Walking Around

Michele calls what we did on Saturday part of the “best day of the year” for her. With Open House Chicago, you have access to places you wouldn’t get into the other 365 days, like the rooftop garden at McCormick Place. Trust me, it offers views of Chicago you can’t get anywhere else. We walked through an area generally referred to as the “South Loop,” an area once marked by abandoned buildings, old warehouse and vacant lots, along with a few Prairie Avenue mansion hanging on for dear existence. Well, the mansions are thriving now, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an empty lot. The place has been transformed to the point that, if you told me this was a new residential development in lower Manhattan, I’d believe it. Between an iffy weather forecast and the uncertainties attached to the “No Kings” march downtown, we didn’t know if we could do Saturday; Open House is a two-day affair. But everything worked out, so that we didn’t have to go on Sunday. Not that we could have, not really. As it was, I had a hard time finding street parking; let’s just say if you don’t live in the area and have a sticker on the windshield to prove it, you’ll be in trouble. But I found a spot that allowed us to walk around to three places, and all was good. But Sunday, the odds are somebody going to the Bears-Saints’ game at Soldier Field likely would’ve snagged it ahead of me. No doubt they’d have had a happy walk back to the car after the Munsters dominated the visitors, 26-14. Or they might’ve stopped in to celebrate at any of the restaurants and bars we passed. That’s the thing. The Bears right now generate all sorts of economic activity centered in the South Loop. The resulting tax revenue goes to the city. If the Munsters move to Arlington Heights, that economic activity will tag along. The team basically will be generating the same amount of business wherever it plays. It won’t matter to the state of Illinois where the McCaskeys pitch their flag, just to the communities within walking distance of wherever the Bears play. The Bears are already bad neighbors (What? We’re not responsible for that $534 million in construction bonds still outstanding for the 2003 Soldier Field renovation. We’re just tenants.) If the Munsters move out of the city, Arlington Heights and surrounding communities will learn just how bad.

Smart Money

Poor Tom Ricketts (relatively speaking). He must’ve drawn solace from the fact that his Cubs lost the NLDS to the kind of team he wishes his Cubs were. In other words, underpaid overachievers. According to sportac.com, the Cubs’ payroll this season is $211.9 million, as opposed to $121.7 million for the Brewers. And then the Dodgers had to go and ruin things by sweeping Milwaukee in the NLCS. Nobody spent more on salary this year than Los Angeles, at $350.3 million. Call it smart money, especially when compared to the Mets spending $342.4 and not even making the postseason. You can draft; develop; trade; and hope or draft; develop; trade; and spend smart. That’s what the Dodgers do. Oh, and gamble smart. They signed Blake Snell this year and Tyler Glasnow last year. Both have a history of arm problems, and neither pitched much in the regular season. But both were ready for the postseason, as evidenced by Snell’s eight shutout innings in game one of the NLCS. The same goes for Shohei Ohtani, who pitched all of 47 innings during the regular season. As if that kept him from throwing six shutout innings as he scattered two and three walks against strikeouts against the Brewers last night in the series clincher. We won’t even mention the three homeruns he hit in the game. This is the player Jerry Reinsdorf publicly stated the White Sox wouldn’t be pursuing when Ohtani was a free agent in 2023. Yes, by all means draft; develop; and trade. Just don’t expect to win unless you spend smart, which is not the same as spending less.

An Embarrassment of Choices

You want baseball? NLCS or ALCS? Hockey? Check the Hawks’ schedule this week? Basketball? The Bulls start next week. Football? NU or the Bears? Truly, this is the one time of year where Americans sports overlap. I hope to live long enough to see an October where the Cubs and White Sox are in their respective championship series, TV schedule be damned; the Hawks and Bull are looking to defend championships; ditto the Wildcats and Munsters. I’m pretty sure that never happened over the course of Sister Jean’s 106 years on the planet. I can wait.

