SINGING THE UNDERSUNG

               The epithet “most underrated” is flung around widely on the sports pages and the internet, meant to cast spotlights on athletes some consider to be neglected, but I’ve never been happy with it. I mean, If a player is recognized as being underrated, that means he’s valued, doesn’t it? Add the word “most” to the description and it means he’s a downright celebrity. And aren’t we all convinced that the world doesn’t appreciate our wonderfulness?


               So okay, you get my drift about the piece to follow. It’s about baseball players who, for one reason or another, seem to have been, uh, undersung, especially of late. These are guys I’ve come to appreciate  during my daily wanderings around MLB’s “Extra Innings” package, which offers subscribers every Major League game that’s televised anywhere, which is just about all of them. It fills many of the hours left vacant by TV’s summer programming and, at between $150 and $175 a season, is a great bargain to boot.  That’s less than the cost of a single box-seat ticket in many cities.


               The player I think best exemplifies the underrated label is JEAN SEGURA, the shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies. Here’s a guy who, to paraphrase my old horse-racing guru Sam Lewin, does nothing but hit, but gets scant credit for it. In his six full seasons after his brief (one game) rookie call up with the Angels in 2012 he’s hit safely 981 times, an average of 163 a year, and led the National League in safeties in 2016 with 203. Nevertheless, he’s been traded four times in that span, to the Brewers, Diamondbacks, Mariners and Phillies, where he’s in season one at age 29. In each of the last three seasons he’s topped the .300 mark at the plate, no mean feat in his whiff-happy era. He’s almost on pace to do it again this year, hitting .284 at midweek with his first-place team.


               One possible reason for Segura getting short shrifted by many is his physique, which tends toward the chunky. That’s unusual for a shortstop but he’s fielded his position adequately and his mobility is attested to by his 174 career stolen bases. He’s stolen 20 or more bases in each of the last six seasons and in 2013, in Milwaukee, ranked second in the National League with 44 in that department. Base swiping is getting to be another lost art, so thanks to Jean for that, too.


               Another player who deserves more credit than he gets is JOSE ABREU, the Chicago White Sox first baseman. Smuggled out of Cuba under perilous circumstances in 2013, he’s been the very model of power-hitting consistency in Chicago, hitting 146 home runs and driving in 488 runs over his first five Major League seasons (2014-18). He’s one of just three players to average at least 25 home runs and 100 RBIs in his first four seasons in the Bigs, the other two being Albert Pujols and Joe DiMaggio. With 16 homers and 52 ribbies already logged for this 40% completed season, the 32-year-old is on pace to better his career averages.


               Abreu has been overlooked because he plays for the White Sox, a team that’s No. 2 in its home town and hasn’t done much of anything since its surprise, 2005 World Series victory. Abreu’s signing, for an eye-opening $168 million over six years, was based on the gargantuan stats he put up in his native country (he hit .453 one season), and was supposed to help reverse that. It didn’t—the Sox have been losers in all of his years with the team. Still, Abreu survived the talent dump that signaled a ground-up rebuilding program starting in 2017, and while he remains the topic of trade rumors the betting is that the Sox will try to hold on to him now that things have turned for the better. At least he gets some respect in his own locker room.


               NELSON CRUZ was busted in the 2013 raids on the Biogenesis Clinic, the notorious Miami drug-dispensing operation that also netted Alex Rodriguez, and sat out a 50-game suspension that season. But instead of shriveling up he went on to prosper, hitting 40, 44 and 43 home runs in his next three seasons under, one supposes, enhanced surveillance. It makes one wonder why he thought shooting up was a good idea.


               Despite his diminished reputation, Cruz still is going strong at age 38, helping his new club, the Minnesota Twins (his fifth), mount their unexpected surge this season by anchoring the middle of their lineup as a DH. His career home run total (372) puts him fourth among active players, and his power numbers last season with the Mariners (37 HRs, 97 RBIs) showed he hadn’t slowed.  He’s had injuries his year but came off the IL in June to homer in four consecutive games.  Que hombre!


               NICK MARKAKIS has 2,303 base hits in his 14-season career, fourth among active players, but until last season never made an All-Star team. He played nine seasons with mostly bad Baltimore Orioles teams before escaping to the better Atlanta Braves in 2014, but there has been overshadowed, first by fan favorite Freddie Freeman and, more lately, by some very talented youngsters. But on he labors at age 35, with no end in sight.


               Not only is Markakis a rarity of longevity, he’s also one of durability. No one these days goes eons without missing a game, ala Cal Ripken Jr., but Markakis gives it a try, playing in all 162 last season and 160 or more in six others.  Additionally, the outfielder is a three-time Gold Glove winner and set a Major League record by going 398 straight games without an error in the 2012-15 seasons. Throw in the fact he’s a perennial All-Beard and you have someone worth rooting for.


