Pick a Side, Any Side

Cubs’ first baseman Anthony Rizzo and management are at a stalemate in negotiations over a new contract. The front office has offered Rizzo a deal said to be worth $70 million over five years while Rizzo wants more. How much more? Think Paul Goldschmidt money, probably, in the neighborhood of $130 million over the same length of time. Suddenly, my head hurts. According to baseball-reference.com, Rizzo has already made just under $72 million in his career. What, doubling that number isn’t good enough? Then again, the Cubs are worth a reported $3.36 billion according to Forbes, with another organization going as high as $4.14 billion. You think those numbers reflect the Ricketts’ abilities on the field? Their ballplayers—and, in the case of this franchise, their ballpark—have generated that value. So, why shouldn’t Rizzo get his fair share? Remember, owners are forever pushing salary caps or, as they like to say in baseball, the luxury tax. But there’s no luxury tax assessed by the Players’ Association when an ownership group sells. Nope, the money goes straight into some fat-cats’ pockets. It’s also worth noting that free-agent contracts drive salaries in a more general context. Not only do you have Rizzo thinking Goldschmidt, you have Rizzo and Goldschmidt having an effect, however indirect, over salary arbitration figures; both sides have to come up with a figure based at least in part on what players at a particular position command in salary. It may not be efficient, but it is a tide that lifts all boats, sort of. Oh, did I mention Francisco Lindor? The Mets recently offered their newly acquired 27-year old shortstop a ten-year, $325 million deal, which he turned down; Lindor wants a reported $385 million over twelve years, which would put him $41 million behind Mike Trout for richest-ever baseball contract. Nice work, if you can get it. I’m left with this question: What’s more insane, the Mets having $325 million on hand to offer one player, or Lindor wanting more? You decide. I can’t.

Age-old Question

Joe Cunningham died last week at the age of 89. If I can remember him playing first base for the White Sox, what does that say about me? I’ll go with “good memory, Doug.” Cunningham came to the Sox for Minnie Minoso before the 1962 season. In truth, I have no memory of him playing in ’62 (or any of Minoso, for that matter, until he came back to the Sox for a few weeks in ’64). In fact, one of the only two things I do remember about Cunningham is that he broke his collarbone in 1963 and was replaced by 22-year old rookie Tommy McCraw. My God, baseball-reference.com lists McCraw as being 80-years old. What a memory. McCraw was a typical Sox player of the ’60s, with good speed, good glove and just a hint of power. When the Sox traded Cunningham to the Senators for Bill “Moose” Skowron a few weeks before my twelfth birthday, I worried what would become of McCraw. Silly me. Al Lopez started to play him in the outfield.

A Walk and a Stroll

I was taking Satan for her walk Saturday morning when I spotted a campaign sign on the corner. I’d know that name anywhere, and he wouldn’t get my vote to flush out sewers. Check that. He’d be perfect for the job. Some things you don’t forget, like the way a coach treats your eleven-year old. Clare had just moved up from Mustang- to Bronco-level Pony Ball. The previous two years, she was good enough to start all the time and make the All-Star team both times (although the coaches one year didn’t want her playing the field, being a girl and all). Clare should’ve been with her old team when it moved up but got placed elsewhere for reasons I don’t understand to this day. New coach didn’t like new player and didn’t care if her new teammates did, either. Clare ended up platooning at second base with a boy who had a prosthetic leg; every time he batted, cheers went up from the bench. That never happened with Clare, although a teammate did tell her one time she was having a bad day in the field at practice “because you suck.” Midway through the season, the coach awarded her with a game ball for being such a good sport about not starting. Two years later, at the Pony-level, I brought Clare in to face her now ex-coach’s son. who told the ump he’d die of embarrassment if he struck out. “Where’s the death certificate?” my daughter called out after getting her strikeout. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say, in which case the grandkid will have Super Woman for a mom. Me, I’ll be watching election results nine days from now.

Admission of Error

On Thursday, the Bulls blew up their roster, trading away former first-round draft picks Wendell Carter Jr and Chad Hutchison along with Otto Porter Jr., Daniel Gafford, Luke Kornet and two first-round draft picks for a whole bunch of folks, starting with All-Star center Nikola Vucevic. OK, then. Right now, the only thing I can say for sure about the incoming talent is that the front office wants to start winning now, because Vucevic happens to be 30. Of more immediate interest is what this says in effect, as in, The old regime didn’t have a clue, which, of course, they didn’t. Carter and Hutchison were two first rounders who obviously didn’t pan out. As for those other two first-round picks from the days of Gar-Pax, Lauri Markkkanen and Coby White would be smart to keep their bags packed. (Technically, the Timberwolves drafted Markkanen, then packaged him in a deal with Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine for Jimmy Butler and Justin Patton. You be the judge of that trade.) Anything short of a quantum leap in production, and they’re both likely gone by next season. I’m a broken record on the subject, so I may as well start repeating myself about one-and-done’s, in this case Carter. If the third-year center doesn’t produce in the near-term in Orlando, he risks joining the ever-expanding club of young journeymen, Jabari Parker and Jahlil Okafor among its most prominent members. One-and-done certainly hasn’t worked out career-wise for those two one-time phenoms. Carter, Okafor and Parker all could have benefitted bigtime from another two years of college ball, but what do I know? Well, more than the Bulls’ old regime, at least.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

