Same Old Same Old Same...

The White announced the signing of 20-year old pitcher Norge Vera of Cuba. The lanky right-hander signed for a reported $1.5 million bonus. It’s increasingly apparent that Cuban ballplayers feel comfortable in the organization Minnie Minoso once called home. To which I said good, but… I read a story in the NYT yesterday about Randy Johnson’s daughter, Willow. Now, there’s a good name, given how the 22-year old professional volleyball player stands an imposing 6’3”. And, just like her father, the younger Johnson plays with a certain snarl. Now, if I were another Branch Rickey on the lookout for talent, I’d give this Johnson a baseball to see if she could throw or hit it. What’s to lose? You’d have to ask major-league baseball for the answer to that.

Yesterday

Pardon the cliché, but time does fly. Ten years ago today, and I was checking the calendar to see how long until we left for Florida to watch Clare play her first season of college softball. Now, I check the calendar to see how long until my daughter becomes a mother. Clare hit her first homerun in college on our 32nd wedding anniversary. This anniversary, I’ll be checking on the weather to see if it’s too early to take the Schwinn out. I have this fantasy about starting the cycling season in March. There are people I refer to as “jackasses”—and worse—who believe that biking in Chicago is a year-round activity. I am not among them. Ten years ago, I watched as my daughter set the single-season homerun mark at Elmhurst College for softball, a record she would break the next year. But I won’t talk about nine-year anniversaries. Why bring up Ozzie Guillen when we have Tony La Russa in the White Sox dugout?

Apples and Oranges, Donovan and La Russa

So, the Bulls moved to within one game of .500 (15-16) last night with a 133-126 win over the Timberwolves in overtime. As I’ve said, if head coach Billy Donovan guides this roster to .500 or better on the season, he’s Coach of the Year, hands down. And then we have Tony La Russa. The new/old White Sox manager has been a noticeable presence around camp at Camelback Ranch, which is what you want. Read about La Russa, and everything looks good, fingers crossed. But catch the nightly sports on TV, and it almost takes your breath away. Or it does mine. Trust me, I know people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, but La Russa looks every bit of his seventy-six years, and then some; me, I’m just a guy drivers call “Grandpa!” if they don’t like how I’m riding my bike crossing their path. In other words, I get a break where La Russa won’t. If this latest move by Jerry Reinsdorf and company doesn’t work out, I get to say, “I told you so,” which isn’t going to be all that satisfying. I’d rather be forced into tipping the proverbial cap to Reinsdorf on making two hires who win Coach/Manager of the Year awards in their respective sports. We’ll see.

Talkin', Walkin', Dancin' and Singin'

Well, Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada sure are making the early days of spring training mighty interesting with the White Sox. Let’s hope it doesn’t come back to bite them. Anderson let the world know yesterday that, at least on paper, “We are way more athletic than them,” “them” being the Twins, the 2020 AL Central champs, “and that’s just true facts.” Good to know. Not that Anderson was finished. No, he went on to say, “We have a pretty good shot of [putting a] whoopin’ on them.” The thing about Anderson is his talk tends to motivate his walk, which, in this case, should come out to a .300-plus season and being part of the MVP conversation. I certainly hope so because not only do we have Anderson talking but Moncada singing…and dancing. Moncada recently recorded and released a music video, “Desaste Personal,” with Latin stars El Chacal and Lenier. How to put this? Well, at this stage in his career, Justin Timberlake certainly wouldn’t be doing this, and ditto Beyonce raised to the nth power. Maybe Moncada will get a rookie pass, or not. Let’s just say nobody in the video, especially the bikini-clad women, comes off as a three dimensional character. The Sox third baseman says he’s going to use the song for his walk-up music this year, in which case I can only hope that the title doesn’t work better as prophecy. Some stuff just doesn’t need to be said, or sung.

