A Sunday in November

I TIVO’d through the Bears’ game yesterday while riding the exercycle. Say this about Justin Fields—he keeps things interesting, as in 147 yards rushing with two touchdowns and another two touchdowns to tight end Cole Kmet. Maybe next time the Munsters won’t lose to Detroit. When you go up by two touchdowns in the third quarter, you’re not supposed to lose, 31-30. Later, we drove to my mother-in-law’s to celebrate her ninety-first birthday; the stories she could tell, though none of them unrelated to her husband involve football. My father-in-law played high school football before playing infantryman on the icy-cold hills of the Korean peninsula. The stories he could tell about either. I was able to handle Ed O’Bradovich and Dan Hampton on the radio for about ten minutes before I had to turn them off. O’Bradovich never changes; he basically wants to shoot anyone not named Ditka. Hampton, at least, thinks Fields is a keeper. Danimal was particularly impressed that, an hour after the game, Fields still hadn’t gotten out of his uniform, he was so upset at losing. Hampton also thinks the best defense is a ball-control offense. Score points while taking your time doing it. How O’Bradovich keeps from having a stroke is beyond me. It’s only a game, Ed. Let me introduce you to a woman who has seen it all in her ninety-one years. She knows what matters in life. What happens on a Sunday afternoon at Soldier Field might not qualify.

Embers in a Hot Stove

I’m a baseball fan, mostly. I don’t expect much from the papers this time of year. If they maintain even a flicker of interest in the hot-stove league, I’m happy. The Sunday Tribune sports made me anything but. It’s not like I’m asking for a page-one story on the Arizona Fall League, but devoting virtually all of page one and four full inside pages to Jon Scheyer defies logic, unless the point is to maximize profit for Trib corporate parent Alden Global Capital. Colonel McCormick spins in his grave. Who is Jon Scheyer? The 35-year old successor to Coach Mike Krzyzewski at Duke by way of Glenbrook North High School. Odds are Scheyer will have no more to do with the Chicago area than Coach K, the pride of St. Helen’s Grade School in Ukrainian Village, did once he established himself at Duke. Unless the Duke basketball program intends to relocate here. Otherwise, a whole lot of trees died for the Tribune sports’ department to save a few bucks by focusing limited resources on one big, blah story. My hot stove grows cold in the process.

Wages

Clare called me yesterday afternoon. “It sounds like you’re in a tunnel,” I said. “I’m on the bus,” she explained. Those days she’s not working from home, my daughter either has to drive or take the train, plus a bus back and forth to the Gold Coast through lower Wacker Drive. See the action movie of choice to get an idea as to what the route is like. She wanted to talk about the Astros parting ways with James Click, their general manager. “Has this ever happened before?” she wanted to know of a team dumping its GM after winning a World Series. The answer is, Yes, at least once, with the Yankees last doing it in 1947, when they axed Larry MacPhail for George Weiss. This is the kind of stuff a father is expected to know. It looks like Clare is drawing on baseball in the same I have on occasion. Thinking baseball will help her get through a twelve-hour day at work today. “These are the wages of family,” I advised, noting that her job makes possible husband, child and home. Baseball is the sugar that makes the medicine go down in a palatable, if not entirely delightful, way. In the fall of 1980, I was six-months married and between careers, out of journalism and into graduate school. Michele was finishing her master’s and unsure of what she should do next. This gives you an idea as to how much times have changed—neither of us had a job, but we weren’t worried (yet) about making the rent. We even had money to go to two ballgames. I remember that the White Sox beat the Mariners in early September and they played the A’s at the beginning of October. I can still recall Mike Davis, a rookie outfielder for Oakland who looked like a god. I was certain he was destined for greatness, more than the 778 hits he amassed over a ten-year career. I remember other games, at the ballpark or elsewhere. I remember catching the last inning of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game in 2009 in a Maryland hotel room, my daughter woozy from a bad baserunning accident at first base; for a second, we thought she might’ve broken a vertebra. Dewayne Wise makes the catch! Six months later, we watched a replay of that game on the day we buried my sister Betty, who instilled a love of country-and-western in her niece. Dewayne Wise makes the catch! Something like that could be echoing through Clare’s mind at the end of a long Saturday. I hope so.

The Fickle and the Level-headed

A month ago, Bears’ quarterback Justin Fields couldn’t show his face for fear of being booed off the streets, let alone the playing field. Now, after a string of solid performances, everybody wants to be his friend and advocate. Just turn on the TV; pick up a paper; or hit the appropriate site to see what I mean. So, don’t blame Fields if he’s a little tentative around the media. The ting of it is, he really hasn’t been. When he stinks, he says he stinks, and, when the talking heads on ESPN speak their Valentines, which they did this week, he appears unphased. All twenty-three-year olds should act as mature. One thing, though. Fields can’t afford to have a bad game Sunday against the visiting Lions. In his line of work, Valentines can turn into brickbats as quick as it takes to throw a pick-six.

