How Nice of Them

I'm supposed to root for a team that would dare do this? Let’s just say it’s hard. The Bears want a state law that will allow them to negotiate their tax bill with the relevant public bodies in and around their hoped-for new Arlington Heights Stadium. To move things along, the team offered to make a one-time,$25 million payment to the city of Chicago. Why? Because in McCaskeyland, that qualifies as a principled act. The Munsters think that the $534 million in outstanding bonds from the 2003 renovation of Soldier Field isn’t their concern; they’re just tenants. But, out of the goodness of their hearts, they offered the money “to rebuild or improve public parks and playing fields each year in under resourced Chicago neighborhoods,” according to a letter the Bears circulated to Chicago Democrats in the General Assembly. [story in today’s Sunb-Times] The mind boggles here. The team says that costs go up every month the project is delayed, yet they have $25 million on hand to buy votes. And they still want close to $1 billion in infrastructure assistance. How will they sweeten that ask?

Back and Forth

I watched enough of game five of the World Series to come away impressed by rookie starter Trey Yesavage. The 22-year old righthander had the Dodgers eating out of his hand for seven innings last night at Dodger Stadium. The pride of East Carolina University scattered two singles and a solo shot while striking out twelve and giving up zero walks. No one in World Series history has recorded that many strikeouts to go with no walks. Yesavage is now 3-1 in the postseason, which is two more career wins than he has in the regular season. He went twentieth in the first round of the 2024 draft. The White Sox skipped over Yesavage for Hagen Smith. Here’s hoping Smith performs at the same level once he gets to the majors. I also switched over to the Bulls-Kings game between World Series commercials, the frequency of which assured me of watching a lot of basketball. How nice to see another team for a change trying to figure out how to balance scoring between Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan. Bulls 126 Kings 113. Four starters in double figures, along with two players off the bench plus another three people scoring nine apiece. Interesting. The win pushes Chicago to 4-0 on the season, with their next game in “The Gahden.” Please, oh please…

GOAT, Asterisk

Shohei Ohtani had a very nice game for himself Monday night. No, a really nice game. OK, an incredible game with two solo-shot homeruns and two doubles along with five walks plus three runs scored and three RBIs in the Dodgers’ 6-5, eighteen-inning marathon win. Let the superlatives rain down, which they are. And, like an idiot, I unmuted some of the broadcast on FOX last night. One of the announcers—they all sound alike to me, except for the fingernails-on-blackboard tones of John Smoltz—very gently dissed Babe Ruth by saying he “only” pitched two full seasons. They must’ve had a bad internet connection up in the booth at Dodger Stadium. Baseball-reference.com has the Sultan of Swat pitching anywhere between 166.1 and 326.1 innings for the four seasons 1915 to 1918 and another 133.1 innings in 1919. That’s the period when he picked up 89 of his 94 wins to go with a 2.28 ERA. I’ll just note in passing the 107 complete games. Ohtani has never pitched over 166 innings in a season. In the regular season this year, he threw 47. I keep looking at his stats and come away with the same conclusion—pitching is his vanity project. A 39-20 record, 3.00 ERA and one complete game. Oh, and every time he goes out to the mound, he risks injury. He’s already had Tommy John surgery and another procedure on his UCL. Smoltz inadvertently called out Ohtani when he suggested the 31-year old needs to learn to vary the speed of his pitches. John, the guy’s 31. He should’ve learned that a long time ago. This may be pushing things a bit, but I’d argue the GOAT does what he did on Monday and then tops himself Tuesday, not at the plate but on the mound. Instead, what happened is that Ohtani pitched a nice game into the seventh inning, when he ran out of gas, trailing 2-1. Reliever Anthony Banda couldn’t keep the two Jays Ohtani put on from scoring, before letting in two runs of his own. Toronto 6 Los Angeles 2 not even a day after losing what’s being ballyhooed as the greatest World Series game of all time. One other reason to pull back on all this GOAT talk. Sorry, but the greatest ballplayer can’t be a DH, at least not until he hits 100 homers a season. Ohtani has played eight years in the major leagues, and, in all that time, he’s played the outfield seven times, none since 2021. In comparison, Ruth started 2222 times in the outfield over his 22-year career. Did I mention the Ohtani Rule, where he gets to switch to DH after being relieved as a pitcher? What exactly am I saying here? That Ohtani belongs on the short list of greatest hitters of all time and that he’s less of a pitcher than the folks on FOX care to admit. Shohei, meet Frank Thomas, another player whose hitting prowess made up for a bad glove. Big Hurt, this is Shohei. You two have a lot in common.

