Eli Maybe, Eloi Not Yet

White Sox outfielder Leury Garcia was put on the ten-day disabled list after hurting his left hamstring over the weekend in Tampa.  This gave the Sox the opportunity to call up Eloy Jimenez, hitting .376 with eight homeruns at Triple A vs. .317 with ten homers at Double A.  Fans were hopeful.

Jimenez would have had the chance to face the visiting Yankees in his major-league debut.  He might have homered in his first at-bat, or struck out.  Either way, he would have been in the bigs, and the team would have made a statement on the progress of its rebuild.  But no, a 29-year old journeyman was called up instead.

There are boxes to check, hopes to quash.

Cultured

We are who we are.  I can no more imagine life without baseball than I can without culture.  The stage, the screen, the ballfield—these are where great performances happen.

This connection for me between baseball and culture started back in freshman year of high school.  It was late September 1967, and my mother took me downtown to see “Sand Pebbles,” starring Steve McQueen and Candace Bergen.  “What the hell happened?” More than 50 years old and still a great line.

As I recall, the White Sox beat the Indians that day, to draw within one game of first place with five games to go, two against last-place Kansas City and three against eighth-place Washington; naturally, the Sox lost all five games (and the first ten of the 1968 season for added measure).  What the hell happened?

Three years ago, we heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra play at Morton Arboretum; the Sox lost.  Two years ago, we went to an outdoor jazz concert at Elmhurst College; Cleveland demolished the Sox, 13-2.  A little over a month later, we went to see the Broadway-bound musical “War Paint,” starring Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole.  Good show, interesting game.

I parked the car amid reports Chris Sale wouldn’t be starting; that was the day Sale took a pair of scissors to 1983 throwback uniforms he didn’t want anyone to wear.   For added excitement, David Robertson of the Sox gave up three homeruns in the top of the ninth.  I tuned in just in time to hear the Sox had rallied for the win in the bottom of the ninth.  Ask me about Lupone, and I’m likely to talk about Sale.

Yesterday, Michele and I went to see “Pamplona,” a one-man production about writer Ernest Hemingway at the end of his life, starring Stacy Keach.  Last summer, Keach suffered a heart attack on the play’s opening night, onstage no less.  There were no such problems yesterday, I’m happy to report.

When we got back home, I went downstairs to check on the score of the White Sox-Rays game.  Because I am at heart a child, I scrolled down the scoreboard to the Sox game and then counted the runs they had as the visiting team.  That would be eight, maybe enough with James Shields pitching, maybe not.  Then I scrolled down to count how many runs Tampa scored.  That would be seven.  White Sox win.

The Sox pulled ahead for good on a two-run home run by Thor the rookie, aka Daniel Palka, who launched a 439-foot shot for his 17^th homer of the season; before that, Palka had struck out four straight times.  “I just had to forget the first eight-ninths of the game and move on from there,” Palka told reporters after the game.

Hemingway couldn’t have said it better.

Apples and Oranges

For their first exhibition game Thursday night in Canton Ohio, the Bears played just two regulars.  The opposing Baltimore Ravens also kept most of their starters off the field.  This is normal for football.

In baseball, spring training is all about playing.  The rookies want to show what they’ve got, and the veterans want to show what they haven’t lost.  Nobody wants to get injured, but most everybody wants to play.

In football, it’s almost the exact opposite.  Nobody really wants to play much in the preseason for fear of injury.  What an odd game, at least compared to the one I hold dear.  And, then to read that Vikings’ safety Andrew Sendejo wore a cap in camp with the message “Make Football Violent Again,” well, it made me want to put Sendejo in touch with former Raiders’ safety Jack “The Assassin” Tatum, who made football violent and then some for receiver Darryl Stingley with a tackle in a 1978 preseason game that left Stingley a quadriplegic.  But Tatum died in 2010 from a host of health issues.                  

As I said, an odd game.

Evermore Tour de Me

For whatever reasons, I seem to be biking more this year than most summers previous.  Call it a second wind in semi-retirement.

