Win Some, Lose Some

The Cubs beat Kris Bryant on Wednesday.  The question now becomes, will they lose because they won?

Bryant filed a grievance against the team over the question of service time.  The Cubs delayed calling him up in 2015—this despite a stellar spring—until they were assured of an extra year of control.  One day earlier and Bryant would’ve been a free agent at the end of the upcoming season.  Now, if they want to trade Bryant, the Cubs can offer a player with two years of control before he reaches free agency.

Odds are a player who files a grievance against his team won’t sign an extension with them.  With Scott Boras representing Bryant, raise those odds to another power.  It’s odd how differently the Cubs and White Sox treat their young players.  The Cubs don’t make much of an effort to wrap up them up early while the Sox swear by it.

The Sox have done this most recently with Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert, but they also did it with Adam Eaton, Chris Sale and Jose Quintana.  Those deals paid dividends when it came time to rebuild.  The Nationals, Red Sox and Cubs were inclined to part with young talent—including Lucas Giolito; Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech; and Jimenez and Dylan Cease—because the players they got in exchange were not only until control for a number of years but signed to affordable contracts to boot.   To the best of my knowledge, the Cubs haven’t pursued the same strategy with players like Bryant, Javy Baez or Willson Contreras.

Maybe if the Ricketts had done that instead of starting a Cubs-centric cable network, they wouldn’t be crying poor like they have since 2019.    

A Fine Whine

The Astros must’ve thought they deserved more punishment than they received from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for their sign-stealing activities.  How else to explain the team hiring Dusty Baker?

What team that’s done its due diligence would want Baker running things from the dugout?  As manager of the Giants, Baker blew a three-games-to-two lead in the 2002 World Series against the Angels.  In what could have been—and dare I say should have been—the game-six clincher, San Francisco had a 5-0 lead going into the bottom of the seventh inning at Anaheim.  Oh, that Dusty.

That World Series loss finished Baker in San Francisco.  Next up was managing gig number two—not to be confused with Houston, number five—with the Cubs.  You remember the 2003 Cubs, don’t you?  That was the team up 3-1 in the NLCS against the Marlins.  A game-five loss in Miami still left Bake and company two chances to close things out at Wrigley Field.

Ah, yes, game six, the Bartman Game.  The Cubs were up 3-0 going into the top of the eighth inning when God or fate or both led a fan to reach for a ball that could have turned into an out but didn’t, and the Marlins ended up scoring eight times to win.  What’s that old saying?  Oh, right, the tough get going when the going gets tough.  The Cubs had themselves a 5-3 lead early in game seven before Florida got tough and pulled out a 9-6 win for a trip to the World Series. On his career, manager Baker is 23-32 in the postseason, which is even less impressive when you consider he’s 16-13 for his efforts in 2002 and ’03.

Baker also has a way with words, as when he offered how “you’ve got a better chance of getting some speed with Latin and African Americans.  I’m not being racist.  That’s just how it is.”  In the wake of domestic abuse allegations against closer Aroldis Chapman (this during managerial stop number 3, in Cincinnati, Baker told reporters, “Sometimes abusers don’t always have pants on.”  Oddly enough, Baker doesn’t have anything to say, at least anything bad, about Barry Bonds, whom he managed in San Francisco.

As for managing the Cubs, the fans and ownership turned on him.  In an August 2018 interview with The Athletic, Baker said of his time in Chicago, “That’s when the Tribune Company [then the team owners] was in trouble.  I figured [that] out later, and they didn’t give us any help the last two years.”  That would be 2005-06, well before the collapse of the Tribune Company, which started after Sam Zell bought a controlling interest in 2008.  When a Dusty Baker team goes 66-96 like the 2006 Cubs did, somebody has to be at fault.  Just so long as it isn’t Dusty Baker.      

Anyone who would call out Baker for what he says is advised to think twice because Baker is quick to see conspiracies against him.  He said as much during a 2018 interview with the Associated Press.  Baker talked about a world, one seemingly populated by one and only one victim, who happens to have the name Dusty Baker.  For that poor fellow, “there’s always been discrimination, race discrimination, but it seems like in this new world there’s [also] age and salary discrimination, which go hand in hand.”

If you want to talk conspiracies (or blacklists), consider the one that keeps ex-White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen from getting another job.  Guillen goes from wining a World Series in 2005 to becoming persona non grata by 2012.  Meanwhile, Dusty Baker goes on and on and on, to managing-job number 5.   

The Real Dog Days

Don’t give me any crap about the dog days of summer.  Anytime you can enjoy a meal outside, that ain’t no dog day.  White Sox in last place and the sun’s out, not a dog day.  Cubs in last place and sun’s out, that’s a holiday.

You want dog days, come to Chicago in January.  According to AccuWeather, fifteen days this month have been cloudy, twelve partly cloudy and one—that very lonely number—has been sunny.  The last time the sun was out was five or six or seven days ago, I’ve lost count.  This is Seattle with snow, and forbearance.  Mention all the clouds to a Chicagoan, and they’re likely to say, “Yeah, but at least it’s not cold.”  Last year this time, the temperature hovered in the vicinity of 20-below.  Like I said, don’t talk to me about “the dog days.”

The trick is to find some way to hold on until the calendar turns and we get a month closer to spring; after all, Saturday is February.  Pitchers and catchers report eleven days after that with the first spring training game ten days after that.  But hold on how?  SoxFest is over, and all the media cares about is football.  The very thought of Super Bowl fun in the Florida sun sets me to shivering.