Late Night

Clare went upstairs to put Maeve to bed last night, leaving Michele and me with Leo. Did our four-year old grandson want to watch the World Series? Not really. But throw a mini-football to and at his grandparents? Oh, yeah. After twenty minutes or so of throwing and catching, Clare returned, and we got back to watching the game. The grandparents got tired just about the time Alejandro Kirk hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning. I caught my second wind once we were back home and lasted through the visitors’ half of the thirteenth inning. Note to Blue Jays: If you don’t want to lose in eighteen, figure out how to run the bases and bunt runners along. Between innings, I caught the end of the Hawks-Bulls game. Three games—and wins—into the season, Billy Donovan’s squad looks just like I said last week, with players six through ten nearly as good as numbers one through five. Last night, eight Bulls scored in double figures while Nikola Vucevic fell one assist short of a triple-double in a 128-123 win. Trae Young of the Hawks dished out seventeen assists to go with 21 points. Anytime you can overcome a performance like that, you’ve had a good game. A 3-0 start. Who’d have thought it?

Comedy of Errors

Here are your Chicago Bears, a team trying to shake down the General Assembly for close to $1 billion to fund infrastructure needs related to their planned stadium in Arlington Heights. Ravens 30 Bears 16. Caleb Williams, the first pick in the 2024 draft, couldn’t move his team against a mediocre Ravens’ defense. Williams also continued the disturbing habit of getting lost in the red zone. Two early forays there led to six points; good teams would’ve generated fourteen. And a good quarterback would avoid throwing an interception deep in his zone with his team trailing by three points with just over nine minutes left in the game. The defense, which had excelled at takeaways, came up with none against a 1-5 team led by a backup quarterback. But they did pick up penalties. Then again, so did the offense. The Munsters managed eleven—let me repeat, eleven—penalties on the afternoon. Guys, figure out how to line up on the right side of the line of scrimmage and when to move, as in with the snap and not before. As for coaching, you have to wonder. Ben Johnson said in the postgame that team leaders need to deal with the penalty problem. Funny, I thought the coaching staff handled that. And who decided to have Cairo Santos handle kickoff duties? Baltimore gained good field position on Santos’s kicks all afternoon. Sure looks like Santos is suffering from a thigh injury, but what do I know? Poor McCaskeys. Well, not poor in any financial sense. No, more poor as in pitiful. Here’s a family that sees their pot of gold from a new stadium, yet they can’t make their team play well enough to excite the fan base. How do you expect folks to pony up for personal seat licenses, again, when the product on the field doesn’t look a whole lot better than it did last year? Beats me.

Playing to Strength

The Dodgers like to hit homeruns, and they like to spend money on pitchers. Last night, that formula worked to perfection, with the boys of Tinseltown topping the Blue Jays, 5-1, behind seventh-inning homeruns from Will Smith and Max Muncy along with a complete game by Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The 27-year old righthander gave up four hits (three singles and a double) and no walks while fanning eight. Yamamoto signed a twelve-year, $325 million contract back in December of 2023. Has he been worth it? That depends. He’s gone 19-10 over the course of two seasons. Not overwhelming numbers—affected by injuries, especially in 2024—and not nearly as impressive as 5-1 over two postseasons, including 3-1 this year, including a 1.57 ERA. In comparison, the White Sox are barely on the same planet, let alone the same sport, as the Dodgers. Contact vs. power, both hitting and pitching. Series tied at one game apiece. Onto Los Angeles, with Grandpa and grandson Leo slated to watch game three Monday night while at least one of us eats pizza.

