IMMORTALS AMONG US

                I read somewhere that at any given time about 30 future Hall of Famers are on the active rosters of Major League Baseball clubs, and while I haven’t done any independent research on the subject the number seemed high. I’m thinking 15 for sure, maybe 20, but 30 might be a stretch.

                That predicting future Hall membership with any certainty can be hazardous is seen in the cases of Ryan Braun and Robinson Cano. Both had careers that seemed to be Cooperstown bound until they were ensnarled in the game’s drug-testing net. Given the fate of other dopers their immortality now appears to be unlikely, unless a pharmaceutical company takes over the place or they enlist Kim Kardashian to plead their cases.

                That said, though, I think that most of us fans carry a list of future Famers around in our heads and all that remains is to write it down. I’ll do that in the paragraphs to follow. You can, too, if you like-- on your own computer or legal pad, that is.

                My list breaks down into three parts: sure things, maybes, and “not there yet.”  The last category exists because nobody gets on a Hall of Fame ballot without having put in 10 or more  Major League seasons. Contrary to public belief, that and having been retired for at least five years are the only statistical requirements for membership. Players also must pass the muster of a writers’ nominating committee, but that’s a low bar.

                Name Number One on my “sure thing” list is easy to guess. He’s ALBERT PUJOLS, the LA Angels slugger. Nobody fills a batter’s box like big Albert and few have filled the box scores better, as his 3,000-plus career hits and 600-plus home runs attest. Though he has his aches and pains he’s still hitting pretty well and at age 38 isn’t talking about retirement. There’s still time to tell your grandchildren you saw him play.

                My Number 1A is ICHIRO SUZUKI, maybe the best contact hitter ever. He didn’t show up in the U.S. Majors until age 27 but still topped the magical 3,000-hits mark. Throw in his 1,278 hits in the top pro league of his native Japan and you’ve got an Everest-like record. Technically, the 44-year-old Ichiro isn’t active at the moment, having recently joined the Seattle Mariners’ front office after starting this season on the field, but he’s vowed to return and play until he needs a walking cane, and one can only believe him.

                Then there’s MIGUEL CABRERA, the era’s best all-around batsman. His .317 average over 16 seasons is the best of any player with 10 or more years’ service, and his 2012 Triple Crown—leading the Majors in batting average, home runs and runs batted in—was a signal achievement, a 45-year first. Enough said.

                Pujols, Ichiro and Cabrera are certain first-ballot electees. Three other players also seem sure to make it, albeit perhaps not that fast. ADRIAN BELTRE qualifies by having hit safely 3,000-plus times, an accomplishment that may die out if the current, swing-for-the-fences hitting mentality endures. His other batting numbers also are of Hall quality. YADIER MOLINA has been the best defensive catcher of his era, a very good hitter and a fiery team leader whose presence dominates any field on which he performs. JOE MAUER has put in 15 seasons, mostly behind the plate, and has batted better than .300 so far, a rare combo. Playing with the out-of-the-way Minnesota Twins hasn’t helped, but his Gold Gloves, All-Star Game appearances and 2009 MVP have.

                The best three starting pitchers of the current era—JUSTIN VERLANDER, MAX SCHERZER and CLAYTON KERSHAW-- also seem to be headed for enshrinement, even though recent trends in the game dictate a reassessment of starting-pitching stats. Time was when the best starters aimed at 20-win seasons and careers with 250 or more victories. Now starters start every fifth game instead of every fourth and quick hooks are the rule, so those standards are out of date. Verlander, Scherzer and Kershaw have put in a combined total of 36 Major League seasons but have only five 20-win seasons among them, and none has yet recorded 200 career wins.

Verlander was 197-116 in the won-lost column last week, but he’s 35 years old. Scherzer was 151-77 at age 33. Kershaw, 145-68, is the youngest of the trio at 30, but has spent parts of the last two years on the disabled list, so his longevity is questionable. Where have you gone Greg Maddux?

My “maybe” list is fairly short, including JOEY VOTTO, DUSTIN PEDROIA, BUSTER POSEY, CC SABATHIA, BARTOLO COLON and JON LESTER.  Posey, Pedroia and Votto are good bets if they keep playing at a high level for a few seasons more, but Votto and Pedroia both are 34 years old so that might be difficult for them (Posey is 30). Colon and Sabathia lead active pitchers in career wins—Colon with 243 and Sabathia with 241—but neither has been dominant in the manner of Verlander, Scherzer or Kershaw, so Hall electors might find them to be acquired tastes.  Ditto for Lester, 167-94 at age 34. He can’t throw to first base but his three World Series rings won’t hurt.

 In my “not there yet” category are a bunch of players who have yet to put in 10 seasons. It includes the position players MIKE TROUT, JOSE ALTUVE, BRYCE HARPER, MOOKIE BETTS, MANNY MACHADO, PAUL GOLDSCHMIDT, FRANCISCO LINDOR, AARON JUDGE, GIANCARLO STANTON, KRIS BRYANT and ANTHONY RIZZO, and the pitchers CHRIS SALE, COREY KLUBER, AROLDIS CHAPMAN  and CRAIG KIMBREL.

 Athletic careers are chancy, easily interrupted or ended by injury or other missteps, so there’s no telling who in that group will make it and who won’t. Those with the best chances to compile truly memorable career numbers started youngest—Harper and Trout at age 19 and Altuve at 21, for instance. The currently dominant Kluber, on the other hand, is 32 years and has 85 wins to show for his seven-plus seasons, so conventional Hall credentials may be beyond his reach.  

Still, the fat, jolly Colon is still at it at 45 and just tied Juan Marichal in career wins, so anything’s possible. That’s why we watch, isn’t it?