Oh, Ye of Little Faith

Seems like I just needed to wait one more day for Michael Kopech to speak. The young right hander faced the media via Zoom yesterday, and the 24-year old sounded pretty reflective for someone drafted straight out of high school, a Texas high school, no less. Kopech spoke in measured tones, like someone who’d been through stuff he’d rather not share. What struck me most was his comment, “I think I learned I need this game a lot more than I realized.” Amen to that for all of us. Then, I got to thinking: Kopech, Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Garrett Crochet. This could be really interesting. I hope.

Unless My Eyes Deceive Me

The big news coming out of the opening days of spring training for the White Sox seems to be starter Dylan Cease. People are saying he has Cy Young Award stuff. I may need to have my eyeglass prescription changed. To these uneducated, tech-free eyes, Cease can hum that pea more than he can control it. The problem—again, to these untutored, unaided, eyes—looks to be his mechanics. The 25-year old right hander doesn’t strike me as comfortable on the mound, and new pitching coach Ethan Katz may want to check the video to see if Cease is capable of repeating his delivery from pitch to pitch, let alone batter to batter. Michael Kopech is another story. Every time I see Kopech throw the ball—and I’m assuming they’re showing video from spring 2021—and all I can say is, Wow! The ball comes exploding out Kopech’s right hand at what looks to be 1000 MPH. Batters will swing at the motion from a pitcher with that kind of stuff. That’s the good news. The worrisome part is I’ve heard Cease address the media but not a peep out of Kopech. The idea is for a pitcher to be comfortable on the mound and with reporters. A major league career is impossible without the former, difficult at best without the latter. Guys, you’ve got six weeks to figure out. Please.

Telephone Dad

Usually, Clare is the one to call me with baseball-related news. Wednesday, I turned the tables on my daughter, who’s expecting a boy, if I forgot to mention it. First item of news came courtesy of the Marquee Network; they’ve named Beth Mowins as one of three broadcasters to fill in for new play-by-play guy Jon “Boog” Sciambi when he has work for ESPN. I’ve been listening to Mowins since the first time Clare turned on the NCAA D-I softball championships, what, going on ten years now. Mowins calls a good game, and, unlike, Jessica Mendoza when she did color for ESPN baseball coverage, won’t have to dance around the baseball-softball divide. How can a woman more versed in softball do baseball, you ask? Well, how did Harry Caray ever get to do baseball? It’s not like he had a HOF career or anything. I also scooped my daughter on the signing of one of our favorite ballplayers, ex-Sox infielder Matt Davidson, he who liked to walk barefoot on the grass at Guaranteed Rate Whatever. Davidson is the kind of guy you wish could just hit twenty-thirty points higher. Anyway, Davidson signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers that includes an invite to spring training, where he’ll be one of 31 non-roster invitees fighting for a spot come Opening Day. Davidson’s oddness extends from a gently goofy personality to the ability to crush breaking balls, where most power hitters prefer heat. Oh, he can also pitch, with a career ERA of 2.84 over six games and 6.1 innings for the Sox and Reds. Davidson is a Southern California boy, and he won’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders anymore, unlike on the South Side, where he was projected as the next Bill Melton or thereabouts. Why not a feel-good story, for me, my pregnant daughter and a guy who always gives it his quirky all?

It's Good to be King

Tony La Russa met the media over Zoom yesterday, and I guess he said all the right things, short of admitting he has a drinking problem. What really caught my attention, though, was what Bob Nightengale reported in USA Today, that La Russa told White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf of his DUI arrest when the Sox owner reached out to him about taking over for Rick Renteria. Now, wait for it. Reinsdorf didn’t feel the need to share that information with anyone, as in team executive vice president Kenny Williams or general manager Rick Hahn. How do you say, “left out to dry”? This is how Reinsdorf operates, putting himself ahead of everyone else. You have to wonder what Williams and Hahn felt when they found out; when they—or at least Hahn—had to face the media last November after the DUI story broke; and yesterday, presumably when they first learned that mum’s the word for things La Russa and Reinsdorf. Williams must want a World Series ring the worst way; ditto Hahn. That’s probably the only way they’re going to get one.