Warming Up

As good parents, grandparents and in-laws, we went to the last game of the season for the Lake Park Lancers, coached by our son-in-law Chris. And, because we are parents, grandparents and in-laws of a certain age, we left in the third quarter. Something about the temperature dipping into the forties makes a body feel its age, and then some. We listened to the World Series on the way home. Michele loves baseball on the radio; it feels like summer, she says. Me, I think of the time driving in Colorado, an Oakland A’s game fading in and out. I was too preoccupied with not driving off the side of a mountain road at a time of night when all sane people were asleep in bed. I don’t listen on the radio now as much with Ed Farmer gone. Anyway, we heard Daulton Varsho go deep against Blake Snell to tie the game at two. And we got home in plenty of time to see the Blue Jays score nine runs in the sixth against Snell and the Dodgers’ bullpen. Final Score, Toronto 11 Los Angles 4. What really stuck out is how the Dodgers struck out, thirteen times in all to four whiffs by the Jays. Toronto hitters are geared to contact, which shows in the stats—best team batting average (.265) and on-base percentage (.333) in all of baseball. The Dodgers hit twelve points lower and had an OBP six points lower than the Jays. However, the boys of Tinseltown did lead the majors in striking out, 1627 as compared to 1099 for the Jays. That’s the second lowest in baseball. Game two, who can say? All I know is, you can’t win unless you hit the ball (or walk a lot). That, and dress like it’s winter even if it’s only late October.

Ice Berg Tips and Coal Mine Canaries

The NBA has been hit by a betting scandal, again, only now it involves HOFer and current Portland Trailblazers’ coach Chauncey Billups along with Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player and former assistant coach Damon Jones. What the various charges do is raise questions, again, about the honesty of NBA games, of their outcomes. (A second scandal involving Billups concerns high-stakes’ card games, rigged by the Mafia.) It also raises questions about the integrity of broadcast networks that show games and push betting. I’m talking about you, ESPN, Marquee and CHSN. Right now, it’s the NBA. How long until a scandal rocks the NFL or MLB? Is tonight’s game one of the World Series on the legit? You have to wonder.

A Sleeper, or Not

The Bulls kicked off their season last night, beating the Pistons 115-114 before a packed house at the United Center. They almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, only to think better of it. This is an odd team, one where the second unit looks nearly as talented as the starting five. That’s either a good thing, or bad; only time will tell. But nobody seemed to miss guard Coby White, expected to be out another two weeks with a calf strain. In which case, thank goodness Arturas Karnisovas decided to keep Tre Jones around for another three seasons. The 25-year old scored twelve points while dishing out eight assists, the sort of performance he gave on a regular basis last season after being acquired from the Spurs. A smart move by Karnisovas—who knew? Sort of like Nikola Vucevic, the human tree on skates, scoring 28 points to go with fourteen rebounds. Now, if the big tree can do that in March and April, there may be cause for hope. I’d also trade some of the 50 or so guards Karnisovas has collected, but that’s just me.

Do the Math

I wonder what Jerry Reinsdorf and Tom Ricketts are going to do during the World Series. Wag their fingers and say, “Tsk-tsk,” maybe, or lay the groundwork for a work stoppage after the CBA expires at the end of next season? A hard salary cap for the good of the game, anyone? At the very least, they should both be rooting for the “small-er” market Blue Jays, who have a $255.2 million payroll vs. $350 million for the top-spending Dodgers, per spotrac.com. Number seven payroll vs. number one. Go, seven. What I’d love to ask these two whiny billionaires is this—why are you team owners if you don’t want to spend money? By all means, be smart in spending the cash (think Blue Jays), but spend it or get out of the business. Instead, the odds are we’re talking about two owners who are going to spearhead the drive for a hard cap. What a bunch of cry babies.

Two Jays

Say this for the White Sox under GMs Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. When they made a dumb trade (and they made lots), you could count on it being a doozy. Take this one from December 2014. Hahn—or maybe Williams, the former was GM by then, but that never stopped the latter as team president from interfering—engineered a trade of four prospects for ex-Cub Jeff Samardzija and a minor leaguer. Three of the ex-Sox—pitcher Chris Bassitt, catcher Josh Phegley and infielder Marcus Semien—all have had pretty decent (or better) major-league careers. In fact, Bassitt and Semien are both still playing, and come Friday, both can say they’ve been on World Series teams. Samardzija? He pitched one year on the South Side before having five pretty-blah seasons with the Giants. I was reminded of all this last night when Bassitt came out of the bullpen to pitch a scoreless eighth inning while protecting a one-run lead for the Blue Jays. Jeff Hoffman did the same in the ninth, and the Jays beat the Mariners 4-3 in game seven of the ALCS to advance to a date with the Dodgers in the World Series. Three of the runs came courtesy of a George Springer homerun to erase a two-run Seattle lead in the seventh. Ah, George Springer. I’ve never been a fan, at least of his contract, six years at $150 million. At the time of signing, Springer was already 31 years old. I wondered what would happen the last two years of the contract. Well, what I thought would happen, sort of. Springer started 80 games as a DH, which suggests he won’t be seeing much of the field either in the World Series (honesty forces me to admit he took a fastball off the knee in game five of the ALCS) or next season. But, right now, I doubt Blue Jays’ fans care much about that, and I can’t say I blame them.

