The Last Day of January

 The last day of January 1987 I was driving the back roads outside Sheboygan, Wisconsin, part of a wedding party for someone I’d known since high school.  He’s been gone for over thirteen years now.

The last day of January 2014 I wondered how the final year of softball would go for Clare.  I know now she ended her college career by making all-conference.

The last day of January, today, I’m happy to learn my daughter survived a late night softball practice that required her driving the back roads of Indiana in order to reach a nice big dome; no injuries, everyone back home safe and sound.  Tonight, a blizzard could storm down from Berwyn to Valpo, but the graduate-student intern will wear her fancy dress to the baseball fundraiser, regardless.  And the most wintery of months will be no more than a memory come morning.    

Homecoming

Clare put her Bluetooth feature to good use yesterday driving back to Valpo from Hammond, where she had a meeting with Ron Santo Jr. (yes, of that Santo clan).  “Breaking news, Dad,” she said, “the White Sox have just signed Gordon Beckham and designated Dayan Viciedo for assignment.”

Beckham is what you call a real hair-puller of a player.  He can turn a double play in his sleep, and most of the time he looks asleep at the plate.  After a late August trade to the Angels, he’s back with a one-year contract, and, if he’s to be believed, a whole new outlook.

Beckham broke in Clare’s junior year of high school.  He was both alter ego and crush; we had to go to SoxFest a few years back so the ex-second baseman could have her picture snapped with the good-looking Georgia Bulldog.  You can make the high school infielder into an outfielder come college, but….

Beckham’s rookie year in 2009 he hit everything to right center and looked like the best second baseman in Sox history since Nellie Fox.  Then came the need to pull the ball; popups and strikeouts followed soon after.  Here’s hoping Gordon goes back to his old ways, assuming he can get enough playing time; there are two rookies ahead of him at second base.  It’s a good thing he played shortstop in college and debuted at third for the Sox.  Life is all about second chances and change.

How better to describe my daughter’s odyssey, from high school to college to graduate school, with the Valpo baseball fundraiser constituting yet another internship in her young life?  She had contacted Santo, who provides sports memorabilia for such occasions.  He drove down to Hammond, Clare drove up, and they loaded up her trunk with all sorts of goodies.  “Do you have a blanket to protect everything?” he asked, and she did, covered in Sox logos.

“That’s alright,” the son decided.  “My dad played for the Sox one year.”  Indeed, the elder Santo had to change over to the South Side in 1973.  It’s never easy, all this change.  

A Super Bowl of a Series

 Every time someone mentions the possibility of a neutral-site World Series, I shudder, because if that ever happens, baseball will have surrendered unconditionally to the NFL.

Think of it.  A neutral site takes weather out of the equation.  Playoffs could start in mid-October and end four weeks later.  As a sop to the “purists,” a few of the November games could be played during the day, and probably would have to be anyhow in the cold-weather cities.  Then the World Series could be scheduled so that the seventh game falls on Thanksgiving, or the day after, or the day after that if MLB is afraid of intruding on the NFL and national retailers (think Black Friday).  What could be more depressing to us purists?

As it stands, the Super Bowl buildup is more than enough for me in that regard.  When exactly did the event turn into a circus, with media day a cattle call for aspiring clowns, and Marshawn Lynch?  I’ll give the Seahawks’ Richard this much, he doesn’t suffer fools well.  “I don’t answer preschool questions,” he said a few days ago when asked to compare himself to one of the Patriots’ defenders.  “Improve your line of questioning, then we’ll talk.”

My thoughts exactly.

Say No More

Valpo softball has been doing camps for wee things in the area.  At one of them, Coach asked Clare to help with pitching instruction.  Replied my daughter, “I played baseball until I was thirteen.  When I switched over to softball, it was too late for me and pitching.  I got nothin’.”

Except for a couple of homerun records, that is.

Big Contracts, Bad Habits

 Aaron Rowand stopped playing baseball at age 34, which may be why he had time on his hands to attend SoxFest over the weekend.  Rowand took a break from appearances and autographs to tell the Sun-Times “I have faith in” beleaguered Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler.  Rowand said he knows what it’s like to deal with the expectations of a big contract.  I’m not sure he does, entirely.

Rowand was, without a doubt, the best Sox centerfielder in since Ken Berry in 1970 or thereabouts.  If only he hit like he fielded.  Alas, Rowand never saw a pitch too far outside to try and pull down the leftfield line.  How do you say, “6-4-3, over and out” again and again?  There had to be a whole bunch of hitting coaches who begged Rowand to change his approach, but why should he if the Giants are going to sign him to a $60 million contract, which they did much to their regret?

