that manager Rick Renteria or pitching coach Don Cooper would share that information with Juan Minaya.

Or Rick Hahn would care.

On a Distant Beach

My darling daughter spent part of her Sunday on a beach along the Adriatic Sea.  Some people have all the luck.  But half a world away isn’t too far for baseball news.

 

I made sure Michele texted Clare that Eloy Jimenez hit a 471-foot homerun to dead center field in Kansas City, part of a 5-2 Sox win by Reynaldo Lopez, of all people.  The weird thing about Jimenez is the ball doesn’t really explode off his bat, a point Sox announcer Steve Stone alluded to by comparing Jimenez’s homerun to the one hit by the Royals’ Jorge Soler, which “only” went 445 feet.  Soler swings like a power hitter, Stone noted, putting every last ounce of strength into his swing.

 

Not so with Jimenez.  The ball doesn’t explode or jump off his bat, it floats; with Jimenez the swing looks exactly the same, whether he hits a can of corn or a 471-foot blast.  The only player I remember hitting like that was Ron Kittle, whose seeming dinks ending up as roof shots at Comiskey Park.  So, is this deceptive power a good thing?  I haven’t a clue.

There was also baseball news from the Adriatic by way of the Caribbean.  Towards evening, we got a text from Clare that said, “My God, they shot Big Papi.”  Yes, some clown in the Dominican Republic shot David Ortiz.  A good thing Clare’s now in Venice.  No one would do anything like that there.  I hope.          

 

The Glass is Half-full, Repeat...

Lucas Giolito started for the White Sox yesterday, which right now is pretty much like saying, “The Sox won.”  They did, 2-0, with Giolito, now 9-1 on the season with a 2.28 ERA, going 7.2 innings on 111 pitches, striking out 11 while yielding two walks and three singles.  Eleven of the twelve outs Giolito recorded from the second through the fifth innings were strikeouts.  As for offense, Eloy Jimenez hit a fastball up and away at the very outside corner of the strike zone for an opposite-field, two-run homerun.

 

So, why does the glass feel half-empty?  Well, the Sox managed all of five hits in eight innings off of KC starter Brad Keller, who came into the game with a 3-7 record and 4.50 ERA.  Four singles and a homer is not exactly crushing the ball.  And I don’t get the moves Sox manager Rick Renteria makes with his bullpen.

 

He brings in lefty Aaron Bummer in the bottom of the eighth to face left-handed hitting Alex Gordon, who grounded out to second.  Keep in mind that the 25-year old Bummer has been a pleasant surprise out of the pen so far this season with his 0.52 ERA  over 15 appearances spanning 17.1 innings.  The switch-hitting shortstop Adalberto Mondesi (Note to Tim Anderson: This is the guy you want to be better than) led off the ninth.  Why not keep Bummer in to force Mondesi to turn around?  Oh, well, no harm no foul.

One last thing: Why does a game featuring all of eleven baserunners minus a double play take 2:26 to play?  Somebody ask the commissioner.       

A Sweet Sadness

 

I am old enough to remember JFK’s inauguration and Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon.  In all that time, I have never once set foot in Europe, or any other continent for that matter.  My daughter, who is barely old enough to tie her shoes, is in Europe for the second time in six years.

 

In 2013, Clare travelled to Holland for softball.  This June, she’s in Graz, Austria, as the wife of a college football coach; the mighty Elmhurst Bluejays are playing an exhibition game against a team the Austrian equivalent of the Chicago Dogs of Rosemont, probably more independent than professional.  Tomorrow, everyone is off to Venice.  Not bad for an erstwhile Morton Mustang.

 

Six years ago, we saw Clare off at the airport and then went for breakfast at a favorite spot of ours on the North Side; we’ve been going there for over forty years.  Trust me, there’s nothing like eating outside in and around Chicago, if for no other reason than you can eat outside in and around Chicago.  The cold, the rain, the snow, the wind, none of it matters because here you are eating outside.  Today, we ate at that same place, if not under the same tree, close to it.  Michele had an Oslo omelet, I had a Stockholm.

 

Somewhere between the cinnamon roll topped with hot frosting and our omelets, I started to read the Sun-Times’ sports’ section; for the past few months, they go all out on a Saturday, and, truth be told, they do a nice job covering stuff the Tribune can’t be bothered with, e.g., full-length stories on the Sky, the Wolves and the prep baseball playoffs.  It was like jumping back in time.  If only.