No sooner do I write about Eloy Jimenez turning into the second coming of Pete Reiser than my daughter calls with the news, “Eloy will be out five to six months.” Thanks, messenger. What to do? Well, if I’m White Sox GM Rick Hahn (and perish that thought), right off I try to avoid social media, where the wanna-be Hahns are all talking about how Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is trying to win on the cheap, and it’s come back to bite him. A few hundred million in free-agent signings, and, waah-la, problem solved. Step right up, George Springer and/or Marcell Ozuna. You guys were the answer to stopping Eloy from being Eloy in the outfield. Of course, signing Springer for six years would’ve meant providing him with a wheelchair to play the outfield for the second half of the contract. And exactly how Ozuna qualifies as a defensive upgrade over Jimenez is a mystery to me. Injuries happen, pure and simple. No one likes it, and, with Eloy, they basically have to be expected. (Ted Williams had the same problem, too, yes?) Now, you move on, or Hahn moves on to show how he can respond on the fly. The wanna-be’s are right that Hahn has whiffed on providing organizational depth in the outfield. The question now is, can he pull a rabbit out of the hat a la Roland Hemond? Two names, if I might—Daniel Palka and Clint Frazier. Either one would make for an interesting five to six months.

Anybody But Them

The White Sox think they’ve found themselves another Cuban prodigy, 22-year old Cuban outfield prospect Oscar Colas. According to The Athletic yesterday, the $2.7 million deal will become official next January. The Sox have used up their international signing funds until then. What struck me in this was a sentence beat reporter James Fegan wrote: “But even scouts who wonder if Colas’ hit tool[s] will weather the acclimation phase to translate his thump into games believe it’s largely a risk worth taking.” As opposed to signing a woman, I guess.

Pete and Eloy

Well, he did it again. White Sox left fielder Eloy Jimenez ran into another fence yesterday and had to be helped off the field. This marks four times in two seasons plus a spring training that Jimenez’s awkward outfield play has risked serious injury. Yesterday’s jump for a homerun ball clearly beyond reach was so egregious it prompted Sox announcer Steve Stone to deliver a lecture on the need to stay healthy. When Steve Stone turns on you, Eloy, it’s serious. Fences, nets, fellow outfielders—Eloy doesn’t pick favorites. Yesterday, it was a fence. Next week or next month, who knows? It would be nice if during this latest timeout for recuperating (discomfort in the left shoulder, they say), someone tells young Mr. Jimenez the story of Pete Reiser, the superstar who never was. Reiser was Eloy before Eloy, a gifted hitter who seemed hellbent on self-destruction while wearing a glove; somehow, it seems fitting he played in Brooklyn. From what I’ve read, Reiser suffered at least three possible concussions running into walls and, according to Wikipedia, was carried off the field on a stretcher eleven times. One head injury was so bad, a priest gave Reiser Last Rites under the stands at Ebbets Field. Each injury claimed a little more of Reiser’s talent until he just wasn’t a starter anymore. And that’s going to be Eloy Jimenez if he’s not careful.

Temptation

Sportswriters bring to mind H.L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism, as a “haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” Which may explain why Steve Greenberg wrote what he did in today’s Sun-Times. Excited about Loyola and head coach Porter Moser? Well, Greenberg wants you to consider the possibility, the likelihood, that Moser will leave for greener pastures. Yes, these Ramblers bear the imprint of their coach. “But there’s another level to which he [Moser] cans ascend if he wants to try. Don’t believe for a second he won’t be thinking about it.” The assumption here being that Moser can do exactly the same thing at twice the salary elsewhere. As proof, Greenberg brings up Brad Stevens, the Porter Moser of Butler before he moved on to coach the NBA Celtics. Interesting comparison, that, and one Greenberg fails to explore fully. Consider that, despite a .558 winning percentage over eight seasons in Boston, Stevens has never come as close to a NBA championship (no better than the conference finals) as he did a NCAA one (losing twice in the championship game). Why oh why, I wonder, is Stevens’ name now popping up in regards the Big Ten coaching vacancy at Indiana? Must be a coincidence. At the risk of doing apples and oranges, I think Porter would do well to consider what Pat Fitzgerald has accomplished at Northwestern, which just happens to be, literally, two or so miles up Sheridan Road from the Loyola campus. Fitzgerald overachieved with his football program, to the point he got the university to commit to him in a way it never did Ara Parseghian. That’s the opportunity Porter has at Loyola. Or he could go off in search of those greener pastures. In that case, he might consider Brad Stevens as a cautionary tale. The bigger the pasture, the more pressure to make it produce, the less of a chance to do it your way. If I were Porter Moser or Loyola, that’s definitely what I’d be thinking.

