Tour de Me

The weather and my body were cooperating, so I took out the Schwinn this morning to take on the Illinois Prairie Path.  It was 45 miles of relative solitude.

 

Unlike the lakefront path, the Prairie Path allows me to go miles without seeing anyone, which allows for deep and shallow thought, depending on the terrain.  When I’m going up one of those two rises the path affords, my only thought is not turning into Benny Hill on a bike.  Mission accomplished there.  Other times, I found myself thinking about Nick Madrigal.  For reasons I can’t quite explain, I’m a skeptic, although his three hits yesterday against the Royals were impressive.

 

I bike because I can and because I enjoy it.  A half-hour drive from home got me to a path that goes by farms and wetlands; as ever, the cows looked up as if to say, Hello.  I saw a heron land and nearly collided with a duck that thought it could follow behind the heron.  And, for the first time in all my years of riding, I had to avoid a frog that hopped its way across the path.

 

The weather the past two summers along with COVID has affected my biking, to the point I can’t remember the last time I did the Prairie Path, so, of course I don’t remember all the construction along the path.  For years, I went by an abandoned sand and gravel quarry.  Now, it’s undergoing residential development.  And behind the cows were houses instead of corn.  Things change, whether or not I want them to.

 

And Nick Madrigal gets the start at second base tonight against the Twins.

 

Caught in Time

Some things about bizarre-baseball I don’t mind, like expanded rosters and the DH in the National League.  Change is good, or necessary.  One thing I don’t like is a carryover from pre-COVID days:  Games take too damn’ long.

 

Yesterday, the Cubs’ Yu Darvish and Jeremy Jeffress combined to shut out the Reds, 3-0; there were sixteen total hits and walks, minus two double plays.  The game took 2:47 to play.  Maybe I should mention here that it was a seven-inning affair, the first half of a twin-bill.  Double headers only go seven innings this season.

 

Also yesterday, the Yankees topped the Mets by a score of 2-1 in a game that featured fourteen total hits and walks, minus one double play.  So, why did it take 3:00 to play?  Maybe the Mets using seven pitchers had something to do with it.

 

And just maybe a crap-load of commercials; there seem to be more than ever.  They’re even going split-screen during the game to run yet more ads.  So much for blaming this on the fans.  There aren’t any at the game to slow things down.  The snail’s pace is all by design.

 

Lucas Giolito’s no hitter on Tuesday took 2:23.  Maybe that’s the answer, pitching complete games where the other side gets just one baserunner.  But I doubt Commissioner Rob Manfred would go for it.  Not enough commercial time.

Circus News

Well, I said that mediocre teams give back at least half of the games they win on a streak.  By that measure, the White Sox were a mediocre team at the start of August.  A six-game winning streak ended, and three games over .500 turned to one under before long.  What a difference a near-month makes.

 

A seven-game winning streak ended last Sunday, to be followed by a three-game streak (and counting).  Last night was classic clown baseball, with an error letting the Royals tie the score in the top of the ninth and put the go-ahead run on third base with just one out.  Pick a year, any year, between 2013 and 2019, and the Sox lose this game.  But last night, catcher Yasmani Grandal hit a walk-off homerun, which was nice of him considering how he basically let the tying run score by falling asleep at the plate.

 

Moral of the story—when you play clown baseball and win, things are going your way, and you are not a mediocre team.

Us First

A group of University of Nebraska football players is suing the Big Ten to force the conference to allow games this fall.  According to fansided.com, the lawsuit, filed in state court by eight players, is charging, among other offenses, “wrongful interference with business expectations.”  How special.

 

Basically, the players are arguing that football is their major and the Big Ten is in effect denying them the degree necessary to go out in the world and get a job.  Only the “degree” is a full slate of football games.  And here I thought college athletics is all about the “student-athlete.”  Somebody go tell the NCAA.

 

I don’t know whether to be impressed by the players’ honesty or put off by their arrogance.  Buy why choose?     

Standing Tall

I’ve been raving about White Sox infielder Danny Mendick since spring training last year.  A 22^nd round draft pick in 2015 out of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Mendick has grinded his way through the Sox minor-league system to get to be the right guy in the right place at the right time.  Top prospect Nick Madrigal went down in early August with a separated shoulder, and Mendick was there to step in.  Not bad for a 22^nd rounder who stands 5’10”.

