Pardon My Broken Record

Ordinarily, I could care less about the Astros and Mariners playing one another in a four-game series, but this is different.  We’re talking two teams playing FOUR GAMES against one another to start the season; that’s strange.  Oh, and we’re talking about TWO DOME TEAMS!!!

Did I ever mention that the MLB schedule is dumb?  This is one of those areas where it’d be nice if fans could force a little bit of change on the game.  But as we White Sox fans would say just hours before the first night game of the season (on April 7^th, no less), there’s always the Craft Kave. 

 

Old Boys Will Only Get You So Far

By my count, Clare has tried for at least two jobs in MLB without so much as a form email in response.  Part of the problem is her old man, who doesn’t have ties with guys in the ML.  Katy Feeney’s father did.

He was Charles “Chub” Feeney, onetime GM of the Giants and NL president.  His daughter, who died over the weekend, worked for MLB for some forty years, to become, according her obit by the Associated Press, “among the most prominent women in baseball.”  But don’t get too excited.  Katy Feeney didn’t have all that much power, even as a vice president.

Oh, Feeney had plenty of responsibility, both for media relations and the schedule; there’d be all sorts of headaches if somebody didn’t take care of these things.  You have to have a schedule every year, HOF inductees have to be introduced on the podium at Cooperstown, and Feeney handled these responsibilities well.  But did she have power, could she set policy?  Surely, you jest.  

You Can't Fight Nature

Today is April 5, and the White Sox schedule has generated two postponements already; with snow forecast for tomorrow, #3 won’t be long in coming.  There are two ways to handle this.

Either teams in the Northeast and Midwest all open on the road in warm climates (Milwaukee and Toronto excepted because of their domes), or the season’s start should be delayed until mid-April.  To make up for lost time, MLB could employ something known as the doubleheader; on dates two games are scheduled, rosters would be expanded to 27 or 28 players.

Problem solved. 

Headscratchers

First, will someone tell me why a baseball club would share Opening Day with football players, even if it is Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski at Fenway Park?  They want to attend the game, fine, but they don’t get on the field.  I sure wouldn’t want a Bear running around Guaranteed Rate Field (!), and thank goodness, neither did the White Sox yesterday.

Second, is it me, or were the NCAA and CBS complicit in exposing Gonzaga and North Carolina players to injury throughout the men’s basketball finals’ game last night at the University of Phoenix Stadium?  From what I could see, the court was elevated two-three feet above the first row of seats.  Maybe they don’t hustle as much in college, but NBA players go crashing into the seats all the time while going after loose balls; now imagine them falling off a cliff as well.  I don’t want to see anyone injured, but I sure wish the powers that be had been taken to court, both literally and figuratively, on this.   

Chimps and Tees

The New York Times had an interesting page 1 story yesterday (Sunday):  “They Can Hit a Ball 400 Feet.  But Play Catch?  That’s Tricky.”  It seems that college baseball coaches are coming across ever-more players who can hit the ball or throw the ball hard and little else; all the fundamentals that used to mark the college-ready player are in eclipse.  How come?

According to the story, it’s the fault of travel ball and parents’ quest for the Holy Grail of an athletic scholarship.  Softball gets mentioned in passing, and I’m guilty as charged.  The story notes that parents will send their athletes off to see the hitting or pitching coach, and that’s it.  The head baseball coach at Tufts is so aggravated he feels like telling new players, “You have been hitting off a tee in an indoor cage way too much.  You could teach a chimpanzee smoking a cigarette to hit a baseball off a tee.”  Or a 12-inch softball.

Players, of course, swear by private lessons.  As one college-bound pitcher put it, “There is only so much the average dad can teach a kid.”  For me, that was getting my daughter to lay off of sliders down and away and to stop fielding grounders off her front foot.  I don’t know what the hitting coach taught her all those years—the 22-year old had the same vicious swing as the 14-year old and the 4-year old, for that matter.  But I do know what travel-coach Harry did.

Harry used to be the head softball coach at an area girls’ Catholic high school that had; teaching was in his blood.  All fall and winter of Clare’s sophomore year of high school he worked with her before or after regular Sunday practice: Position your body like this, hold the ball here to make your throws.  Back and forth they went, month after month.  I think Clare came to hate Harry nearly as much as she did me all those times I’d ask her after she went fishing for an outside pitch, “And exactly where would that’ve gone had you managed to get your bat it?”  Clare played a beautiful second base her last two years of high school.

.And when the college coach said she didn’t need a second baseman but a right fielder, Clare volunteered, not because she wanted to learn a new position but because she realized a complete ballplayer plays the field as well as hits.         

  

The Greatest Story Never Heard

 The bigger they are, the harder they fall, one and all.  Just ask Goliath, or the Connecticut women’s basketball team.

Women also play NCAA D-I basketball, and it’s also quite good.  In the semi-finals Friday, UConn put its 111-game winning streak on the line against Mississippi State, a team they had beaten by 60 points in the tournament last year.  Only on Friday, State didn’t roll over, forcing UConn into overtime, where 5’5” guard Morgan William sank a 15-foot jump shot with time expiring.  Clare told me it was on the anniversary of the death of William’s stepfather.  Why would my daughter feel the need to tell me that, I wonder.

The game was too late—and too female—for coverage in the Saturday papers.  I caught the shot on the national news, but not the local.  Today, the Tribune ran a wire story and the Sun-Times nothing at all.  And if that winning streak had belonged to UCLA, Kentucky or Louisville, the level of coverage would’ve been the same, no doubt.

That last sentence, my friends, was written one day after April Fool’s. 

Then and Now

Five years ago starting this week, Clare was on a homerun binge, hitting three, two of them three-run jobs.  Today, Clare will be having dinner with us after working a half-day on Saturday.  Her fiancé Chris is watching spring practice at Western Michigan University, where his old Elmhurst coach is now the head football coach.

Five years ago this week, the White Sox embarked on what so far is their last season over .500, when they finished 85-77.  After four seasons of mediocrity—this despite having Chris Sale, the best left-handed starter in baseball—the Sox are in rebuilding mode, sans Sale.  How nice.

Five years ago, Paul Konerko had his last really good season, hitting .298 with 75 rbi’s.  This will be Konerko’s third year of retirement—and A.J. Pierzynski’s first.

Time waits for no one.