A Fine Mess

A Fine Mess

It appears that after close to a month, the Bears and their first-round draft pick, linebacker Roquan Smith, have come to an agreement on his contract.  The standoff was a matter of principle on both sides, I’m sure.

Smith is a hard-hitting—dare I say “headhunting”?—player who feared that the Bears would dock him his guaranteed money if he ran afoul of the NFL’s new helmet-contact rules; he also didn’t want to lose money if he were fined for other on-the-field offenses.  The Bears, of course, were looking for ways to send Smith in a time machine back to the days they could sign a player for a fraction of his worth.  For me, this is a tough fight to pick sides.

It’s funny, though, how professional sports are moving in a direction the justice system is extremely slow to go.  Teams and leagues will penalize players for off-the-field conduct that would be criminal if only a judge and/or jury ruled it as such.  Ah, but work behavior, that’s where it gets murky.  Who’s going to pay that fine for head butting?  Or for taking out a player driving to the basket?  Or for intentionally throwing at a batter?

Here’s an idea—why not fine both the team and the player for bad behavior during the course of a game?  The player is an employee for the team and acting as a representative of said business.  If he’s going to do something that combines dangerous, hurtful and dumb, then his employer should share in the liability for allowing a particular incident to occur.  This happens all the time in the real world.

If any Bear—or Bull or Blackhawk or Cub or White Sox—is fined during the course of the season, determine the fine as a percentage of the player’s salary and level a similar penalty against the team’s gross earnings.  That would either improve player conduct or unite players and management against commissioners in a way never before seen.

On the Beach

To Chicagoans of a certain age (like me), the city beaches represent a summer refuge from bungalow heat.  Houses built of brick may keep the big bad wolf at bay, but they can also turn into a kiln come June and July.  It was two or three buses for us to get to Rainbow Beach, where I turned into a master of sandcastles and waist-deep wading.

Michele and I hit the beach yesterday, sans shovel and pail, but we brought along plenty to read along with a radio.  Our destination was Kathy Osterman Beach on the North Side, about a mile from where we parked.  The weather was beautiful with a breeze off the lake, so we didn’t mind the walk from Foster Avenue.  Note:  If you want to remember where you parked the car in the lot, line it up with the trapeze school operating steps from the lakefront.  Those daring young people flying through the air all but shout—you parked here.

I only listened to the White Sox game long enough to hear Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson scratch their heads—how could I tell without seeing?—over the mystery that is Dylan Covey.  A few months ago, the right-hander seemed to have it figured out, but that was then and this is now, with Covey sporting a 4-9 record and 6.06 ERA after being lifted in the third inning of the game against the Indians.  I can listen to the Sox lose anytime while we only get to the beach a few times a year.  I shut the radio off, the better to hear the waves.

I didn’t expect the game to be on still when we got home at 4:30.  Lo and behold, the White Sox rallied from a 9-1 deficit to lose by a more or less respectable score of 9-7.  Lo and behold, Adam Engel denied a third batter—Yonder Alonso—a homerun in the course of a week.  Engel even went three for four with a triple, homerun and three RBIs.  He is now hitting .224.

Hope springs eternal on a Sunday afternoon in mid-August.

A Question Unasked

Softball star pitcher Jennie Finch threw out the first pitch (overhand, by the way) at the White Sox game Friday night and put in an appearance in the TV booth for a half inning, during which time Jason Benetti asked the former Olympic gold medalist about how she got interested in sports.  Growing up with brothers helped, and so did attending Dodgers’ games.

Finch said she grew up wanting to pitch for the Dodgers.  Benetti could have but didn’t ask what it felt like when she first realized that wasn’t going to happen.  I would have liked to hear what one of if not the most talented fast-pitch softball player of all time had to say about that.  Oh, well, maybe next year.

Daniel, Again

For the second time in a week, Daniel Palka of the White Sox struck out in bunches before hitting a meaningful homerun.  Four strikeouts on Sunday in Tampa before the eventual game winner, three times at Guaranteed Rate Whatever last night against the Indians before a walk-off shot for a 1-0 win.

Palka basically repeated what he said Sunday, “I just went back to my old routine, and I kinda forgot the first 8/9ths of the game and made 1/9^th of the game count.”  A one-and-two count, a homer to the opposite field—what else could you ask for?