 

Did I mention Mendick can hit?  Usually batting in the eight- or nine-spot, Mendick is hitting .266 with three homeruns, six RBIs and nine runs scored.  Of his 21 hits this season, seven have been for extra bases.  Not bad for a kid from Rochester NY.

 

This got me thinking about some other “short” players who impressed me last year, starting with 5’10” Mike Yastrzemski.  A 28-year old rookie with the Giants in 2019, Carl Yastrzemski’s grandson hit a respectable .272 with 21 homers and 55 RBIs.  So far this season, Yastrzemski is hitting .293 with seven homers and 23 RBIs.  No sophomore jinx here.

 

Or for 5’10” Mike Brosseau of the Rays.  The pride of Munster, Indiana, by way of Oakland University outside of Detroit, the 25-year old Brosseau came out of nowhere 2019 to hit .273 with six homers and 16 RBIs in 132 at-bats.  This year, Brosseau is coming off the bench to hit .318 with three homers and seven RBIs.  Again, pretty good for a non-giant.

 

Next on the list is 5’11” Nick Solak of the Rangers; Solak also happens to be from nearby Naperville North H.S., one of those places the scouts for our Chicago teams can’t seem to find.  Solak hit at a .293 clip his rookie season with five homers and 17 RBIs.  This year, he’s hitting .269 with 11 RBIs while playing four positions for Texas.

 

Nicky Lopez is another Naperville product, this time from Naperville Central.  Last year, the 5’11” Lopez hit .240 for the Royals while getting a crack at second base.  This year, he’s slipped to a .217 BA, but hope springs eternal, and the Royals come to town over the weekend, so we’ll see.

 

My point is that good things, good ballplayers, can come in relatively small packages.  Someday, one of those packages may even resemble my daughter, who played baseball long before she switched to softball.   

 

Adieu, Nick

ESPN figured out right quick who Lucas Giolito is.  He’s the guy who faced 28 Pirate batters last night on his way to the nineteenth no-hitter in White Sox history.  Giolito walked one, fanned 13 and needed 101 pitches to get the job done.

 

A tip of the cap to shortstop Tim Anderson, who ranged far to his right from his shift position for left-hand hitting Bryon Reynolds in the seventh inning.  Anderson threw across his body on the move for the out.  And a tip of the cap to first baseman Jose Abreu for scooping Anderson’s throw out of the dirt.  And a final doff of the chapeau to right fielder Adam Engle, who made a B+ running catch of a sinking opposite-field line drive by Erik Gonzalez for the 27^th and final out.

 

I’ll save my kudos for Giolito and his catcher, James McCann.  Giolito showed his composure, not just for the game but the season, given all those comments made by critics, including yours truly.  The man who gave up a towering homerun on the first pitch of the season has methodically righted the ship.  To give you an idea as to how bad Giolito was, he’s now tossed seventeen straight scoreless innings, to get his ERA down to 3.09.  Don’t stop now, Lucas.

 

And for you doubters out there sure to point out that the 7-18 Pirates are a woeful lot, just let me say, so were the 40-120 Mets of 1962, and they only got no-hit once that year, by Sandy Koufax.  The Dodger lefty walked five while striking out 13.  The Mets threw eight right-handed batters (pitcher included) against Koufax while the Pirates’ lineup featured seven left-handed batters (DH included) against the right-handed Giolito.  You decide who had the tougher go of it.

 

Lastly, McCann.  He’s caught Giolito’s last two games.  According to baseball-reference.com, Yasmani Grandal has caught Giolito four times, during which time the starter has amassed a 5.66 ERA.  With McCann catching three games, Giolito’s ERA falls to 0.78.  Hmm.  Why is pitch framing so important, again?

 

McCann also caught Dylan Cease Sunday against the Cubs in what I think was Cease’s best showing against a team not named the Tigers.  I love what Giolito has done to transform himself, and I can’t help but feel McCann is a part of that.  Sox GM Rick Hahn had better be careful about letting McCann walk at the end of the season.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Chicago is a Cubs’ town, just as it has also been a White Sox town.  Things change, things go in cycles.

 

But it’s been North-Side first for a long time now, dating to the early 1980s, when Harry Caray started doing Cubs’ games.  Caray gets too much credit for changing the dynamic; he was more an effect than a cause.  But either way, Sox fans are right to see themselves as the Israelites 2.0, wandering in the desert for a good—or bad—forty years.

