Just Like Old Times

Growing up, I rooted so hard for the White Sox that, come World Series time, it was impossible for me to be for the American League, which basically meant the Yankees of Mantle and company.  That changed only after I became friends with an obnoxious National Leaguer.  Nothing like being subjected to someone endlessly extolling the virtues of Sandy Koufax to make those Robinson boys, Brooks and Frank, look good.

Last night, I turned into a kid again during game one of the Series, Giants vs. Royals.  Hey, James Shields, can’t get the ball over the plate?  Oh, right, you’re not facing the Sox.  Hey, Nori Aoki, can’t hit, can’t field?  Oh, right, you’re not playing the ChiSox.  Hey, Kansas City, get your collective heads out of your butts.  I’ve got a pizza riding on the Series with that obnoxious National Leaguer from years ago.

If things don’t improve by tonight, I may be hoping for a San Francisco sweep. 

Shrinking Giant

I didn’t dare pass along an NYT column to Clare on Barry Bonds; he’s not one of her favorite people.  The piece noted that Bonds seems to have lost his steroids-bloat while still taking most of the heat—outside of San Francisco, that is—for those excesses wrought by the Steroids Era.  Bonds doesn’t come off a hero, just less of a culprit than Bud Selig, which is just fine in my book.

Clare told me last week that the Valpo coach wanted to show one of her players a video of Bonds waiting nicely on a changeup, but all the girl could say was, Cheat, Cheat.  So much for the hostility being a D-III thing, although I do think non-scholarship D-III athletes are probably the least sympathetic group when it comes to steroids.  Another possibility here is gender, that female athletes in general don’t condone cheating.  But for that to be true, you’d have to exclude track and field.

In the end, it may be a softball thing.  Here’s a sport like baseball played by athletes who  really can’t play baseball on any serious level.  Baseball players have it all, even at D-III, because there’s always that chance of signing a pro contract as an undrafted free agent.  And along come Barry Bonds, not satisfied with his Hall-of-Fame career, deciding that with a little help he’ll turn himself into the next Hank Aaron.

Come to think of it, I can’t feel sorry for Bonds, either.

Dressing Down

The Bears stunk up Soldier Field yesterday, losing to the Miami Dolphins by a score of 27-14.  Offensive lineman Kyle Long was so upset he called out one of the culprits, those fans in the stands upset they have yet to see a home win from the 3-4 Bears.  “To be getting booed at home when you’re walking off the field down [just!] two possessions is unacceptable,” lectured Mr. Long.  “Especially when there is not a lot of noise being made on third down [which would have made it hard for the Dolphins to hear their quarterback and, presumably, have led to a turnover or chance for Jay Cutler not to cause one—or two].  Period.

Repeat after me, Bear fans: We must pay, cheer, obey, whatever the score and no matter how much tickets cost.   And never complain about parking that can go for as much as $55 a spot.

Brick by Brick

As a rule, I hate stupid and lazy.  Too bad those seem to be the two chief qualities of most anyone writing a sports column these days.  This week, the Cubs started their renovation of Wrigley Field by taking down the outfield bleachers.  Of course, television loved the pictures; the slightest hint of thought is beyond your typical sportscaster.  But print journalism is supposed to be different, the real thing, like Woodward and Bernstein or Red Smith at least.

But, No, I wake up this morning to a column celebrating the piles of debris while taking more potshots at Cubs’ president Theo Epstein, who has committed the mortal sin of not sucking up to Chicago sportswriters.  The writer in question even gave himself credit for writing that the ballpark was a dump back as far back as 2003.  You see, to this guy Wrigley is “crumbling and uncomfortable” in need of a fix up that does “without the rust, grime and leaks.”

Why you stupid, lazy so-and-so.  The engineering problems at this one-hundred year old ballpark don’t add up to $575 million, but you don’t care because it’s not your money, and you didn’t care when the Ricketts family wanted $300 million in public funds, because you didn’t figure any of that would be coming out of your pocket either.  Right?  Did you bother to ask any architects how much it would cost to make the park structurally sound with better washrooms, especially for female fans, and how much was going to create the bells and whistles needed to make fans forget how much they’re paying for a ticket?

I want a ballpark that’s first of all safe, then clean and relatively easy to navigate.  Keep your video boards and kiss-cams.  As for state-of-the-art clubhouse facilities, every ballplayer today should get down and his knees and thank God that Yankee Stadium in 1927didn’t have the amenities found in today’s clubhouse.  If it did, Babe Ruth might have hit 120 homeruns.               

 

Where Does All the Time Go?

Where Does All the Time Go?

The first 2-1 game between the Royals and the Orioles in the ALCS featured ten hits over the course of 2 hours and 55 minutes; the second game was a minute faster, maybe because there only nine hits.  Over in the National League, the Giants-Cardinals’ games contests went anywhere from 3:03 to 3:53, all of them in regulation.

Come the World Series broadcast on Fox (“Don’t miss Sleepy Hollow or The Simpsons”), I’m betting every game closes in on 3:30.  Heaven forbid another Don Larsen comes along to try and pitch a perfect game.  Producers would have to find ways to slow things down to fit in all the commercials.  Maybe a telethon:  We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled inning as soon as we reach $50 million in contributions to our advertisers.

Or we could bid on keeping Joe Buck from talking.

Destiny, with a Short Shelf Life

 Ask the Tigers after getting swept by Baltimore, and the Orioles likely were a team of destiny.  With the O’s now one game away from being swept by the Royals, who have already swept the Angels, and KC is next in line as a team of destiny, or “Yostiny,” as manager Ned Yost’s crew has been called by some sportswriters.  But however they say “destiny,” I say “lightning in a bottle.”

Either one would describe the 2005 White Sox, after sweeping the defending world champion Red Sox in the ALDS and losing all of one game to the Angels in the ALCS before sweeping the Astros in the World Series.  Then general manager Kenny Williams had to go and take the cap off the bottle by trading away Aaron Rowand….We haven’t been close to the Series since.

If the Royals make it, I’ll be pulling for them; I have a pizza on it.  But Royals fans, beware.  Each season has its own logic, its own rules and winners and losers.  Come April 2015, this year’s destiny could very well go the way of last summer’s lightning.   

Souvenir

Twenty-five years ago on a Sunday in mid-October, Michele and I drove downstate to the town of Lewistown for the annual fall festival that centers on native son Edgar Lee Masters.  As I recall, the local cemetery was filled with actors playing characters from Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, which is set in a fictionalized version of said cemetery.  I had another reason for going—Luke Appling, at the time very much alive, had been booked to appear at a local memorabilia show.

Since there was no one else in line, we had the Hall of Famer all to ourselves.  Appling complained about Chicago weather (“you had to dig the snow out of your neck at shortstop”); being cheated out of a base hit on an umpire’s call during Bob Feller’s Opening Day no-hitter in 1940 (“go ahead, ask him”); and the play of Pete Rose (“what is he, 215 pounds, and he slides into the second baseman, 159 pounds?”).  Throughout our conversation, Appling kept flirting with Michele, which she denies to this day.    

Along with an autographed picture of Appling, I bought a drinking glass, with the image of a smiling (who knew?) Ted Williams on it, along with the subliminal command to drink “Ted’s Delicious Creamy Root Beer.”  Whenever Clare faced some sort of challenge, a big game or tryout, I had her use the glass.  The idea was for her to see herself in the image of Williams, a hitter who had no use for pitchers other than as a means to an end.  It seems to have worked over the years.

Our daughter came home for the weekend from school and used the glass at breakfast yesterday.  I can only imagine the challenges ahead.