What He Said, and What He Did

After his first bad outing this spring, White Sox right-hander Reynaldo Lopez said, “Just a couple [of] mistakes, but I felt good with all my pitches. [Sun-Times]” After his second bad outing, Lopez said, “I was able to make those adjustments from my last outing, and it was a good day. I’m on a good track. [team website].” After his third bad outing, Lopez offered it was all “something I can fix in the next couple of day [Sun-Times].” There won’t be a fourth bad outing, not with Lopez getting sent down yesterday. In four spring appearances, Lopez logged eleven innings, giving up sixteen hits and four walks to go with a 9.00 ERA and 1.82 WHIP. None of that kept pitching coach Ethan Katz from offering a strong defense of the 27-year old: “He’s getting into the right place with everything. It’s just some bad luck thrown his way, but he’s putting in the work to put himself in the best position he can be.” Really? Where, exactly, is the bad luck Katz alludes to? If anything, Lopez is lucky none of those sixteen hits went up the middle and took his head off. A few more appearances, and who knows? How happy talk benefits a player in this instance is beyond me. There’s something wrong with Lopez, who’s regressed each season since he went 7-10 with a 3.91 ERA in 2018. Either he’s injured and not telling anyone, or he’s picked up a ton of bad habits he refuses to let go of. Because the numbers don’t lie. It would be nice if someone would tell the truth here. I think Latin pitchers have it especially tough. Right now, the Sox active roster includes fifteen pitchers, two of whom are Hispanic (Carlos Rodon and Jose Ruiz). Of the thirteen position players listed, seven are Hispanic. So what? Well, for openers, more people to talk to. It’s not like Lopez can go up to Jose Abreu and discuss his curve ball. Come to think of it, who can he talk to? Oh, right, the team interpreter, but he’s not the pitching coach. So far, I haven’t heard anything about Katz being bilingual. Yes, manager Tony La Russa and catcher Yasmani Grandal are, but they’re not pitchers who’ve got that pitching vibe going on peculiar to players who toe the rubber for a living. Too bad for Lopez. He's at the point where the Sox no longer feel especially invested in him. Both Lopez and Lucas Giolito came over in the same trade from Washington. One pitcher has progressed, the other regressed. Maybe Lopez will never match Giolito’s success. OK, but I’d like to know they did everything possible to make it happen, and that includes talking to the man in the language he both understands and thinks in.

Upset Explained Here!

Yesterday was throwback day as number-eight seed Loyola of Chicago upset top-seed Illinois, 71-58 in the second round of the NCAA Midwest regional. Somewhere, Bobby Knight is smiling, assuming he can pull off that most basic of human actions. Loyola head coach Porter Moser the second coming of Bobby Knight? Yes, now hear me out. Knight thrived at a time when the coach was God and his players listened absolutely lest they be smote, both in the figurative and literal sense of the word. Knight just so happened to know what he was doing, at least from the bench. Moser does, too, plus he appears to be in possession of a heart and soul, both of which Knight was sadly lacking. That kind of college game is mostly gone now, replaced by what I’d call the pro/college game, where teams load up on NBA-bound talent and try to hash out a strategy that maximizes said talent. Illinois would be a good example, with guard Ayo Dosunmu and probably center Kofi Cockburn expected to declare for the upcoming NBA draft. It’s doubtful anyone on Loyola, not even super-hustling senior center Cameron Krutwig, will be drafted. A walk-on invitation, maybe, but that’s it. And that’s how it used to be with the Knight teams. Name me anyone outside of Isiah Thomas who came out of Indiana to have a big career in the NBA, and even Thomas only lasted two years with Knight before going pro. But could those mostly nameless Hoosiers play defense. That’s what the Ramblers did yesterday to the Illini, forcing seventeen turnovers. Moser preaches defense, finds players who buy into the concept and then does what he does. Which, in this case, is to take Loyola to the NCAA tournament twice in the past four years, and advance. And, while Moser may detest the media every bit as much as Knight did, outwardly he treats them with respect, all the while displaying an infectious enthusiasm that the cameras love. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski used to coach the same way, if with fewer smiles, but then he went over to the one-and-done philosophy. Truth be told, pro/college approach should top most old-time, coach-first programs. Only someone forgot to tell Loyola.

Conflicted

The NCAA is running a commercial of former athletes now part of the everyday world, and, as soon as I saw it, I thought of my daughter. Then I thought of ten years ago coming up on March 31st. It was Clare’s first home game for Elmhurst. Between the playing of the national anthem and the words “today’s NCAA softball game” sounding over the speaker, I got goose bumps. Yes, it could’ve been the 45-degree chill, but I’d grown used to softball weather by then. Only a fool sat in the stands without wearing his long underwear, boots and at least two sweatshirts. No, it was “NCAA” that did the trick. Clare went three for three in the first game, four for six on the day, with a double that literally hit off the top of the fence and bounced back onto the field. I always found that it paid to keep score, in order to remember. “March Madness” is framed in much the same way, college memories in waiting. Only, they don’t broadcast the sports all those other ex-athletes played, at least not in prime time to national audiences. I listen to coaches talk about the “tournament feel,” which to me feels like more of a NBA audition for the one-and-done players. Good luck to them all, in particular those who go on to find the pro game is a lot more than they reckoned for. Clare has her own NCAA memories, and so do I. The commercial is right about one thing. The world moves on whether or not we want it to.