 

Well, we’re back, sort of.  As a team, the Sox are young with plenty of potential that they flash from time to time; just ask the Cubs, who lost two out of three to their crosstown nemeses.  If only ESPN could be bothered to notice.  You’d think that coming in from out of the sports’ desert would make a good story, but, No, that would be too much of a bother.

 

ESPN did the Sox-Cubs’ game on Friday, and it was a good thing the announcers weren’t in town; my daughter might have hunted them down to exact her revenge.  The broadcast team kept referring to someone named Nick Giolito, a player Sox fans and players know better as Lucas Giolito.  After Eloy Jimenez hit a mammoth homerun, he was identified as one of those talented Cuban hitters on the team.  Only Eloy hails from the Dominican Republic.

 

Then, during Sunday’s game, an ESPN graphic referred to Sox second baseman Danny Medwick; those of us in the know call him Danny Mendick.  Maybe our Mendick reminded someone at ESPN of HOFer Ducky Medwick.

 

Yeah, I bet that’s what happened.

Live by the Long Ball...

Well, it isn’t every day you get to see a player hit homeruns in four consecutive at-bats the way Jose Abreu of the White Sox did Saturday and Sunday.  In fact, it’s only been done 43 times in all of MLB  history.  And it isn’t every day you see a Sox player hit six homers in a series.  No, only Abreu has managed that.  And the six homers by an opposing player ties for the most-ever against the Cubs, so that’s nice.

 

I just hate losing 2-1 on a two-run homer by Kyle Schwarber.  Maybe next time Dylan Cease and/or his catcher will notice how bad Schwarber looks on anything that isn’t low and away.  As ever, fingers crossed.

Not too long ago, when the Sox had themselves a six-game winning streak, I said that mediocre teams give half or more of that away.  In fact, my team went from three over .500 to one under before their seven-game streak ended Sunday.  We were 17-11 and now 17-12.  With the Pirates and Royals coming to town this week, there’s no reason to go mediocre.  We’ll see.      

 

Homer Happy

Another game, another bunch of homeruns by the White Sox against the Cubs, this time five in total, three courtesy of Jose Abreu.  For you fans out there keeping count, that’s 27 long balls over seven games, a MLB record.

 

This can’t go one forever, at least I don’t think it can.  But let the middle of the lineup keep doing what it’s supposed to be doing, with everybody else getting on base to score ahead of the latest blast.  How nice for a change to see the North Side team in disarray, flaying away helplessly.

 

Rebuild, Theo?

"A Ton of Slug"

I depend on my daughter for baseball updates.  The day the White Sox signed Luis Robert, we were standing in line to tour a Frank Lloyd Wright house.  That was a few years ago, unlike Thursday, when Clare called or texted scoring updates in the Sox 9-0 win over the Tigers; we were at the Milwaukee Zoo in search of elephants.  The updates are timely and, best of all, don’t cost a thing.  The elephants were pretty cool about it, too.

 

Last night, I didn’t need updates for the Sox visit to Wrigley Field; I watched the game for the full six Sox homeruns.  Robert hit a missile, Eloy Jimenez and Yasmani Grandal bombs.  Danny Mendick added a nice line drive into the bleachers while Jose Abreu golfed one and blasted another.  A person could get used to this sort of thing.

 

So, I feel good, but I also remember last Saturday, when I wanted to pillory Lucas Giolito and the coaching staff for dropping a twin bill against the Cardinals.  Baseball is like Chicago weather—things can change in short order.  I need to keep that in mind so as not to turn manic during this sprint of a season..

 

Cubs’ manager David Ross told reporters before the game the Sox have “a ton of slug” in their lineup.  Yes, they do, along with youth, which makes them different from the South Side Hit Men of 1977.  I was young then, watching a team full of veterans; I’m older now.  Best to sit back and enjoy the youngsters.

 

Be Careful What You Wish For

Some parents of Big Ten athletes are threatening to protest the conference’s decision to forego football this fall.  It’s all about the kids, right?  Juniors and seniors having big years before going into the NFL draft has nothing to do with it, I’m sure.

 

Part of what makes COVID-19 almost diabolical is how it affects different age groups.  The young who test positive mostly get kind of sick and recover (with the big exception noted below).  Their elders who get sick are far more likely to die.  Given how masses of college students seem to be partying like it’s 1999, all I can say is they mustn’t care about their parents or grandparents a whole lot.

