Making Do

COVID-19 has hit New York pretty hard, so I should cut them some slack.  Pre-COVID, the story I read in today’s NYT on the glory that was the Knicks would’ve caused me to pass out from laughing.  I mean, who writes that two Knicks’ championships in 1970 and ’73”brought the very best of basketball to the bright lights of Broadway, illuminating the possibility of one day electrifying the world” with a straight face?

 

Granted, these are tough times, especially for those of us used to drawing a bit of daily sustenance from sports.  Unless you’re the kind to get excited by the NFL announcing its schedule for the upcoming season, there’s not a whole lot going on (and my thoughts and prayers to all those in danger of becoming NFL zombies).  For what it’s worth, here’s something I do usually once a day.

 

I go onto baseball-reference.com and look at the twelve player pictures they post, which seem to change and very few minutes.  So far, my record for connecting names to faces stands at five.  Art Nehf and Red Ames I’m never going to get, but I just nailed Luis Tiant; Hank Bauer; Billy Butler; and Geo Conzalez, all in a row.  It would’ve been five if I’d just guessed Rich Dauer.  And, yes, I know who Curtis Granderson is, but you put a Marlins’ cap on Babe Ruth and he’d look anonymous, too.

 

Like I said, it beats reading about who and when the Bears play.

Groundhog Day, Your Chicago Bears

Make it go away, please.  I can’t stand the resurgence of Bears’ news along with everything else football.  For heaven’s sake, we’re all of seven days into May.

 

The dearth of real sports’ news has local sportswriters reverting to their worst habits, above all rah-rah coverage of our Munsters of the Midway.  All is forgiven, Ryan Pace, at least until Mitch Trubisky is recorded throwing his next errant pass.  No, for a team that had no picks in the first round of the draft, you did great.  Oh, and those free agent signings!

 

Let’s see, there’s soon-to-be 30-year old safety Tashaun Gipson, who says he came here in part due to the recruiting job done by ex- and now current teammate Buster Skrine.  Well, that has to be on a par with D-Wade enticing LeBron to Miami, now doesn’t it?  And let’s not forget 35-year old wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr., who’s certainly getting the benefit of the doubt from reporters.  Me, I’m connecting the dots between Ginn and that other recent addition, 33-year old tight end Jimmy Graham.  How old can you go?  The Munsters’ newest offensive weapons may depend on walkers.

 

What all this Bears’ hoopla proves is the Munsters’ are the default setting for Chicago sports, with anything else football as spackle where needed.  It’s May, we should be wrapped in baseball, but, No, we get breathless coverage of mediocre free-agent signings by a mediocre football team.  Not only that, we get to listen to Roger Goodell and whatever football blowhard who happens by a camera try to buffalo COVID-19.

 

The NFL commissioner intends to play a full schedule, and he sure would like fans to be there.  The athletic director at Notre Dame is all but refusing to play unless Notre Dame Stadium is filled to the rafters with fans, coronavirus be damned.  Be careful, guys.

With all that huffing and puffing, you could come down with something.

Boomerang Back Here, Please

One of the pleasures of baseball is getting to follow a player on his journey, in the majors and elsewhere.  With Ted Williams or Hank Aaron, you always knew where to look, but what about Tyler Saladino?

 

The ex-White Sox infielder was let go by the Brewers last December and signed by the Samsung Lions in the Korean Baseball Organization on Christmas Eve.  If either the release or signing made it to the Transactions section, I must’ve missed it.

 

And I wouldn’t have been any of the wiser but for a baseball clip on the local news the other day.  Look, it’s baseball!  Look, it’s Tyler Saladino batting!  Luckily, I did look, and there he was, a player so decent he tweeted out his thanks to Sox fans when he was sold to Milwaukee during the 2018 season.  You judge a person by the small things as much as anything.

 

So, the now 30-year old Saladino is taking his show—and Fu Manchu—on the road halfway around the world.  Maybe ex-Milwaukee teammate Eric Thames talked Tyler into going.  When Thames’ own major league career had stalled, three years in Korea led to three years (and 72 homeruns) with the Brewers.  It could happen like that for Saladino.

 

If not, I can only hope he enjoys the experience, the way he seemed to last season when he hit grand slams in back-to-back games for the Brewers.  You go, Tyler. 

Uniform Thought

Last week, The Athletic did a story ranking the uniforms of MLB’s sixteen oldest franchises.  Lo and behold, the White Sox came in first, which I guess is a good thing.

 

The current uniform, featuring black pinstripes and “Sox” spelled out on a diagonal in Old English lettering, dates to 1991, the same year Clare was born.  So, she’s never known another uniform.  Lucky child.

 

I came of age with the current uniform’s ancestor, Old English “Sox” and numbers on the back outlined in red, the hat “SOX” spelled out with interlocking block letters on a diagonal, also getting the red outline treatment; call it South Side sublime.  They started playing around with the hat in 1964 and the uniform in 1968.  From 1968-90, the team went through five uniform styles.  Talk about confusing.

 

Oh, and depressing.  It’s a tie for worst, between the clam diggers of Bill Veeck and the “candy wrapper” of the Greg Luzinski era.  For the past few seasons, the candy wrapper has come out of the vault as a Sunday throwback uniform.  Clare loves it, I hate it.

 

I’d like to nominate the 1940s’ uniform as a compromise. No pinstripes, SOX in red lettering with the O and X fitting in the curves of the S.  This is the uniform Ted Lyons and Luke Appling wore, and the uniform Jackie Robinson would have worn had the Sox signed him after a tryout in 1942. 

I can always hope, right?