Strat-O-Matic?  I checked, and the year they’re reissuing is 1962; I have an earlier version I’m perfectly happy with.  The Grammys?  Who cares?  The Oscars?  See Grammys.  No, it’s grownup pants’ time.  Suck it up, take it one day at a time.  Make it to Saturday, turn the page.

Then, February 22^nd, vs. the Angels at Camelback Ranch in Glendale.  Arizona has sun, right?

Kobe Bryant

Clare and I found out about the death of Kobe Bryant at about the same time Sunday.  When we talked on the phone, she mentioned that Bryant and his 13-year old daughter Gianna were flying to her travel-team basketball game when their helicopter went down, killing all nine passengers aboard.  To any parent who’s gone through the travel-ball experience, such an end doesn’t seem too out of the question.  The only real difference is that in most scenarios, the accident takes place on a highway somewhere far from home.

My daughter was particularly impressed with how Bryant supported women’s sports, particularly, as you would expect, basketball.  But Clare also remembered that he tweeted out kudos last year for something that happened in college softball.  As a celebrity, Bryant looked to be far more of a parent than those folks facing charges for trying to buy their kids’ way into college.

Still, Bryant was a celebrity, one who had to deal with the scrutiny that resulted from a sexual assault case in 2003.  Bryant settled out of court, as often happens with celebrities.  He also offered an apology that noted his accuser had a different idea of consent than he did; it was an admission free of the conditional “if I have…” that so many celebrities resort to in these situations.  For what it’s worth, in all the time since Bryant was never again accused of such behavior.

Most of the tributes pouring in focus on Kobe Bryant the player.  I was more impressed by how this ex-athlete acted as a father.

     

Ouch

And another one bites the dust, or at least goes on the disabled list.  Last Thursday, the Bulls announced forward Lauri Markkanen will miss four-six weeks due to a pelvis injury.  This is what they call in sports a real injury bug.

Markkanen joins forward Otto Porter Jr. (probably out for the season), center Wendell Carter Jr. and forwards Chandler Hutchison and Daniel Gafford, all of whom have missed significant time this season.  Even two-way contract player and swingman Max Strus from DePaul tore his ACL in December.  That is one nasty bug.

Or maybe not.  Could there be something else at play here?  After all, the Bulls are the team that sat by quietly while a botched spinal tap on Luol Deng in 2013 came fairly close to killing him.  Virtual silence from the front office and coaching staff led fans to think that Deng was somehow dogging it.  With an organization like that, who needs injuries?         

A bad front office plus a bad coaching staff leads to a badly constructed roster; just ask Bobby Portis and Niko Mirotic.  What we may have here is the human equivalent of trying to force square pegs into round holes.  Try it sometime.

In a perfect storm of bad, players can try to do too much or grow frustrated or careless.  When any or all of that happens, expect the injury bug to bite.

Contempt(ible)

You think the Bears are a class organization?  Think again.  On Friday when the media was showering all sorts of attention on the White Sox and SoxFest, our Munsters of the Midway announced ticket-price increases averaging 3.9 percent.  That 8-8 record may have saved fans from collective heart failure, or financial ruin.  If the Munsters had actually made the playoffs, they probably would’ve jacked up prices about moon-high. 

In true Bears’ fashion, the tone-deaf treatment of its fan base didn’t stop at a little bit of ticket gouging.  No, team president Ted Phillips felt the need to say, “Unfortunately, our performance on the field failed to meet everyone’s expectations.  No one was satisfied, and it is now imperative for us to thoroughly analyze what went wrong and make the necessary corrections for 2020.”  Obviously, ticket prices were one of the problems.  They were too low.

Members of the McCaskey family get all sorts of praise for involvement with various charitable activities.  Given that they’re not playing with house money, big deal.  My God, if the White Sox can hold the line on ticket prices during a rebuild, the Munsters should do the same after falling flat on their faces after all but promising a trip to the Super Bowl.

But that wouldn’t be the McCaskeys’ way.

That Was Then, This Is Now

 A year ago this weekend, Clare and I went to SoxFest; you can’t beat free tickets.  I got autographs from Adam Engel and Daniel Palka (“To Bukowski from PALKA, it takes one to know one” he scrawled on a photo showing him in mid-swing).  We also listened to the likes of Yonder Alonso and Nicky Delmonico.  Those two are both gone, while Engel projects as a fourth outfielder, which is considerably better than Palka’s prospects.  Daniel either hits the cover off the ball as a non-roster invitee this spring, or he spends the summer in Charlotte.  Oh, he could also get released.

Such is the nature of professional sports, here today gone tomorrow.  I doubt few if any attendees from 2020 SoxFest will care or remember anything from last year.  Hope carries from one season to the next, but not the smoke and mirrors that help make the transition possible.


Ah, just three weeks to spring training.  Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, now.  Just be warm and sunny Opening Day, March 26^th at home against the Royals.

A Difference of Opinion

Clare forwarded me a press release yesterday from USA Softball, the governing body of softball in the United States and a member of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee.  It seems that MLB is pitching in to help the 2020 USA Softball Women’s National Team get ready for the summer games in Tokyo.  To which I can only say, Whoopee!

Of course, the press release—and to an extent, my daughter—sees things differently.  The purpose of the release is to publicize the “Stand Beside Her Tour” coming up in the months ahead.  The women’s national team will visit 35 cities for activities and exhibition games.  Wait, there’s more.

