That's Entertainment

Entertaining: When was the last time you associated that word with the Bears, in a positive way? Well, the Munsters—quarterback Justin Fields most of all—were downright entertaining in yesterday’s 35-32 loss to the visiting Dolphins. In a regular season game, no NFL quarterback has run more than the 178 yards Fields gained against the Miami defense. He also threw for three touchdowns, two to tight end Cole Kmet. That got me to thinking of a game at Soldier Field on another Sunday afternoon in November a very, very long time ago, when Bobby Douglass connected with Jim Seymour for two touchdowns against the Bills. The Bears scored thirty-one points that game, but won. They could have yesterday, too, if the refs were consistent with their pass-interference calls. Instead, they turned into soup Nazis, giving the call to the Dolphins but not the home team late in the fourth quarter. Bad teams don’t usually get the call. Next week, the Lions come to town. If Fields plays like he did against Miami, the Bears will be the good team. For a change.

Nope

With the Astros beating the Phillies 4-1 last night to clinch the World Series, some people are wondering if this title is clean or it will lead to forgiveness or redemption. Speaking for myself, I can answer a hearty No! on all counts. The 2017 Astros cheated without consequences. If MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred didn’t know what was going on at the time, he should’ve stripped the team of its title once he found out. Instead, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman were allowed to spout gibber that was supposed to pass for an admission of guilt. I’m still waiting for those two to come clean. Ditto Dusty Baker, who finally gets himself a fancy Series’ ring after twenty-five years of trying. Baker wasn’t involved in the 2017 fiasco. No, his claim to notoriety stems from managing Barry Bonds for ten years in San Francisco. PEDs? What PEDs? Dude, do you mean Pez? Can’t wait for the induction speech at Cooperstown.

Reading the Tea Leaves

Clare texted me a video of new White Sox manager Pedro Grifol Facetiming Eloy Jimenez. The conversation was conducted in Spanish, and I’m pretty sure Eloy dropped a few “Sirs” on his part. Talk about an astute move by the Sox. During the two years in his return as manager, Tony La Russa was never recorded speaking to anybody in Spanish, yet here was Grifol on day one doing that with Jimenez, who’s going to have to live up to his potential for the Sox to contend next year. If thjs was just marketing, it was pretty effective. If it was intended to show that team and manager are serious about reaching their players, how sad nobody felt that way the previous two seasons. Yesterday, Grifol was filmed picking up the tab at a local hot dog stand and visiting a grade school, which I assume was also in the neighborhood of 35th and Shields. South Siders take their cuisine pretty seriously, so this was another astute move by the marketing department—look, the new skipper wants a dog with fries (and was probably instructed NOT to ask for ketchup on the dog). I can’t imagine La Russa sharing a hot dog with fans or visiting a school; it wasn’t his style, and, as he pointed out on at least one occasion, he was a HOFer, which conferred special status, or so he hoped. So, the Sox have rediscovered their marketing legs. Have they also found a good manager? Time will tell.

At What Cost?

The White Sox introduced their new manager yesterday, and Pedro Grifol alluded to all the things that have been missing the past two years—playing with passion and energy; being fundamentally sound; and being held accountable. No doubt, White Sox fans—“long suffering” comes with the territory, making that modifier totally unnecessary—couldn’t believe their ears. Here's the thing—every promise Grifol made constituted a rebuke of Tony La Russa and, by extension, the man who hired La Russa. That would be Jerry Reinsdorf, who is not known to be fond of criticism. So, if Grifol was able to say what he did at the news conference yesterday, what did it cost him? How much of his soul or self-respect did he hand over to the team owner? Because, if you want to manage this team, it comes at a cost.

Then and Now

I was too young to know or care about baseball’s first World Series no-hitter, Don Larsen’s perfect game against the Dodgers in 1956. Now, I’m probably too old to care about the second, which happened last night in Philadelphia. The Astros’ Cristian Javier and three relievers shut down the Phillies on no hits and three walks in a 5-0 win. All of Houston’s runs came in the fifth, while I was driving home from a visit with Michele’s mom. We went out to eat, but the restaurant didn’t even bother to put the game on its multiple TVs. I still think Jessica Mendoza would make a good play-by-play announcer. We got home, changed and watched the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions; I didn’t put the game back on until two out in the bottom of the ninth. It was pretty close to 10:30, when people my age are thinking of going to bed. If there were any middle-school baseball fans who watched, I’ll bet they’re dragging today. Don Larsen needed 2:06 to achieve perfection against a lineup that included five future HOFers. Javier et al took 3:25 to complete Fall Classic no-hitter no. 2. I wonder if they faced anyone bound for Cooperstown.

Reasons Why

In spite of Jerry Reinsdorf, I really do want the White Sox to win, and win consistently; it makes my daughter happy, and it could rub off on her son. That said, I have reasons to question the apparent hiring of Pedro Grifol to take Tony La Russa’s place in the dugout. The positive spin on Grifol is that he’s one of those highly regarded baseball people we so often hear about. But, like I said yesterday, if he’s so highly regarded, why didn’t the Royals hire him to replace Mike Matheny? Instead, he comes to the Sox as a first-time manager at the age of fifty-two. In my opinion, the best two managers to work in this town since, oh, say, 1970, were Chuck Tanner and Ozzie Guillen. They both started their managerial careers on the South Side, Tanner at age forty-one and Guillen age forty. If Grifol is as good as those two, what took him so long to get a managing job? Grifol spent two years as one of the Royals’ hitting coaches. What exactly does a career .226 hitter in nine minor-league seasons tell major-league ballplayers? Sorry, but in my book hitting and pitching coaches need career stats to back up their ideas. Anything else is…Walt Hriniak and Don Cooper. Here’s hoping the next Sox hitting coach had a big-league career of some note. I’m also supposed to be impressed that Grifol was a catching coach and Salvador Perez swears by him. That’s nice, but how do we measure Grifol’s influence on him? It’s not as if Perez came out of nowhere and all of a sudden blossomed because of this one coach. I will admit to being impressed by one stat attached to the new Sox skipper—he had a career forty-four percent caught-stealing rate. Perez is at thirty-six percent, so maybe that reflects Grifol’s influence. Lord knows Yasmani Grandal could use some pointers in how to get the ball to second base ahead of the next Ice Age. We’ll see.

Please, No

This is what at least some White Sox fans are reduced to—hoping that the latest rumor for next Sox manager gets tossed with all the other rumors. I mean, Pedro Grifol, Royals’ bench coach for the past three seasons? If he’s so good, why didn’t Kansas City hire him after firing Mike Matheny? Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweeted that Grifol “blew away” his interviewer(s) and was the “consensus choice among Jerry Reinsdorf, Ken Williams and Rick Hahn.” In other words, Shemp blew away the Three Stooges. Good to know.