Tap the Cap

Riddle me this, sports’ fans. The NFL just signed a rights’ agreement with the usual broadcast suspects worth a reported $113 billion over eleven seasons. The McCaskeys and their fellow owners would seem to be rolling in the dough, then, right? So, why is there a salary cap? The short answer is because the players allow it. Hence, the salary-cap dance the marks the start of each new calendar year in the NFL. The Bears get rid of cornerback Kyle Fuller and are expected to dump defensive tackle Akiem Hicks to save a projected $21.5 million in salary cap space. The fact that GM Ryan “Searching for Clues” Pace just spent $10 million to sign free-agent quarterback Andy Dalton serves as frosting on an absurd cake. NFL owners laugh their way to the bank or, in the McCaskeys,’ case, stumble there. And the players? Why, they can look forward to getting their collective bells rung, and not just for sixteen games. It looks like this year the regular season will expand to seventeen. Clang-clang goes the trolley, straight to concussion protocol. Last stop, CTE-ville. But, hey, we need the cap to save the game.

I Can't Watch Anymore

Listen to my wife, and she’d have you believe TIVO has turned me into some weird kind of sports’ fan who can only watch games on fast-forward. Maybe she’s right. With baseball, I’ll often tape afternoon games to watch while I’m on the exercycle. With Jason Benetti and Steve Stone doing their vaudeville act, there’s no reason to turn off the mute button. I just fast-forward until something interesting happens. Night games I tend to watch in real time, mute button on. I do the same with Bears’ games on a Sunday afternoon (and won’t it be fun now with Andy Dalton at the helm?). For some reason, this doesn’t work with the Bulls, though. In fact, all I can stand is the last three or four minutes of a game. You might say I’ve lost that loving feeling. Part of it is age. The teams I most identify with—Sloan, Van Lier and company—are a mere memory, and one an increasing number of fans don’t share. I’m sure there had to be games when my heroes blew a 23-point lead to go on and lose (but, with Dick Motta as the coach, not too often unless somebody had a death wish), and I watched throughout, but that was then and this is a whole different regime in a different century, to boot. Maybe the best way to put it is I prefer to sample my basketball these days. So, I turned on the Bulls-Spurs’ game Wednesday night to see that the home team was ahead by the aforementioned 23 points. When I checked in again pretty late in the fourth quarter, they were down by eleven, I think, in other words a swing of 34 points before finally losing by six. Who could watch that, even on triple fast-forward? Not me, and I’m guessing nobody in the front office. My money is on just about anyone not hired or drafted by Arturas Karnisovas—think Wendell Carter Jr., Lauri Markkanen, Coby White and, yes, Zach LaVine—leaving a whole lot sooner than later. If and when that happens, I’ll stop in to check on the new product. But just for a bit, with TIVO remote in hand.

Circles of Bears' Hell

Tuesday night, I was watching the 9 o’clock news as is my wont. About thirteen minutes in, the anchors shifted to sports with breaking news—the Bears had signed free-agent quarterback Andy Dalton to a one-year contract. A giant sinkhole that swallowed up the Cubs and White Sox would’ve gotten less attention. Such is the place I live in. The 33-year old Dalton is slated to make a base salary of $10 million, with another $3 million in incentives. I hope for Dalton’s sake he earns the extra cash because that means he performed better than expected. That either mollifies an unhappy fan base, or it gives Dalton more than enough cash to get out of town, fast. And here I thought I’d never feel bad for a millionaire. Nothing short of a deep, and I mean deep, run in the playoffs will protect Dalton and the people who signed him. A slow start, and the McCaskeys will probably invoke COVID protocols to empty out Soldier Field. I think it’s finally reached a point where Bears Nation is ready to give Philadelphia fans a run for the money as the most unforgiving boo-birds in all of sports. You had a chance to draft Patrick Mahomes, and now we end up with Andy Dalton? That is not a thought to still restless souls. On top of that comes news that Bears’ GM Ryan Pace really, really tried to get quarterback Russell Wilson from the Seahawks, offering a package that included three first-round draft choices and two starting players. Only problem was, the starting players had to come from the Bears, which is sort of like the mid-60s Mets. In other words, it was easy for Seattle to utter the two words that promise another season of mediocrity, or worse, along the shores of Lake Michigan—No thanks. I wouldn’t want to be Pace right now or anyone with the last name of McCaskey. If ever Chicago could shift (back?) to being a baseball town, it’s now. You can only hope that Jerry Reinsdorf and the Ricketts don’t go belly up in solidarity with a brother owner. This is one time you pray there’s no honor among thieves.

Mute Button

Clare and I had a little taste of déjà vu courtesy of yesterday’s The Athletic. Sometimes, you forget about what you don’t miss until you get a reminder of what, or who, has left the premises. The what/who in this case is “sportscaster” Chris Rongey, who anchored the White Sox postgame show from 2006-2015 on The Score. If you were listening to the game on the radio back then, it was always a good idea to change stations before Rongey started taking calls from listeners. The man would’ve insulted the Pope and George Washington on a conference call if he could. Not that you got any of that in the story by Jon Greenberg. No, for Greenberg it was all a jolly stroll down memory lane, complete with eight audio excerpts to show what fools Rongey suffered. Maybe The Score didn’t have the funds to pop for a mute button on Rongey’s console. Maybe Rongey didn’t know how to use one. Funny—or not—how none of the excerpts sounded like the callers Clare and I heard on our way home from games, mostly frustrated White Sox fans like us wanting the team to do something other than sign Adam Dunn or trade for Todd Frazier. You’d be at wit’s end, too, if your team kept making one bone-headed move after another. Yes, there were fans who sounded like they were on a different plane of existence, along with clalers who thought Paul Konerko was dumb and Matt Thornton an abomination. But guess what? You can mute or disconnect those people. What Rongey did—just like David Kaplan before him working a similar gig after Cubs’ games on WGN—was to treat everyone with contempt, except for those times he went with patronizing contempt. Two things here, starting with people in glass houses. Ever wonder why so many coaches and managers hate the media? Listen to a full postgame press conference, and you’ll get a good idea: Coach, looking back, do you think it was smart to bring in Jones, who gave up that walk-off grand slam? There’s no intelligent answer to a stupid question, but reporters keep asking them. Coach… I try to punch up, not down like Rongey and Kaplan did. Otherwise, you’re just a jerk on one end of the phone.