Hair

It’s a good thing my father isn’t around to see me.  He’d be all “When are you getting a haircut?”, a line he’d repeat maybe twice before dropping the “when” and the question mark.  So, heaven—literally—knows what he’d say now.

 

The last time I waited this long for a haircut was over twenty years ago, when my barber suffered a heart attack.  He was out for close to four months.  I could’ve found someone else to go to, but real men don’t abandon their barbers.  Of course, it got a little dicey when we went over to visit my parents.  My father would shoot me a look that said, well, “When are you getting a haircut?”

 

Now, I can’t get one for the life of me.  I love my wife dearly, but not enough to hand her a pair of scissors and say, Cut Away!  Who knows what long-buried resentments could come out at the sight of my scalp?  Maybe I should try a man bun until the shelter-in-place order is lifted.  Then I can go visit family members at the cemetery and raise the dead with my bun.

 

That, or I can have my very own “Turn Back the Clock” promotion every day until further notice.  It’s the 1970s until further notice.  I could be Terry Forster, Goose Gossage, Bart Johnson, Steve Stone…

 

Somebody get me a barber.

Silver Lining

Here’s a silver lining to the cancellation of youth sports this summer: Jerk coaches won’t have a chance to assault players.

 

I just read a story in yesterday’s NYT about an Olympic gymnast whose coach growing up (the coach being female, if that matters) employed public humiliation, hair-pulling and stupidity—as in having an athlete perform despite suffering on separate occasions a broken growth plate and dislocated knee—to get her point across.  And the point would be what, exactly, if not that sports is the last refuge of abusers?

 

Most any parent of an athlete has had to deal with these situations, and they can start by looking in the mirror.  I have a smart mouth, much smarter than my I.Q., which I had to keep it in check with Clare.  No, wait.  On reading that above sentence, I have to strip away the euphemism—the mouth was more cruel than smart.

 

I’m not asking for forgiveness here, in large part because I kept my mouth shut.  The meanest thing I said—and I freely admit to repeating—was this:  “And if you hit that pitch, where exactly was it going to go?”  Clare had a fondness for sliders away that I made it my mission in life to break her of.  Going on fifteen years after the fact, our relationship appears good, and my daughter will take care of me in my old age.  I think.

 

Clare’s high school and college coaches definitely weren’t abusive.  Coach Euks at Morton loved her for her bat from the first day of the season in freshman year.  On top of that, I doubt Coach had/has a mean bone in his body.  But Coach had an assistant who, if his body were ever found stuffed in a locker, every player on the team would’ve been a suspect.  The man was Don Rickles without the filter, is that’s possible.  Lucky for everyone surgery took him out of the dugout for parts of two seasons.

 

In college, Clare had Coach Brown and Coach P.  Brown was old school, definitely not above yelling, which in itself signifies nothing beyond than a preference for getting a point across.  Coach expected her players to perform at a high level, and she held them to it.  Coach also placed her trust in veterans first.  Had she stayed for Clare’s junior year, I’m pretty sure Clare would’ve been the veteran she most would’ve leaned on.

 

As for Coach Brown’s replacement, Coach P., it was like he took notes from Coach Euks on how to treat Clare.  We were lucky that way.  And it helped make up for the travel coaches.  Some of those guys, OMG.

 

Clare’s first travel coach did a dead-on if unintended impression of R. Lee Ermey, the D.I. in “Full Metal Jacket,” right down to the crew cut.  Coach didn’t swear, but I saw him push two of his players into asthma attacks, including my daughter.  But we were fortunate, in a way.  Clare was an insurance policy for Coach as a 13-year old on a 16-u team.  He ended up not needing her, and she went to another team in the organization before ever playing in a game for him.

 

The next two years we had good coaches, to be followed by two idiots the third year.  The one coach in particular was a gem.  He felt the need to inform Clare she’d never hit in college, and, during one game, grabbed a player by her helmet cage the better to yell at her.  Really, good times.

Each sport is different, I think, attracting a unique set of abusers.  Women’s gymnastics seems to be the worse.  What we went through in softball was bad enough.  Is it too much to hope things change once play resumes?  It shouldn’t be.         

Sports by Any Other Name

I’ve always connected sports with exercise.  Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t say.  I guess I like the idea of competition with sweat involved.  Otherwise, all you’re doing is playing Monopoly or, conversely, doing jumping jacks.  Give me sweat-drenched victory.

 

By that definition, taking a walk with my daughter and son-in-law on the warmest day of a still-young year qualifies more as jumping jacks than baseball or football.  Wait, I tried to walk ahead of everyone else, so it kind of did fit my definition of sports.  On top of that, I got to see these two young people for the first time in five or six weeks.  You can’t beat that with a stick.

 

So, Michele and I drove out to where Clare and Chris live, which is right next to a pedestrian/biking path that goes clear out to Elgin or Aurora, take your pick.  Of course, we talked a lot about sports.  Chris is worried about a friend who works in the athletic department at a midsized university.  If they don’t have football in the fall and the revenue it generates, this person may be without a job.  Such are the times we live in.

 

The child seems to be going through a worse case of baseball withdrawal than her old man is.  “Why can’t they have ballgames with just 5,000 people in the stands?” she wanted to know.  “I could sit with people I know, and there’d be nobody in the row in front or behind us.”  Well, maybe we should bring that to the commissioner’s attention, dear.

 

We also discussed how much time players would need to be ready to go out and play.  Yesterday, Clare sent along a video of White Sox prospect Dane Dunning pitching after having Tommy John last year.  At least he looks ready.

 

Play ball.  And, if we can’t do that, find some loved ones to take a walk with.