Reading Material

Outside of seeing Clare, we haven’t much enjoyed our trips to Indiana—pitch-black highways at night, a gangster who charged us $120 to not tow our car, near-endless cold and snow.  At least Saturday’s cold had a silver lining.  I stepped into a Target to warm up and walked out with the first baseball magazine I’ve bought in years.

I admit, part of the reason I bought Lindy’s Sports 2015 Preview is they pick the White Sox to win the AL Central.  But, really, the format’s a joy to behold:  Scout’s Take (“A lot of us were wrong about [Jose] Abreu.  He’s got more than a slider-speed bat.”); Key Arrivals and Departures (Matt Lindstrom, good riddance); Projected Batting Order and Rotation; Top Organizational Prospects (including hot-yoga devotee Micah Johnson); and Organization/Management Direction, with the arrow pointing up for the Sox.  All that plus a Phenoms list of baseball’s top fifty prospects, a rating of the best players by position, some interesting articles w/o too much sabermetrics and the Cubs picked for fourth!

It’s enough to make a person feel young again.  

Tomato, Tomahto

Cold is cold, whether at an NCAA Division I or Division III softball game.  And bad pitching is just the same, along with the size of the crowd and the bad umping and the dads making sure the world can hear their every comment.  The one big difference would probably be the heaters.  Valpo and visiting parents carried around portable propane ones while a plug-in unit warmed up at least part of the Valpo dugout.  I couldn’t tell if the other side had one, too.  

This was the first softball game I ever watched without my daughter putting in an appearance on the field.  Oh, I could hear her, all right, shouting “Out!” from the dugout, for an outside pitch.  Clare had figured out the visitors’ signs and shouted them out to the Valpo batters.  She’s also working with a girl who has a Craig Counsell, straight-up batting stance that could use a little modifying.  So, the ex-Bluejay is learning and teaching, which is good.  But why can’t there be a fifth year of eligibility, based on good conduct or average distance of home runs hit in a career?  I could go for that.

In the meantime, there’s nothing like 35-degree temperatures to make a person feel old.  That or the parents in the stands really were that much younger than me.  Still, we’re basically alike, geezers and young folks.  We pace, we yell, we feel the agony and the ecstasy that goes with being the parent of an athlete (or aspiring coach).  When it was all over, the Valpo parents huddled around an open-sided tent for chow.  That was one thing we never did in D III.

For the Good of the Game

 Scott Boras is crying to high heaven that his client, Cubs’ rookie hitting sensation Kris Bryant, is being jerked around by the Cubs while Theo Epstein says any decision on Bryant’s making the club out of spring training will be based solely on the best interests of all involved.  Meanwhile, Commissioner Rob Manfred says it’s none of Boras’ business what the Cubs decide to do with Bryant.

Business—now, there’s the key.  It’s all about the business, or money, for Boras, Bryant and the Cubs.  At issue is the matter of keeping Bryant under contract.  If he makes the team by Opening Day, the 23-year old third baseman becomes a free agent in six years; if the Cubs send him down and then call him up in late April, they control his rights for an extra year.  Apparently, nobody thought of this scenario when the current players’ agreement was negotiated.

If sportswriters weren’t so lazy, they’d ask each of the parties involved if their stand isn’t influenced by money.  Would the Cubs send Bryant down if it would cost them more?  Would Boras want his client on the roster if that meant less money for either of them?  And when was the last time the commissioner’s office took a stand not based on what was best financially for the owners?

This reminds me of something Clare told her Valpo coach a few weeks ago, about the difference between NCAA Divisions I and III.  In D I, players are motivated because they get a scholarship.  In D III, it’s the game alone that matters.  Of course, nothing so ideal has a place in the business Manfred and Boras are in.    

Getting to look a lot like Christmas

 Nothing like waking up to a dusting of snow, and this a day before we go to Valparaiso to watch Clare work her magic, e.g., charting pitches, in the dugout.  How I love springtime in the Midwest.

Depending on what happens in the next 24 hours, it could be worse.  Clare’s sophomore year of high school, she opened the season in 38-degree weather; that was the day that taught me to combine long underwear with a winter coat and a minimum of two sweatshirts.  Five days later, I helped Euks shovel snow off the field at Morton.  Maybe I should mention here that a March sun can be deceptively weak when it comes to melting the white stuff.

But the winner for softball misery—again, tomorrow notwithstanding—happened on a Wednesday night in more-or-less late April Clare’s freshman year at Elmhurst.  The Bluejays played at Judson University, forty miles north and west of Chicago.  The game-one temperature topped out at 40, which wouldn’t have been bad but for the wind and the time; the game started at 5:30.  In the top of the first, Clare hit a ball on the line to dead centerfield.  Anywhere else and it’s gone, but the Bandits also played at Judson, and they wanted a roomy outfield.  So, the ball hit off the fence at 230 feet, giving Clare a double.  There’s the highlight of the evening, unless you count watching your daughter splash through the standing water in right field.  The second game started around 7:30, by which time the mercury was going into freefall, along with the Bluejays.  On the plus side, I’ve never been back to Judson in the four years since.