You see, the sponsorship will provide players “with access to support staff and resources they need to stand atop the podium and bring the Gold [Medal] back to the United States.”  I only wish there would’ve been some mention as to the exact nature of that support, outside of training at an MLB training complex in Florida.

Here’s the part that I found most troubling.  Tony Reagins, the executive vice president of baseball and softball development for MLB, was quoted saying, “The players on Team USA share our commitment to growing softball.”  Excuse me, but shouldn’t Reagins’ job be growing baseball to the point that it includes women?         

“Dad, not all girls want to play baseball,” Clare reminded me for the umpteenth million time, give or take.  “Yes, but there are girls who do,” I answered yet again.  If only baseball wanted them.

Warning Signs

You won’t hear this on any NBA halftime show, but professional basketball is in trouble.  Consider that 17 out of 30 teams are playing sub-.500 ball, with eight teams at 15 or fewer wins.  That’s in the neighborhood of a .341 winning percentage.

A big part of the problem is that the game is based on five players.  There’s a powerful temptation to tank because one superstar can carry a team on his back.  (See: Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem; James, LeBron.)   That the NBA has an anti-tanking draft scheme doesn’t stop front offices from gambling that a #1 draft pick is the one thing they can get right.

Last night, the Minnesota Timberwolves visited the United Center to play the Bulls, who won 117-110, giving the T-Wolves a 15-29 record on the season.  In the previous fourteen seasons ending in 2018-19, the T-Wolves have averaged 28.5 wins a season, “good” for a .348 winning percentage.  They were supposed to have tuned the corner a few years ago with Tom Thibodeau at the helm after his firing by the Bulls, but, surprise, it didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen even with young stars Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, with or without Jimmy Butler, I might add.  Oh, Wiggins scored 25 and Towns put in 40 last night, only success isn’t measured by points-per-game alone.

I definitely wouldn’t want to be a T-Wolves fan.  With the Bulls all of two games better, I don’t much want to be a fan of them, either.   

The Goldilocks' Challenge

The NFL selects 15 candidates for its hall of fame, baseball elects two (plus another two selected by a veterans’ committee).  The one sport lets too many in, the other too few.  What to do?

First off, a tip of the cap to Derek Jeter and, yes, Larry Walker for their election to Cooperstown, as announced yesterday.  Next, a question for the baseball establishment:  If football can put offensive linemen into Canton, why can’t baseball find a place in Cooperstown for the likes of Tommy John, Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso, Billy Pierce…?  Not to take anything away from the Bears’ Jimbo Covert, though I’d like to see what his football WAR would be and how to compute it.

As for the other names mentioned here, like I said:  WAR, what is it good for?  And what’s a hall of fame without John, Kaat et al? 

What Is It Good For?

The results of baseball’s Hall-of-Fame voting will be announced tomorrow, which must’ve prompted three sportswriters for the Tribune to beat the rush and disclose their votes in today’s paper.  They shouldn’t have bothered.

The good news is none of them voted for anyone from the PEDs crowd: Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sheffield or Sosa.  That last one is particularly gratifying, especially given how Slammin’ Sammy always had his way with the Chicago media in his playing days.  When it comes to clarity, better late than never, I guess.

That said, I have to wonder if these guys watch the same sport I do.  Larry Walker got two votes while Todd Helton and Scott Rolen picked up one apiece.  Paul Konerko got zero votes, with one sportswriter explaining he “really wanted to” before deciding Konerko belongs in the “Hall of Very Good,” alongside Mark Grace and Don Baylor.  Why only very good?  In part because Konerko had a career WAR of 27.7 vs. 46.7 for Mike Cameron, who the Sox traded to the Reds for Konerko in the offseason of 1998.

Will someone please explain WAR to me again?  Konerko amassed 2340 hits; a .279 BA; 439 homeruns; 1162 runs scored; and 1412 RBIs.  Compare those numbers to Cameron: 1700 hits; .249 BA; 278 homers; 1064 runs scored; and 968 RBIs.  Konerko was named an All-Star six times to once for Cameron.  Do Cameron’s three Gold Gloves explain the difference?

Now, consider Walker.  If you knew nothing about him, and I told you he had a seventeen-year career with three batting titles and three Silver Slugger awards (to go with seven Gold Gloves), you might think he had monster stats to explain that 72.7 WAR, yes?  Yet, outside of a .313 career BA, Walker’s stats aren’t all that impressive.  Konerko has more homers and RBIs, Walker more runs scored.  Oh, and did I mention Walker spent 9-1/2 seasons in the hitter-friendly—no, hitter-crazy—thin air of Colorado?

Konerko played eighteen seasons, one more than Cameron, Walker and Todd Helton, who spent his entire career with Colorado (see above).  Seventeen years in Colorado, and Konerko still ended up with six more career RBIs.  Maybe the three Gold Gloves at first base along with the four Silver Slugger awards explain Helton’s 61.2 WAR.  Konerko has 17 postseason RBIs vs. four for Helton and fifteen for Walker.  There must be a penalty involved when factoring postseason performance into WAR.

Rolen is yet another seventeen-year veterans.  His 70.2 WAR is the product of 2077 hits; 316 homers; 1211 runs; and 1287 RBIs.  He has eight Gold Gloves to go with twelve postseason RBIs.   And that’s different from Robin Ventura how, exactly?

Numbers alone don’t tell the story, or so I believe.  Weighing everything as carefully as I can, I can’t help but come away wondering—WAR, what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.   