Robin Ventura, Jimmy Carter

I saw a story about Robin Ventura in The Athletic today. It seems that the ex-manager of the White Sox is in his second year as a student coach at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. That’s right, student coach, which means Ventura is taking a full course load to meet NCAA requirements. In a word, Cool. Ventura was the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Sox hired him to replace Ozzie Guillen in 2012. Nobody cheered louder than I did when Ventura stepped down after five fitful seasons. But that doesn’t mean I wish the best-ever Sox third baseman ill. It takes guts to go back to college in your early fifties, and to move to Stillwater OK, no less. But Ventura has a love of the game that won’t go away. Maybe he can accomplish things at OSU that he failed to do with the Sox. In that way, he could be a little like Jimmy Carter, a bust of a president but a human dynamo the past forty-plus years out of office. Ventura was two years short of a degree when he started up again. Might I suggest a major in history? Just saying.

Winter Sports Contd.

Depending where you place the yardstick, there’s 20”-30” of snow on the ground right now in beautiful Berwyn. Anyone who lives next to a Great Lake knows what “lake effect” means. The rest of you, count your blessings. Penny the satanic basset hound does not feel blessed. Robert Duvall’s Lt. Col. Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now” said how he loved the smell of napalm in the morning. I wonder what he’d say about snow so dry you can literally breathe it in (especially when standing behind a snowblower). Oh, and napalm? It’s so cold right now the gel would turn to goo before freezing. Ooh, frozen fire. I should send that one along to Paul Bunyan. Come to think of it, I should hire Paul and that blue ox of his to plow the alley so I can get out and pick up my order of paczki at the Oak Park Bakery. I got to thinking—which is a lot better than feeling the cold creep into my fingers—behind said snowblower about some of the stuff we used to do as kids. One snowstorm when I was five or six, my dad took me out on the street in a sled. God, that was fun, until a car on St. Louis couldn’t stop until it had rolled over the lower half of my body. Lucky for me it was a 1954 Chevrolet (you tend to remember this sort of stuff) with clearance high enough that I fit underneath, if a little snug. We never went sledding after that. On the playground at school, we played this really dumb game, Lemon, I think we called it. Basically, you went up to someone, tackled him, and shouted, “One, two, three—Lemon!” or words to that effect. Like I said, dumb. There were also snowball fights. Given that ours was a neighborhood full of Baby-Boomer kids, there was no lack of participants. The fights were distinct from surprise attacks. Heaven help the third or fourth graders not paying attention on his way to or from school. Pow! in the side of the head. There were also “snow baths,” which were confined to the face, as I recall. You didn’t want to get one of those, either. Girls were probably more popular targets than boys, even; call it a form of adolescent flirting. Boys went after the most popular/attractive girls, not so much to hit them but to get them to ask not to be hit. Yes, it was a dark time for gender relations back then. Some girls, not so popular, would find themselves as walking targets. The tough ones dared their attacker to hit them, threatening all sorts of retribution if they did. There were plenty of tough girls at St. Gall. Now, back to the snowball fights. I remember one in particular, late January of fourth grade, all boys, about forty in total, half on one side of 54th Street, half on the other side. It literally rained snowballs for what seemed to be an hour but was probably closer to fifteen minutes, with some irate mother coming out on the front porch to break it up, lest her husband be greeted with a messy sidewalk on his return from work. But until that adult-imposed armistice, it was bombs away. Again, I can see the snowballs flying every which way; how the emergency room at Holy Cross wasn’t filled with boys blinded by a snowball to the eye is beyond me. The fighting paused only to allow cars and wooly mammoths to pass. Getting hit in the chest was best, except for the snow shrapnel exploding up into the base of your chin before sliding down your neck. Head shots were repeated and many. Really, good times.

