If Only That Were True

Knuckleballer Phil Niekro died last week at the age of 81. If it seems like Niekro pitched forever, that’s because he more or less did, holding down a roster spot in the major leagues for 24 seasons. In fact, I’m a little surprised he retired so young, at the age of 48. Fellow knuckleball artist Hoyt Wilhelm pitched to within two weeks of his 50th birthday. Anyway, MLB.com posted the speech Niekro gave at his HOF induction in 1997. In it, Niekro contended that no owner or player owns the game of baseball. “This game is owned and belongs to you, the fan. Cherish it and take care of it.” A beautiful sentiment, if only it were true. The current situation in Chicago proves otherwise. For openers, the Cubs traded starter Yu Darvish to the Padres this week in what amounts to a salary dump. New team president Jed Hoyer would have you believe otherwise, but the four prospects (along with starter Zach Davies) the North Siders received in return for Darvish and catcher Victor Caratini have little going for them outside of their Greg Goossen-like youth; one of them is seventeen, two are eighteen and the fourth is all of twenty. It’s worth noting here that three of the these new Cubs have yet to play a single game in the minor leagues, even. I keep hearing that the deal was “high risk, high reward.” Sure, if that makes you feel better. But what do you call nontendering outfielder Kyle Schwarber? It’s like Hoyer included Schwarber as a throw-in because the North Siders sure don’t have anything to show for his departure. What did Branch Rickey say about trading a player a year too soon rather than a year too late? That’s Schwarber, who hit 38 homeruns to go with 92 RBIs in 2019 before slumping to 11 and 24, respectively, in 2020, along with a .188 BA. Darvish falls into the “year too soon” category. It’s the return that makes you scratch your head. It doesn’t really matter to me that Hoyer is said to be shopping catcher Willson Contreras or that the return on possible trades for soon-to-be free agents Javy Baez, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo doesn’t promise to be all that much. My team has its own problems, well, one problem, actually. You know, hiring Tony LaRussa. And that’s the thing of it. Phil Niekro should be right, only he’s not, never was and in all likelihood never will be. Owners own the game of baseball. The Ricketts family gets to cry poor all the way to the bank while Jerry Reinsdorf gets to indulge in his geriatric fantasies. Fans are left to do what they’ve always been told to, shut up and pay up. They can go on talk radio to complain or listen to the likes of Chris Russo, but that won’t change a thing. Phil Niekro probably sees that clearly right now.

Fever, Tsunami, Tomato...

There are any number of ways to gauge the extent of Bears’ fever in these parts. Me, I go with the equivalent of taking my temperature with an old, oral thermometer; drop it, and it breaks, with beads of mercury everywhere. But you just can’t teach a dinosaur new tricks. I’m sure you could check social media, but I tend to shy away from that stuff, and the next podcast I listen to will be the first; if I need to listen to someone drone on about sports, there’s a friend I can call, or I can just talk to myself in the shower. Push comes to shove, I’m a dead-tree kind of guy. You’ll miss print when it’s gone, believe me. So, just for fun, I checked to see where the Sun-Times put the Bulls-Warriors’ story in the Monday paper. It wasn’t on the back page; that had a Bears’ picture. And it wasn’t on the next page or the next or the next. Everything was either Bears or ads for nine full pages. Like I said, any Chicago team sharing the calendar with the Munsters can expect this kind of treatment if they’re not playing well, and even winning is no guarantee of coverage. Come the draft in April (let’s dare assume a return to normal times), and it’s a zero-sum game; expanded coverage has to come from somewhere. Bad basketball or hockey season, and that’s where it’ll come from. Bulls and Hawks fighting for the playoffs, then space—and time—gets taken from the Cubs and White Sox. Afterall, it’s April, and those guys have at least five more months to get noticed. Actually, it’s not even that long. Barring COVID (and by all means keep a good thought), there’s rookie camp and voluntary workouts in May followed by minicamp in June and training camp in late July. Play .500 baseball in Chicago, and you all but guarantee getting buried deep inside the sports’ section whenever the Bears show their collective faces. But, hey, if things play out on Sunday, we could jump up to the sixth seed. Just sayin’.