Paths Not Taken

There are 32 teams in the NFL, all with a single annual objective, to reach the Super Bowl.  One team in the NFL is tasked with a second objective, to beat the Packers.  That twice-tasked team is the Bears.

How to beat the Packers when it counts?  Well, the 49ers showed one way in their NFC Championship tilt with Green Bay—you run the ball and manage the game.  San Francisco’s Raheem Mostert rushed for 220 yards and four touchdowns while Jimmy Garoppolo threw all of eight times in four quarters of play.  The pride of Arlington Heights was a study in how not to get in the way or screw things up.  Oh, and some guy named Robbie Gould kicked a 54-yard field goal to go with 27- and 42-yarders.

The Bears showed time and again this season they lacked a running game along with a quarterback who knew what to do in crunch time (or any other time during sixty minutes of play, for that matter).  They could’ve tried to acquire Garoppolo from the Patriots, if only the Bears’ “brain trust” hadn’t set their sights on Mitch Trubisky in the 2017 draft.

And, by going with Trubisky, the Munsters lost their chance to draft Patrick Mahomes.  If the 49ers beat the Packers one way, Mahomes could have done it another, by throwing and scrambling to his heart’s delight, like he did in leading his Chiefs over the Titans 35-24 in the AFC Championship game.  Oh, this guy is scary good, but he lacks the humility the Bears expect of their players outside of Martellus Bennett and Brandon Marshall.  Garoppolo or Mahomes?

The Bears can watch the Super Bowl to see how two paths not taken do in fact lead to the same place.

Do I Spy a Seismic Shift?

 It sure wasn’t a headline I expected to see on day two of the Cubs Convention, but there it was yesterday, splashed across the front page of the Sun-Times’ expanded Saturday sports’ section: [White] Sox Town?  The accompanying story speculated that Chicago baseball loyalties could soon be shifting south of Madison Street.  Wait, there’s more: Cubs’ fans at the convention booed team chairman Tom Ricketts, twice, no less.

Ricketts got the strawberries both for showing his face at introductions and then for mentioning the Marquee Sports Network, the new and virtually exclusive home of all team broadcasts, that is, if your cable provider picks it up.  Mine doesn’t, and I don’t want it to.  Why?  Because if Comcast bites the bullet and subscribes to Marquee, it passes the cost on to me.  In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a big Cubs’ fan.

Therein lies the evil genius of this particular enterprise—people who don’t care about the Cubs or don’t care about sports, for that matter, will be subsidizing the North Siders.  Talk about a racket.  In the ideal world, I would be able to sit down and pick each and every cable channel I wanted, a la carte, if you will; only cable companies don’t allow that, and the federal government is too chicken to make them.  So, I’m reduced to crossing my fingers in the hopes that Comcast doesn’t cave.  Fingers crossed.

However Marquee plays out, I’m more focused on the Sox, both past and present.  The present part is obvious; 2020 should be interesting, to say the least.  But the past is, too.  For openers, there’s that part of the past that involves new Sox starter Dallas Keuchel, who pitched for the Astros during the time of their cheating escapades.  What did Keuchel know about his teammates cheating, and when did he know it?  After all, cheating is a subject that has long drawn the interest of Sox pitchers.

A hundred years ago, there were Ed Cicotte and Lefty Williams, and now we have Jack McDowell.  An anchor for those pitching staffs of the early ’90s, McDowell this week went on talk radio in North Carolina to disclose a sign-stealing system set up by then-manager Tony LaRussa.  McDowell alleged that a blinking light in an outfield sign signaled Sox hitters what to expect, this after a camera had picked up the catcher’s sign.  The story might carry more weight if LaRussa had ever managed McDowell, which he didn’t.

And let’s not forget pitcher Al Worthington, who actually left the team after learning his new team positioned a spy in the centerfield scoreboard to alert Sox batters what the pitcher intended to throw.  Yup, the blinking light thing, again.  Worthington actually feared that participating in such a scheme could affect his chances of reaching the Good Place in the afterlife.  That didn’t appear to be a problem for the Astros.          

I Take It All Back (Sort of, Maybe)

I Take It All Back (Sort of, Maybe)

The collective ears of MLB really must’ve been burning/buzzing/ringing from my remarks yesterday on the status of women in baseball, as in next to invisible.  No sooner do I crack wise, and the Giants hire 29-year old Alyssa Nakken as an assistant coach. 

The former all-conference first baseman from Sacramento State is now one of thirteen coaches named to the staff of new manager Gabe Kapler.  Nakken’s formal job description doesn’t go beyond “assistant coach,” and skeptics—maybe me among them—will point out that she won’t be among the seven uniformed coaches allowed to sit in the dugout at game time.  But Nakken does get to wear a uniform before games.

To do what, exactly?  Kapler explained in a statement that Nakken and Mark Hallberg, another new hire as assistant coach, “will focus on fostering a clubhouse culture that promotes high performance through, among other attributes, a deep sense of collaboration and team.”  Well, that certainly explains it, or not.

A story on MLB.com yesterday did try to flesh out Nakken’s and Hallberg’s duties (in what I’m guessing is a paraphrase of Kapler’s statement).  The story noted the two will work to “streamline practice with an aim toward making on-field work shorter and more intense in duration.  They will be tasked with developing a competition aspect to practice, perhaps recording and tracking sprint times to first base or efficiency in base-running decisions and posting the results.”  I bet soon-to-be 33-year old Buster Posey and 35-year old Jeff Samardzija can hardly wait to have those results made public.  Hey, tortoise.

