On a Gray Day

On a December day given over to cold and drizzle, I’m tempted to think the internet would’ve altered the fate of Comiskey Park. As it is, there are numerous tweets of photos and video clips showing the park at is boisterous best. Just the other day, I read an online interview with organist Nancy Faust. Na Na Hey Hey. I imagine a social media campaign that could’ve overwhelmed the kneejerk desire for a ball mall. Tweet followed by TikTok followed by petition followed by whatever a good imagination could come up with. And all of it to be repeated, day after day until the powers that be wilted. On a December day given over to cold and drizzle, I tend to dream. Behind me on the wall are a group of pictures I took during the 1990 season—Carlton Fisk crouching behind the plate, Fisk and Ivan Calderon trying to dig in against Randy Johnson. In some ways, my favorite is the one showing four steps off the main concourse; nothing more separated the fan from a glimpse of the field up close. I want to say it took something in the neighborhood of twenty paces to go from the entrance to that top step. From 35th Street to a green cathedral. On a December day so wrapped in cold and drizzle, I find myself mixing memories with dreams of what might have been.

A Reckoning, Someday

Today, Trib columnist Paul Sullivan put the Mets’ payroll at $349 million, plus a luxury tax of $70 million. This led me to wonder, what would (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) Hegel think or do? Why, he’d employ the Hegelian dialectic, which holds that thesis meeting antithesis leads to synthesis. Put another way, the Mets spend all that money, something’s got to give in the world of baseball. All those owners who will not or cannot spend like the Mets’ Steve Cohen are going to react. There will be a new normal in baseball. Only it won’t be as simple as A+B=C. Better to expect the unexpected. Cohen is placing a $400-million-plus bet that he can win a World Series or two or three. His spending on free agents drives up the price tag on other free agents. In some indirect way I can grasp, kind of, what Justin Verlander and Trea Turner pull down will affect arbitration awards for younger players. Again, the price of stadium hot dogs will go up. But for how long and how much? And what if the economy tanks? A new version of Jerry Reinsdorf, very hawkish when it comes to players, buys a team and rallies the owners or takes over from Rob Manfred? Some or all of these factors will change the economic landscape of the national pastime. As long as I can listen to games on the radio for free, that’s fine by me. Baseball will keep going. In exactly what form is a question I don’t have an answer for. I do know, though, it will all be very Hegelian.

Is This Anything?

With the winter meetings over, baseball news in these parts will disappear until the middle of next month, when the Cubs hold their fan convention. There’s also the possibility of a White Sox trade out of the blue, which is how Rick Hahn likes to do things. (Prediction here: Gavin Sheets to the Padres for a second baseman.) Otherwise, nothing. So, I now have time to consider the story of Olivia Pichardo, the first female baseball player to make an NCAA D-I team; Pichardo made the Brown University Brown Bears as a walk-on this fall. From what I saw, she has a nice left-handed stance. Clare probably stopped playing baseball around the time Pichardo was born. In all that time, no female baseball player has managed what Picardo’s done. To me, this means Clare would’ve face a whole lot of heartbreak trying to be Olivia Picardo. Too soon, my child, too soon. Knowing my daughter, I think she’ll be checking to see how Pichardo fares, come spring. As hard as walking on can be, getting playing time is harder still. A young mother watches a young ballplayer. Somehow, this will affect my grandson. Will Pichardo produce the first crack in baseball’s grass ceiling? Time, which moves both achingly slow and whiplash fast, will tell.