 

Which brings us back to the complaining football parents.  Not only do they want to gamble with their sons’ health—there are reports of heart problems for athletes recovered from COVID—but their own as well.  You can’t watch your kid play in the NFL if you’re dead, guys.  Yes, it’s possible you might be able to do it up in heaven, but what if the reception’s bad and the Big Guy can’t be bothered?  What a bummer to find out the “football” He cares about is the soccer kind.

 

Then you’ll be stuck on a cloud with nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon.

St. Anthony

I really must be getting old—losing something last week nearly left me in tears.  How could a three-inch square of a coin purse mean so much?

 

I bought it on our vacation to Cooperstown the summer Clare was ten.  We studied the exhibits at the Hall of Fame, sat behind home plate at Doubleday Field; the sprinklers were on, and Clare brought along Molly, her American Girl doll who just happened to be dressed in a baseball uniform.  Then we drove up to Niagara Falls.

 

I bought the purse on the Canadian side, hence the maple leafs embossed on brown leather.  If I didn’t think of Cooperstown, of Clare sitting with Molly in that bandbox of a ballpark in upstate New York, every time I used that purse, it was damn’ close to it.  Then I went and lost the thing.

 

Maybe I was distracted by the phone call the cashier was handling and how he tried to reassure the caller there was no looting going on; we live in strange times.  Or I’ve become old and forgetful.  As it was, I didn’t realize the purse was missing for three days, and, when I went back to the store, it was no dice.

 

On the chance that something might’ve turned up over the weekend, I went back on Monday.  Lo and behold, someone had found it.  My life is complete, the leather holder of a memory I don’t ever want to forget back where it belongs.

Western Union

We used to be a two-TV family back when a certain child refused to be in the same room when I was watching The X-Files or Millennium (and as a kind of adult during the four seasons of 12Monkeys.  She was asleep on the couch, woke up during a “scary” scene and bit her tongue, or something.)  But now we’re down to one set; I don’t stream stuff on different platforms; and someone else wanted to watch the Democratic Convention.  So, downstairs I went to follow the White Sox on mlb.com’s Gameday.

 

This must be what it was like to follow games via telegraph.  Dot..dot..dash…dot, ball to McCann.  Ball in play…run(s) score.  How many is hard to say because the transcontinental line went down.  This is definitely old-school baseball.

 

The good news is the Sox are beating up on the Tigers, winning 10-4 last night.  Tim Anderson hit another leadoff homerun and keeps hitting in general.  The bad news is Luis Robert swings like Clare did as a ten-year old, which means early and often.  I reached my daughter before it was too late, now someone has to do the same with Robert.

 

Oh, and Robert hurt his right wrist trying to make a catch.  Dot..dash…dash…dot, fingers crossed.

A Couple of Shout-outs

Allow me two shout-outs, one with finger-pointing, that being for the Cardinals on Sunday.  Who does that to a guy?

 

The guy in question is rookie pitcher Roel Ramirez, who gave up back-to-back-to-back-to-back jacks in the bottom of the fifth inning in the game against the White Sox.  Why exactly did Cardinals’ manager Mike Shildt keep Ramirez in the game to take the full brunt of the assault?  I mean, there were two outs, so Ramirez had already faced the minimum number of batters.  Then, to send him down the next day, hey, very classy, not.

 

As to the White Sox hitting six homers against the Tigers last night, with Tim Anderson and Luis Robert each clubbing two, cool.  Danny Mendick joining in on the action, cool again.  Anderson and Yoan Moncada entered the record books as the first-ever MLB players to go back-to-back leading off a game against the same pitcher in a season while the Sox courtesy of their dynamic duo became the first-ever MLB team to start a game with back-to-back jacks twice within a five-game span.

 

I can live with that, just as long as it leads to wins.

A Whole Lotta Stuff

Yesterday was something of an emotional rollercoaster for yours truly, starting with the obituary for former Illinois governor James Thompson.  He saved the White Sox for Chicago, or at least that’s what it said in both papers.

 

What Thompson did was stop the clock on the floor of the Illinois General Assembly at 11:59 PM of the last day of the legislative session, until he could round up the votes for White Sox welfare, aka a publicly-funded stadium.  How ironic that someone with a stated fondness for Prairie architecture and someone who poured public funds into the renovation of a state-owned Frank Lloyd Wright (Dana-Thomas) house could turn around so quickly and easily to allow for the construction of a ball mall.