The New Normal

With her other half coaching high school football (on a Saturday, in March), Clare decided to spend the afternoon with us watching the White Sox game against the Angels. We took our usual positions, daughter on the couch, father on the exercycle. That made it feel like old times, along with some of the talk. We don’t like how the Sox are hitting, but we are happy fewer and fewer non-roster pitchers are around to blow late-inning leads. Adam Eaton also got the third degree, or at least a lot of Tivo slow-motion replay to see if he’s hitting off his front foot. Sadly, the results proved inconclusive. But there were also reminders about that this isn’t like any other then. Take Satan, the wonder basset (please). She can no longer pounce on her sister the way she likes because Clare is carrying a pup of her own. And I don’t seem to remember us ever discussing maternity clothes during a ballgame before. Oh, well, things change. A new normal is here, and my job is to make it work. I figure, by next summer, the kid will be going back and forth from my lap to his mom’s as we watch our heroes run roughshod over the AL Central. That’s what I’ll work on.

Six, Do I Hear Seven?

I saw a story in the paper yesterday about the number of teams considering six-man rotations in light of the previous season only going sixty games. Teams don’t want to risk injury to starters in need of arm strength after an all-too-short 2020 campaign. And the science behind this? None that was cited. And the odds of pitchers being allowed to throw as hard as they want because, hey, they’re only going six innings, tops? Oh, I’d say the odds are very good. Same goes for this idea failing to prevent injuries and even causing more along the way. We’ll find out soon enough.

Na Na Hey Hey...

Ex-White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper took to the airwaves Thursday on 670 The Score to talk about his dismissal from the Sox after eighteen years of slouching in the dugout. Get your hankies ready. “It’s not fun when people you really look up to and admire and care for—care for, that’s the best way to put it—don’t care for you quite as much,” the 64-year old Cooper told listeners during the Parkins & Spiegel Show. “It’s not fun.” Well, speak for yourself, Don. And allow me a few questions here, like who in particular did you admire? Jerry Reinsdorf? Kenny Williams? Also, who did you “care for” and dare I ask, how? C’mon, names and acts. Try as I might, I can’t imagine Cooper going up to any of the coaches or managers who’ve cycled through the Sox organization to offer support or sympathy after they’d been let go. Ozzie Guillen? I’m pretty sure Ozzie and Don hate one another, maybe the result of Cooper taking care of someone else in the organization other than his manager. Maybe a bullpen coach or longtime scout? If Cooper did, it was a well-kept secret. Cooper was proudly old school, so he should appreciate the adage that what goes around comes around. I suspect a lot of people who’ve worked with him feel the same way.

Don't Say That

Reynaldo Lopez started for the White Sox last night, and he reminded me of long-gone Jacob Turner in a couple of ways, starting with his stat line: three innings pitched, six hits, five earned runs with a walk, two strikeouts and two gopher balls along the way. Afterwards, Lopez did a spot-on Turner imitation after similar outings. “I think it went well,” the 27-year old right hander was quoted in today’s Sun-Times. “Just a couple [of] mistakes, but I felt good with all my pitches.” As Billy Crystal might say, it is better to look good than feel good. In addition, the team web site has Lopez explaining through team interpreter Billy Russo, “My focus right now is not to throw hard. It’s more to execute with all my pitches. That’s what I’ve been working on.” Like Jacob Turner? I’m just spitballing here, but I think the idea is to see if you have a feel for your pitches and move on quickly if you don’t. How can misfiring pitch after pitch—see stat line, above—in any way help? If anything, I’d say it leads to bad habits. And what are all the new gizmos for, if not to show a pitcher during his side sessions what’s working and what isn’t? Lopez made a point in his comments of saying what a hard worker he is. OK, use the gizmos to get better, bring what you’ve learned to the mound, and then be ready. For what? Well, I’ve always heard good pitchers are the ones who know how to win without their best stuff. Lopez obviously didn’t have his best stuff. Then get into the habit of realizing that fast and identifying what will get batters out. That’s the spring-training habit I’d want to establish from the get-go. Manager Tony La Russa said something Lopez and everybody else on the team might want to consider: “Six times we’ve been losers, [and it] messes up the rest of the day.” If the skipper doesn’t like losing in March, what’s he going to be like once the season starts?

