Listen Closely

Given how much his mom and granddad are talking baseball these days, the little fellow should be quite the White Sox fan once he enters the world come summer. I hope he’s taking notes. Like Sunday, when Clare and Chris were over for dinner. Naturally, father and daughter talked hitting, with me complaining about Nick Madrigal’s leg kick. “All that kick, where’s the power?” I asked. Madrigal responded with his first career homerun just 24 hours later in a Sox 16-4 pasting of the Twins. Then, we talked over the phone yesterday, and I mentioned Danny Mendick would be in the starting lineup, reason for both father and daughter to cross their fingers and provide a little help to one of their favorite players. Mendick responded by hitting his first career grand slam. Notice a pattern here? This morning, Clare texted if I’d heard anything about Yermin Mercedes’ homer, a solo shot on a 3-0 eephus pitch by position player Willians Astudillo that gave the Sox their sixteenth run. Apparently, Twins’ announcer Roy Smalley, among others, was not amused. I’m guessing some people are claiming Mercedes broke an unwritten rule by trying to go deep. I say he didn’t. I mean, why does the losing team in this type of game get to trot out crap pitching and it’s supposed to be OK? If you want to talk about respecting the game, try not to be down eleven runs in the top of the ninth. Where’s the respect when the “pitcher” isn’t even registering 50 mph on the radar gun? One day in the not-too-distant future somebody is going to lose the batting crown because he grounded out or popped up a pitch thrown by a position player in a blowout game back in May or June. Then what? Let’s say the bases loaded and Mercedes swung for the fences. I might feel differently about that. But would Roy Smalley and company be satisfied with “just” a double or single? Boy, the grandkid’s heard an earful in just a couple of days.