The Giants are going all-in with a New Age approach to coaching.  Their 32-year old bench coach never played a game in the minors or majors, and a 29-year old assistant hitting coach is, well, 29 as opposed to 34, like Giants’ third baseman Evan Longoria.  The composition of this staff is either a work of genius or a disaster in waiting.  Given that Kapler as a rookie manager with the Phillies nearly ran out of pitchers halfway through a game early in the 2018 season, I’m leaning towards the latter.

But the move is good for women no matter how unproductive Nakken’s job may turn out to be.  It will get players used to being around female coaches and front offices accustomed to thinking of women as coaching material.  Now, if teams would only start inserting female players at second base and actually having women coaches in the dugout, then we’d be cooking with gas.

More Girls, Girls, Girls

The NHL has announced that, as part of its All-Star weekend festivities next weekend, there will be a three-on-three game featuring players from the U.S. women’s national team going up against their Canadian counterparts.  This is the latest in a series of moves by the league to treat female hockey players as a possible talent pool in the not-too-distant future.  The national pastime prefers to go in a different direction.

There are women who play baseball, but you won’t see them doing anything on the field during All-Star festivities.  No women will take part in the homerun derby, no female teams will play one another a day before the guys do.  Nor will baseball invite any of the best female softball players to participate.  Instead, if past is prologue, at least one very good female athlete—and one who would be on the shortlist of best-ever softball player—will be made to look like she’s having fun while a bunch of ex-baseball players and celebrities clown around during a slow-pitch softball game.

  I wonder what goes through Jennie Finch’s mind as she participates.  No real contest pitting the best of the softball world against baseball’s best, past or present.  Just hijinks and laughs.

You gotta love baseball.  Or not.

Beat the Clock

Clare and I have been talking a lot about MLB’s sign-stealing scandal.  “It would’ve been nice if someone had told me the changeup was coming,” mused my daughter.  But let me say right here I didn’t raise a cheat, and my kid will probably try and rip the plaque off the wall in Cooperstown of any PEDs’ user elected to the Hall of Fame.

The two of us agree that a pitcher tipping pitches is a pitcher tipping pitches, and not the opposition stealing signs.  Furthermore, we agree that a runner at second base or anyone noticing something from the dugout is also on the up-and-up; the sin occurs once you start using binoculars and/or electronics.  The bat bashing against the trash can is just a silly symphony revived.

To me (or my eyes, if you will), the more elaborate the scheme, the less likely it is to work.  Somebody has to relay the information to the dugout, where someone else has to relay the information to the batter, all this in real time.  This will never work against any pitcher who works fast, and I wonder how often it works against a deliberate pitcher like Jose Quintana.  Maybe Astros’ telecasts are archived, and someone will go through them to pick out instances of the scheme succeeding.

Which brings us to the question of how effective the sign-stealing routine the Giants had back in 1951 for home games at the Polo Grounds.  Somebody in the clubhouse, located 480-plus feet from home plate, pressed a buzzer that sent the information (was that one buzz or two?) to the Giants’ bullpen, also 400-plus feet from the batter.  Supposedly, a player in the bullpen then played around with a baseball to signal to the batter what kind of pitch was coming.

So, somebody using binoculars had to pick up a catcher’s sign from nearly 500 feet away, buzz the info to the bullpen, where a player tried not to look like a juggler who walked in off the street while signaling to the batter standing over 400 feet away, all this in real time.  How could such a setup have worked on a consistent basis?  It’s worth noting that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred reported in his findings that the Astros stopped using their hi-tech system—except for the trash-can banging, that is—because “players no longer believed it was effective.”

But if Bobby Thomson hit his pennant-winning homerun off Ralph Branca because he was alerted by some buzzing and jugging, it wasn’t just “The Shot Heard ’Round the World.”  It was the longest of long shots and a performance for the ages.   

Girls, Girls, Girls

The Sun-Times may have set a record yesterday for “Transaction” notices when it ran a 5-3/8” notice—in tiny type—of White Sox organizational moves.  Name after name after name, and yet all I saw were two that were recognizably female.

One of those belonged to a new senior director—of minor league operations, and the other to the office manager of the team’s baseball academy in the Dominican Republic.  If this is progress on gender equality, parity should happen a day or two before the sun goes supernova.

 

On the Carpet

Yesterday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred laid down the law to the Astros for a sign-stealing scheme that stretched from the 2017 season into 2018.  General manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were suspended for a year (and subsequently fired by Houston owner Jim Crane).  The team was also fined $5 million and will lose its first- and second-round draft choices in the next two drafts.  I’ll give Manfred a solid B for his response.

The Astros should’ve been fined in the neighborhood of $50 million, but there’s a $5 million ceiling on team fines, which definitely needs to be raised; it will be interesting to see if Manfred is willing to demand something like that from the owners, who would have to agree.  But it is nice, for once, to see discipline climb up a few rungs on the organizational ladder.

Now, if he were really feeling creative, Manfred would demand all current and former Astros’ players from 2017-18 to participate in an open-ended news conference.  Who made the most use of stolen signs?  Why didn’t anyone go public, if they thought it was wrong?  Did in fact anyone think it was wrong? And who got the job of banging on a dugout trash can with a bat to signal batters?  Was it one bang for a fastball, or two?

On a related note, at least for me, MLB.com ran a story last week in which six of its writers revealed their HOF votes.  All six voted for PEDs’ users Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens; four added Gary Sheffield to the mix; and two voters sent in ballots for those three worthies, plus Manny Ramirez.  My question: Shouldn’t you six now come to the defense of Luhnow and Hinch and anyone else (the Red Sox look to be next up for punishment) the commissioner goes after for cheating?