Flat-footed

As soon as I read what Adam Eaton said, I had to call my hitting guru for comment; she did not disappoint. “If I hit off my front foot all the time, I wouldn’t tell anyone about it,” Clare said yesterday when we talked over the phone. Indeed. The comment in question arose from Eaton telling reporters how his approach to hitting has changed since being traded from the White Sox to the Nationals in the 2016 offseason. Eaton said he “used to be very front foot, be athletic, barrel to the baseball, and now I kind of have to refine that,” by which he means being “more of a back-foot hitter. I want to stay on my back side longer, see the ball better and deeper.” OK, but about that front-foot thing. Nobody stays in the major hitting primarily off his front foot, at least not since the days of Vic Davalillo in the 1960s and ’70s. There’s a reason I mention Davalillo because he and Eaton were/are both left-handed hitters with speed; those are the only kind of players who can get away with hitting off their front foot…occasionally. Think about it. If a fast right-handed hitter like Adam Engel were to do that, he’d hit sad little grounders to short or third unless, like Davalillo and Eaton, he went to the opposite field. In which case, he’d hit sad little grounders to second and first. You can’t beat out balls like that. Be a speedy leftie, though, and you can as the ball travels in the opposite direction you’re running. But here’s the thing. If you did that all the time, pitchers and defenses would adjust accordingly. Pitchers would go inside, and the left-side defense would shade to the opposite field; left and center field would also shade over to get a step on fly balls. The result would be no more opposite-field hits, no more career in MLB. In his second and third years with the Sox, 2015-16, Eaton averaged fourteen homers a season, and I doubt many of them were opposite field. I think he was enough of a pull hitter to keep defenses honest so that when he did hit off his front foot, the ball had a chance of trickling through. But I’d like to know how many of Eaton’s 899 career hits were of the trickle/slap/lucky-liner-to-left variety. This is probably the result of reporters being reporters and Eaton being Eaton; stories have to be written, space filled, even in spring training. To his credit, Eaton is an accessible player. In this case, he said something that doesn’t really hold up and reporters didn’t bother to think about before quoting. Like my guru said, always hitting off your front foot isn’t something to tell the world.

Moving Violations

The Athletic had an interesting baseball story today, “Can we determine which teams are best and worst at developing fastball velocity?” According to the authors, the answer is Yes, and the White Sox come in dead last. A couple of observations here. First, baseball continues its fascination with—or addiction to—speed. At no time do writers Eno Sarris and Brittany Ghiroli question the underlying premise that speed is the basis upon which all pitching is based. They did note that some organizations emphasize vertical movement over just speed and concede that kind-of fast could have advantages over way-fast in terms of maximizing inning-after-inning performance, but that’s it. What about control, the lack of which renders speed meaningless, at least against disciplined hitters? Not a word. Or injuries? Again, nothing. It’s as if everyone in and around baseball has bought into Darwin. The strong throw heat, the weak get injured and try to get strong again with Tommy John surgery. Sarris and Ghiroli end with an ironic—at least to me—observation that baseball is a “sport where stagnation is the enemy.” Really? Then why is everybody, including those slow-to-figure-it-out White Sox, so enamored with pitchers who throw hard? And hitters who swing hard? It seems to me this phase of the game has been going on way too long.

Retired

Clare texted the other day with the kind of news that makes a fan reflective. Gordon Beckham, one of her favorite players, had decided to retire after an eleven-year big-league career. I think Beckham was to Clare what Walt Williams was to me, a slightly older player you could identify with. Beckham was 22 when the White Sox called him up in 2009, or five years older than my hot-hitting high school junior. And that first year everything looked so promising, with Beckham hitting .270 with 14 homeruns and 63 RBIs in just 378 at-bats. While Beckham’s power stayed the same, the rest of his offensive numbers suffered a steady decline during the next 4-1/2 seasons, until he was traded in late 2014 to the Angels. What kept Beckham in the majors as a starter was his glove. He came up with the Sox as a slick-fielding third baseman, only to be shifted in his second year to second base, where he played a Gold Glove caliber defense. Ironically, Beckham was drafted out of Georgia as a shortstop. Maybe the switch(es) proved harder than he let on. I read an online interview where Beckham admits to being his own worst critic, a tendency he says was fed by the Chicago media. All the questions he heard seemed to fall into one of two categories, “Have you figured it out?” and “Are you ever going to figure it out?” Even out of the game, Beckham is still too hard on himself. If he failed the Sox, they replied in kind. You’d figure an organization would want to take care with the eighth player selected in the 2008 draft, but that’s not necessarily the South Side way. At the time, GM Kenny Williams and manager Ozzie Guillen were consumed by their tug-of-war over the loyalty of owner Jerry Reinsdorf. It appears no one was paying attention to young Mr. Beckham. I can’t imagine this happening had Rick Renteria and Rick Hahn been around then. That’s what you call bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. A broken hamate bone Beckham suffered in his left hand during the 2013 season was another bit of bad luck. So it goes. You lose an early hero, who has to get on with his life just as you do. In the interview, Beckham mentioned his one-year old son. My daughter is having a kid of her own. Maybe she’ll show him the picture she had me take of her with Beckham at SoxFest in 2013. Or maybe one day my grandson will find himself playing on the same field with Gordon Beckham’s kid. That would be cool.