Walking Around

Michele calls what we did on Saturday part of the “best day of the year” for her. With Open House Chicago, you have access to places you wouldn’t get into the other 365 days, like the rooftop garden at McCormick Place. Trust me, it offers views of Chicago you can’t get anywhere else. We walked through an area generally referred to as the “South Loop,” an area once marked by abandoned buildings, old warehouse and vacant lots, along with a few Prairie Avenue mansion hanging on for dear existence. Well, the mansions are thriving now, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an empty lot. The place has been transformed to the point that, if you told me this was a new residential development in lower Manhattan, I’d believe it. Between an iffy weather forecast and the uncertainties attached to the “No Kings” march downtown, we didn’t know if we could do Saturday; Open House is a two-day affair. But everything worked out, so that we didn’t have to go on Sunday. Not that we could have, not really. As it was, I had a hard time finding street parking; let’s just say if you don’t live in the area and have a sticker on the windshield to prove it, you’ll be in trouble. But I found a spot that allowed us to walk around to three places, and all was good. But Sunday, the odds are somebody going to the Bears-Saints’ game at Soldier Field likely would’ve snagged it ahead of me. No doubt they’d have had a happy walk back to the car after the Munsters dominated the visitors, 26-14. Or they might’ve stopped in to celebrate at any of the restaurants and bars we passed. That’s the thing. The Bears right now generate all sorts of economic activity centered in the South Loop. The resulting tax revenue goes to the city. If the Munsters move to Arlington Heights, that economic activity will tag along. The team basically will be generating the same amount of business wherever it plays. It won’t matter to the state of Illinois where the McCaskeys pitch their flag, just to the communities within walking distance of wherever the Bears play. The Bears are already bad neighbors (What? We’re not responsible for that $534 million in construction bonds still outstanding for the 2003 Soldier Field renovation. We’re just tenants.) If the Munsters move out of the city, Arlington Heights and surrounding communities will learn just how bad.

Smart Money

Poor Tom Ricketts (relatively speaking). He must’ve drawn solace from the fact that his Cubs lost the NLDS to the kind of team he wishes his Cubs were. In other words, underpaid overachievers. According to sportac.com, the Cubs’ payroll this season is $211.9 million, as opposed to $121.7 million for the Brewers. And then the Dodgers had to go and ruin things by sweeping Milwaukee in the NLCS. Nobody spent more on salary this year than Los Angeles, at $350.3 million. Call it smart money, especially when compared to the Mets spending $342.4 and not even making the postseason. You can draft; develop; trade; and hope or draft; develop; trade; and spend smart. That’s what the Dodgers do. Oh, and gamble smart. They signed Blake Snell this year and Tyler Glasnow last year. Both have a history of arm problems, and neither pitched much in the regular season. But both were ready for the postseason, as evidenced by Snell’s eight shutout innings in game one of the NLCS. The same goes for Shohei Ohtani, who pitched all of 47 innings during the regular season. As if that kept him from throwing six shutout innings as he scattered two and three walks against strikeouts against the Brewers last night in the series clincher. We won’t even mention the three homeruns he hit in the game. This is the player Jerry Reinsdorf publicly stated the White Sox wouldn’t be pursuing when Ohtani was a free agent in 2023. Yes, by all means draft; develop; and trade. Just don’t expect to win unless you spend smart, which is not the same as spending less.

An Embarrassment of Choices

You want baseball? NLCS or ALCS? Hockey? Check the Hawks’ schedule this week? Basketball? The Bulls start next week. Football? NU or the Bears? Truly, this is the one time of year where Americans sports overlap. I hope to live long enough to see an October where the Cubs and White Sox are in their respective championship series, TV schedule be damned; the Hawks and Bull are looking to defend championships; ditto the Wildcats and Munsters. I’m pretty sure that never happened over the course of Sister Jean’s 106 years on the planet. I can wait.