Joining Rowand at SoxFest was former teammate Jon Garland, a right-handed starter with uncommon control.  Garland won 136 games while losing 125 with a 4.37 ERA before retiring at age 33.  Garland made $52 million, enough to muffle the message of pitching coaches trying to get through to him.  So much talent, so little seeming interest in developing it.

Jack McDowell retired Garland’s rookie season.  If Garland was laidback to a fault, “Black Jack” was all fire all the time.  He feuded with White Sox management and got shipped to New York, where he gained notoriety as the “Yankee Flipper” for a certain hand gesture to the fans at Yankee Stadium.  McDowell retired at age 33 with 127 wins.  The $28 million he earned made it possible for McDowell to play in a rock-and-roll band without starving.

In the time before free agency, lowball contracts probably would have made Rowand, Garland and McDowell a whole lot hungrier.  It’s awfully hard to “chuck it” when you’re not rich.  Garland and Rowand are still in their 30s, so it will be interesting to see where their wealth leads them.  McDowell is 49 and managing a rookie league team for the Dodgers.  Here’s hoping Black Jack can teach his players good habits strong enough to withstand big contracts.    

Ernie and Us

Ernie Banks was a ballplayer, touchstone and human being.  A good obituary of the man needs to go beyond the first two.

Banks looked taller than six-foot-one, so maybe his grace at shortstop shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Still, he is remembered more for the home runs than the fielding chances, which is wrong.  In an era of small gloves, rocky infields and stingy official scorers, Banks managed a .985 fielding percentage with just twelve errors in his second MVP season of 1959.  (It pains me to note that Luis Aparicio topped out at .983 in any one season.)  Clearly, Banks could handle the defensive part of the game.

But I wonder what he thought about being a touchstone for so many Chicagoans, or at least Cub fans.  There was no equivalent of Banks for followers of the White Sox.   An eight- or nine-year old Cub fan came home from school at three in the afternoon, turned on Channel 9 and there was Banks launching a home run into the left field bleachers.  There were precious few Sox games on after school; we had the ballpark with lights.  We also had homework to finish at night.  And no ballgame until you’re done.  Watching Al Weis was hardly what you would call an incentive to finish.  

Banks had his last great season at age 38 in 1969, when he hit 23 homers and drove in 106 runs.  That was the summer of Ron Santo clicking his heels and the Cubs collapsing, to which the Mets said, Thank you very much.  In a way, it didn’t matter.  That team, with Banks as its face and soul (no doubt to the disgust of manager Leo Durocher), brought out droves of kids to an otherwise iffy neighborhood.  So began the reign of the Bleacher Bums, from one generation to the next, until by the mid-2000s a small ballpark regularly drew over three million people a year.  In essence, Ernie Banks begat Wrigleyville, though I suspect he would have traded that distinction for a World Series ring.

To Cub fans, Banks was the time machine back to their youth, a role he didn’t appear to mind.  For now ex-Commissioner Bud Selig, Banks was “synonymous with a childlike enthusiasm for baseball.”  That’s cutting it close to a stereotype.  Part of Banks’ popularity was due to what he wasn’t, outspoken in a time of racial turbulence.  Roberto Clemente made waves, Ernie Banks didn’t, and a goodly number of fans wanted all ballplayers to be like Mr. Cub.  But how many of those people knew Ernie Banks?

Did they care about what it was like growing up in a family of fourteen or being black in the whitest part of Chicago?  Did they ask him his views on race or politics?  How many know that Banks’ foundation supported efforts to overturn wrongful convictions?  The stats at baseballreferendce.com don’t begin to measure the human being. 

In Your Backyard

Clare sent a video clip of the girl who pitched herself into a scholarship last weekend atg the Valpo camp.  Holy Cow, did she hum that pea!  If players dream of something like this happening, coaches do, too.  One minute, you’re just trying to get through the day with a bunch of wannabes and then, Pop!  Who’s throwing so hard?  And two years from now, your pitching needs are all taken care of.  Even better, it didn’t cost a dime in airfare to check the prospect out.

The pros don’t bank on such serendipity, although in a way, I wish they did.  Teams send scouts half way around the world to look for anyone who can pitch or hit, but in Chicago they don’t care much about the talent around Chicago.  Consider that Jim Thome of Peoria was drafted in the 13^th round (!) while both the Sox and Cubs passed on Gary Gaetti (from downstate Centralia) when either of them could have drafted him in the first round.  And then we have the Cubs passing on Chicago’s own Kirby Puckett in the first round to take the immortal Troy Afenir.

If Jackie Robinson had played for the Chicago American Giants instead of the Kansas City Monarchs, he still would’ve broken in with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It’s just the way we do things around here, regardless of color.