Make-believe

I open the Sunday sports’ section this morning and what do I see? Why, a story about the Bears, of course. Afterall, the NFL is a twelve-month-a-year enterprise, and this is Chicago. Brad Biggs’ story in the Tribune started with an informative-enough headline, Some heavy lifting ahead for [Bears’ GM Ryan] Pace due to salary cap.” Reading on, I learned that the Saints are “mired in salary-cap hell,” so they’re unlikely to pursue Seattle’s Russell Wilson as a replacement at quarterback for the likely-retiring Drew Brees. In comparison, the Bears are in more of a salary-cap purgatory, with Pace possibly asking players to restructure their contracts as a way to get out of it. What a soap opera. I no longer say baseball operates free of a cap. There is one, both soft and real in the form of the luxury tax. The thing is, it’s a (un)healthy minority of teams that reach the threshold each year. The Cubs did it two straight seasons recently and now act like paupers looking for a handout. That’s on them. Every team in every sport should be free to spend as much money as it wants, just as all the players in all the professional sports should demand an end to salary caps. Playing under one is no different than being stuck in a soap opera. It’s just another form of make-believe.

On Further Review

As a rule, I skip over the obituaries for all the usual reasons of a person my age. But as they say, rules are made to be broken, and I do check baseballreference.com for ballplayers called to that big league in the sky. This is how I found out about the death of ex-Sox pitcher Juan Pizarro last month. Pizarro belonged to the first great starting staff I became aware of with the White Sox, along with Gary Peters and Joel Horlen. (We won’t talk about Denny McLain or Dave DeBusschere here.) He came over in a trade in the 1960 offseason. Pizarro won 75 games for the Sox from 1961-1966. The first four years, he won 14; 12; 16; and 19 games, respectively. That first year, 1961, the Sox got 24 wins out of the deal, with Cal McLish chipping in with ten. And what did all these wins cost us? Nothing more than Gene Freese. Bill Veeck, ever in rush for pop, traded Johnny Callison for Freeze in an effort to out-bash the Yankees and win back-to-back pennants in 1959-60. Not only didn’t it happen, Callison went on to have a far better career, mostly with the Phillies, than Freese. Think along the lines of 840 career RBIs vs. 432 and an outfield arm so strong it recorded as many as 26 assists in a season. Or as the kids like to say these days, we’re talking a 38.4 WAR vs. 8.7. You can see why that trade might rankle me. But no more. Not only did Freese-for-Pizarro work out, Pizarro-for-Wilbur Wood was even better. Wood had all of one major-league win over parts of five seasons with two organizations before the Sox secured him from the Pirates for Pizarro. With the Sox, Wood won another 163 games over twelve seasons, plus 57 saves. Four straight seasons, 1971-74, he won 20 or more games. Only a shattered kneecap off the bat of Ron LeFlore in 1976 kept Wood from going on and on the way really good knuckleballers do. That means it’s not really Gene Freese for Johnny Callison anymore but Callison for Juan Pizarro with Wilbur Wood waiting in the wings. Would you make that deal? Wood’s WAR alone is 50.0, and Pizarro’s is in the neighborhood of 14.4 with the Sox. (Somebody should ask baseballreference.com why they have two different WAR numbers for Pizarro.) On further review, I think I would.

Report Card

Well, the NBA has made it to the All-Star break, and, wouldn’t you know it, the Bulls qualify as a mild surprise with their 16-18 record. As much as it pains me to note this, the Tom Thibodeau-led Knicks rate as an even bigger surprise at 19-18. The Bulls won 22 games last season to the Knicks’ 21. I can tell you most of the Bulls’ roster but have no idea who Thibodeau is running out onto the court, though I’m sure the New York media is making all sorts of Willis Reed and Walt Frazier comparisons by now. Dr. Naismith would’ve invented the game in the Big Apple, if he had it to all over, no doubt. Off of what I’ve seen so far, I’ll take Billy Donovan, the current Bulls’ head coach, to ex-coach Thibodeau. Donovan can speak full sentences in the active voice; treats his players with respect, which must be hard considering he inherited nearly all of them; and has avoided playing Thibodeau-like mind games with the front office. A word to the wise, if there are any among Knicks’ fans: Your coach treats every regular-season contest like it’s a postseason game seven. That might work in February and March but May, not so much. Fingers crossed for a Chicago-New York matchup somewhere down the line.

Darkness

I can’t imagine life without sports. Baseball and softball in particular have shaped me both as a person and a parent. If only sports were truly separate from the rest of life. Now, that would be something. Last week, a coach caught up in the USA Olympic gymnastics’ scandal killed himself. Among twenty-four felony charges filed by Michigan authorities, John Geddert was accused of human trafficking and sexual assault. Is gymnastics somehow more prone to this sort of thing than the youth sports my daughter took part in? I can’t honestly say. In retrospect, there were all sorts of chances for a coach to be a pervert, though, thankfully, none of them were, at least in terms of sexual predation. Maybe we were just lucky, maybe it’s in how different sports are taught and coached that allows for predators to act. The problems I saw concerned things said. When Clare played softball in high school, one of her varsity coaches was a real bench jockey; he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut when somebody made an error or didn’t respond to his coaching. We put up with it for two years until a health issue made the problem go away. I kept my mouth shut because this coach didn’t go after my daughter. But the man said hurtful things that I could have objected to and didn’t. That’s on me. In travel, Clare had a coach who disparaged her hitting on two separate occasions, one time telling her she’d never hit in college. Him I confronted, though for something else. This coach and his partner told me my daughter wasn’t a good infielder, which was a flat-out lie. I told both of them Clare was the best second baseman on their team. By the time the one guy popped off about Clare’s hitting, we were already gone, in a way. This one coach also did a Woody Hayes on a player, shaking her head by the cage of her helmet; I had to restrain the girl’s dad. Maybe I should’ve let him go at it. There are lines that can’t be crossed, in sports or any other part of life. The consequences come when we fail to act.