 

Going over that “pleasant” history took place in the morning.  Then, Clare called in the afternoon, when I was peddling away on the exercycle.  “Did you see?” she asked, with a note in her voice that hinted I would do well to speed up the recording of the game I was watching.  That child of mine was right.  Seeing your team go back to back to back to back is definitely fun.  That the first three homers came from Cuban-born players—Moncada, Grandal, Abreu—was also a first in MLB history.  Eloy, from the Dominican Republic, added on in that effervescent way of his.

 

And with MLB yesterday honoring the Negro Leagues, those first three homeruns were a perfect tie-in.  You see, Cuban-born Minnie Minoso played in the Negro Leagues before he found a home on the South Side, so you had Minoso, the Negro Leagues and the three homers all coming together perfectly.  Just not for me.

 

If Jom Thompson had been anything close to the visionary the obits suggested he was, he would have made Jerry Reinsdorf renovate his ballpark, the one that was home to the Negro-League Chicago American Giants and the site of the annual Negro Leagues’ All-Star games.  Instead, Thompson urged Reinsdorf, whom he knew from law school, to threaten to move so legislators would know he was serious.  Friends, that ain’t leadership to me.

 

But the homeruns were nice.   

As I Was Saying...

Well, the Stink Sox sure put on an exhibition yesterday in losing a twin bill to St. Louis, a team that hadn’t played in seventeen days and was missing at least two starters from its lineup.  Where to start?

 

Oh, let’s go with Lucas Giolito, who hit two batters and walked another in giving up four first-inning runs.  This is a staff ace?  This is someone who thinks he deserves a contract befitting a staff ace?  I think not.

 

And let’s not forget those important offseason moves made by GM Rick Hahn.  Catcher Yasmani Grandal is hitting a robust .228 with zero homeruns while dh Edwin Encarnacion is raking at a .163 clip with two homers and 3 RBIs; and don’t forget those 17 punchouts in 44 total at-bats.  Either the 37-year old Encarnacion has lost it all at once (he hit 34 homers with the Mariners and Yankees last year), in which case Hahn exhibited bad judgment, or Encarnacion is the canary—or parrot, given his predilection for carrying an imaginary one with him around the bases on his homerun trot—in the coal mine.

 

Now, I’ll grant you Dallas Keuchel has been a good acquisition, though I’m betting Hahn wishes Keuchel had found a way to keep his recent criticism of teammates for lack of effort on the down-low.  But what about reliever Steve Cishek, with an 8.64 ERA over ten appearances?  Cishek comes in, and the balls go out.

 

The White Sox as a team are by no means talentless; rather, the problem is they have way too much talent to be 10-11 on the season.  Why does Yoan Moncada look gassed after playing 19 games?  Why is Eloy Jimenez batting just .254?  How can a team strike out eighteen times in two seven-inning games?

 

The answers, my friends, lie with the coaching staff.  Assuming coaches are coaching (you can never be sure with pitching coach Don Cooper), players don’t seem to be listening much.  And then we have the manager whose team has just been swept by an opponent that hasn’t played in seventeen days!  Rick Renteria was quoted in today’s Tribune saying the Cardinals are a “tremendous organization” and have been one “over a long period of time.”  Renteria added that St. Louis always “finds a way to get things done, however they need to.”  And what about you guys, Rick?

 

Change at the top of the White Sox will only come through illness or death; loyalty assures the continued employment of subordinates, most of the time.  All Sox fans can hope for is this one of those few times where loyalty doesn’t excuse the inability to win (See: Boylen, Jim).  I’d also urge Sox fans to start chanting:  Ozzie, Ozzie….       

Now They Tell Me

It’s a good thing for the American people that sportswriters didn’t cover Richard Nixon in office; we’d be finding out about Watergate only now, and that’s if we were lucky.  There just doesn’t seem to be much journalism in “sports’ journalism.”

 

The weird rules of sports-writing were on display today as I read about the Bulls firing coach Jim Boylen.  Did you know that Boylen had an argument with a team chef serious enough to require a lawyer’s involvement or that he was known to treat people off the court badly?  I didn’t until I read about it in today’s Sun-Times.

