A Change of Venue

 If I were king, or just a despot, I would make professional sports teams play in the facilities I considered fit for them.  If I were king, there’d still be a Comiskey Park and Chicago Stadium.

My ballpark was an oasis amidst the industry and smoke that surrounded it and much of the South Side; the Stock Yards were a couple of miles to the southwest.  You couldn’t hear the order of business from there, but you could sure smell it.

Not that it mattered to anyone sitting in the outfield grandstands or down the lines; you were so close to the action all unpleasant thoughts—and smells—not related to baseball lost their hold over the course of nine innings.  By my count, I went to a couple of hundred ballgames at 35^th and Shields and never once felt cheated by the presence of obstructing posts.  As for the bathroom lines, I don’t drink.  Call me Mr. Model T, the old man who would bring back the WCTU.

A packed house at Comiskey could be deafening, unlike at the Cell; either architects forgot or ignored that stretching the upper deck away with cantilever construction dissipates crowd noise.  The same holds true for the United Center.  Once upon a time, the Bulls and Hawks played at the Chicago Stadium, nicknamed The Madhouse on Madison for good reason.  The place was a triple-decked sardine can in the best sense of the term.

The Stadium was torn down for the United Center, which looms massive and ugly on the Near West Side.  Last night, the Bulls beat the Cavs 99-96 on a three-pointer by Derrick Rose at the buzzer.  So, you might say it was an exciting game.  That being the case, then why bother with cheerleaders and guys running around with oversized Bulls flags?  Can’t the team generate its own noise?  If not, blame the hangar the team plays in (along with the Hawks).  As king, I would let my subjects be happily stuffed into a Madhouse.  They deserve no less.

Old School, Right On

 White Sox V.P. and former GM Kenny Williams has never been one of my favorite people.  He was fond of trading prospects for over-the-hill players, and HE SIGNED ADAM DUNN.  But even a stopped clock gets it right twice a day, which Williams did in 2005 when he assembled a roster that brought Chicago its first World Series title since 1917.  And I do like how Williams lets his character show when least expecting to.

Several years ago at spring training he yelled at Dayan Viciedo from the stands for failing to run out a ground ball; that’s something my father would have done.  And this week Williams was walking through the White Sox clubhouse when he heard an offensive song blaring away.  How offensive?  Well, the Tribune reported on the story but couldn’t find any lyrics clean enough to quote.  Williams immediately had the music turned off and apologized to a reporter for the anti-woman lyrics.

According to the story, Williams took grief on Twitter and sports talk radio for being too old school.  Holding people to an adult standard of conduct is old fashioned?  Well, I’ll ride that dinosaur any day of the week, and pay Kenny Williams for the privilege.                        

Pick Your Poison

People choose sports and teams to follow for all sorts of reasons.  With me, baseball was a factor of time and place.  In the 1950s on the South Side of Chicago, the Go-Go White Sox were your birthright, Irish or not.  The Bukowskis were part of the “nots” who showed up at 35^th and Shields, especially when the Yankees came to town.

My dad was a fan of the football Cardinals, but they moved after the 1959 season.  He watched the Bears more to heckle George Halas than cheer on the old man’s team, and I inherited that lukewarm affection, which hasn’t grown much to this day.  The people who wear bear heads on Game Day are beyond me.

So are Blackhawk fans; I just don’t get the sport.  A group of us used to play hockey in the alley in winter, without skates; we just ran around and used our sticks to whack one another with.  I kind of warmed up to the teams of Bobby Hull and Stan Makita, but then Bill Wirtz turned into an owner only George Halas could love.  By the end of his life, Wirtz was threatening to disband the team rather than share more revenue with players.

The Bulls came into existence my freshman year of high school and something clicked, though I can’t say exactly what.  Let me put it this way—a squirrel could palm a basketball better than I can.  One of my least favorite high school memories involves “basketball tag,” a game devised by one of our gym teachers; you tried to tag an opponent while dribbling.  Yes, in fact I may have sweat real bullets avoiding said tag.  But I grew to love those Sloan/Van Lier/Boerwinkle/Love/Walker teams as much as I did any White Sox team.

My biggest influence over Clare, of course, was baseball.  Basketball I tried to steer her away from because she had too much of my personality, that of a physical center stuck in Tiny Archibald’s body.  Until college, she couldn’t have cared less about football, but along came Chris the center, and all that changed.  Now, she’s little Miss Safety Blitz, picking up more knowledge of the game in four years than I have in a lifetime.