It's Early, But--

The last time I judged a team based on so small a sample size of games, I went after the White Sox after Lucas Giolito gave up a homerun on the first pitch of the 2020 season; patience is definitely a virtue. So, I waited three games before saying anything about the winless Bulls. They were 0-2 going into Sunday night’s matchup against the visiting Warriors. Not only is Golden State playing without Klay Thompson, starting center Marquese Chriss suffered a broken leg during practice, in Chicago, on Saturday. The Warriors would’ve seemed to be a beatable team, then. But no. In their first two games of the season, the Bulls lost by 20 and 19 points, respectively, and both games were garbage-time close. Against Golden State, the Bulls were ahead by two with five seconds left. Not a problem. Warriors’ guard Damion Lee drained a three-pointer for the win. Now, here's the bad news for just about everyone on the roster. With the exception of current first-rounder Patrick Williams and two other players, this team remains the work of the old regime. Only John Paxson’s gone and Gar Forman and Jim Boylen, too. How long do you think the new front office will keep Lauri Markkanen, Zach LaVine and company? LaVine had 33 points last night, to go with seven turnovers. Yikes. My guess is that players will start getting dumped a week or so before the trade deadline as the Bulls tank in order to get a nice pick in the next draft. This is the joy of a rebuild, which owner Jerry Reinsdorf should be used to after how long his Sox took finding their way back to respectability. Reinsdorf is learning, yet again, that it’s not a good idea to be irrelevant in a Bears’ town. If the Munsters have so much as a pulse, you have to respond with a fifteen-game win streak, not a fifteen-game win total on the season. And that’s assuming they even get off the schneid.

Madness and Methods

This must be why the Bears cycle through all those mediocre quarterbacks year after year—at some point, they’re bound to face one, like yesterday. It’s tough to lose to the Jacksonville Jaguars under any circumstances, even more so with ex-Bear Mike Glennon at the helm. So, Munsters 41 Jaguars 17. Too bad that strategy won’t work on Sunday, when the Packers come to town looking to clinch a first-round bye. Khalil Mack and the rest of the defense is going to have to show up; the guys might consider actually putting pressure on Aaron Rodgers, for a change, for once. And Mitch Trubisky might want to stop throwing endzone interceptions. He’s done that twice now in two weeks. Let me suggest a New Year’s resolution, Mitch…. But this is all I could ask for, to have something meaningful to watch on a Sunday afternoon in January. A win for the home team might not qualify as a Christmas miracle, but I’d take it all the same. That would mean another January Sunday with reason to watch a game on TV. Go, Bears.

They Got the Fever

You have to hand it to the Bidwells, aka the Arizona Cardinals. All they had to do yesterday was beat the injury-riddled 49ers, who were starting their third-string quarterback. But no, San Francisco beat the long-ago South Side team, 20-12. So, now the McCaskeys, the Munsters, the Stooge among Stooges, control their own destiny in trying to make the postseason. You’d think we were at the end of January with the Super Bowl a week off, instead of December. I actually caught a sportscaster shouting and what looked to me to be jumping for joy as he updated the playoff situation for our local heroes. The Sunday sports today had one Bears’ story after another, if only for the critics to explain why they’d written this team off and whether qualifying for the playoffs is reason enough for GM Ryan Pace and Coach Visor to keep their jobs. I’m one of the critics; I think both the general manager and head coach should go, and will go in the not too distant future. But I wish Team Nagy well. Just one playoff game puts us well into January; two playoff games and you can see February on the horizon, which would be heavenly. Here’s the problem. Assuming the Bears beat the woeful Jaguars, next week they face the Packers, who need a win to secure a first=round bye. Then, if our heroes make the playoffs, and I think they go up against the likes of the Saints. Fingers crossed, and everything else.