Freeze Frame

My latest purchase arrived in the mail on Monday, an 8”x10” photo of Tommie Agee sliding under the tag of Lee Elia during spring training, 1966. Oh, the memories. Agee was part of a three-way trade with the Indians and A’s. We sent Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger and Jim Landis to Kansas City for Rocky Colavito and then shipped Colavito and Cam Carreon to Cleveland for Agee, Tommy John and John Romano. Nice deal, that. Elia was already a baseball lifer when he debuted with the Sox as a 28-year old rookie in ’66. A .205 BA in 195 at-bats didn’t win him a second season on the South Side, just a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1968. But his career in baseball was hardly over. Dallas Green named him Cubs’ manager in 1982. Elia gained notoriety for speaking truth to conceit in April of 1983. His team had just lost a close game to the Dodgers and gotten off to a terrible start at 5-14. Let’s just say Elia wasn’t a fan of the fans who showed up back then, saying that, “Eighty-five percent of the f****n’ world is working. The other fifteen come out here.” Unfortunately for Elia, his words were caught on tape. Not that he was wrong. This was the era of “Bleacher Bums,” which offered a fanciful take on that fifteen percent. Bums they were, and unemployed Elia became late in the ’83 season when the Cubs fired him. I see those full houses at Wrigley Field, and I can still hear Elia cursing, good White Sox that he was.

Now, That's What I'm Talking About

So, if Blake Snell was doing Sandy Koufax Monday night, then Yoshinobu Yamamoto stepped into the role of Don Drysdale last night. The 27-year old righthander threw a 118-pitch complete game helping the Dodgers beat the Brewers 5-1 win in Milwaukee. It’s the first postseason complete game since Justin Verlander in 2017. Eight innings from Snell, nine from Yamamoto—the analytics’ world must be reeling. What about batting average third time around the order? What about starter fatigue? What about leveraging power arms out of the bullpen? Who cares?

Stop the Presses!

How old school was that? Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts let starter Blake Snell go eight innings last night in game one of the NLCS in Milwaukee. It didn’t hurt that Snell gave up all of one baserunner enroute to a 2-1 LA win over the Brewers. That’s the good news for those of us who remember going to ballgames on our brontosauruses. The game still took 2:53 to play. Yes, Brewers’ pitchers—and there were six of them—issued eight free passes, but the Dodgers helped things along by hitting into two double plays. And the Brewers chipped in, so to speak, when Caleb Durbin was picked off of first in the third inning. Gosh, I wonder if an onslaught of TV commercials had anything to do with an excruciating pace? Nah. Commissioner Rob Manfred cares too much about the future of the game to let anything like that happen. Right?

Done

With the Cubs’ loss to the Brewers in the NLDS Saturday night, the Chicago baseball season is officially over. It’s liberating, in a way. Now, I don’t have to listen to White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable—and I’ll call him by his given name the day he gets his team ten games over .500, I promise—start every answer to a question with “Yeah” or wonder why the lineup features the likes of Jacob Amaya or Josh Rojas or Will Robertson or why a hot hitter sits for one of the above. I miss reading box scores, but only for the 60 wins on the season. On a possibly related note, the 1967 team-autographed ball I bought arrived over the weekend. Talk about a stroll down memory lane—Wayne Causey, Don McMahon, Don Buford and, oh, so many more. Best of all, the autographs are clear, which makes it easy to spot Ken Boyer and Rocky Colavito (acquiring aging talent, always the White Sox way). The only tough signature to decipher belongs to coach Kerby Farrell, born two weeks after my dad and died 25 years before he did. Gary Peter, Joel Horlen, Walt Williams. Perfection, or almost. There’s no Cisco Carlos, who amassed an eyepopping 0.86 ERA in 41.2 innings. The 26-year old rookie got his first start August 25th (Bukowski father and son were in the stands, I distinctly recall), and Colavito was acquired July 29th. My guess is the autographs were amassed sometime between July 30-August 24. I lived and died with this team, the last gasp of a “Go-Go” Sox iteration dating to 1951, before my birth. With five games left in the ’67 season and one game out of first place, the Sox finished out the schedule against the tenth-place A’s and seventh-place Senators. Easy-peasey, right? No, a five-game losing streak brought me to tears and ushered in three miserable seasons of losing culminating in the 56-106 debacle of 1970. Hope returned in the following season with the hiring of Chuck Tanner. I already have the 1971 team ball: Bart Johnson, Jay Johnstone, Carlos May…Venable as the new Tanner? Sox fans should be so lucky.

