Choose One

I like baseball over football, always have and always will.  Give me the sublime over the ferocious, or pretentious, any day.  Yesterday offered plenty of reasons why.

As an organization, the White Sox are desperate to show their rebuild is working.  Forget the team being 62-78, GM Rick Hahn and company tell their fans, trust us, trust the process.  Even doubters like yours truly can be made to believe, sort of.

In his previous start, Dylan Cease gave up eight runs in two innings.  Tuesday night in Cleveland, Cease struck out eleven Indians in 6.2 innings of an eventual Sox win.  In his previous start, Reynaldo Lopez couldn’t get out of the first inning.  Yesterday, he threw his first-ever complete game, a 7-1 one-hitter against the Tribe.

And let’s not forget Danny Mendick, the 22^nd-rounder who won’t let you forget him.  Mendick went two for three in Cleveland yesterday.  How many ballplayers can say their first hit in the major leagues was a two-strike bunt?  Mendick can.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps a baseball fan interested.  I mean, I don’t like the Cubs, but hats off to Kyle Schwarber.  How can you hate a guy like Schwarber?  He’s challenged defensively and tempted by everything in the refrigerator.  That said, he’s made himself into an adequate left fielder and kept a whole lot of weight off the past two seasons.  Schwarber has also hit 34 homeruns this season, including a grand slam in last night’s win over the Brewers.  The man with the beer-leagues’ physique is a big part of the reason the Cubs are still contending for a wild-card spot if not the lead in the NL Central Division.

And then we have the Bears, all hype and little bite.  Everywhere you look or go, it’s Bears, Bears, Bears.  Move over, ’85, for Super Bowl Shuffle 2.0.  Only Aaron Rodgers and the Packers beat the home team 10-3 last night at Soldier Field.  Some offense.  Some defense.

Head coach Matt Nagy does a mean imitation of Inspector Gadget, only that stuff grows old after a while.  And Nagy seems afraid to give quarterback Mitch Trubisky free reign, for better or worse.  Once nice thing about all the hype, though, is the reaction to defeat.  You get what you reap, even if you happen to be a football team owned by the McCaskey family.

So, let the name calling and finger pointing commence.  I get to follow Danny Mendick for another three weeks.