A Bad Christmas Tale

Bad news gets released, or buried, on a holiday. Take Peter Gammons’ Christmas-Eve piece on Tony LaRussa (please!) in today’s The Athletic. Twenty-five paragraphs, starting with the tale of how Gammons caught popups for then-new Sox coach LaRussa “at old Comiskey Park.” It’s always “old Comiskey Park” for people who don’t understand what “old” means. Gammons devotes one paragraph, barely eight lines, to LaRussa’s recent DUI trouble and ends it with, “He also underwent counseling.” He notes the “racial issues raised” after LaRussa’s hiring by the Sox given the criticism LaRussa leveled at NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick back in 2016. And you know what? “One of the smartest baseball persons on the planet [along with Peter Gammons and Tony LaRussa, no doubt]0 Eduardo Perez, responded emphatically on MLB Radio, ‘I played for Tony LaRussa, and I know he is absolutely not a racist, but he is also the best manager I ever played for. Period.’” Well, certainly settles it, then. But here’s the line that really gave me pause: “LaRussa and [Bill] Belichick, 68, have a long-standing relationship.” Do they, now? Thanks for letting me know, Peter, because that explains a whole lot. I can’t wait to see what Gammons has saved up for New Year’s Eve. Shagging flies with Dave Kingman, maybe, or the forever misunderstood Barry Bonds?

Baseball Time Travel

On top of my eBay watch list Tuesday was an old wire photo dated July 23, 1937. It shows White Sox shortstop Luke Appling scoring ahead of the tag by Yankees’ catcher Bill Dickey in a 9-6 Sox win. And off I went on a visit to baseball-reference.com. The Yankees were in town for a four-game series that weekend. The Sox took three out of four, including two walk-offs. Whatever New York thought of Chicago, Sox fans always showed up to see their heroes battle the bullies from the Bronx. The game on the 23rd drew 42,000, with another 22,000 for the Saturday game and 50,000 for the Sunday doubleheader. Those three wins pulled the Sox to within five of the Yankees, but it was not to be. The 88 wins that yearwere nice for a team that hit all of 67 homeruns on the season, but the bullies proved sixteen games better in winning themselves yet another pennant. It’s possible my dad was in the crowd that Sunday, assuming he didn’t pull a shift at the Ford plant on Torrance Avenue. Ed Bukowski would have seen the likes of DiMaggio, Crosetti, Dickey and Gehrig, though I doubt he cared much; he was too good a Sox fan to cheer, however faintly, for any bully, even the HOFers. No, it would have been “Yea!” Luke and… Jackie Hayes, the second baseman forced to retire because of eye problems that eventually left him blind; infielder Tony Piet, who, when he retired, opened up a Pontiac dealership on south Western Avenue; pitcher Monty Stratton, who went all nine innings to win the second game of the twin bill, 7-6. Stratton, hailed as a future ace after winning thirty games in 1937 and ’38, only to his right leg in a postseason hunting accident. And then there was first baseman Zeke Bonura, the pride of New Orleans. Bonura didn’t make the big leagues until the age of 25, but could he hit, with a career .307 BA and 704 RBIs in just seven seasons. Bonura’s name kept popping up during broadcasts this summer, with stats that usually put him just ahead of Luis Robert for hitting by Sox rookies, all-time. From 1937 to 2020 and back again. In these COVID times, it’s nice to get a chance to travel like that.

Anyone But Them

Clare called with news yesterday that the White Sox were going to sign Yoelqui Cespedes, 23-year old half-brother of Yeonis, for $2 million. “Do you care one way or the other?” my daughter inquired. To which I answered, “As long as they didn’t spend that money on developing female talent.” We wouldn’t want that, now would we? The Sox are intrigued by a player who stands 5’9” and weighs 205 pounds. The team website said, “The outfielder has added at least 15 pounds of muscle while improving his bat speed and power since he defected” from Cuba in 2019. Rich Hahn and company must read all of the above differently than I do. Start with size. Cespedes has a compact frame, so why is he adding so much muscle? That’s an invitation to oblique and other injuries from hard swings. He’s improved his bat speed? Oh, really? And just how did he accomplish that? In all my time with Clare in baseball and softball, I never once saw anyone increase bat speed outside of choking up or going to a much lighter bat. I doubt Cespedes has done either. So, what’s the secret behind the faster bat? It can’t be muscle alone, because baseball is littered with Incredible Hulks who couldn’t hit their weight. Oh, and he’s 23 already, by which time players drafted out of college have two or three years in the minors already. When will Cespedes be ready, in a year, two at the outside? Ever? I read that the Sox had been scouting Cespedes for years, and I wonder, they couldn’t have focused that kind of attention on female players? The couldn’t have encouraged a few college graduates to try and modify their windmill windup into a submarine approach? They couldn’t have found a power hitter or two who wanted a chance to hit off a minor league pitcher? No? Of course not. In baseball, it’s all about the same old same old. That grows old after awhile.

