Sound and Fury

By nature and upbringing, I am loath to join in on protests.  If you knew Monsignor J.D. Hishen or Ed and Mary Ann Bukowski, you’d have an idea how I got to be that way.  Still, I respect others who feel the need to protest what they see as injustice.  It’s all a matter of walking in other someone else’s shoes, if you will.

Which is why I respect the decision by [most likely ex-] NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to take a knee during the national anthem during the 2016-2017 season.  And if people want to protest Nike for making Kaepernick the center of an ad campaign, let them burn whatever Nike items they want.  I just wish Kaepernick and his critics would consider, really consider, the company in question.  Nike is nothing if not bald-faced—and part of what needs changing if we are ever going to address economic inequality in this country.

I suggest Kaepernick, his supporters and critics all stop what they’re doing long enough to go online and take a look at the interactive map Nike has so kindly provided.  It shows the company contracts with 46 factories employing 6000 workers in the U.S.; 11 factories employing 33,000 people in India; 123 factories employing 162,000 workers in China; and 39 factories employing 194,000 people in Indonesia (all employment figures rounded up to the nearest thousand).  Next, they should go to the company’s sustainability website.

I did and was struck by this line: “We believe in a fair, sustainable future—one where everyone thrives on a healthy planet and level playing field.”  Right, and the White Sox disregarded service time this week when they decided to keep Eloy Jimenez in the minors.

Nothing eats away at a person like poverty; nothing eats away at a society like poverty that stretches over generations.  If Nike cares so much about fairness and health, why does it avoid American-made goods and why do the workers in Asia who make goods that go to Nike earn so little, at least when compared to American wages?  Oh, and if Nike stuff costs so little to manufacture, why does it cost so much to buy?

But those websites sure are slick.

Catching a Glimpse

The weather at Monday’s ballgame was nothing short of threatening.  I have never seen black-gray clouds billowing so close overhead the way they were in the fifth inning on Labor Day.  Being three rows from the field at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, we opted for the shelter of the concourse.

The concourse is connected to a switchback ramp-way that goes from ground level to the upper deck.  There’s a landing leading to the concourse that I like to look out from; church domes and smokestacks outline the Bridgeport world of my father in his youth.  After a few minutes of this reverie, I gave my clipboard with scorecard attached to Michele so I could use the men’s room.  Alas, the trough urinals of Comiskey Park are no more.

I came back to find my wife and daughter were leaning over a railing of another section of the landing and looking down.  I walked over and glanced down to see the Tigers’ Victor Martinez hitting in the visitors’ batting cage.  Why or how there was an opening in the roof that let us watch I can’t explain, but it was definitely neat.

“Clare heard someone hitting and walked over to here,” Michele explained.  Of course.  Surgery was on my daughter’s shoulder, not her ears

Weasel Words

White Sox general manager Rick Hahn came out and stated the obvious before Monday’s game against the Tigers, that top prospect Eloy Jimenez won’t be among the September call-ups.  Hahn told reporters it didn’t make sense “for Eloy, at age 21, to make an appearance at a third level [of professional baseball] this season.”  Of course, “sense” is in the eyes of the beholder.

Hahn went on to say, “In our opinion, it’s in everyone’s best interest for him to continue to develop into a well-rounded impactful player we project him to be.”  With a talent so great, Hahn said he would rather err “on the side of patience.”  What a crock.

By waiting until the middle of next April, the Sox will get to keep their prized possession through 2025; bring Jimenez up now, and he could be gone after 2024.  Would Hahn be so patient if keeping Jimenez—who batted .355 in Triple-A vs. .317 in Double-A—meant losing him a year sooner?  I doubt it.  So, why not be a grown up and admit to your motivation instead of stringing everyone along for an entire season?  Notice that Hahn didn’t say that at one point in the season he was leaning in the direction of bringing Jimenez up.  That being the case, he spent the better part of a year talking gobbbledegook.   

Why not gamble that calling up Jimenez now would actually benefit his development?  Jimenez would have a month in the majors and something to carry with him through the offseason.  If he did great, he’d focus on doing more of the same come April 2019.  If he did so-so or worse, he’d have his offseason motivation.  But, no, the White Sox prefer to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

That’s the perfect epitaph for the reign of Reinsdorf.

Walk-off

The parents took the recuperating patient to a ballgame on Labor Day yesterday.  In other words, Clare (with her right arm in a sling), Michele and I went to Guaranteed Rate Whatever to see the White Sox top the Tigers, 4-2.

StubHub works great if you want to watch mediocre teams; we ended up three rows from the field, maybe sixty feet behind first base.  Four months ago, Clare and I saw Reynaldo Lopez throw seven flawless innings, only to have the White Sox bullpen turn victory into defeat.  Yesterday, Lopez left after seven innings in a 1-1 game.  But the bullpen was still working its “magic,” with Jace Fry grooving a pitch in the top of the ninth to a now-portly if still-ageless Victor Martinez for a 2-1 Detroit lead.

When Martinez connected, a Tigers’ fan a few rows back of us started screaming like his team had just won the World Series.  Sorry, buddy, you visit my house, you show some manners.  I said as much in the parking lot before the game when two Tigers’ fans pulled alongside.  “I hope you had a long ride here and a longer ride back,” I smiled.  We South Siders are always polite.