       And I don’t need tomorrow to “top” that.

What Makes a Solid Citizen?

 George McCaskey found his inner George Bush this week.  The Bears’ chairman looked into the eyes of free-agent defensive lineman Ray McDonald and must have seen straight into his soul.  In any case, it was enough for the Bears to give McDonald a one-year deal.  As for those two sexual assault incidents (not to be confused with the time McDonald’s fiancé may have pulled a gun on him during an argument), well, where there’s smoke there’s not always fire.  Someone go tell Mrs. O’Leary.

Three days before the McDonald signing, Chuck Bednarik died at the age of 89.  Bednarik played both center and linebacker for the Eagles from 1949-1962.  The nickname “Concrete Charlie” had as much to do with Bednarik’s ferocity on the field as his offseason job selling the stuff.  Oh, and he flew thirty missions over Europe during WW II as a gunner on a B-24.  This is my kind of guy.

To the best of my knowledge, Bednarik was not known for beating on women; for that matter, neither are players from his generation.  Were they inherently better than the Ray McDonalds of the world?  I doubt.  Have Bednarik and McDonald trade birthdays, and they very likely would be trading reputations, give or take a felony.  Times are different, indeed.

Bednarik went to war before he played football, and he acquired a nickname in part due to the fact that he didn’t make enough money with the Eagles to kick back in the offseason.  Football for the Chuck Bednariks and Dick Butkuses even was a stage in life, not a career.  And, along the way, community expectations were placed on them—serve your country, use your God-given talents to provide for your family.  Money has changed all that.

No, I don’t want us going into another world war or revert to paying athletes chump change.  If owners can make hundreds of millions of dollars (or more), then players are due their millions.  What I do want is all millionaires and above to feel the same sense of humility that athletes once brought with them onto the field.  A little more Jackie Robinson and Chuck Bednarik would go a long way in keeping athletes’ names off the police blotter. 

Ever the Gentleman

A college baseball player tweeted his displeasure this week over the news Disney planned to do a movie on Mo’ne Davis by referring to the 13-year old pitcher as “that slut [who] got rocked by Nevada” in the Little League World Series last summer.  When said writer got booted off his team, Davis came to his defense.  “He made one dumb mistake,” she emailed the school president in support of the oaf’s reinstatement.  “I’m sure he would go back and change it if he could.”  The maturity points here go to Ms. Davis.

Clare got the same kind of treatment playing baseball when she was eleven.  Her team lined up for the after-game handshake, during which one boy said, “Nice game, bitch.”  I only found out well after the fact, or else I would’ve been in a whole lot of faces.  If something like that happened now, I’d worry about the speaker needing dental work.  But, at the time, it nearly crushed a child who merely wanted to play the game she loved.  We really need to do better as parents.      

The Future of Football

 Promising San Francisco 49ers’ linebacker Chris Borland retired last week.  One season of butting heads in the NFL was enough for the former Wisconsin Badger.  “I just want to live a long healthy life,” explained Borland of his decision, “and I don’t want to have any neurological diseases or die younger than I would otherwise.”  Wise words from a 24-year old.

So, does this spell the beginning of the need for America’s top sport?  I doubt it.  If Borland were Gayle Sayers or Dick Butkus, maybe, but he’s just a good football player whose name most fans won’t remember in another two weeks.  The beauty and the terror embedded in a good NFL doubleheader will remain intact.

There’s something inherently satisfying about seeing—and executing, no doubt—a good play, the block that springs a nice run or a pass pattern that nets a first down on fourth and long with the clock ticking down.  On top of that you have a player like Sayers, who would have been perfect on the Black Sox; since it was impossible to tackle the man, he always had a clean uniform.  Old Man Halas must’ve saved a bundle on laundry.

Sayers would take a handoff and confront yet another blown assignment by his offensive line.  Hello, my name is Ray Nitschke, and I want to tear your head off.  To avoid that fate, Sayers would run left ten yards, right twenty and circle back before heading downfield for whatever yardage the Bears needed.  There was never a more graceful runner before or since.  Such moves were the antithesis of a game that at the time allowed the blindside tackle and helmet spearing, which may be why Sayers’ career spanned only five full seasons and another two injury-shortened ones.

Sayers was the opposite of Walter Payton, who thrived on contact.  Hit Payton once, and he gained another ten yards; smack him a second time, and it meant another twenty yards at least.  Payton was the offensive version of Dick Butkus, terror incarnate.  Waiting for the snap, no. 51 would spit across the line of scrimmage; much worse was to follow.  The blindside, the spear—Butkus could hurt an opponent any number of ways.  He gave no mercy and expected none.  If ever there was a warrior ready to be carried off the field of battle on his shield, it was Butkus.

So far, neither Hall of Famer has turned his back on the game that made them both famous.  Until they do, fans have free reign to see who compares today to what Sayers and Butkus were back then.  The violence can be ignored in the search for beauty and terror.