If You Say So, Tony

Yesterday in Arizona, new-old White Sox manager Tony LaRussa pled guilty to reckless driving, a plea bargain that allowed him to escape a more serious DUI charge. LaRussa addressed the media afterwards. He said a conference call, “I feel a deep remorse and regret over what I did,” without explaining the difference between those two emotions. He also claimed, “I know I don’t have a drinking problem, just like I know I made a serious mistake in February. And where I am right now is to prove that I don’t have a drinking problem every day off the field that I’m going to handle it.” That’s good, because whether or not he knows it, LaRussa has placed a life-sized bullseye on his back for TMZ and anyone else keen on trashing a public figure. Whenever LaRussa goes out to eat, the cameras will be out to record him getting up from the table; walking to the men’s room; heading for the parking lot. If he stumbles, we’ll see it; if he weaves, we’ll know. If he does either or both and then steps behind the wheel, bye-bye, Tony. The White Sox released a statement that said in part, “Tony knows there is no safety net below him. There cannot be a strike three.” Just in case, the front office should have a list of possible successors on hand.

The Fever

Nothing like two wins in a row to start spreading Bears’ playoff fever. Never mind the six straight losses previous; the fact those two wins came against a bad Houston team and an overrated Minnesota outfit; or the near impossibility of having to beat Green Bay up there in the final game of the season to have a chance to keep playing. The Bears are back, baby, and most everyone in the Chicago media says so, never mind the eye winks. Why? Well, Mitch Trubisky suddenly looks like an NFL-competent quarterback, though that endzone interception late in the fourth quarter sure revived doubts, didn’t it? There’s also a reshuffled offensive line that actually seems to be working. (Sorry, guys, I don’t know who you all are, but I do remember Jim Cadile and Bob Wetoska from the ’67 squad.) Holy Ryan Pace. Can this team play past January 3rd? This is where it gets to be deliciously ironic. The Bears need Trubisky to keep performing; the better he does, the further they go, and the greater the pressure to sign him for 2021 and maybe beyond. The Munsters also need kicker Cairo Santos to keep doing his Robbie Gould imitation. Santos is at 22 straight field goals, the second-longest string in team history, behind Gould’s 26 in a row. The new Santos, same as the old Gould. You gotta love it. And this—guess who Coach Visor and company are chasing for the last playoff sport? Why none other than the Arizona—nee Chicago, nee St. Louis—Cardinals, led by that baseball turncoat, quarterback Kyler Murray. The Bidwells against the McCaskeys, less the Hatfields and McCoys than Curley and Moe. May the best Stooge win.

You, Not You

What a coincidence. When it moved Wednesday to incorporate the records of Negro Leaguers into the MLB database, baseball chose the period 1920-48. Anything beyond, and baseball would have broken a glass ceiling, however retroactively. Infielders Toni Stone and Connie Morgan along with pitcher Mamie “Peanut” Johnson played in the Negro Leagues, post-1948, wouldn’t you know. I guess the good news is that none of their male teammates from that time will be having their stats counted, either. The national pastime, always a step behind, or two or three.

My Bad

How did I miss this? I was reading today’s Trib sports’ section when I ran across something White Sox and Bulls’ owner Jerry Reinsdorf said in response to ESPN’s “The Last Dance.” Reinsdorf conveyed to sportswriter K.C. Johnson in a May phone conversation his displeasure with Michael Jordan. You see, Jordan said in the documentary that the Bulls should’ve tried for a seventh title, and that upset The Chairman. “I was not pleased,” he related to Johnson. “How’s that? He knew better. Michael and I had some private conversations at the time that I won’t go into detail on ever. But there’s no question in my mind that Michael’s feeling at the time was we could not put together a championship team the next year.” Notice how Reinsdorf has information he won’t divulge, sort of like that engineering report on Comiskey Park. In the minds of the super-rich, something said by them is, ipso facto, true. Facts are not important, or details. The mighty have spoken. This is what makes it hard, for me at least, to root for either Reinsdorf team; he treats fans as little more than peasants. Give them a little cake, expect a world of obedience in return. Yes, m’lord, hiring Tony LaRussa is a great idea, and Jim Boylen…