The Bears being the Bears and this being Chicago, there was also ample coverage of a centennial salute to the team.  Butkus, Ditka, et al were in town.  There was a picture of William “Refrigerator” Perry in a wheelchair, and it made me feel sad that a 57-year old former athlete should now be in such poor health.  Then I turned the page to see a picture of an emaciated Gale Sayers sitting in a wheelchair; the ravages of dementia and who knows what else have reduced Sayers to a 130-pound shadow of himself.

And I tried not to cry and thus ruin so beautiful a morning as we were having.           

 

Just Right, Sort Of

I’ve turned into Goldilocks the second I get on a bicycle.  I don’t want the weather to be too hot or too cold or too windy or wet.  Then why in God’s name do I live in Cook County, Illinois?  This is a place where the weather comes with 24/7 attitude.

 

Back in March, I took my venerable Schwinn Varsity to have some work done—new brakes and ball bearings for the fork, a new spoke or two for the wheels.  I fully intended to hit the bike trails sometime in April, only it snowed in April, late April.  May for sure, I said waiting for the snow to melt.  But May came straight out of the Bible.

 

It did last year, too, with a record-setting 8.21” of rain.  Well, guess what?  Last month we got 8.25” and a record-tying 23 days out of 31 with precipitation, or perhaps you call it rain.  If I didn’t get on my bike yesterday, it was reaching the point where I’d be better off selling it.  So, off to the 606 I went, fog be damned.

 

That’s right, the closer you got to Lake Michigan yesterday afternoon, the greater the chance for fog, as evidenced by the Rockies-Cubs’ game at Wrigley Field.  Me, I lucked out to the extent I avoided the soup, but that breeze off the lake, not so much.  The closer I got to the eastern end of the trail, the colder I felt.  Never did it feel so good to have the wind at my back as when I turned around.

 

I managed just over 45 miles and hardly ever thought about the three people shot—one fatally—on the trail early one morning last week.  What a waste.       

Look What I Found

After months of claiming there was no money left in the cupboard to go after high-priced free agents, the Cubs are expected to sign a high-priced free agent, closer Craig Kimbrel, who gets a reported three-year, $43 million deal once he passes his physical.  But didn’t team owner Tom Ricketts claim repeatedly during the offseason that his team was tapped out?  Never mind.

 

Will Kimbrel make a difference?  Of course he will.  Enough to put the North Siders back in the World Series come December (just kidding on the date)?  I’m not so sure.  Kimbrel is 31.  Assuming the Cubs don’t decide to go with fourteen pitchers (and, hey, why not in this Looney-Tunes’ age of matchups?), he’ll likely be one of eight pitchers the other side of 30, or nine, depending who gets demoted or cut.  Come July, Mike Montgomery turns 30, while Tyler Chatwood and Kyle Hendricks will join the club in the offseason, or earlier, if in fact the World Series does reach into December.

 

Hendricks is the only Cubs’ starter under 30, and Kimbrel could become the fifth reliever in that category.  Stuff happens to pitchers once they reach a certain age.  Most of the Cubs’ staff is already there, so we’ll see.  

Channel Surfing

The White Sox were irritating me so much last night that I switched over to the Cubs, only to see a clown at work in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.  Colorado left fielder Raimel Tapia caught the final out of the fourth inning and tossed the ball to a fan, the aforementioned clown.  The guy barehands the ball nicely, only to fling it back at Tapia.  Either alcohol or general ignorance or some combination thereof was at work here. 

 

If Reynaldo Lopez had been able to keep a five-run lead in Washington, I wouldn’t have felt the need to change channels.  But no, Lopez took that lead and turned it into a two-run deficit before he left in the fifth inning of what would end up a 9-5 loss.  The righty’s record now stands at 3-6 with a 6.62 ERA.  We are not amused.

 

Meanwhile, Dylan Cease won again last night for Charlotte.  Keep dotting those i’s, crossing your t’s and checking off the boxes, Dylan.  If nothing else, it’s character building.   

Born Again

I’m living proof of reincarnation.  No, I’m not Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig, or George Washington or FDR.  Think more along the lines of Frances Willard, longtime president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.  I’m serious.

 

The WCTU opposed alcohol and gambling—so do I—while advocating for women’s rights, which I think I do, at least in sports.  So, I’m guessing my reaction to the Illinois General Assembly approving sports betting; a Chicago casino; a new combination race track and casino, or “racino,” as the Sun-Times called it in today’s paper; and legalized marijuana is pretty much exactly what Willard’s would have been were she still around.