Winter Sports

These are the times that try our souls—eight to twelve inches of snow predicted to fall on top of, what is it now, a hundred inches already on the ground? Penny the satanic basset can barely see over the drifts on our walks. Maybe if I were Dutch or Minnesotan, this would all be invigorating. I could slap on my skates or cut a hole in the ice on some lake. Yeah, that’s it, stare down into a circle of ice-cold water with a pole or line in my freezing hands. You think the fish won’t be staring back at the dummy looking at him? The best I ever did on skates was learn how to walk; anything more was beyond my Hans Brinker skillset. But, as I like to remind a certain friend, at least I could get up off my ankles while taking baby steps around the rink. In high school, we did play something along the lines of galoshes-hockey in the alley. But it never went too long either because of the cold or Bob turning into Eddie Shore. Teammate or opponent, Bob took to hacking at the nearest limb—or head—until we all ran home. Just for the fun of it, I checked on the Strat-O-Matic website to see what old season they might be doing this year. Crap, 1956. They did that one already, and I don’t feel like popping $50 for cards with advanced info I don’t use when playing. If Strat-O-Matic can’t save me, what will? Oh, that’s right. Pitchers and catchers are due to report on Wednesday.

Misnumbered

Our friends at Baseball Prospectus are at it again with their annual PECOTA projections, pegging the White Sox for third place in the AL Central with 83.1 wins, behind the Twins (90.6) and Indians (85.7). Consider what this means for a moment. Somebody has come up with a formula that reduces the Sox winning percentage from a .583 last year down to .513 this season. In other words, an infield of Miguel Sano (1st); Jorge Polanco (2nd); Andrelton Simmons (ss); Josh Donaldson (3rd); and Mitch Garver (catcher) will ride roughshod over the lies of Jose Abreu (1st); Nick Madrigal (2nd); Tim Anderson (ss); Yoan Moncada (3rd); and Yasmani Grandal (catcher). Let the arguing commence. Oh, and let’s not forget the outfield. PECOTA-wise, Jake Cave (left), Bryon Buxton (center) and Max Kepler (right) over Eloy Jimenez (left), Luis Robert (center) and Adam Eaton/Adam Engel (right). Gosh, I wonder if Twins’ fans would trade their three for our four. If not, it may say something about them. As for dh, well, I’m admittedly a homer. I’d rather see what 22-year old Andrew Vaughn can do than throw money at Nelson Cruz, going on 41. It just makes me wonder how subjective the number-crunchers are. No, I take that back, this kind of projection convinces me they play favorites. I mean, the “our cupboard is bare” Cubs are projected to win 85.1 games. Really? Without benefit of a time machine or reincarnation? Well, the proof’s in the pudding. We’ll see come October.

More OPs

Bulls’ head coach Billy Donovan is really stuck with a lot of OPs—other people’s players. With the exception of rookies Devon Dotson and Patrick Williams along with free-agent acquisition guard Garrett Temple, Donovan is coaching a roster the work of John Paxson and Gar Forman. How do you say “old regime”? Donovan has this team at 10-14, and they could easily be .500 or a few games over, in which case, we may be talking “coach of the year” honors. Consider that the Bulls average as the tallest (6’7-1/2”) and biggest (226.9 lbs.) team in the NBA, yet they don’t really rebound that well—21st in the league—or play much of a physical game. Somehow, without a true point guard, they are eighth in assists. Again, we may be talking coach of the year. And, again, I think coaching in the NBA is a hard-to-impossible undertaking with the penchant for one-and-done players who come into the league at age 19 or thereabouts. So far, 19-year old rookie forward Patrick Williams has been doing pretty good, averaging a little over 10 points and 4 rebounds a game, but you have to hold your breath given the Bulls’ injury history recently. Center Wendell Carter Jr., 21, has suffered injuries of one sort or another all three years he’s been in the NBA. Forward Laurie Markkanen, 23, has seen injuries mar three of the four seasons he’s played for Chicago. Had he stayed all four years at Arizona, Markkanen would now be in his rookie season. Instead, he’s out with a dislocated shoulder. Markkanen was supposed to be a key part of the rebuild envisioned by Paxson and Forman, along with guard Zach LaVine, who is indeed putting up some gaudy offensive numbers, averaging 28.2 points a game, fifth best in the league; his 3.9 turnovers a game also rank as fifth most in the league. LaVine is a relative oldster, 25, in his seventh NBA season. He shouldn’t be throwing the ball away so much. So, add everything up. Do you hang onto this team or break it up and put your imprint on it? Whatever the Bulls do, I like their chances better than the Pelicans’, the team they beat last night, 129-116. Oh, second-year phenom Zion Williamson scored 29 points and pulled down 4 rebounds for New Orleans, but talk about an injury waiting to happen. Williamson is listed at 6’7”, though he’s most likely an inch shorter. What isn’t in dispute is his weight, all 284 pounds of it. If he weighs that much at 20, what will Williamson be at 24, 28, 32? At least this isn’t a Bulls’ problem, assuming, of course, they’re not tempted to swing a trade with the Pelicans. Fingers crossed.