Broken Record

There goes Rick Morrissey of the Sun-Times, again, complaining about how the White Sox and Cubs don’t spend the necessary big bucks. I have to start clipping these columns to see if they ever change. Here’s Morrissey in his column today: “Neither team has ever committed to spending big money year after year, the way the Yankees and Dodgers have. That’s a sin, given that Chicago is the third-largest city in the country and given what the Cubs and Sox have put their fans through historically.” Last time I checked, sloth is a sin, too. Morrissey is too lazy to say how the big bucks could be spent, intelligently. Because that’s not something the Yankees are known for. The Dodgers are a different story. Here’s how you can tell. Name a young Yankees’ player you’d want. I can’t. Now, how about a young Dodger or two? Let’s see. Id’ go with starters Walker Buehler and Julio Urias; catcher Will Smith; and infielder Gavin Lux. Oh, and in August MLB.com ranked the Dodgers with the second-best minor-league system in baseball. The Yankees came in at twelfth, and that was probably with a lot of East Coast bias factored in. If Morrissey ever got off his lazy butt, maybe he could tell us what teams spend on player development and scouting. All I know is that the Dodgers develop players; develop prospects they trade (think Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong as part of the deal for Mookie Betts); and exhibit an uncanny ability to identify talented discards from other organizations—Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, Justin Turner. Then, they spend big money—intelligently, I might add—for the likes of Betts and Freddie Freeman. That’s what I want the White Sox to do. Maybe Rick Morrissey does, too, when he can rouse himself to write intelligently about it.

Money, Money, Money

Clare texted just as I were pulling out of the garage to drive Michele to the train: Judge staying with the Yankees. With nine years at a reported $360 million, I would, too. That comes out to $40 million a year, nice money if you can get it. Cody Bellinger, for one, can’t. The former Dodger signed a one-year deal with the Cubs worth $17.5 million, including mutual option and buyout. Back in the old days, we’d call this a “reclamation project.” Bellinger, who won the NL MVP in 2019, hit .165 in 2021 and .210 this season. What struck me about the deal is a comment Tribune beat reporter Meghan Montemurro made today, that the North Siders wouldn’t have signed Bellinger “if the front office and hitting infrastructure didn’t believe he was capable of applying swing and approach changes.” Hitting infrastructure? My God, analytics has trickled down to beat writers. Did the Cubs sign a player or a machine? It’s getting harder and harder to tell.

Color Me Skeptical

Something about free-agent contracts brings out the skeptic in me. If I were king (or an owner), I’d pay young players for performance—the way the Braves, and, to a lesser extent, the White Sox, do—and try to keep them under control for as long as possible. In other words, cash now for performance now, along with a shot at keeping players a season or two beyond arbitration. But I’m not king Justin Verlander for two years at $86.6 million? The Mets know they signed someone who turns forty in February, right? Oh, and Max Scherzer will be thirty-nine come late July. No whistling past the pitchers’ graveyard, there. Or consider Trea Turner, signed to an eleven-year, $300-million deal by the Phillies. Turner turns thirty in June. Will he still be playing shortstop in seven years? How about five? If I remember my Sox history correctly, Luke Appling turned into a statue at short. Between the ages of thirty-nine to forty-two, Appling never hit lower than .301, and management still couldn’t wait get rid of him. I wonder why? Age on the back end of these contracts is going to come back to bite more than a few big-spending teams. When that happens, I want to see the reaction. Right now, Mets’ fans are probably over the moon and couldn’t care less what ticket prices will be over the next decade or so; ditto Phillies’ fans. Guys, you may end up with some very expensive DHs, and that’s if you’re lucky. Either way, people will be paying an arm and a leg to watch these teams. In August, the New York Post calculated what it would cost to keep the current team together. Substitute Verlander for Jacob deGrom, and the projections remain pretty valid, in the neighborhood of $345 million. I want to see the price of a hot dog at Citi Field come Opening Day. Again, I’d pay players for actual performance from day one, but I wouldn’t be shoveling money their way for what they might do come age thirty-five, or thirty-nine or…

Caveat Emptor

Any semblance of sanity in major league baseball has left the room between now and Thursday, the duration of this year’s winter meetings in San Diego. The Rangers want to sign thirty-four year old Jacob deGrom to a five-year, $185 million deal? MLB.com is all a-giggle. Forget that deGrom has only started twenty-six games over the last two seasons or that he’s eighteen games short of hitting 100 career wins. The Rangers are serious, man. Ditto the news on Aaron Judge, that he’s likely to land a nine-year gig, which would make him forty when the deal ended. And where will Judge play in his twilight years, you may ask? It doesn’t matter. [Fill in team’s name here] are serious, man. Lucky for us White Sox fans our team doesn’t go in for this kind of nuttiness. No, we prefer to go searching for Rembrandts at the thrift store. The next Jermaine Dye is just around the corner, opposite Johnny Cueto and…