 

Did you know that Boylen installed a time clock and expected players to punch in for practice?  I didn’t until I read about it in today’s Tribune.  Why would reporters sit on stuff like that, if they knew about it?  And if the answer is they didn’t know about it, why not?  They’re journalists, for heaven’s sake.

 

This reminds me of a comment by a sportswriter in 1993 after the Cubs fired manager Jim Lefebvre, despite his just going 84-78 on the season; back then, that was a respectable record, especially when you consider the North Siders would finish fifteen games under .500 the next year.  As I recall, the sportswriter said he could tell stories about Lefebvre.  Twenty-seven years later, I’m still waiting.

Ouch

The Yankees have put outfielder Aaron Judge on the IL, where he joins teammate Giancarlo Stanton.  It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure.

 

So what if Judge stands 6’7” and weighs 282 pounds or Stanton is 6’6” and 245 pounds?  Launch angle teaches us that big guys crush the ball, that is, when they’re healthy.  For the past two seasons, Judge has suffered through a nagging oblique injury (separate from the time he missed in 2018 from getting hit by a pitch on the wrist) while Stanton played all of eighteen games in 2019 because of shoulder and knee injuries.  He’s presently on the IL with a hamstring problem.

 

Analytics would have baseball peopled by giants, players Judge- and Stanton-sized, if not bigger.  Never mind the multitude of injuries, and forget the adage, “The bigger they are the harder they fall.”  No, think launch angle and exit velocity and barreling (whatever that is).  At some point in the not too distant future, analytics will venture into AI and robotics to produce the only kind of ballplayer who can play the game front offices want to without having to deal with the consequences suffered by the human body.

 

Then they can fill the stands with the perfect fans.  But can robots drink beer at $10 a pop?

Things are Getting Serious

Again, I can’t help but count my lucky stars at being the parent of an ex- high school and college athlete.  Don’t get me wrong.  I miss watching my daughter play softball more than you can imagine, but the fact remains I got to watch her for a full eight years, with five summers of travel thrown in as a bonus.  My guess is that there are a lot of parents out there who’d love to trade what I had for where they are with their kids.

 

The Big Ten just created a bunch more potential—and imaginary—trading partners yesterday by announcing the postponement of all fall sports.  What that comes down to is, Goodbye, Football.  Goodbye to the big revenue generator for ten (plus four, it must be the New Math) athletic departments.  The only appropriate response here is, Wow.  Things are getting serious.  The Pac-12 also announced yesterday they were postponing fall sports.

 

Three other major conferences have indicated they intend to go forward with football (we turn our lonely eyes to you, Ole Miss).  Good luck with that.  Good luck with betting on the health of your players, despite evidence COVID-19 has led to heart problems with young athletes.  But, hey, the game’s the thing.

 

I get players telling the media they want to play; the sport is in large part who they are.  What I don’t get is coaches acting like their livelihoods have been taken away.  No, they haven’t.  But play and risk the health of your charges.  Now, that could be taking something away.

 

There’s just no getting around we’re in uncharted territory here.  As hard as this may be, we’re going to have to start thinking in terms of cancelling, not postponing, fall sports.  You’re going to play a bunch of games in spring and then go back to a full slate in the fall, coronavirus permitting?  I doubt even young, athletic bodies could handle the strain.

 

People like Clare and me may be the lucky ones.  We have the memories, the pictures, the video clips.  High school and college athletes today just have a lot of uncertainty.   

 

Did I Say Half-full?

After last night’s 5-1 sleeper of a loss to Detroit, the White Sox record stands at 8-9, fourth-best in the AL Central Division.  In case you’re wondering, they’re one game out of the cellar.

 

The record would be tolerable in a 162-game season, which this is not.  Luis Robert going 3 for 19 comes out to around 7 for 45, non-COVID.  I won’t even bother to tally up the strikeouts.

 

Dallas Keuchel took the loss and called out his teammates, saying in today’s The Athletic “we’ve got some guys going through the motions.”  Yes, but not Danny Mendick, who had a three-hit night with a run-scoring triple.  Otherwise, you guys know who you are.

 

Me, I keep seeing Ozzie Guillen pop up on “studio updates” and think, Hmm, he might look good in the Sox dugout.  If Rick Renteria doesn’t wake his players up and soon, a whole lot of people are going to feel the same way, and that’s if they already don’t.