Pitcher, Pitcher, Pitcher...

So, the baseball powers that be have decided another season of seven-inning doubleheaders and a tie-breaker format for extra-inning games is worth repeating. Gosh, thanks. As for the players refusing to go along with the dh in the NL, it’s always fun to see somebody else cut off their nose to spite that face. And, lest I forget, game-day rosters will be set at 26 players again. My inner Charlie Finley immediately gets to thinking Allan Lewis and Herb Washington, pinch runners extraordinaire, or Smokey Burgess, pinch hitter extraordinaire, then I see there won’t be any limit on pitchers carried this year. You know what that means, right? Teams definitely will carry thirteen pitchers, except for the ones that opt for fourteen, except for the one that will defy all convention and go with fifteen. And what team would that be, you ask? Hint: Tony LaRussa is their manager. Maybe LaRussa will opt for two openers and the rest relievers. I can’t wait to see. Not.

Practice in the Snow

I was looking at the MLB website yesterday to see who was playing pretend GM with other people’s money when I came across a video of a girls’ high school baseball team practicing outdoors in Japan, in the snow. Talk about eye-opening. Granted, the video no doubt edited, but even then, there were still players making nice plays on grounders and flyballs, again, in the snow! That’s just not supposed to happen. I was particularly impressed by the throws, no short-arming like in softball. This bears watching, friends and scouts. During the summer of hell, when my 17-year old daughter kept hitting homeruns unseen by D-I college coaches she wanted to impress and homeruns that didn’t impress her two travel coaches one bit, I took her to a baseball game as a release. A team of females players, including at least one college-aged, was playing against a bunch of 13- and 14-year olds from local teams. It was not a pretty sight. Basically, it looked as if the girls hadn’t been coached, not really, not seriously. What I remember in particular was one infielder trying to field grounders off her front foot. I was livid, and I’m pretty sure Clare was disgusted. Our little field trip did nothing to lighten her mood that summer. But these Japanese kids—you go, girls. And, next time, show us some BP.

Grace Under Pressure

The Bucs took the Chiefs to the woodshed in Super Bowl LV yesterday to the tune of 31-9. Tom Brady can lay claim to being quarterback GOAT with his seventh win while Patrick Mahomes finally got to experience what a pounding literally and emotionally feels like. I’m betting this makes for a future GOAT. I read that Mahomes was chased for something like 500 yards behind the line of scrimmage during the game, and I know he made some incredible throws side-armed (the angles of which would make me worry about injury). My point is that Mahomes kept putting his body out there long past the time it was obvious his team didn’t have a chance. A Chicago-area roofing company does a commercial about what marks a champion. I’d say, look at how hard Mahomes played with his team down by 22 points. After the game, the first one which Mahomes has ever lost by more than one possession as a pro, the 25-year old told the media that the Bucs “were the better team today. They beat us pretty good—the worst I think I’ve been beaten in a long time. But I’m proud of the guys and how they fought until the very end.” Hmm. Not a hint of Joe Namath or Cam Newton in any of that, which to me is a good thing. A young, gifted athlete found himself on the short, painful end of the score, and it sounded like he was going to be the better for it. Like I said, future GOAT.