On Wednesday, I did the lakefront, down to 91^st Street close to the Indiana border and up to Ardmore, not far from Evanston.  Call it an easy “45,” and by easy I mean my palms don’t get blisters from leaning on the handlebars for so long and the serrated edges of the pedals don’t rub my feet the wrong way.  That all changes—for the worse—if I do 60 miles.

I also got to race people for the first time in memory.  On the way up, I followed a chiseled-physique guy for twelve miles, from 55^th Street up to Belmont; I got close but could never catch him.  On the way back, I kept playing tag with a girl Clare’s age.  As that was going on, a guy in full racing attire passed both of us, so that faux-Clare and I spent miles passing one another as we tried to pass him.  After four or five miles, the girl dropped out, leaving me to go after Mr. Speedo alone.

It pains me to admit he could’ve my age, or older; you just don’t want to get passed by an elder.  Twice I passed my opponent, and twice he quickly pulled ahead.  This went on for probably close to fourteen miles until the other guy pulled off the trail; he looked totally gassed.  So, I either outraced someone my own age or made an old man cry “Uncle.”

You take your wins where you can get them.

Why Bother?

White Sox manager Rick Renteria pulled shortstop Tim Anderson in the bottom of the sixth inning Tuesday night when Anderson failed to get out of the box on a soft line drive to third he thought had been caught but the umpire ruled a trap. More embarrassing still, the Royals went around the horn to get Anderson at first.

So, Renteria yet again pulls a player for not hustling; I’ve lost count exactly how many over the last two seasons.  Oh, and starter Reynaldo Lopez admitted to reporters the other day he’s lost his focus over his last few starts.  I thought Ricky’s kids don’t quit.  What exactly do they do?

A shortstop batting south of .250 in this his third season at the major-league level; a pitcher who basically forgets how to pitch: how much worse can it get for this rebuild?  How about a second baseman, aka Yoan Moncada, whose 14 homeruns pale when compared to his 16 errors?  Out of the 141 players to appear in a game at second, Moncada ranks 124^th with those errors accounting for a .957 fielding average.  That’s the worst among all MLB starters at the position.  And let’s not forget the 149 strikeouts in 393 at-bats or .226 BA.  Those are the kind of numbers that make a person miss Chris Sale all the more.

Regardless, Sox fans are supposed to embrace different names now.  I was reminded of that when Michele put the radio on Wednesday as she made dinner; WGN was doing the White Sox pregame.  Yet again, I was given the scores of the top four Sox minor-league affiliates.  Yet again I was encouraged to hope reinforcements were on the way.  But when, and will the parent team have the coaching staff up to the task of getting the most out of the new players?  

They’re sure not doing it with the nearly new ones.

Echoes

Monday was my birthday, two-thirds of the way to the devil’s number, as one friend joked (I think).  The devil or boxcars, it wasn’t enough to keep Clare and Chris from coming over for steak and cake.

I can see that my role as in-law and, maybe eventually, grandfather will include the television turned on to some sporting event; as long as it’s not golf, I’m OK with that.  Both before and after birthday candles (Full Disclosure: the second verse of Happy Birthday in our house starts with “May the dear Lord bless you.”) Clare sat next to me on the couch watching the Red Sox-Phillies’ game.  Every so often, a hitter would take a vicious cut at a pitch and someone, either father or daughter or I think once both of us together, let out a little gasp, as in “Ooh!”

You can take the girl out of the house, but you can’t take the upbringing out of the girl.

A Rustling of Pitchforks

You can tout your minor-league prospects for only so long until people start wanting to see them up close.  The White Sox months-long game of “they’re really good/they’re not ready yet” seems to be wearing thin with the media.  Finally.

Last week, a sportswriter called out Sox GM Rick Hahn after Hahn alluded, yet again, to the “checklist” of accomplishments that prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Michael Kopech are being held to.  “They know what’s on the list,” Hahn was quoted in yesterday’s Tribune.  “I’m not going to sit here and tell you things our players can’t do.”

Why not, Rick?  The TV announcers tell us virtually every miserable broadcast how great Jimenez and other prospects are doing, and they show film clips as proof.  A fan can watch Adam Engel strike out just so many times before dreaming about alternatives.  You provide faces and numbers to those dreams, you risk creating a mob.  The townspeople are getting restless.