Loud and Clear

White Sox hitting coach Frank Menechino would be better served keeping his mouth shut about how he coaches. Menechino was quoted in today’s Tribune and comes off, well, judge for yourself. Menechino said that with former assistant Scott Coolbaugh, “I cursed [him], screamed at him, called him every name in the book.” Now, with new assistant Howie Clark, Menechino says, “Howie’s a great guy. Howie’s going to fit right in. Howie can take me yelling and screaming, so it’s perfect.” Ha-ha. Maybe now we know why Coolbaugh joined the Tigers as their hitting coach. If Menechino is yelling at his assistant coach, what is he doing with and to players? Assuming that he treats them with the utmost respect, how does he come off dumping on the guy he tells to feed the pitching machine? One of the great lessons my daughter taught me is that yelling will get you nowhere with a young player. Maybe a little smart-ass—as in, “If you’d actually managed to hit that slider, where would it have gone? No, really, where, back to the pitcher?”—but not yelling and screaming. By the way, Clare quotes this line to me on a regular basis, and it’ll be one of the last things she says to me before I go to the big ballpark in the sky. All of which makes me wonder how Menechino would handle having a woman as an assistant coach. Lucky for him my daughter is ensconced in university administration. Her daddy didn’t raise his kid to take crap from a blowhard, not that she ever did or would. Get your act together, Frank. It’s a new day.

Two Birds

Let’s see, now. The University of Illinois has just fired football coach Lovie Smith while the Bears may do the same with Matt Nagy. Maybe the two should trade jobs. I mean, Captain Visor spouts the kind of rah-rah gibber that the college game thrives on. Consider this gem from today’s Sun-Times: “The guys are playing with confidence [as shown by their 1-6 record over the past seven games], and I do believe that’s real for Mitchell right now, and I like where he’s at.” This is just what the Illini need after a 45-0 loss to Ohio State or Michigan. Conversely, Smith is the coach the Munsters have tried yet failed to replicate three times and counting. They can’t do it because no one has better credentials for the job than Lovie Smith. The Bears hate quarterbacks; so does Smith. They love defense, as does Smith. There’s an unwritten team rule that two-minute drills are to be stopped, not continue on to a score with time running out in the half; Smith probably authored the rule. And Smith treats the media with just the right amount of contempt to bring a collective smile to the McCaskey clan. Lovie for Matt, the beard for the visor. It’s the perfect trade, at least in Bizarro World.

The Slightest Glimmer

The only thing worse than having COVID (and dying) is passing it along to your spouse. The silver lining so far is that Michele’s case has been “mild” to my “moderate.” In other words, the symptoms haven’t been so severe that she’s threatening to kill me, which would require her having the energy to get off the couch. And I don’t see that happening anytime soon. That being the case, we ordered out for dinner last night (don’t worry, I’m no longer contagious), a place in Oak Park, good hamburger, Goldilocks’ perfect size. I parked across from a storefront which has turned into a kind of pop-up field house for a local travel softball team. They looked to be 14u. There were five girls, all in a line, doing a pitching drill with their coach (seated on an upturned plastic bucket, of course). Throw a pitch, go to the back of the line. Repeat. There, on a cold Sunday night in December, COVID all around, I felt sudden surge of hope, however fleeting. If those kids and their coach saw fit to practice, with the support of everyone’s parents, maybe things will go back to normal. I mean, assuming the Bears breaking their six-game losing streak isn’t a sign of end times, that is.

Two Wrongs

It looks like James McCann is soon to be an ex-White Sox. Reports are the catcher is set to sign a four-year, $40 million deal with the Mets, to which all I can say is, Damn’. The Sox struck gold with McCann in 2019, when they signed him for two years. He immediately established a rapport with Lucas Giolito and other White Sox pitchers while putting up eye-opening offensive numbers (.273 BA, 18 homeruns, 60 RBIs) So, what does Sox GM Rick Hahn go out and do? He signs Yasmani “Passed Balls” Grandal to a four-year deal. How Grandal rates over McCann is beyond me, if not certain advanced metrics. But the Mets? Why would McCann go there, of all places? He’s a Southern California boy by way of the University of Arkansas, all “yes, sir” “no, sir” during interviews and thoughtful throughout. Those are qualities likely to fly over the heads of member of the Chris Russo crowd. Oh, well. All you can do is wish the guy well and hope Grandal can knock the next breaking ball down before it rolls all the way to the backstop.