Herd Mentality

The Cubs have a new hitting coach, again. Greg Brown is out, Dustin Kelly is in. Haven’t heard of either? Don’t worry, you’re not supposed to. The days of the successful ex-MLB player as hitting coach are mostly over. Consider that before Kelly and Brown, there was Anthony Iapoce. Before those three, Chili Davis, the kind of coach I’d hire. Why? Because he had 2380 hits during a nineteen-year career that saw him go to three World Series, that’s why. Assuming, of course, that he could explain the philosophy that allowed him to amass those stats. Kelly will be joined by four assistants. Funny, the last time I checked, there was only one hitter at a time in the batter’s box. According to the story in today’s Tribune, there’ll be a coach responsible for “game planning” along with another taking care of “data development and process.” Team president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer thinks it’s important to “have experts in different areas and not feel like they have to be the final arbiter or the best coach, the best game planner or the best mental guy. That’s really important in becoming more collaborative.” Screw collaboration. Players and teams should want the best coaches in place, period. What the Cubs (and probably the White Sox, as soon as they hire a new hitting coach) are doing is following the trend in baseball to specialization. The hitting specialist will be no different than a medical specialist in that neither had to play baseball to get their job. The only possible silver lining here is that, if playing experience is not necessary for coaching, then women will have a real shot at becoming head and/or assistant hitting coaches. Women who didn’t play baseball telling guys how to hit a baseball, and guys listening? I won’t hold my breath. Neither would Bill Robinson or Chili Davis, I’m sure.

Election Night

This is how election night went at our house, Michele in the living room watching results on CNN, me in the kitchen doing Strat-O-Matic team rosters. Extra bench player or reliever? Clare called right around the time I started work on the 2018 Mariners’ pitching rotation. “Carlos Rodon declined his option with the Giants. What would you do?” Try to sign him, but not for six years. “I thought you’d say that. And did you hear about A.J. Pollock?” Do tell. “He turned down his option for next year,” and I all but shouted, Hurray! Pollock disappointed in his only season on the South Side, hitting .245 with fourteen homeruns and fifty-six RBIs. On top of that, he turns thirty-five in under a month, which suggests he’s running out of gas. Pollock gets a $5 million buyout in exchange for passing on a $13 million salary next year. Good luck trying to top that. Of course, it’s entirely possible Pollock didn’t like the atmosphere in the clubhouse and doubted it would improve much next season. In which case, I can’t say that I blame him. Whatever the reason for his departure, this really is addition through subtraction. The leading candidate to take over for Pollock in the outfield is twenty-four year old rookie Oscar Colas, who bats lefthanded. It looks like Eloy Jimenez will primarily DH while Andrew Vaughn will play first in place of free-agent Jose Abreu, who does not look to be coming back. That in turn opens up another spot in the outfield, for Gavin Sheets or someone else. All this good news comes with a qualifier, however. Rick Hahn traded two young players—reliever Codi Heuer and infielder Nick Madrigal—to the Cubs at the 2021 trade deadline in exchange for closer Craig Kimbrell, who couldn’t dislodge Liam Hendriks as closer and certainly couldn’t transition into a setup role. Hahn then traded Kimbrell to the Dodgers for Pollock at the start of this past season. That leaves us with bupkis. Way to go, Rick.

Not Enough

The NBA thinks voting is so important there are no games scheduled today. The message is, clearly, Get out and vote. The message with Nets’ star Kyrie Irving? There doesn’t seem to be one. Irving, who sort of questions the shape of planet Earth and the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccination, also questions how anyone could think he was an antisemite. In Irving’s flat-earth take on reality, it’s OK to tweet a link to an antisemitic “documentary,” as he did last month. Called out for his action, he sort of apologized, along the lines of “if anyone was offended,” which he can’t see how they would be. Irving released a statement last week stating, “"I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain, and I apologize. I initially reacted out of emotion to being unjustly labeled Anti-Semitic, instead of focusing on the healing process of my Jewish Brothers and Sisters that were hurt from the hateful remarks made in the documentary." Talk about heartfelt. The Nets have suspended Irving while the NBA dithers. According to a story in Sunday’s NYT, LeBron James said that he loves Irving but also believes “what Kyrie did caused some harm to a lot of people.” Ya think? As tepid as James’s remarks were, they were better than those of Irving’s teammate Kevin Durant, who initially told reporters, “I felt like we could have just kept playing basketball and kept quiet as an organization. I just don’t like none of it.” The mind boggles. I watched some of the Bulls-Nets game on Thursday and caught Reggie Miller go after the players for their refusal to speak up and criticize Irving. Miller gets it, as do Charles Barkley, Shaquill O’Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Then again, they all probably believe the Earth is round, too.