Finis

The Brewers sent the Cubs packing with a 3-1 win last night at a rocking American Family Field to clinch the NLDS. Put another way, the team that finished 22nd in homeruns during the regular season bested the team that finished with the sixth most longballs by outhomering them, three taters to one. Best of all, ex-White Sox Andrew Vaughn hit the deciding go-ahead homer for his new team in the fourth inning. Oh, where to start? The emperor’s new clothes seems the best bet, the emperor here being Cubs’ team chair and de facto owner Tom Ricketts. This is the man who claims his cash cow is but a small or medium market franchise. Hence, only the tenth highest team payroll this year, per sportrac.com. Up until around 9:30 or so last night, Ricketts was probably feeling downright proud of himself. Why, his team with a $211.9 million payroll had a good shot at advancing to the NLCS. Not like the Mets, who didn’t even make the postseason despite spending $342.4 million on player salaries. Too bad the real small-to-medium market team, the one with the eighth-lowest payroll ($121.7 million), won when it counted. The other team? Oh, they played the analytics-driven game of longball and launch angle all season while their opponents opted for on-base percentage. The team that had the sixth most homers in the regular season lost the division, let alone the NLDS, to the team that finished with the second-highest on-base percentage. And that really mattered because the home team won every game in the series. Would the Brewers have won game five if it were played at Wrigley Field? I really, really doubt it. But we’ll never know, courtesy of front-office decisions made by Jed Hoyer and company, at the behest of their emperor. Which leads me to my last point, that Emperor Ricketts also subscribed to the Jerry Krause dictum that players and coaches alone don’t win championships, organizations do. That’s were willing to spend $40 million in the 2023 offseason to make Craig Counsell the highest paid manager in baseball. (The Dodgers’ Dave Roberts signed an extension at the beginning of 2025 that gives him $8.1 million a season to Counsell’s $8 million.) The Cubs thought Counsell provided more value than any potential free-agent signing. In other words, they spent money to save money, however imaginary the savings might be. Great philosophy, only it didn’t work for the Krause’s Bulls after Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson left, and it’s not working for the cash cow on Addison. Let’s see if the postseason changes anything.

Not My Cup of Tea

I bailed on the Tigers-Mariners’ ALDS game five after thirteen innings. Where FOX announcer Adam Amin saw baseball poetry in motion which he described in hyperbolic flourishes, I saw two teams incapable of bunting the ball or stealing a base. Heaven forbid someone try a hit-and-run. The Tigers struck out seventeen times in fifteen innings, the Mariners twenty (!) times in 14.1. Somebody had to win, and it was the Mariners 3-2 on a walk-off single by Jorge Polanco. Yea. They still lose to the Blue Jays in the ALCS.

Sister Jean

Sister Jean Schmidt died yesterday at the age of 106. She was an actual person turned into a media star. If you’re Catholic and of a certain age, the odds are you knew someone like Sister Jean, a teacher probably along the way from kindergarten through twelfth grade, although it’s worth noting Sister Jean also taught on the college level. If you’re looking for a “the nun(s) beat me every day for x-years” story here, sorry, I don’t have one. Members of the Sister Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary taught me as best they could at St. Gall. In many ways, I was a challenging case. Sister Jerome Marie, my teacher in fourth grade, gave me batting tips, which was very nice of her considering how I tried to forge my mother’s name on my report card in the spring. Like I said, no “she beat me silly” stories here. To me, Sister Jean and Sister Jerome Marie are interchangeable; nuns were jacks—and maybe Jills—of all trades who helped the students entrusted in their care. Because she was the team chaplain for the Loyola Ramblers men’s basketball team and Loyola went deep in the NCAA tournament in 2018, a national audience learned all about Sister Jean, or some cute version of her. Make it to 106, and you outlive just about everyone you’ve ever cared about. Age brings sorrow as well as wisdom. That Sister Jean chose to smile for the cameras diminished neither her wisdom nor her sorrow. We’re diminished, or should be, by her passing.