Eddie Robinson, Phil Linz

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but baseball can go all time machine without notice or warning. Like yesterday, when I saw on MLB.com that Eddie Robinson was four days short of his hundredth birthday. A power-hitting first baseman, Robinson was traded to the White Sox at the age of 29 in 1950. And, No, I have no recollection of the man playing on the South Side, 1950-52. But I’ve used him in Strat-O-Matic, and I do remember he was there cheering on the Indians, his first team, against the Cubs in the 2016 World Series; Robinson played on the last Cleveland Series winner back in 1948. So, happy birthday, Mr. Robinson. If memory serves, you and Gus Zernial shared the team homerun record at 29, until Bill Melton came along and broke it in 1970. Melton I remember and Phil Linz, too. A utility player mostly with the Yankees, Linz died Wednesday at the age of 81. Lucky for Linz the cause of death didn’t involve a harmonica. It nearly did in August of 1964. The Yankees had just dropped four in a row to the Sox at Comiskey Park to drop them to second place against the hitless wonders; at one point in the season, the Sox had dropped ten in a row to New York, so this was a pretty big thing. For reasons best known to himself, Linz decided to start playing a harmonica on the team bus on the way to O’Hare. Manager Yogi Berra didn’t like it and told Linz to stop, only Linz was all the way in the way and couldn’t hear. “What did he say?” Linz asked Mickey Mantle, who answered, “Play it louder.” Accounts vary as to what happened next, either Berra knocked the harmonica out of Linz’s hands or Linz tossed it to his charging manager. Whichever, the incident somehow broke the tension and may even have helped the Yankees win the pennant against the Sox by all of a game. That, I remember, and Dick Allen…

Sell, Please

The problem with Chicago sports is that owners own too long. The Wirtz family bought the Blackhawks in 1966 while Jerry Reinsdorf snagged the White Sox in 1981 and the Bulls four years later. Oh, and the McCaskey/Halas clan has controlled the Bears since right after The Flood. As long as there’s been an NFL, there’s been a Halas or descendant thereof to muck things up. Bill Wirtz nearly ran the Hawks into the ground. Bobby Hull? Bye-bye. Phil Esposito? Gone. Contraction in the NHL up to and including his franchise? Sounded good to Dollar Bill. Only Death stopped Wirtz from acting on such folly. Reinsdorf has screwed up not one but two franchises. The Bulls have yet to recover from their dismantling at the end of the Michael Jordan Era. Reinsdorf is the owner who picked Jerry Krause over Jordan and Phil Jackson. Enough said, only there’s more. Think the 1994 MLB strike and the “White Flag” trade three years after that. How many World Series does Reinsdorf owe Sox fans, given those two colossal bonehead moves? I’d start with five, minimum. As for the Cubs, they’re the exception that proves the rule. The Ricketts family bought the club in 2009 and turned the world upside down with a World Series championship seven years later. Alas, the family now seems headed in the direction of destructive idiosyncrasies a la Halas/McCaskey, Reindsorf and Wirtz. God, we deserve better.

My Precious

More than anyone, White Sox fans should balk at trading away prospects for veterans. I know I don’t like it. After winning the AL pennant in 1959, Sox owner Bill Veeck thought what he needed to repeat was more power, this despite his team playing in beautiful, cavernous Comiskey Park. So, he traded away five young players—catcher Earl Battey; outfielder Johnny Callison; first baseman Norm Cash; first baseman Don Mincher; and catcher John Romano. And what did they get in return? Two years of Minnie Minoso and Roy Sievers along with one season of Gene Freese. Three of those players—Callison, Cash and Mincher—were good for 795 homeruns between them while Battey and Romano totaled another 182 homers after being traded away. The thing of it is the Sox didn’t strip all the talent from their farm system, just most of the hitting. Combine the above with the likes of Gary Peters and Joel Horlen, and you’ve got a team that could have sent the Yankees into decline years before it happened. Then we have the Sox trading off all that young talent from the 1970s. Goodbye, Bucky Dent; Brian Downing; Terry Forster; and Goose Gossage. Hello, mediocrity. And let’s not forget the miscellaneous trades down through the years: Doug Drabek for Roy Smalley; Bob Wickman and others for Steve Sax; Chris Devenski and others for Brett Myers. So, excuse me for not jumping up and down yesterday over the Sox trading Dane Dunning and a prospect for Lance Lynn. That’s a soon-to-be 26-year old for a starter who turns 34 in May and will be in his walk-year. GM Rick Hahn better hope Dunning has already hit his ceiling. Because, if not… On the other hand, I don’t have any problem with the Sox signing Adam Eaton to a one-year deal with a club option. Eaton rubs a lot of people the wrong way, which I think comes with the territory of being small player; Eaton stands 5’9”. Yes, he called 14-year old Drake LaRoche a clubhouse leader, but we all say dumb things. In a way, the Sox just got younger, with Lynn and Eaton in place of Gio Gonzalez and Edwin Encarnacion. So, that’s a plus. As far as trading away young talent, all I can do is cross my fingers and hope.