The High Cost of Cycling in the Time of COVID

The night before my big ride on the lakefront, I thought to fill the tires on my trusty Schwinn.  That’s when I found a broken spoke on the rear wheel.  What to do?

 

I decided to risk it and tied the spoke in question to another as a stopgap.  The next day, I passed by two bike repair kiosks on the trail—you can fix your bike but not relieve yourself—only they were busy.  That meant a trip to a bike shop the next day.

 

But which one?  I usually use Mullet Brothers, a twenty-minute drive each way while the place on Roosevelt Road is only five minutes from home.  I don’t like going there, though, from the time they sold me Kevlar tires that were in fact ordinary, flat-prone works of rubber.  Oh, but just five minutes…    

 

Convenience won out over principle, and that cost me, literally.  I paid $32 to get one spoke changed—$2 for parts and $30 for labor.  Mullet Brothers, here I come.

Not So Fast

Not So Fast

 

I want to believe the White Sox rebuild has finally and fully arrived, but I can’t, not yet.  Allow me to explain why.

Let’s start with some numbers.  After years of acquiring talent through the draft and trades, the Sox have amassed a roster that has the fourth-most strikeouts in the American League; too bad I mean hitting, not pitching.  As far as that’s concerned, the team ERA of 4.28 is ninth-best in the AL.  Whoopee!

 

Right now, the Sox have one really good young pitcher in Lucas Giolito and a promising one in Dylan Cease.  What’s the difference?  Well, Cease needed 99 pitches to get through five innings, not exactly efficiency personified.  And after those two, it’s Dallas Keuchel, then Katie bar the door.  What’s saving the staff so far is the bullpen, and at some point relievers get tired.

 

I don’t like how Eloy Jimenez plays defense in left field, and, by that I mean he doesn’t play much defense in left; they should keep a clip of how Jimenez turned a fairly routine fly ball by Christian Yelich into an inside-the-park homerun as a tutorial on how not to field the position.

 

Speaking of not doing things, I’d have to include GM Rick Hahn’s first-round draft picks.  Carson Fulmer’s gone; Carlos Rodon is injured (again); and Zack Collins is 0 for 2020 (13 at-bats and counting).  Nick Madrigal was supposed to be, I don’t know, the next Nellie Fox, but he hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, especially not with that separated shoulder.  But Hahn can pat himself on the back for coming up with Danny Mendick in the 22^nd round of the 2015 “Fulmer” draft.  This is the guy Madrigal should aspire to be.

 

I have a theory that mediocre teams give back half or more of the games they win in a streak.  After winning six straight, the Sox went into last night’s game against Cleveland having lost their last two.  Mediocre or not?  Not, because they shut out the Indians, 2-0, behind Cease and company.  And it’s always nice to see Adam Engel hit a homerun.

So, one last stat to argue/hope the glass is half-full, or just a bit more.  The Sox rank fifth in the AL in runs scored.  Don’t stop now, boys.       

 

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The Kids are Alright, I Hope

I’m not quite ready to jump on the White Sox bandwagon or explain why; that can wait a day or two.  But I will talk about two of my favorite players, both of whom were judged unworthy of staying around to see the Sox rebuild through.

 

Matt Davidson, the dreamy one who crushed changeups more than fastballs, was let go by the Sox after the 2018 season.  After spending last year in the Rangers’ organization, Davidson made the Reds this year.  He pitched last night.  That’s right.  Matt Davidson pitched, again.  Three times with the Sox in ’18 and now once with Cincinnati for four innings total and not one run scored.  Keep it up, my boy, keep it up, and maybe they’ll pitch you in a game when it counts.  Fingers crossed.

 

Same goes for Daniel Palka, released by the Sox on my birthday last month.  The plucky Palka has signed on with a Korean team and will actually be taking the place of an injured Tyler Saladino.  Talk about weird karma. 

 

Personally, I think Daniel should’ve stuck around in the States.  With all the NL teams just now shifting to the DH, he would’ve been an intriguing option, or so I think.  But maybe he can hit ten homers over there in August and sign with another ML team next year.  Fingers crossed.

Biking in the Time of COVID

Because I try to be a good spouse (sometimes), Michele and I sat down to discuss the possibilities of me taking a bike ride.  We agreed that the 606 was too crowded and thereby posed a threat of virus transmission.  Off of our earlier walk on the lakefront, it seemed the lake wouldn’t be too crowded, and it wasn’t.  As for the ride itself, you take the bad with the good.