Trying to Keep Up

Clare called yesterday afternoon, and I could tell she was ticked, sort of. “Why aren’t you watching the White Sox?” my one and only demanded to know in mock exasperation, at least I think it was mock. Because I’m writing about my deep and abiding affection for Steve Stone, I replied. “Did something good happen?” And I knew it had to because all such phone calls are a sign of that. The ”good” in this case was rookie Andrew Vaughn hitting a three-run homer in the first inning against the Rangers. Clare likes Vaughn, so do I. For my daughter, it’s feeling a connection to a guy serious about his craft. For me, it’s having another good hitter in the lineup. Last season, Jason Benetti was all about Edwin Encarnacion carrying an imaginary parrot on his forearm as he circled the bases on one of his occasional homeruns. I’m betting Benetti won’t bring up the parrot when Vaughn starts stinging the ball as Encarnacion’s replacement at DH. A couple of hours later, after I’d seen the homerun in question, my daughter called a second time to tell me about what pitcher Lucas Giolito just said, that he really likes throwing to possible second catcher Johnathan Lucroy. “Notice how he didn’t say anything about [Yasmani] Grandal. He could’ve said, ‘Oh, I like Yasmani, too,’ or ‘It really doesn’t matter which catcher I throw to, I like them both,’ but he didn’t.” Neither father nor daughter is a big Grandal fan, at least on defense. And she may be on to something here. The last two seasons, Giolito excelled with James McCann behind the plate. With Grandal, not so much. So, there you have it. My daughter sees stuff in baseball as quick as any sportswriter. Heaven help her son if he doesn’t grow up loving the national pastime. That definitely would not be advisable.

One More Time

At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseum, let me mention again how much the broadcasting team of Jason Benetti and Steve Stone irritates me. And let me repeat how certain broadcasters—e.g., Tom Paciorek and the late Ed Farmer—don’t. And let me add a few more names of announcers who’ve avoided being bitten by the clever bug. John Rooney did White Sox games on the radio for seventeen seasons, every one of them a joy. Rooney possessed an ability to make the game at hand interesting. So did Wayne Larrivee, another first-rate broadcaster who did the Bears before moving over to the dark side, aka Green Bay. Football, baseball, basketball: Larrivee made seamless transitions from one sport to another. From time to time, Benetti has been paired up with Chuck Swirsky, who also calls the Bulls on radio. Swirsky is a fans’ broadcaster without being so blatantly a homer like Hawk Harrelson; Swirsky feels every Bulls’ loss with the intensity of a true diehard. When he’s in the company of Swirsky (or Paciorek), Benetti improves exponentially, sounding as if he actually cares about the game of baseball. For reasons best known to himself, Len Kasper left the Cubs’ TV booth to call Sox games on the radio, and the early reports are encouraging. It should be interesting to see what happens when Kasper moves over to the TV side, as he’s supposed to do from time to time. If it’s just him and Benetti, I have no doubt the broadcasts will be first-rate. But if a certain ex-pitcher is part of the mix, all bets are off, I’m afraid. Full Disclosure: Stone has blocked Clare from his Twitter account. It seems he can’t take the criticism.

First Impressions

I’ll open with the bad news from yesterday’s Cactus League opener for the White Sox, a 7-2 loss in six innings to the Brewers. Not the score so much as the TV broadcasting duo of Jason Benetti and Steve Stone. Unfortunately, they were in midseason form. These guys aren’t nearly as clever as they think they are; the same goes for their inside jokes. If it’s too hard to do their job in March, either quit or call in sick. I don’t recall spring training ever being a bother for Ed Farmer. In his heart of hearts, I bet Stone thinks he’s twice the player and announcer Farmer ever was. In that case, show it. As for Benetti, a question—why do you sound so much better when Stone’s out of the booth? Calling Tom Paciorek, calling Tom... As for the game itself, Milwaukee’s non-roster pitchers were better than our non-roster pitchers. As for new/old Sox manager Tony La Russa, he sounded spot-on, provided you read what he said. La Russa thinks winning is a good thing, even in spring training, a habit to get into before the season starts. Who could disagree with that? Right now, La Russa works for me as long as I don’t see him; then it becomes a case of “Oh, my God! What’s wrong with him?” Plus, I have to try and forget how La Russa spent his post-Sox managerial career with his head in the sand when it came to likely PEDs’ use by his players. So, in a way, it’s spring training for me as well as La Russa. Now, onto the good news, starting with Adam Engel; he hit a two-run homer in his first at-bat. With luck, we’re talking about a really productive platoon in right field with Engel and Adam Eaton (oh, and to have three center fielders out there in the ninth inning). Then, after the game, Clare texted another bit of good news. Matt Davidson hit the Dodgers’ first homer of spring training. Who says good things don’t happen to those deserving?