She also likes hockey.  I think part of the reason is she’s a good ice skater, so she can imagine herself setting up Patrick Kane for a game-winning goal.  And while hockey players are considerably taller than they were a generation ago, they’re not behemoths yet.  Kane stands 5’11”, a size everyday people can relate to.  Just not me.  No, I want to be like Jimmy Butler defending against LeBron James in tonight’s Bulls-Cavs playoff game.  To each his own.   

Kids Say the Darndest Things

 For an Ivy Leaguer (Dartmouth), Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks sure sounded dumb in the Trib this morning when he said the team doesn’t want to be like the Cardinals, who came back from a 5-0 1^st inning deficit against the North Siders to win 10-9 and post a best-ever 19-6 start to the season.

“We’re not going to try to copy the Cardinals,” said Hendricks.  “We’ve got our own unique personalities around here, and it’s been successful so far.”  Oh, really, as in zero World Series championships in the past 106 years and only one Series’ appearance in the last 70?  Kyle, the Cardinals have made 19 Series’ appearances, winning 11 times.  Anyone born since the last time the Cards won the World Series (2011) would be too young for kindergarten.  Anyone born since the last time the Cubs won, well, they’re either very, very old or dead.  Just this once, be a copycat.     

The Old Professor

In Lost Ballparks, Lawrence Ritter relates a joke that stemmed from an ad on the outfield wall at Baker Bowl:  “The Phillies use Lifebuoy [Soap], but they still stink.”  So do the White Sox, with a record of 8-14 after losing four straight in Minnesota to the Twins.

But how the players want to protect their manager.  “I really love to play for Robin [Ventura] because he’s a friend, he’s a brother, he’s like a father in some situations,” first baseman Jose Abreu told the Tribune through an interpreter.  “He lets you play your game.”  In which case, the record speaks for itself.

By all means, start getting rid of players if the losing continues.  If the front office is convinced they’re not the problem, then get rid of the manager.  And make sure he has at least a grain of Casey Stengel about him (sorry, I just don’t think it’s going to be a woman).  The Old Professor believed, “The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.”    But everybody loves Robin.  Hmm….

Bruce Howard, .116 Career BA

 New York Times’ columnist William Rhoden had a nice line the other day writing, “If baseball ever dies, the cause of death will be complications caused by tradition.”  Rhoden questions the wisdom of pitchers hitting, and so do I.

Last week, the Cardinals lost their ace starter Adam Wainwright for the season with a torn Achilles suffered when batting.  And the week before that, Max Scherzer, aka the World’s Richest Pitcher, jammed his thumb while batting.  In case you were wondering, Wainwright is a career .198 hitter while Scherzer clocks in at .171.

In the 1960s the White Sox had a pitcher by the name of Bruce Howard; for Howard, hitting looked to be one part mystery, one part nuisance.  Hence, the career .116 batting average.  At least Howard wasn’t Bob Buhl, who went 0 for 70 one year.

When I need a rationalization for hating the Cubs, all I need to do is think of their announcers, who are fond of labelling anyone as “purists” for the sin of questioning certain changes.  Dislike the growing number of night games at Wrigley Field or the installation of the monstrosity of a video board?  Why, you purist, you.  Don’t like interleague play?  Guess what that makes you?

Oh, but when it comes to the differences between the NL and AL, you’d think the pitcher hitting constitutes the 11^th Commandment.  New Cubs’ manager John Maddon likes to bat his pitcher eighth on occasion, but guess what?  He’s still a pitcher.  That’s something only a purist could love.      

Meaning

Sports have always occupied a good deal of my life.  At the age of 15, I cursed God (yes, though behind closed doors so my parents didn’t hear) for letting the White Sox lose the pennant in the last week of the 1967 season.  Three years later, God let me suffer through a 56-106 season with talk of the Sox moving to Milwaukee.

I felt a different kind of pain on a Sunday afternoon in November of 1968 when Gayle Sayers, the Kansas Comet, blew out his right knee against the 49ers; such a gift once bestowed on a running back should not be taken away except for cause.  With the White Sox more mediocre than not in the 1970s and the Bears a good deal worse, I found meaning in the Bulls of Motta, Van Lier, Sloan et al.  With the ‘80s came adulthood, the demands of which led me to ration energy, if you will.  Try following—really following—more than one sport while raising a family and taking care of elderly parents.

I couldn’t, but judging from all the people who showed up in downtown Chicago yesterday for the NFL draft, the fault lies with me.  Adults abandoned their regular lives to don jerseys and cheese gear in order to walk along Michigan Avenue in search of a gridiron savior if not the real deal.  (Hint: I doubt He’ll put in an appearance at Draft Town.)  I loved it when the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, but my life didn’t change all that much.  I must be missing something.  That third-round pick out of Clemson could be a sleeper.