Can't Help Myself

For someone always warning about the dangers of getting stuck in the past, I sure do like walking to the edge and sticking a toe in.  I did it again yesterday picking up Chinese takeout.

 

“As You Like It” is a two-bounce foul ball away from the baseball field at Morton West, on Harlem Avenue.  Ask Clare how she became a baseball fan, and she’ll point to watching Frank Thomas on TV.  I think watching the Mustangs play had something to do with it, too.

 

We’d sit in the stands to catch a few innings before going to pick up Michele from the train.  God, how that girl loved to chase after foul balls that didn’t land in traffic on Harlem.  (The school got around to installing netting a few years ago.)  Happiness for an eight-year old was winning the race to the ball and tossing it back to the ump.  Well, that and having her father pitch endless BP.

 

The field yesterday stood empty in the early evening sun of a cloud-free Saturday; the outfield flags were all pointing in the direction of home plate courtesy of a stiff breeze out of the northeast.  It was just the kind of breeze that chased after me in softball.  If I had the car windows down more, maybe I would’ve heard the echo of cheers from those games long ago.  I’d like to think so.

 

Clare graduated Morton ten Junes ago, around the same time her onetime classmate Ryan was drafted by the Angels; he was a year ahead of her in class.  Ryan used control more than power to get noticed, and he made it as far as high A.  I could imagine him on that mound, pitching and hoping.  Baseball comes wrapped up in hopes, along with dreams.

 

Ballgames generate memories; ballfields hold them.  You just have to look and listen.

Kneel Before Me, I Say

Kneel Before Me, I Say

 

If MLB players shot themselves in their collective foot, owners would one-up them taking aim where their own collective sun doesn’t shine.  Owners wouldn’t blow their brains out, though, because they don’t have any.

 

That fact went on display this week with the owner’s latest proposal, a 72-game season at 70-80 percent of the earlier agreed-to prorated salaries, depending on whether baseball makes it to a postseason.  The owners just have to win.  Owners just gotta own.

 

According to Bob Nightengale in USA Today, baseball is in line to receive $787 million in postseason broadcast revenue.  Sorry.  Nope.  It won’t fly.  Owners can’t cry poverty with that kind of payday in store.  If any or all of them run through their cut, that’s just too bad.  There’s money enough to keep the system afloat.  The only problem is it has to be shared.

And owners gotta own.

He's Back

I intend to take a pass on Sunday’s ESPN documentary on the 1998 Sammy Sosa-Mark McGwire homerun race.  The way I see it, don’t cover a lie unless you intend to call it a lie.

 

So far, I’ve read three Chicago sportswriters who have no intention of doing that; two of them were beat writers who covered Sosa.  God forbid they address the reasons they never called out Sosa—or McGwire or any other suddenly enhanced ballplayer—for PEDs’ use.  I guess they were too busy chronicling how the Doping Duo were in the process of saving the game.

 

And then there’s Jon Greenberg in yesterday’s The Athletic.  “I don’t need him [Sosa] to admit anything,” wrote Greenberg.  “Nor should anyone else.  We saw what we saw.  We know what we know.”  But only some of us were in a position to report on an ongoing scandal.

 

And, you know what, guys?  I wasn’t in that position.

Perchance, to Draft

Clare called me last night to ask, “Why should I care about a draft if they’re not going to play baseball?”  The answer, my dear, is that they will play baseball.  It might be a spite-filled 50 games, but it will be baseball nonetheless.

 

Sad to say, I actually watched the draft—hey, we’re as exciting as the NFL or NBA (no, you’re not)—long enough to see the White Sox pick lefthander Garrett Crochet out of Tennessee and hear the comparisons to Chris Sale—lanky, great fastball and slider, hard-to-pick-up delivery.  We’ll see.  Personally, I’d be a little worried that he pitched all of 3.1 innings this spring because of shoulder soreness.  So, fingers crossed.

As for Mt. Carmel shortstop Ed Howard, the other Chicago team thought enough of Howard to make him their first-round pick.  Cool, though not-cool if you wanted him on the Sox, though OK once you realize the Sox have Tim Anderson at short.  It’s just nice that, for once, local baseball talent got scouted and drafted by a local team.