 

Like the lack of restrooms and water fountains—they’re all closed or shut off.  And then there are the signs, admonishing everyone to “Keep Moving.”  There are actually small groups of city workers strategically placed at intersections and beaches to enforce the directive.  Never have I felt so loved in my hometown.

 

I did about 45 miles, south to close to the Indiana border, then to the trail’s northern terminus.  For you fans of the old S-curve on Lake Shore Drive, they’ve incorporated one on the bike trail just north of the Chicago River at the mouth of the “flyover” intended to make it easier for joggers and cyclists to maneuver in the tourist-heavy area around Navy Pier.  Since I didn’t know about the curve, I nearly veered into traffic and took another cyclist with me.  Sorry.

Did I mention the sand trek?  At another point, the powers that be decided to shut the trail down at North Avenue Beach, but not really.  From what I could tell, they closed down all of ten feet.  Unfortunately, there aren’t any signs, so I followed everyone onto an alternate path that eventually dead-ended into sand.  Nothing like walking the old Schwinn through a couple hundred feet of sand to get the heart pumping.

 

Not all of the ride was this aggravating, I’m happy to say.  There are stretches of the trail that have been planted with wildflowers; this has been a project years in the making.  Well, it looks to be complete, and it sure is breathtaking.  Let’s just say the Midwestern prairie is home to some sublime flora.

 

And the lake is the lake, beautiful when it wants to be, like today.  And the hill at 47^th Street is the hill at 47^th Street, an easy-enough challenge going north but a mountain on the way back after four hours of pedaling.  I made it, though, and I don’t think I sucked in anybody’s COVID along the way. 

I hope.

Tradtitions

If memory serves, on Friday the White Sox became the first MLB team ever to have the first four players in the lineup all come from Cuba.  That would be Luis Robert, Yoan Moncada, Jose Abreu and Yasmani Grandal.  Somewhere, Minnie Minoso must be smiling.

 

I’ve always been fascinated by my hometown’s reputation.  Someone once said of Pittsburgh that it was “hell with the lid off.”  Chicago has always been seen as that, squared.  Tough place, bad weather, mean folks, especially if you’re considered to be of the “wrong” race.  And, yet in baseball most if not all of the most popular players in Chicago have been people of color.

 

Consider Ernie Banks and Billy Williams on the North Side and Minoso on the South Side.  I was once at a SoxFest, where Minoso was walking through a crowd; fans acted like they were in an audience with the Pope.  Also remember Luis Aparicio, Harold Baines and Frank Thomas are revered Sox players.

 

I think one of the reasons Ozzie Guillen did so well as Sox manager is that fans were already quite comfortable with Venezuelan players; before Guillen at shortstop, there was Aparicio and before Aparicio, Chico Carrasquel.  And in a somewhat different regard, before Guillen as manager there were Larry Doby and Jerry Manuel.  I’m not saying the Sox are free of the old-boys’ network, but there does seem to be a definite belief in meritocracy over color preference.

 

So, anyone else who wants to follow in Mr. Minoso’s footsteps as a player from Cuba for the Chicago White Sox, let’s see what you’ve got.

 

See?

Well, that didn’t take long.  A few days ago, I said COVID-19 was going to lead to chaos in high school sports, and Saturday proof arrived in the Sun-Times, with a story about three seniors leaving their two Illinois schools to play football out of state in the fall.

 

All of them are prospects, one or two of them borderline in a way.  A strong performance come September and they go to the big school of choice; otherwise, they could end up at places they probably never imagined, or at less than a full ride.  How sad, disturbing and more.

 

As a parent, I’d have my son think long and hard about such a decision because it’s going to make him appear selfish to his peers and coaches.  Football is supposed to be a team sport, yes?  I wouldn’t want to bump into any of the jilted players or coaches, that’s for sure.

 

But something else is going on here, too.  Maybe we should be thankful to the pandemic for exposing the undue influence colleges exert over high school athletes.  Where’s the NCAA putting its foot down to stop member schools from pushing for early graduation by its incoming freshmen?  It ought to be, you play as seniors in the fall; graduate in the spring; and come to us in August with everyone else.  None of this early graduation crap.

 

Alas, the NCAA must have smaller fish to fry.