Discussion

How many fathers get a call from their adult daughters to discuss the new White Sox pitching coach? I did, and we talked for a good ten minutes. Neither of us was very excited. Throw in the new hitting coach, and we were even less than that. New pitching coach Zach Bove played first base in college before serving as a hitting coach on the high school and college levels. Oh, let me count the ways this doesn’t impress—no apparent minor-league career even, not a catcher serving as a pitching coach but a former college infielder instructing major-league pitchers how to do their jobs. Somewhere, Johnny Sain spins in his grave. And maybe the late Bill Robinson with the hiring of Derek Shomon as the new Sox hitting coach. According to baseball-reference.com, Shomon had cups of coffee with two independent-league teams. I can just see Shomon telling Sox hitters in spring training, Do as I wish I’d done, guys, not what I did (career .115 BA in 26 at-bats). Bleh. Clare had a nice guy of a hitting coach from eighth grade on and off through college. He wasn’t big on gizmos (though I definitely see the benefit of taping at-bats in order to analyze a hitter’s approach to different types of pitches). Instead, he was big on “envisioning” what a hitter wanted to accomplish in a particular situation. It worked to the extent my daughter still holds a number of hitting records at Elmhurst University. I asked Clare something: “What if Jessica Mendoza had been your hitting coach?” I could practically hear her eyes growing wide at the thought.