Anyway, the phenomenon known as Daniel Palka led off the bottom of the ninth with an opposite-field homer to left to tie the score; I started hollering like my team had just won the World Series.  Two batters later, Matt Davidson connected for a two-run walk-off, and I hollered some more, a lot more, to tell you the truth.  Clare told me to stop looking in the direction of that Tigers’ fan.  I did, but kept on yelling.  My throat is still raw the day after.

In a postgame interview, Palka explained, “I’m a big proponent of the 1/9^th of the game” approach to hitting, where the idea is to take off “the first eight innings and then show the people what you got.”  In Palka’s case, that would be his 21^st homer, a major-league-leading six of which have come in the ninth inning.  We also got to watch Palka play right field.  Talk about footwork; it was Astaire-like, not.  But the young man does show off a nice trot around the bases.

Here’s hoping he can work on it another six or seven times before the season ends.

From the Heart

Yesterday was Hawk Harrelson Day at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, and the man of the hour did not disappoint in baring his heart for all things White Sox.  Afterwards, he broadcast the game with A.J. Pierzynski and kept speaking from the heart.  One comment in particular caught my attention.

At one point, the stream of consciousness touched on LeBron James.  Hawk used to watch the King, but no more.  If I heard correctly, Hawk thinks athletes should keep their nose out of politics.  The ex-athlete did not appear to appreciate the irony in his remark.

In the Shadow of Bears

It’s September in Chicago, and any baseball team that isn’t in contention had better face facts—it’s football time.  The White Sox will be lucky to get any coverage between now and the end of the season.  I’m amazed the box score from yesterday’s 6-1 loss to the Red Sox even made its way into both papers.

I’m doubly amazed because the Bears pulled off a big trade Saturday that brought them outside linebacker Khalil Mack from the Oakland-soon-to-be-Las-Vegas Raider.  If the papers are to be believed (and remember, it’s the Bears), GM Ryan Pace has pulled off a one heck of a steal.  He definitely put the spotlight on his team.

(Here’s a story that won’t get much coverage in these parts—how the trade affects the Raiders, their move to Las Vegas, to be exact.  All sorts of promises (and about $750 million in public funding) had to be made to lure the Raiders away from Oakland.  I’d be willing to bet—pardon the pun—advocates painted the Raiders as a young team on the rise; Mack, for example, is only 27.  But the Raiders couldn’t or wouldn’t sign their star defender to an extension, so they traded him.  That’s not exactly the kind of franchise I’d want to welcome to my town.)

Professional sports in Chicago is a little like a jungle, or maybe the Galapagos Islands because of where this metaphor is going.  The strong survive to eat up coverage, the weak fall to the back pages or get twenty seconds of air time.  I doubt Charles Darwin was much of a White Sox fan.  Heaven knows it’s hard.

He Could Pass for Another...

Something about the Cubs’ Joe Maddon has been bugging me for ages, but I could never put a finger on it till this week.  Here it is:  Maddon could pass for another Bill Veeck, or his younger brother or at worst first cousin.

Just like Maddon, the onetime owner of the Indians, Browns and White Sox was a man as decent as he was insecure.  (Non-decent people in baseball?  Start with George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, and don’t forget Milton Bradley.)  Maddon needs for everyone to know he’s the smartest guy in the room, Veeck wanted all the world to know how many books he read, and what kind.  Maddon presents himself as a kid from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a variation on Veeck’s common-man persona.  But at some point they both became millionaires putting on an act.

Maddon is renowned for his antics—the petting zoo; medicine man; themed road trips; slogans on tee-shirts; and, most recently, a foray into art as motivation.  Veeck was renowned for using a midget to pinch hit; belly dancers; elephants; exploding scoreboard; and disco demolition.  You either love this kind of stuff, or you don’t; remember it fondly, or don’t.  The more I think about Veeck, the more I’m struck by a thoroughly decent man with a penchant to screw up a good thing.

In his first go-around as owner of the Sox, Veeck traded away a boatload of young talent after the 1959 pennant season (Earl Battey, Johnny Callison, Norm Cash, Don Mincher, John Romano).  If the White Sox teams I grew up with in the 1960s lacked hitting, that was because Veeck traded it away for older guys (Gene Freese, Minnie Minoso, Roy Sievers).  Veeck  played for now at the expense of later.

Ill health forced Veeck to sell the team in 1961 while circumstances allowed him to reacquire it in 1976.  Running the franchise on a relative shoestring, Veeck again started trading young talent, the likes of Bucky Dent, Brian Downing and Goose Gossage.  Things went better with this round of trades because Veeck worked in tandem with general manager Roland Hemond, who was a master at detecting undervalued talent in other organizations.  Still, Veeck couldn’t win consistently, and he sold the team a second after the 1980 season.  The White Sox then looked a little like the Rays when Maddon left following the 2014 season.

Maddon is cut from the same cloth as Veeck, with this one difference—he knows more about the game on the field than “Barnum Bill” ever did.  By that, do I mean a lot?  Maybe, maybe not.  I guess it depends on how you think Maddon managed in the 2016 World Series.