Dick Allen

Former White Sox first baseman Dick Allen died yesterday at the age of 78. Despite playing just three seasons, 1972-74, on the South Side, Allen seems to have left an oversized impression among Sox fans. Every obituary I read mentioned a particular homerun—“chili dog” walkoff against Sparky Lyle, 21st inning walkoff against…Ed Farmer! Part of the Allen charisma is that his homers always seemed to count (looking at you, Ron Kittle). The obits also mentioned that Allen swung a 40-ounce bat. That by itself is impressive, more so when you consider he was just 5’11”. Allen was a sort of big “toy cannon,” one inch taller than Jim Wynn and even stronger. For me, memories of Dick Allen have a certain “almost” quality to them. To think about these Sox teams is to remember they included the likes of Bucky Dent; Brian Downing; Terry Forster; Goose Gossage; and George Orta. That’s a lot of young talent, folks. Throw in Allen along with Bill Melton and Carlos May, and you wonder why the Sox weren’t a team on the rise. Part of the reason, I think, is that they were doing everything on a shoestring budget. This was the dawn of free agency, and the Sox wanted no part of it. They neither signed big-ticket agents nor protected homegrown talent. All those youngster were either traded away before they walked or allowed to test free agency. Maybe things would’ve been different had Allen stayed around, but he was gone after three years. One of the stories mentioned a feud with Ron Santo, who ended his career exiled on the South Side, only that doesn’t make sense. Santo obviously was running on empty and should’ve been the one to leave, not Allen. That’s how it goes for the White Sox, flashes of promise that occasionally break up the stretches of gray mediocrity. Dick Allen was a flash unto himself.

Man the Lifeboats

Well, Captain Matt “Freaking” Nagy of the good ship da Bears really rallied the troops yesterday, now didn’t he? Six days after calling for every “freaking” coach and player to wake up and six days after calling out his defense, Nagy found what that was worth, a 34-40 upset loss to the now not-so-lowly Lions, who have a 5-7 identical to the Munsters. Hey, Coach, a six-game losing streak sure is character-revealing, don't you think? One of the many problems Nagy has, in my humble opinion, is he can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s all blah-blah-culture and blah-blah-great-practice, with a healthy dose of Captain Obvious (see the full “Freaking” remark he made). On the opposite end of the scale you have the Sphynx, aka linebacker Khalil Mack, who got shut out in the stats’ department against a supposedly inferior Detroit offensive line. Productive or not, Mack will still make $90 million guaranteed. So, you’ve got one guy who won’t shut up (or, conversely, say anything that verges on intelligent) and another guy who takes the money while putting in questionable effort and not saying a peep. What do they have in common? Why, Bears’ GM Ryan Pace, of course. No Pace, then no Nagy (still rockin’ that visor, BTW), no Mack. No Pace, now there’s an idea. A brickbat here to the Chicago media, which has finally gotten wise to the fact that the McCaskeys are the Chicago football version of the Bourbons—they’ve forgotten little because they’ve learned little. That said, everyone played along with Mack’s decision not to address the media; something about how it affects his karma. Sorry, you make the big bucks, it comes with responsibilities. And you’d be doing everyone a solid by getting Nagy away from the mic.

Huh?

