Reading the Tea Leaves

Clare texted me a video of new White Sox manager Pedro Grifol Facetiming Eloy Jimenez. The conversation was conducted in Spanish, and I’m pretty sure Eloy dropped a few “Sirs” on his part. Talk about an astute move by the Sox. During the two years in his return as manager, Tony La Russa was never recorded speaking to anybody in Spanish, yet here was Grifol on day one doing that with Jimenez, who’s going to have to live up to his potential for the Sox to contend next year. If thjs was just marketing, it was pretty effective. If it was intended to show that team and manager are serious about reaching their players, how sad nobody felt that way the previous two seasons. Yesterday, Grifol was filmed picking up the tab at a local hot dog stand and visiting a grade school, which I assume was also in the neighborhood of 35th and Shields. South Siders take their cuisine pretty seriously, so this was another astute move by the marketing department—look, the new skipper wants a dog with fries (and was probably instructed NOT to ask for ketchup on the dog). I can’t imagine La Russa sharing a hot dog with fans or visiting a school; it wasn’t his style, and, as he pointed out on at least one occasion, he was a HOFer, which conferred special status, or so he hoped. So, the Sox have rediscovered their marketing legs. Have they also found a good manager? Time will tell.