Do You See What I See?

Yesterday’s Texans-Chiefs game had KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes put on a show for the ages.  Assuming he watched on his TV, what exactly did Bears’ coach Matt Nagy see?

Was it Mahomes rallying his teammates on the sideline after they’d fallen behind 24-0, in the second quarter, no less?  Mahomes throwing for 321 yards and five touchdowns, turning one rout into another, by a score of 51-31?  Did Nagy see Mahomes at all, or was he too busy feeling happy for his mentor, Chiefs’ coach Andy Reid?

Now, imagine the McCaskey family gathered around the TV, watching the game.  What did they see?  Patrick Mahomes the quarterback they could’ve had or a reincarnation of Mike Ditka or Dick Butkus or Dick Gordon or any of a number of Bears’ players who wouldn’t toe the “shut up and play” line instituted by Papa Bear a century ago?  Mahomes possesses a confidence that must send shivers down the collective McCaskey spine.

A player so sure of himself will be slow to genuflect before the powerful and knowing Oz.  Or did the McCaskeys look at Mahomes and see another problem player like Martellus Bennett or Brandon Marshall, brought to Chicago by an earlier version of the Munsters’ braintrust?  

Finally, imagine Bears’ GM Ryan Pace sitting in front of the TV.  Would he even know how to turn it on?

Two Strikes

The current collective-bargaining agreement has some real problems, as evidenced by Kris Bryant’s grievance and Mookie Betts’ salary, one or both of which could lead to a strike once the CBA expires after the 2021 season.

Bryant is upset the Cubs held off calling him up in 2015 until late April.  Had he been part of the Opening Day roster, his service-time count-off to free agency would’ve started; by waiting a few weeks, the Cubs got an extra year on the clock, if you will.  Only in baseball can a day equal a year.

The problem with Betts, it would seem, is his salary.  Rather than go to arbitration, the Red Sox and Betts agreed to a $27 million, one-year deal.  Consider that Betts hit .295 last year with 29 homeruns and 80 RBIs, all down from 2018, when he won the AL MVP hitting .346 with 32 homers and 80 RBIs   Betts did score 135 runs in 2019, up six from the season before.

For that great season, Betts earned $10.5 million, vs. $20 million for 2019.  His third and final year of arbitration eligibility will net him $27 million.  But if his production went down, why didn’t his salary?  Welcome to the vagaries of baseball arbitration.

The temptation here is to pick sides, but that would be a mistake.  Players and owners may be at each other’s throats, but they’re pretty united in not giving a damn’ about me or any other fan.  I’ve always looked forward to September call ups to see what the Sox minor-league system has developed.  No more, service time.  I can barely afford the cost of a ticket, this at the same time while in all likelihood I’ll be stuck subsidizing the Cubs as soon as my cable provider picks up the team’s new network and passes the cost along in my bill.  The Ricketts as owners couldn’t care less about this White Sox fan.  After all, money spent on their cable network is money I can’t spend on the Sox.

And Mookie Betts?  He’s too busy counting down the days to free agency, which happens the moment the 2020 season comes to an end.  Doug?  Doug who?  Oh, Doug the baseball fan.  What a chump.  

Downstream

Some kids grow independent all at once, others a little at a time.  Me, I’d get on my bike and peddle a little further one summer week to the next.  Unfamiliar street signs marked my way in what I thought was a grown-up world.  Naturally, I brought along my transistor radio.

The White Sox went where I went, Al Weis and Floyd Robinson performing feats of hit-and-run magic that filtered up to me through an earpiece.  It was me, Bob Elson shilling White Owl cigars and the Sox together off on an adventure to the far ends of the earth, or until my legs started to grow tired.  Now, when I bike, I go bud-free the better to hear any approaching danger.  God took pity on a young fool once, and I’m not young anymore.

So, let me go from that gauzy memory to this nightmare prediction—at some point, oh, five to fifteen years down the line, baseball will make sure that kids won’t be able to do what I did, at least for free.  The moment a numbers’ cruncher figures out how teams can make more money taking games off the radio and stream them, MLB will move to act, and then everything new will get old again.

I got to listen to games on the radio only because owners overcame their fear of losing control of the product; thank heavens commercials put money in their pockets.  It was the same with TV; owners were petrified nobody would go to a game if they could watch at home.  Well, that never happened, and now owners have wrestled games off of free TV.

Mark my words, radio is next, and then it will be 1919 or 1915 or 1895 all over again.  Next will be open season on knot holes in the wall.  Just kidding.  Those have already been taken care of.

Gone

Contrary to the old saying, there really used to be a free lunch, or at least free TV coverage of Chicago sports’ teams.  Now, there’s only the Bears, and that’s more torture than entertainment.

Blackhawks, Bulls, White Sox?  All exclusively on cable.  Ditto the Cubs, who are gambling they can make fans and cable providers pay for the privilege of watching the North Siders play.  I can’t help but question the implications.  How long until a Wirtz-lite scenario plays out?

The late Bill Wirtz was so much of a Neanderthal he kept his Blackhawks off TV to the best of his ability; Hawks fans either had to pay up to watch their team at the Stadium or listen to games on the radio.  By the time of Wirtz’s death in 2007, the team was on life support, saved only by the sports’ savvy of son Rocky Wirtz.