 

And maybe I’ve got a bit of Buck Weaver in me, too.  If baseball is OK with betting, along with the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, why should Weaver be banned from the game he loved to play?  Every local, state and national politician from our fair state who supports legalized sports’ betting should be honor-bound to fight for Weaver’s reinstatement.

 

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

More Good than Bad

Lucas Giolito of the White Sox pitched 7.1 scoreless innings against the Indians yesterday, to go 8-1 on the season as the Sox shut out the Indians, 2-0, to earn a tie for second in the Central Division at 29-30.  Giolito struck out nine, yielded five hits and no walks and needed 103 pitches to get into the eighth inning.  Giolito’s ERA now stands at 2.54, which would probably earn him a pat on the back from Al Lopez.

 

After the game, Giolito offered an explanation of his recent success that should go right into Pitching for Dummies.  “I’m doing a pretty good job of getting ahead of guys, filling up the zone [and] being aggressive in the strike zone,” he told the Tribune.  “Like I’ve been saying, it’s all about just attacking the zone, not being afraid of any hitter that steps in the box, [but] going after him,” Giolito was quoted in the Sun-Times.  Reyanaldo Lopez and Dylan Covey, please take note.

 

A game that featured eleven baserunners minus three double plays shouldn’t have taken 2:30 to play, and Tim Anderson, who drove in both runs, really didn’t need to stare so long at his solo shot in the fourth inning, but that’s old-school Doug talking.  Doug the perpetual booster of all things Midwest wants to know how the Sox missed on Cleveland starter Zach Plesac, nephew of ex-pitcher Dan, native of Crown Point, Indiana, and a Sox fan growing up.  In his first two MLB starts, against Sox teams Red and White, Plesac has a 1.46 ERA and .81 WHIP in 12.1 innings.  Did I mention that he attended Ball State and was a 12^th round draft pick in 2016 out of Ball State and a teammate of Alex Call, taken by the Sox in the third round that year?  I’m curious what Sox scouts saw that they didn’t like.

 

It really is a good day anytime you can win with CB Bucknor behind the plate.  Bucknor has a big/small/big strike zone to go with an emphatic punch-out motion on strike three.  If he ever went missing, most every MLB hitter would be suspect.   

Mock This

The MLB draft starts tomorrow.  According to the mock drafts I’ve seen, the White Sox are likely to pick either a high school shortstop or a college first baseman.  Whoopee!

 

Pardon my skepticism.  Maybe this uneven lot of first rounders will help explain it: Tim Anderson; Carolos Rodon; Carson Fulmer; Zack Collins and Zack Burdi (two picks, with one being compensation); Jake Burger; and Nick Madrigal.  Anderson is the best of the bunch, even more so when you consider the two first rounders who preceded him, Courtney Hawkins and Keon Barnum.  Burdi is still trying to come back from Tommy John surgery, which Rodon just had,and Burger from two Achilles’ injuries.  Madrigal is hitting .279 for high-A Winston-Salem.  That’s why I’m not holding my breath.

As soon as their top choice signs, the Sox will bring him to Guaranteed Rate Whatever.  At some point during their broadcast, Jason Benetti and Steve Stone will “interview” him to the point that Sox fans can’t help but be excited.  Then, off he goes, most likely to a short-season assignment in Montana.  And then we’ll see.      

A Numbers' Game

This is the time of year Clare loses herself in a sea of softball, if that’s what you can call the NCAA Women’s College World Series.  It excites and yet frustrates her at the same time.

 

The frustration has nothing to do with the young women trying to win a championship in 12-inch softball.  No, it comes from the inability of professional softball to tap into a fraction of the excitement the D-I college game generates.  “Why would I want to spend my money watching the Bandits?” she asked rhetorically during a phone conversation we had today.  Where’s the beef, went an ad tagline from long ago.  With pro softball, where’s the sizzle?

 

The season’s too short, and the venues are too bland, for openers.  I’d also go so far as to say softball is morphing into 12-inch version of baseball, it’s either strikeouts or homeruns.  Once you get down to it, fans would rather watch players swing at baseballs.  As a society, it’s what we’ve been conditioned to do.

 

I also think softball is hurting itself by holding onto the same dimensions, 43 feet from the rubber to the plate, 60 feet from base to base.  Softball players are hitting homers because they’re bigger and stronger; ditto the pitchers with strikeouts.  So, why not move everything back by ten feet or some variation thereof?

Somehow, the NCAA has found a supply of fairy dust it sprinkles on sports like lacrosse and softball, making them popular at least during the televised playoffs; but it disappears the second the players graduate.  If pro softball wants to survive, it should consider applying a measuring tape to the field of play.