Words vs. Actions

MLB is nothing if not media sensitive. The website includes a new offering—Resources for understanding allyship, anti-racism and advocacy. I clicked on “social justice.” There’s a lot on the 1619 Project, the NYT’s take on the taint of slavery throughout American history, but nothing on MLB’s culpability for present-day urban conditions. How can the baseball establishment call for change if it’s busy funneling money out of public coffers to finance ballparks? Social justice demands, or should demand, ballclubs paying for their own facilities and then meeting their annual tax bill. It’s what property owners across the U.S. do all the time. Anything else is just talk.

Catchers Come and Go

The White Sox just signed catcher Jonathan Lucroy to a minor-league deal with an invite to spring training. Lucroy, 34, used to be top-notch, a two-time All-Star for the Brewers with a career BA of .274. But the last three years haven’t been kind to Lucroy, who’s gone through four teams before coming to the Sox. At the same time, ex-Sox catcher Josh Phegley announced his retirement not even two weeks before his 33rd birthday and just two years removed from his best MLB season, when he hit 12 homers and drove in 62 runs in just 314 at-bats for the As. I always liked Phegley for his hard-nosed play; this was a guy who never got cheated on a swing and wasn’t afraid of baserunners sliding into the plate. There’s something else. In the minors, Phegley was diagnosed with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, a serious blood disorder; it cost the Terra Haute native his spleen. My sister Betty had something similar to ITP that claimed her life in 2010. With Phegley retiring, it’s a little like losing my sister all over again. Personally, I wish the Sox had signed one catcher over the other.

A Little More Digging

What can I say? There’s close to twenty inches of snow on the ground, and I was bored. So, I went on eBay last week and bought that wire photo of White Sox owner Arthur Allyn I’d seen. It shows a very serious Allyn, with crew cut, pointing to what the caption calls a “sketch of a new proposed $50 million sports complex to house professional sports in Chicago. Allyn said the complex will include a baseball park, an enclosed area for basketball and hockey, a football and soccer stadium and will be located on the south side of Chicago’s Loop.” You don’t say. The thing is, I don’t recall any of it. The proposed dome over Comiskey Park, yes, but not this, and now I know why—the back of the photo is stamped June 20, 1967. At the time, I was with my parents in Montreal for Expo 67, the World’s Fair that year, which is just as well. If I’d known about this, it’d probably given me a case of juvenile hypertension. McCormick Place, the large convention center on Chicago’s south lakefront, had gone up in flames that January, so Allyn’s proposal could have been intended for the same site (about a mile down from Soldier Field). In today’s dollars, Allyn was proposing a project costing somewhere between $387.4-$393.7 million. And what did it look like? From what I can tell, three separate venues rested atop a massive, one-story base that stretched for blocks, so big it had room enough for parking on the roof. The football facility looks a little like Arrowhead Stadium; the indoor arena could pass for the Forum in Los Angeles; and the ballpark has elements of Comiskey to it, that is, if a modernist architect with a gun to his/her head were told to come up with a ballpark design, or else. I truly consider Allyn and his brother John to be the unsung heroes among Chicago sports’ owners. They could’ve made like the football Bidwells and left for greener pastures. Instead, what Arthur Allyn wanted was a different city address, away from the perception of crime and decay that people connected with the neighborhood around Comiskey Park. That that same area is now gentrifying makes for more than a little irony, at least to me. There’s no way Allyn was going to come up with close to $400 million all on his own. Did he want public involvement? Was there a consortium of investors willing to go in with him? Which architectural firm did he have in mind? Those and related questions will require a trip to Harold Washington Library downtown. After all, curious minds want to know.