The Hawks have won three Stanley Cups under the new Wirtz, so the team’s TV situation is unique, going from virtually nothing to a hit on cable.  As long as the team was really good, fans didn’t mind watching them while somebody, a bar or homeowner, picked up the tab.  The Hawks aren’t so good now, and it’ll be interesting to see how much their viewership declines, along with attendance.

Sox fans are especially sensitive to the subject of TV access for a couple of reasons.  First, back in the late 1960s, the team left WGN for Ch-32, a UHF station, which meant no box on top of the television, no Sox game; we bought a box, only the reception, like the team, stunk.  Then, when Jerry Reinsdorf bought the team in 1981, he rushed a portion of their games onto cable as soon as he could.  But you could still see some Sox games—and Cubs and Bulls—on free TV locally as late as last year.  No more.

Clare grew up a Sox fan because her father insisted on finding games to watch, regardless the monthly bill.  And that’s fine.  No, I take that back.  For better or worse, it’s the wave of the future.  No more turning on a TV, any TV, and finding a ballgame to watch.  If you can’t afford a sports’ package, pro sports in Chicago doesn’t want you.

How sad, and possibly dangerous for the long-term health of local teams.  If they lose the kids to Xbox, they’ll lose the kids’ kids, too.  

What a Load of Bull

Some rebuilds work, others don’t.  At 13-25 and three years removed from the last time they saw .500, the Bulls fall into that second category.

I want to like head coach Jim Boylen, I really do, but he’s a moose caught in the headlights.  Boylen keeps saying his young team is going to learn from its mistakes, in which case they should all be basketball geniuses.  Boylen owns a .313 (!) winning percentage in a season and a half.  If he’s not careful, if his players keep needing to learn, Boylen will be challenging Tim Floyd’s career .280 mark before long.

White Sox fans should count their lucky stars.  Of the two Jerry Reinsdorf-owned teams, theirs looks to be headed in the right direction.  As much as it pains me to say this, at least Sox general manager Rick Hahn has a clue.  And Gar Forman over at the Bulls?

Why, he’s the exec who back in 2011 acquired Niko Mirotic, aka The Next Sure Thing.  Mirotic lasted five seasons (and one punch from Bobby Portis in practice) before deciding he liked European hardcourts better.  But, hey, Forman packaged Mirotic and a second-round draft pick for three bodies and a first-round draft choice.  Anybody seen Chandler Hutchison lately?

Monday, the Bulls played the suddenly-rebuilt Mavericks, losing 118-110 in another one of those learning experiences.  Dallas is now winning thanks in large part to 6’7” guard Luca Doncic, who scored 38 points against those ever-learning students on his way to a triple-double.  Then, last night, the Bulls played the Nets, a team that actually had a worse record.  No more.  Even without injured rookie Zion Williamson, New Orleans prevailed, 123-108.

The mind reels.  So do the Bulls.

Bot This

One day last week, Michele passed along a tweet that purported to be from a national baseball group, though it sure read as political, maybe by way of a place where they don’t play much baseball.  We do live in strange times.

Anyway, the tweet, along with another one I found from the group, talked about a baseball crisis that isn’t being addressed.  And what could it be, you ask?  Why, criminal activity around Guaranteed Rate Field!  The tweet called it an emergency and wondered if the White Sox shouldn’t move to now-vacant Turner Field until conditions improve.  Give me a break.

Mental midgets have brandished the specter of crime in and around 35^th and Shields to slur the White Sox and nearby black residents for as long as I can remember.  “Oh, you don’t want to go to Comiskey Park, it’s not safe.”  So, my parents must’ve wanted to reduce the number of children in their family when they let me take the bus, alone, to the park once I reached high school.  And my dad must’ve had a plan all those times we parked in Bridgeport for a night game in the 1960s and ’70s.  Yeah, he was going to toss me to the wolves so he could make a run to the car.

Happily, I’ve lived long enough to see actual Chicagoans, including Cubs’ fans, stop mouthing this gibberish.  In Chicago, where race has mattered from day one, the White Sox have always been sensitive in that regard.  I’ve come across correspondence from as early as 1917 where someone a part of the Great Migration was amazed that he could attend a major-league ballgame in the presence of white people.  Comiskey Park was for a time home to the Negro Leagues’ Chicago American Giants in addition to the annual Negro Leagues’ All-Star Game.  None of this turned off white fans from packing the park during the Go-Go Sox era, or its replacement across the street during the 2005 World Series season. 

Go to a Sox game, and you’re likely to see the most mixed sports’ crowd in Chicago: white, black, brown.  All that matters is the play on the field, not the color(s) in the stands.  Somehow, I think the fact that ex-president Barack Obama is a Sox fan played into those tweets.  I’ll take a Sox fan, regardless of color, to a dweeb tweeter any day of the week.

Stop It, Already

The Tribune just can’t help itself.  This infatuation with the Bears is a sign of bad journalism; a spot-on reflection of a fan base unable to move on; or both.  Take your pick.

Sunday, David Haugh did a nice page-one column on how, “Seldom do the Bears say what they really mean,” in large part because the notion of transparency is both foreign and offensive to them.  Haugh doubts that GM Ryan Pace is being totally honest about his commitment to quarterback Mitch Trubisky, and so do I and probably most of Beardom.  But filling up the back page was a puff piece on Virginia McCaskey.  The Bears’ matriarch is celebrating her 97^th birthday.