Minority Report

According to today’s Tribune via the AP, viewership was way up for MLB’s Wild Card Series, especially among the young folks. There were big gains registered for both the under-35 and under-17 demographics. Something about trotting out relief pitchers, maybe, in which case I don’t get it. What’s so exciting about watching a parade of pitchers following the starter, e.g., seven relievers for the Guardians in their October 2nd loss to the Tigers? And who gets a kick out of watching batters fan time after time, e.g., the first Tigers-Guardians’ game that featured 28 strikeouts? I can’t wait to see the numbers for the ALDS and NLDS. I mean, the Yankees struck out fifteen times against eight Toronto pitchers on October 5th. Talk about exciting.

Like I Said

Pardon my crude analytics, but I said the other day the Blue Jays should’ve kept Trey Yesavage in for more than 5.1 innings of no-hit ball on 78 pitches. Here’s why. Last night in the Bronx, four of the relievers who appeared in Sunday’s game came out again in what at one time was a 6-3 Toronto lead. Three of those four were scored on, this after they posted scoreless outings on Sunday. So, it does in fact look like the Yankees gained momentum scoring those seven runs in a 13-7 loss. Final score of Yankees 9 Blue Jays 6. But what do I know?

The Ex- Factor

Oh, my Cub-loving hardware guy must’ve been in seventh heaven last night after Seiya Suzuki hit a three-run homerun in the top of the first inning. Cubs 3 Brewers 0. Oh, to have seen his reaction when ex-White Sox Andrew Vaughn tied the game with a three-run homer of his own in the bottom half of the inning. Final score: Brewers 7 Cubs 3. After the game, Vaughn said all the right things while his teammates and manager said all the nice things. All White Sox fans can do is note that Vaughn was hitting .189 when he was shipped off as opposed to the .308 BA he put up just north of the border. Nothing says “good trade” for a team better than the player you acquired having 46 RBIs in a mere 221 at-bats. How did the 27-year old, former first-round pick do it? In part, he credits working “my butt off” at Triple-A Nashville and then taking advantage of the opportunity when the Brewers called him up. [quote in story today on team website] And nothing more than that? Vaughn never struck me as a prima donna in any sense of the term applied to sports. After he homered, Clare texted, “That’s the first time I ever saw Andrew Vaughn smile,” which is probably little if any exaggeration. The guy was always serious, always looking to do his part. But it didn’t work. If the trade shook him and showed him he had to change, good for Andrew Vaughn. If the Milwaukee minor- and major-league coaching staff was able to reach him unlike anyone with his former team, shame on the White Sox. I checked, and none of the five hitting coaches in the Milwaukee system Vaughn has encountered since the trade got beyond Triple-A. It's not enough to go all-in on analytics, if that had anything to do with Andrew Vaughn’s resurgence. You have to have the right people doing the analyzing. The proof’s in the homerun that denied the Cubs any momentum.

Two Questions

First question: Why did Blue Jays’ manager John Schneider pull his starter? I ask because 22-year old Trey Yesavage had thrown 5.1 HITLESS innings, striking out eleven Yankees along the way. Yes, the Jays won 13-7, but why not let Yesavage at least go six innings? I mean, he’d thrown all of 78 pitches. If he goes six or seven, the Yankees may not have scored the seven runs they did off of Toronto relievers, giving them the tiniest bit of momentum. No doubt Schneider went by the analytics’ book. God forbid the home-team fans or those watching the game on television get a chance to see some no-hit history. In any event, the Yankees are now down two games to none, which leads to my second question. If Aaron Judge and company stink the way they did the previous two games, how will Yankee fans react? Class has never been a strong suit in the Bronx.

A Dream Come True

This is every White Sox fan’s dream come true: The Cubs are in the postseason, and manager Craig Counsell’s first call to the bullpen is for ex-Sox Micheal Sorka…in the first inning! Yes, it happened, with results any Sox fan could’ve predicted. Soroka entered with his team already down 4-1 with two runners on and two out. A walk and a single led to two more runs. Wait, there’s more. The 28-year old righthander, who was not a happy camper on the South Side last season, gave up three consecutive singles to start the second inning. Before long, another two runs had crossed the plate, and Counsell called the bullpen for another ex-Sox pitcher, Aaron Civale, and Civale promptly gave up a run-scoring single. Final score, Brewers 9 Cubs 3. Now, far be it from me to gloat, at least not until another two Cub losses. I can almost tolerate the North Siders. The older I get, the less any one Cubbie player bothers me. Not so the fans, like the one I ran into at a hardware store Friday night in the northern suburbs. I was there to have two screens fixed for my soon-to-be 94-year old mother-in-law. Silly me was wearing his Sox cap, which apparently offended the employee in question. He started in on what a terrible team the White Sox are, blah, blah, blah. All in good fun, of course. Maybe I get the last laugh.