Net Worth

The Chicago sports’ world is going crazy over the WNBA Sky signing Naperville Central product Candace Parker to a two-year deal for a reported $385,000. Until now, the 34-year old forward had spent her entire career with the LA Sparks. Chicagoans love it when a local born and/or raised player who “got away” comes back, even though it hardly ever works out in any meaningful way. Before Parker, think Dwayne Wade; Cazzie Russell; Ken Holtzman (though more downstate than Chicago, and traded by the Cubs with most of his career before him); Greg Luzinski; and Ted Kluszewski. This is hardly a comprehensive list. It's the same with entertainers; we love to hear how much they miss the old digs; only the more honest ones will admit that LA has the better weather. By the way, I haven’t heard Parker said anything about actually moving back home; she just intends to play here. I guess that makes it a partial homecoming. Parker has the stats, ring (one WNBA championship so far) and awards (including Rookie of the Year, MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, two times each) to qualify as a star. The money, not so much. She’ll make $192,500 over the next two seasons as opposed to the rookie minimum in these sports: $563,500, MLB; $610,00, NFL; $700,00, NHL; and $898,310, NBA. In case you’re wondering, the WNBA minimum is $57,000. At least Parker will find the cost of living around here lower than in Southern California. That and the average temperature.

No Thankyou

MLB owners and players are doing what they do best, which is fighting. Right now, the two sides are arguing over how the new season should progress. As ever, the owners want to own. The league sent a proposal outlining a plan that would make Commissioner Rob Manfred a super-Pope, with the power to start and stop the season pretty much as he sees fit. The proposal also called for delaying the season to late April;, reducing the number of games to 156; keeping seven-inning doubleheaders and the tie-breaker format, along with the dh in the NL; and having fourteen teams qualify for the postseason. I guess you could say the players got all Martin Luther and rejected the plan. (Yes, I like my metaphors.) So, everything goes to default mode, with a 162-game season and spring training starting in two weeks. Personally, I can live with that. But Paul Sullivan in today’s Tribune apparently can’t. He calls for delaying the season’s start to a week before Memorial Day and starting the postseason November 1 (All Saints Day, per the metaphor); the playoffs would have warm-weather sites, and the World Series might even go all the way to Thanksgiving. Heaven help us. So, the elephants are at it again, and only the grass, aka fans, will suffer. This is all about money. No doubt, the owners have projections showing them the best date to start the season, with fans allowed into stadiums ASAP. In addition, owners must be feeling heat from communities in Arizona and Florida that built all those fancy spring-training facilities for teams. If no one goes to spring training, that means hotels and restaurants stay empty. That means no tax revenue, and no tax revenue means those stadiums have to be paid for somehow. On the other side, players want to be paid for 162 games, period; fans in the stands is not their problem. But Thanksgiving baseball in the Sunbelt isn’t much of a solution. I can live with the seven-inning doubleheaders for another year (but not the tiebreaker, sorry), as well as a delayed start to the season, provided a sincere effort is made to play all 162 games. At some point, ever-expanding playoffs will turn the postseason into one big participation trophy. Then again, what do I know? I’m just a fan, or what elephants call grass.

Knock, Knock...

Who’s there? Why, it’s starting pitcher Carlos Rodon, reportedly re-signed by the White Sox to a one-year, $3 million, this after being released last December. All Rodon has to do is pass his physical. Rodon is the can’t-miss prospect who did, despite all the flashes of talent shown since he was the third pick in the 2014 draft; no Aaron Nola or Trea Turner for the South Siders, thank you very much. Not that Rodon has ever publicly doubted his talent vs. those two or anyone else, for that matter. The meek and the humble don’t usually pick Scott Boras to be their agent. Arm and shoulder problems aren’t necessarily Rodon’s fault. Maybe he ignored pitching tips because they came from Don Cooper, and/or maybe Rodon is one of those hard-nosed types who won’t admit to an injury until it’s too late. If so, that helps explain the 29-33 record and 4.14 ERA over six seasons. My gripe is that the guy never looked to be in shape. Rodon is listed at 6’3” and 250 pounds. Me, I’d want to see if lighter translated into healthier after all those trips to the DL, including Tommy John surgery in 2019. The left-hander turned 28 in December, so it’s not as though he’s ancient. Maybe a new pitching coach—yes, we finally have one in Ethan Katz—will get through to him, and maybe Rodon is at a point in his career where he’s finally willing to listen. It’s February, and hope springs eternal.