Freeze Frame

My latest purchase arrived in the mail on Monday, an 8”x10” photo of Tommie Agee sliding under the tag of Lee Elia during spring training, 1966. Oh, the memories. Agee was part of a three-way trade with the Indians and A’s. We sent Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger and Jim Landis to Kansas City for Rocky Colavito and then shipped Colavito and Cam Carreon to Cleveland for Agee, Tommy John and John Romano. Nice deal, that. Elia was already a baseball lifer when he debuted with the Sox as a 28-year old rookie in ’66. A .205 BA in 195 at-bats didn’t win him a second season on the South Side, just a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1968. But his career in baseball was hardly over. Dallas Green named him Cubs’ manager in 1982. Elia gained notoriety for speaking truth to conceit in April of 1983. His team had just lost a close game to the Dodgers and gotten off to a terrible start at 5-14. Let’s just say Elia wasn’t a fan of the fans who showed up back then, saying that, “Eighty-five percent of the f****n’ world is working. The other fifteen come out here.” Unfortunately for Elia, his words were caught on tape. Not that he was wrong. This was the era of “Bleacher Bums,” which offered a fanciful take on that fifteen percent. Bums they were, and unemployed Elia became late in the ’83 season when the Cubs fired him. I see those full houses at Wrigley Field, and I can still hear Elia cursing, good White Sox that he was.

Now, That's What I'm Talking About

So, if Blake Snell was doing Sandy Koufax Monday night, then Yoshinobu Yamamoto stepped into the role of Don Drysdale last night. The 27-year old righthander threw a 118-pitch complete game helping the Dodgers beat the Brewers 5-1 win in Milwaukee. It’s the first postseason complete game since Justin Verlander in 2017. Eight innings from Snell, nine from Yamamoto—the analytics’ world must be reeling. What about batting average third time around the order? What about starter fatigue? What about leveraging power arms out of the bullpen? Who cares?

Stop the Presses!

How old school was that? Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts let starter Blake Snell go eight innings last night in game one of the NLCS in Milwaukee. It didn’t hurt that Snell gave up all of one baserunner enroute to a 2-1 LA win over the Brewers. That’s the good news for those of us who remember going to ballgames on our brontosauruses. The game still took 2:53 to play. Yes, Brewers’ pitchers—and there were six of them—issued eight free passes, but the Dodgers helped things along by hitting into two double plays. And the Brewers chipped in, so to speak, when Caleb Durbin was picked off of first in the third inning. Gosh, I wonder if an onslaught of TV commercials had anything to do with an excruciating pace? Nah. Commissioner Rob Manfred cares too much about the future of the game to let anything like that happen. Right?

Done

With the Cubs’ loss to the Brewers in the NLDS Saturday night, the Chicago baseball season is officially over. It’s liberating, in a way. Now, I don’t have to listen to White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable—and I’ll call him by his given name the day he gets his team ten games over .500, I promise—start every answer to a question with “Yeah” or wonder why the lineup features the likes of Jacob Amaya or Josh Rojas or Will Robertson or why a hot hitter sits for one of the above. I miss reading box scores, but only for the 60 wins on the season. On a possibly related note, the 1967 team-autographed ball I bought arrived over the weekend. Talk about a stroll down memory lane—Wayne Causey, Don McMahon, Don Buford and, oh, so many more. Best of all, the autographs are clear, which makes it easy to spot Ken Boyer and Rocky Colavito (acquiring aging talent, always the White Sox way). The only tough signature to decipher belongs to coach Kerby Farrell, born two weeks after my dad and died 25 years before he did. Gary Peter, Joel Horlen, Walt Williams. Perfection, or almost. There’s no Cisco Carlos, who amassed an eyepopping 0.86 ERA in 41.2 innings. The 26-year old rookie got his first start August 25th (Bukowski father and son were in the stands, I distinctly recall), and Colavito was acquired July 29th. My guess is the autographs were amassed sometime between July 30-August 24. I lived and died with this team, the last gasp of a “Go-Go” Sox iteration dating to 1951, before my birth. With five games left in the ’67 season and one game out of first place, the Sox finished out the schedule against the tenth-place A’s and seventh-place Senators. Easy-peasey, right? No, a five-game losing streak brought me to tears and ushered in three miserable seasons of losing culminating in the 56-106 debacle of 1970. Hope returned in the following season with the hiring of Chuck Tanner. I already have the 1971 team ball: Bart Johnson, Jay Johnstone, Carlos May…Venable as the new Tanner? Sox fans should be so lucky.