Show Me the Money

The Bears released updated renderings of their stadium project this week, the better to extort money—along the lines of $855 million—from local and state government for infrastructure. Wait, there’s more. The accompanying buildings to the site are featureless geometric patterns, not that the stadium itself is anything to get excited about, unless your fancy runs to classic hubcaps. The team website offers all kinds of reasons why the project makes sense, up to and including better household water pressure for surrounding homes. The team claims the McCaskey clan needs a new stadium “[t]o remain competitive in the NFL today.” Funny, but I thought a hard salary cap allowed them to do exactly that.

New Screen Readers

On Monday the White Sox gave four coaches—including pitching coach Ethan Katz and hitting coach Marcus Thames—their walking papers. I won’t hold my breath that their replacements will be any better. Just different guys reading a computer screen. Katz was a minor leaguer who never rose above A-ball (but did coach Lucas Giolito in high school) while Thames collected 450 hits over a ten-year career with the Dodger, Tigers and Yankees. My guess is that their replacements will have similar backgrounds. I keep hearing on broadcasts how it’s the postseason and everything is different. If so, wouldn’t you want people who’d been there coaching players who want to get there? At least Thames appeared in five postseason series and even collected nine hits. Too bad he never articulated a hitting philosophy. It’s worth noting the assistant pitching and hitting coaches, were kept on. Joel McKeithan never hit a major-league pitch while Matt Wise went 17-22 with a 4.23 ERA in his eight years with the Angels, Brewers and Mets. Big-league success doesn’t matter to the White Sox or any other team these days. They want coaches who can break down data and facilitate tweaks in mechanics per the data Mark my words—the White Sox will hire people who have never been there to coach players who want to get there. Good luck with that.

Ex-Sox Starters

The wild card has been very good for ex-White Sox starters, beginning with Garrett Crochet. Pitching Tuesday night in the lion’s den known as Yankee Stadium, the 26-year old lefthander went 7.2 innings, during which time he allowed one run on four hits, with eleven strikeouts making the zero walks all the sweeter in a 3-1 Red Sox win. Crochet told manager Alex Cora he would only need to make one call to the bullpen, and he was right. Last night, Cora called down to the pen six times, but it didn’t work. Yankees 4 Red Sox 3. For better or worse, now-32-year old Carlos Rodon made the Yankee win possible with a pretty good six-inning performance—three runs; four hits; three walks; and six strikeouts. I never doubted Rodon’s grit when he pitched on the South Side. With him it was—and always will be—a question of health. Well, he was healthy enough last night. Did I mention Dylan Cease? Lo and behold, the great enigma threw goose eggs through 3.1 innings, after which San Diego manager Mike Shildt went into analytics’ mode and went to his bullpen. Unlike Cora, Shildt was able to get by on three relievers in a 3-0 Padres’ win. No doubt Cease’s agent Scott Boras will have something to say about the quick hook. Lest I forget, the Cubs called on ex-Sox Michael Soroka, who responded with .2 innings of scoreless relief. So, former Sox pitchers have acquitted themselves well. Now, we’ll se what ex-Cub Yu Darvish does against his old team in the third and deciding game at Wrigley Field late this afternoon.

Venue

The thing about Wrigley Field is, you know it’s Wrigley Field. No other ballpark has that outfield or walls down the line. The area around home plate used to be unique, so much so other teams copied the brick-and-limestone design for their new parks. Oh, and it’s loud because the upper deck is right on top of the lower deck rather than terraced up and away like in all new stadiums, baseball or football. When those members of the great Cubbie Cult start to screaming, the opposition has to hear it. If they say otherwise, fine, in which case, they can feel it. And when the Cubbie Cult starts to cheering at full lung capacity, the home team can’t help but feel the energy projected. All of the above came into play yesterday during the North Siders’ 3-1 win over the Padres in their Wild Card matchup. Players felt what fans were channeling their way, viewers knew exactly where the game was being played. I wonder, how much of this does Jerry Reinsdorf understand? He once had a ballpark just as unique as Wrigley, only bigger, and he walked away from it for a ball-mall. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.