Of course, the question now is, what will the draft picks do after they sign?  They won’t be assigned to a rookie-league team or the low minors as in years past.  And the Sox #1 pick won’t get interviewed by Ed Farmer up in the radio booth.  I actually remember Farmer talking to Sale—and Carlos Rodon and Zach Burdi, a fellow South Sider.  The not-yet rookie talking with the long-ago player.  It was baseball as I love it.  But Farmer’s gone, and the game is lessened by his absence.    

 

Just a Series and a Game

I just read a rumor that, if baseball happens this year, the All-Star Game and Homerun Derby could take place after the World Series.  This would all be part of an 89-game season, give or take, basically half a season in ordinary times.  Why not reflect that by cutting the name in half to a simple “Series”?

 

And nothing like turning the All-Star Game into a variation on the Pro Bowl.  The one thing Bud Selig ever did as baseball commissioner that made sense was have home-field advantage determined by the outcome of the All-Star game.  This made the game count for something.  But, hey, it’s just entertainment, so no more meaning attached to the All-Star Game.

 

Who knows, maybe it never had any beyond the desire of individual players to stand out.  I keep thinking of Ted Williams, and I’m too young to remember him play.  Williams played in sixteen All-Star contests, batting .304 with a .439 OBP.  Teddy Ballgame cared, Teddy Ballgame always came to play.

 

And what night of the week in late, late October would they play the mid-summer classic?  It couldn’t be Sunday, Monday or Thursday, not with the NFL around, and not Saturday night because college football has claimed that.

 

That leaves Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday.  Who’s going to watch on date night?  I go with Wednesday.  They could hype it as the big Hump-day Game.  Yeah, that has a ring to it.

Say What Again?

The owners, who seem to believe end times will arrive at 12:00 AM on November 1^st, have come back with another proposal.  Now, they’re willing to play 76 games while subjecting players to a pay scale reminiscent of college tuition.

 

I say that as a parent who never understood what his child’s tuition was going in as a freshman or coming out with a degree.  We have a system where there’s tuition A for him, B for her and C for students from overseas.  Don’t worry, you’ll go through the rest of the alphabet soon enough, along with your savings.

 

You couldn’t make a system more confusing if you tried.  Yet this is what the owners propose for players.  The game’s economic structure is so fragile owners can’t afford to prorate salaries without further reductions.  Oh, but they’ll do something they have never agreed to before and drop the compensation requirement for teams losing free agents.  Not only that, they’ll expand the number of playoff teams, all the way to sixteen.  But players have only 48 hours to decide.

 

The tuition-paying parent in me says something’s fishy here.  Would the owners actually give up free-agent compensation out of a sense of fairness, or are they doing it as a loss leader?  And that deadline.  If that isn’t undue pressure, what is?

 

Last month, the Rays’ Blake Snell came off as a greedy SOB looking out for #1.  In comparison to how the owners are acting, Snell was a paragon of virtue.

 

Adios, national pastime.

Piled in a Corner

I’m trying to clean out the garage, which is a lot like Sisyphus trying to make it to the top of the hill with his boulder.  Stuff keeps getting discovered, and some of it even gets thrown out.

 

Among today’s discoveries is my collection of baseball bats, in far northwest corner; they were behind a plastic garbage can full of drop cloths.  (Another discovery.)  My guess is they date back as far as thirty years, more so if you include the John Roseboro Little League model.  That was a gift from out of our next-door neighbor’s garage.  Bill saw how Clare liked to hit, and he gave us two or three bats.  Lucky guy, he got to clear stuff out of his garage in the process.

 

The bats that I decided to keep all still have the signatures on them: Roseboro; Roberto Clemente; David Justice (youth); Jackie Robinson; Carl Yastrzemski.  The Justice bat I bought for Clare; I always wanted her to know what swinging a wood bat felt like.  I don’t have a particular memory of this, but I’m pretty sure we used it when I’d take her to the schoolyard for our own version of fast-pitch.  Clare would stand there next to the “box,” or strike zone, and I’d fire away.  This way she could swing up to four times in a minute, depending on contact.

 

I threw out one of the bats from neighbor Bill and one from Clare’s senior year of high school.  The good news there is it didn’t belong to Clare; she just broke it at the batting cages.  It was a demo belonging to the proprietors, who complimented my daughter for accomplishing something that hardly ever happened; they gave it to her in recognition of her feat.  After ten years, I decided it was time to toss.

 

My daughter has informed me the batting cages are open again.  “Maybe we can go.”  I’d like that.  But the next bat she breaks, she takes home with her.