A CUP HALF EMPTY

                Followers of this space know that I enjoy soccer generally, and the sport’s quadrennial World Cup tournament in particular. As a columnist I covered two World Cups—in the United States in 1994 and in France in 1998—and rank them as Nos. 1 and 1A of the favorite events of my sports-writing tenure. Their color and excitement were unsurpassed, and the skill of the participants at least equaled that of any of the other major global sports fests.

Feet are harder to control than hands, and what the top soccerers do with theirs is remarkable. If you don’t believe that, try kicking any round object with your “off” foot (most of us are right-or left-footed as well as handed). Just making contact is an accomplishment, and watch out that you don’t land on your butt after a swing and miss.

So while you might expect that I’m looking forward mightily to the next World Cup edition, which begins on June 14, you’d be mistaken. I’ll no doubt take in some random games, and be intrigued by some individual matchups, but the event already has been pretty much spoiled for me. I’ll be paying less attention to it than I have in the past.

There are two reasons for this:

--The U.S. isn’t in it.

--It’s in Russia.

The U.S. isn’t in it because it didn’t make the field, falling short in the nearly two-year qualifying phase that ended last October. FIFA, the outfit that runs the Cup, is mindful of the big American TV market and our nation’s contingent of well-heeled traveling fans, and very much wanted the U.S. to make it, but that required winning enough games in our easy, North and Central America play-in division, and we didn’t. Team USA entered the last two games of the six-nation, 10-game tournament needing only one tie to earn a Cup spot, but lost to Costa Rica at home and then bowed to Trinidad and Tobago on the road. The latter loss, by a 2-1 score, ranks as a one of the biggest soccer upsets ever, not only because of T & T’s tiny size (its pop. is about 1.3 million) but also because of its 1-win, 8-loss record going in (the U.S.’s final mark was 3 wins, 4 losses and 3 ties).  It was kind of like a Major League baseball team losing to a Class A club.

     Heads rolled because of the failure-- the two U.S. coaches and the national-federation president during the tournament either were fired or quit under fire—but with the every-four-years Cup format it meant a long slog the wilderness for the entire American sport. Soccer is a minority taste in this land, so the setback wasn’t as catastrophic as it was in the perennial powers Italy and The Netherlands, but not being in the party after a seven-time run stings.

The fact that this year’s tournament is in Russia attests to the corrupt nature of FIFA. Like its multisport counterpart the International Olympic Committee, FIFA is a self-appointed, self-perpetuating body that exists to enable its leaders to stuff their pockets from the deluge of money that has come to big-time world sports, through no special efforts of their own. Like the IOC, FIFA is partial to authoritarian governments like that of Russia and the 2022 World Cup host Qatar, where the graft is conveniently centralized and there’s no danger from pain-in-the-ass citizens’ groups protesting its predations.  The record of both groups forfeits any presumption of innocence in their dealings; one can safety assume that bribery plays a role in all their major decisions.

That the fix already is in for this year’s Cup is shown in Russia’s inclusion in by far the easiest of the tournament’s eight, four-nation round-robin groups. Russia never has been a world soccer force, and its national team is ranked 66^th world-wide going in, but the “draw” blessed it with a group that includes other non-powers Egypt, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. The Cup’s opening match, pitting the Ruskies against the 70^th-ranked Saudis, will be the least-attractive such game ever.

In a better world national virtue would count for something in the award of international sports extravaganzas, but not in this one. Russia under the odious Vladimir Putin leads any list of world evildoers, making war on its neighbors, jailing domestic dissidents, murdering ex-pats and waging cyber attacks against the Western democracies.   

In sports Russia is a pariah, its banners and emblems (but, unfortunately, not all its athletes) barred from the 2016 Summer Olympics as a result of revelations of wholesale doping violations at the 2014 Winter Olympics, which it hosted. Its state-organized doping regime extended well beyond those Games, involving more than 1,000 athletes in some 30 sports, according to numerous sources. It may continue yet, as evidenced by its continuing ban from international track and field competition and its nose-thumbing failure to bring its drug-testing procedures up to standard. Drug testing for the World Cup will be carried out in Switzerland, not Russia.

Russia’s soccer fans behave worse than its athletes, if that’s possible, roaming foreign cities in paramilitary packs and raising bloody havoc when the national team plays abroad. Russia nearly was ejected from the 2016 European Champions in France because of their antics. Last March FIFA again threatened action when fans in St. Petersburg directed racists chants at French player Paul Pogba during a match there; that was just the latest of many such incidents. Such things play poorly on international TV, so Putin, et al, can be expected to rein them in during Cup play, but the nasty undercurrent can’t be whitewashed away.

   There has been some international bounce-back against the Cup, with some corporate-sponsorship slots going unfilled and at least Great Britain refusing to send official delegations to the opening and closing ceremonies. But the “show must go on” mentality that also pervades the Olympics will hold, and the Cup will continue to be the world’s most-watched sporting event, with a peak TV audience estimated at three billion people.

Some of us Yanks will be among that number, and with the U.S.  not represented the question of rooting will arise. Fox Sports, which owns U.S. TV rights, for a while promoted a “root for your roots” approach, which would have Americans pulling for their ancestral homelands, but I’m grateful that my forebears escaped from theirs, so that’s out for me. I’ll give a cheer for England because its team includes several members of Tottenham Hotspur, by club-team favorite, and for Iceland, where my daughter-in-law is from.  But mostly I’ll be rooting for good games, the same as I do for domestic competitions that don’t include my Chicago teams.

And I’ll be flicking through my TV guide to find the broadcasts of the Spanish-language network Telemundo. My Spanish is poor but one doesn’t need much of it to follow Andres Cantor, its lead soccer announcer, and his signature cry of “GOOOOOAAAAAL” requires no translation.