A call-up of Eloy Jimenez, perhaps.  But we wouldn’t want to get ahead of ourselves, now would we?

Stan Mikita

Stan Mikita was a comforting presence in my life, like a favorite restaurant or movie house; you didn’t have to go to enjoy.  I never saw Mikita play, but I’m sure happy he did for the Blackhawks.  The Hawks’ Hall-of-Fame center died Tuesday at the age of 78.

Mikita spent his entire 22-year playing career, from 1958 to 1980, with the Hawks (and for a while he lived in the suburb of Berwyn, just like me).  What always stood out for me, an admitted hockey agnostic, was how Mikita and Chicago were made for one another.  He was an immigrant from what is now Slovakia by way of Canada.  If you saw that face of his, you knew it as an immigrant’s face, the kind I grew up with on the South Side.  And if you heard Mikita talk, you knew he was pure Chicago.

Mikita mixed smart-ass with humble; in New York, they only care about the first part.  Mikita was Chicago in the way that DePaul basketball coach Ray Meyer was Chicago, and my father was Chicago.  What I liked most of all about Stan Mikita was how much he reminded me of my Uncle Art.  They could have been brothers, they looked so much alike.

My uncle was a WW II veteran and Chicago cop.  For no good reason I can think of, he took a liking to me.  My father was detached; my Uncle Art was not.  In seventh grade, I broke my arm and ended up in the hospital for several days.  My uncle came to visit, baseball magazines in hand.  I think I still have them, from 1965, somewhere in the basement.

As long as Stan Mikita showed up at golf tournaments or Hawks’ games, it was almost as if my uncle hadn’t died in 1989.  Now, he’s gone for good.

What a Waste

I’ve more or less stopped writing about Adam Engel because he’s dead to me, or at least his bat is.  But how can you ignore someone who puts on a clinic in centerfield the way Engel did the first two games of this week’s Yankees-Sox series on the South Side?

In the first game, Engel challenged the wall to deny Greg Bird a three-run homer.  The next game, he jumped even higher to bring back a line drive by Kyle Higashioka.  Two plays good for four runs saved.  Take that, Willie Mays.

Here’s the sad part:  Mays at the age of 41 hit better than Engel at the age of 26.  If Engel could hit .250 the way Mays did in 1972, Sox fans would go wild in jubilation.  Unfortunately, Engel right now is batting .217 compared to Mays’ .211 as a 42-year old part-time player for the Mets in 1973.

Talent like Engel flashes in the field is rare.  I can’t remember anyone for the Sox playing that position better, and all the metrics point to Engel has one of the best outfield defenders in all of baseball.  But he can’t hit.  Upper cut, upper cut, lunge outside, take a called third strike:  it gets monotonous after a while.  What to do?

If the Sox were my team, I’d have Engel going through eight hours of hitting instruction a day with his batting coach; I think we have one, though you’d never know it from looking at Engel or  Tim Anderson (.240 BA, 106 strikeouts in 408 AB) and Yoan Moncada (.218 BA, 163 strikeouts in 418 AB).  Anyway, I’d level out that swing and teach plate discipline every day, game in and game out until Mr. Engel got it.  If nothing else, I’d make him bunt for a hit at least once a game at the risk of a fine if he didn’t lay a bunt down.  Then, once every two games after he showed some progress.

But that’s just me, and the White Sox are ever so much smarter.

 

Bright Ideas

The White Sox spent last weekend in Tampa, facing off against a Rays’ team that basically has abandoned traditional notions of a starting staff.  Twice, Tampa starters lasted less than two innings for no other reason than that’s what their manager wanted.  In the third instance, the starter went four innings.  The Sox won all three games, each time by a run.

Not to boast, but I did this twenty years ago in Strat-o-Matic baseball (if you have to ask, shame on you).  It worked pretty well, if only because paper cards representing pitchers won’t wear out as quickly as real pitchers.  I more or less went with the same three or four pitchers in a seven-game series.  In contrast, the Rays seem to be using as many of their thirteen pitchers as they can over the course of a season.

Does it work?  Well, they’re one game over .500, and sixteen games better than the Sox.  On the other hand, the third-worst team in baseball swept them at home.  If nothing else, what it shows is that pitchers can go more than two innings in relief.  Somewhere, Lindy McDaniel and Bob Stanley are smiling.