My days go a lot better than my nights with COVID. For example, this morning I woke up drenched in sweat, and that constitutes a good night. What qualifies as bad? Eight hours of chills. So, there was a good deal of mental fog that hadn’t cleared yet when Clare called me yesterday morning with the news that Len Kasper was going to be the new radio voice of the White Sox. “Who’s Len Kasper, again?” Oh, OK, the TV voice of the Cubs the past sixteen years. Got it. This is a coup for the Sox, and it would seem to be a slap at the Cubs. Kasper said it’s been his dream to do baseball on the radio since he was a twelve-year old listening to Ernie Harwell back in Michigan. If you say so. To walk away from TV takes some guts, so hats off to Kasper for doing it. But I have to wonder if this isn’t also a reflection on the Cubs’ unsettled situation. Unless new team president Jed Hoyer has some rabbits up his sleeve, the North Siders look like they could be going into long-term decline. Not a lot of fun broadcasting games when your team keeps getting its butt kicked in. Ask anybody with the Sox. I also wonder if Kasper isn’t making like Theo Epstein. They’re both this side of fifty (though Kasper will shortly hit the magic mark), and they both seem increasingly out of step with an organization that has “Ricketts” stamped all over it. And, by that I mean it’s as if Donald Trump had bought himself a ballclub. Whatever the reason, Kasper takes over as the permanent replacement for Ed Farmer. I wish him well and hope he’ll have plenty of opportunities for great games to call in the years ahead.

Failing Grade

The White Sox drafted pitcher Carlos Rodon with the third pick in the 2014 draft, one selection ahead of the Cubs, who took “catcher” Kyle Schwarber. Yesterday, their respective teams non-tendered the duo. The Sox could’ve chosen Aaron Nola or Trea Turner instead; Rodon constitutes a variation on Mitch Trubisky. The Cubs could’ve drafted Nola or Turner; Schwarber constitutes a selection that worked, but not enough. The 121 homeruns are nice, the .230 BA and 591 strikeouts not so much. Let me add here that the Cubs also nontendered Albert Almora, the sixth player taken in 2012, and one ahead of Max Fried. Rodon, Schwarber and Almora all stand out as failures by our Chicago teams to develop talent; ditto Carson Fulmer, taken as the eighth player in the 2015 draft by the Sox and let go, mercifully, during the 2020 season. Schwarber and Almora could still pan out, which will reflect badly on the Cubs. Rodon and Fulmer most likely are busts, which will reflect badly on the Sox. All the new-tch gizmos couldn’t fix these four. Maybe the people using the tech didn’t know what they were doing.

The End of the World as We Know It

According to news reports, something called an esports arena is going to be built south of downtown in the not too distant future. And what is an esports arena, you may well ask? It’s a place where people can watch other people play video games. My simple mind boggles at the thought of it. I don’t play video games, I don’t care about people who do, although hats off for those who can make a living off of it. We were definitely blessed to have a child who preferred play in the real world. It's only a matter of time until life becomes that episode of Star Trek where the higher life forms have forsaken their bodies to live in jars. I can’t wait.

Not to Kick a Guy When He's Down, But---

Captain Happy Talk, aka Matt Nagy of the Bears, must’ve come into possession of a rare moment of clarity yesterday. The usual positive gibber yielded to something with a little more edge. Nagy told reporters, “Every freaking coach on the staff, ever player, better wake up and start understanding where we’re at.” Where you guys are at, Coach, is circling the drain. Shouldn’t you have gotten this ticked as soon as the losing streak reached two games, let alone five? I also read a comment by Nagy that instead of players taking ten from the jugs’ machine, they should take twenty. And that will do what, exactly, make receivers wish quarterback Mitch Trubisky were a jugs’ machine? Speaking of Trubisky, he said, “Everything was happening so fast on the field” when his fumble was run back for a Greenbay touchdown. This is the same guy who said he was blindsided by his benching and now says he has to do a better job of protecting the ball. And all this time I thought it was a good idea to throw into double- and triple-coverage. Nagy and Trubisky are both way in over their heads and may be, should be, gone by season’s end. But give them this, they show up to take their lumps from the media. But Dr. Frankenstein, aka GM Ryan Pace, is nowhere to be seen. Somebody should get him a copy of Profiles in Courage for Christmas. He can read it while job hunting,