Then, yesterday they did a “if only” story for the just-completed season, as in if only this field goal had been made, that penalty avoided and any of a number of errant passes caught.  Guys, if this team had won two more games and made the playoffs, all they would’ve accomplished is embarrassing themselves over the weekend.  The Bears are an organization in search of leadership, which in Halas Hall gets confused with a flow chart.

Which brings us back to Virginia McCaskey.  The family literally hides behind her image as Grandma Bear and sole surviving cub of Papa Bear.  If she’s in charge, it’s time for her to take the blame the way any incompetent owner would.  Only the Chicago media is still too afraid to attack someone approaching their centennial.

But they have no choice, if in fact she’s in control.  And if she’s just providing a smokescreen to cover the incompetence of her offspring, then it’s time for the media to stop paying attention to Virginia McCaskey and focus on the McCaskey—George, I think—actually in control.  Your choice, guys.  

Right Back at You

There I was, peddling away on my exercycle while watching the Vikings-Saints’ game Sunday.  And what the camera did catch, right after the Vikings kicked a point after—some proud Saints’ fan flipping a double-bird to the FOX football audience.  Why, thanks, buddy, and right back at you.

There’s a thin, verging on invisible, line dividing acceptable behavior at a sporting event from the stuff idiots do.  The Saints’ fan, like most Yankees’ fans, was full-on idiot.  I yell at players but never swear at them those White Sox games I go to.  Call it learned behavior.  My father never swore when he took me to a game, and I certainly never swore (or threw anything) when I took Clare to games.  Kids learn what you teach them.

So, who raised this Saints’ guy?  Oh, and buddy, your team still lost, again.

A Slip of the Tongue

Mike Rizzo and I have a lot in common, outside of him being general manager of the Washington Nationals and me just being a sports’ gadfly.  We both grew up in the city, went to Chicago-area all-boys’ Catholic high schools and love the game of baseball.  OK, my not playing in the minors would count as another difference.

The Sun-Times did a nice profile of Rizzo on Saturday.  As I’ve said, hats off to the Times for doing sports, from preps to pros, right at least one day a week.  The story notes how the Nationals’ winning the World Series last October over the analytics-driven Astros qualifies in some quarters as a victory for “old school” baseball.  Rizzo thinks of his front office as more of a hybrid.  He told the Times, “You walk past the desk and cubicles of some of the smartest young men I’ve ever been around,” those being the Nationals’ “Ivy League-born and ‘bred” numbers’ crunchers.  “We marry that to some of the orneriest, grinder baseball lifers that there are.”

Notice how Rizzo said “young men.”  I doubt that was a slip of the tongue, just as I doubt any of his ornery lifers are female.  New or old, in some fundamental ways, baseball doesn’t change at all.  Too bad.

The Proof’s in the Pudding

Thank you, Bears, Blackhawks and Bulls for being so less than good this year.  Thank you, Cubs, for going into postseason hibernation, which is better than saying or (not) doing stuff that only alienates your fan base.  Whatever the reason, all of the other Chicago teams have let the White Sox steal a whole news cycle for themselves, again.

On Thursday, the Sox announced they signed top prospect Louis Robert to a six-year, $50 million deal, with two club option.  So, we won’t be playing the service-time-clock game on the South Side this April, unless it involves Nick Madrigal.  Ask, and you shall receive.  Be careful what you ask for.

Barring injury or an 0-for-50 spring, Robert will be in the Opening Day lineup, and fans will see if the 22-year old is worth the $102 million have invested in him since his 2017 signing.  (That figure includes the $26 million signing bonus and $26 million luxury tax.)  I imagine the wannabe GMs are busy figuring out the postseason roster(s).  Not me.

Where other people might be clamoring for free-agent outfielder Nick Castellanos, I want to see what this team, its coaching staff and front office can do with the talent on hand.  Teams that get caught up in win-now mode do stupid stuff, as Sox GM Rick Hahn surely knows.  Anyone care to recall James Shields for Fernando Tatis Jr.?

If this is a playoff-contending team, let manager Rick Renteria and his staff show it.  Instead of adding hitting and/or pitching at the cost of young talent (see Tatis, above), put the pressure on Don Cooper and Frank Menechino to produce that talent through their knowledge of pitching and hitting, respectively.  Every trade-deadline deal constitutes an admission that an organization miscalculated, that they’re not good enough as constituted.  In that case, how will they ever be good enough to win a championship unless they steal away another Gehrig or Koufax?

Not too long ago, the Sox had a marketing campaign centered around the notion that Ricky’s boys don’t quit.  OK, then let’s see what Renteria can do with a team that has some really good players on it before we risk trading away another Tatis or adding an albatross of a contract a la Dunn, Shields or LaRoche.

Personally, spring training can’t come soon enough.

Don Larsen

Ironically, I didn’t know who Don Larsen was until the end of his career, which happened to be a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1967.  I was four-and-two-months when Larsen pitched his perfect game for the Yankees against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series and a not-yet baseball fan when Larsen spent a half-season with the White Sox in 1961.  But as a 14-year old, I was impressed to read about this North Side reliever who’d once achieved perfection.

All ballplayers from the 1950s and earlier look the same to me, which is to say neither young nor old.  Larsen was 27 when he went into the record books.  Any photos of me at that age show someone so much younger.  Maybe it was the booze that Larsen was said to drink too much of, or black-and-white film vs. color. 

Or maybe ballplayers achieve a patina of immortality or timelessness once enough years and decades go by.  Our descendants may feel the same seeing pictures of long-ago 27-year olds.