               ELVIS ANDRUS was a boy wonder shortstop with the Texas Rangers’ American League champions of 2010 and 2011. He’s no longer boyish at age 30 but soldiers on in Arlington, the last remnant of those World Series teams. He’s a good fielder, proficient base-stealer and good hitter for a position that usually doesn’t demand that. About the only way he gets attention is by picking the irritating song “Baby Shark” for his walkup music. That’s going a bit far, I think.

              

              

                  

                

KICK START

                I can’t recall exactly when it was—maybe four or five years ago—but the sport of soccer took a giant leap forward in these United States when ESPN, the all-sports TV network, began including its international scores on its “crawl,” the info that streams constantly across the bottom of its screens. Suddenly, the real game of the foot took its place in the daily diet of scores and news flashes that Americans breathe in like the air, gaining immeasurably in status. Although nobody I know of marked the event it was a clear signal that finally, and despite the scoffers, soccer had made it hereabouts, with a capital M.

                 The observation is pertinent because soccer will be much with us in the coming weeks and many will be paying attention. Later today (Saturday, June 1) the English clubs Liverpool and Tottenham will have it out in Madrid in the final of the European Champions League, the game’s biggest annual event. It will be carried in the U.S. by TNT and the Spanish-language network Univision, and a large audience is expected. The game hyped itself in the best way by the semifinal matches that preceded it, with both finalists gaining upset victories with late goal surges that bordered on the incredible. The highlight films of those games elbowed out domestic contests for U.S. sports-show air space.

                And starting the following week, on June 7, the game’s Women’s World Cup kicks off a month’s run in France, with the U.S. team favored to repeat as champions. Women’s soccer, like women’s sports generally, usually doesn’t fare well on the American tube, but the combination of patriotism, pulchritude and possible victory has made the quadrennial fest a big draw. The U.S.-Japan final in 2015, won by the Yanks, 5-2, had a U.S. audience of about 26 million people, more than the number that tuned in to any NBA finals or baseball World Series game that year. You can win a bar bet with that one.

                What really is noteworthy, though, is how the day-in, day-out popularity of soccer has taken off in recent years. The sport has supplanted ice hockey as America’s fourth-favorite spectator sport (behind football, basketball and baseball) and in the 2018 Gallup Poll it ranked third among people in the 18-to-54-year-old age category, outpacing the diamond sport. Figures on youth participation are similar, with soccer coming in behind only basketball and baseball among kids six to 12 years old.

                Behind the popularity growth is a mushrooming of soccer offerings on TV; according to various sources the U.S. television audience for the sport has about tripled in the last decade, suggesting the maxim “if you air it, they will watch.” NBC, Fox, ESPN, TNT, Univision and a host of national or regional cable outfits present soccer on a regular basis, and all four of the sport’s international “major” leagues—England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A and the German Bundesliga—have U.S. outlets.

                That’s significant because most of the viewer growth is coming from leagues based abroad. Major League Soccer, the biggest U.S. professional league, does okay on the tube (on ESPN) and at the gate, but its American audience is about half of that of the Premier League (on NBC), and only about a third the size of Liga MX, the Mexican pro league. And just to show that it’s not only Hispanics that follow the Mexican circuit, Fox last year added English-language broadcasts of Liga MX games. Many Americans—especially kids-- have become fluent in the language of the sport, calling zero scores “nil” and a field a “pitch,” and arguing over whether Messi or Ronaldo is the game’s best player. And what about Harry Kane, huh?

                That I am among the group that tunes in regularly to soccer is a source of wonder to me. I have no background in the sport, my only childhood rubs with it coming when I wandered by Winnemac Park near my Chicago home on Sunday mornings and saw teams representing ethnic social clubs kick the balls around. My main takeaway from those games was geographical; they were how I discovered that countries such as Armenia and Croatia existed.

                Like many Americans, my first immersion involved the 1994 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., covering the American team’s pre-Cup exertions and the main competition itself. Watching entire contests at the sport’s highest level put me in tune with soccer’s rhythms and taught me to appreciate its fine points, which can make even low-scoring games interesting. Moreover, I thoroughly admired the players’ athleticism, finding amazing the things they could make the ball do using just their feet.  (If you don’t agree, try kicking a soccer ball with your “off” foot.  You’ll be as likely to take a pratfall as make contact.)  My admiration was solidified before and during the 1998 World Cup in France. It was the best event I ever covered, although much of the pleasure stemmed from being able to spend five weeks in or around Paris on the Wall Street Journal’s dime.

                Further, I have a favorite European club team to help me sustain interest in non-World Cup years. It’s Tottenham Hotspur, one of the teams in today’s Champions League matchup.  I came to the club by way of my ex-pat son Michael, who lives near Amsterdam after a long stint in England, and my Anglophile friend Mike Levy. Our common allegiance had made for many hours of quality bonding.

                It was, I believe, fated that I become a Spurs supporter. For one thing, the team has a Jewish connection, the North London neighborhood from which it sprang being a one-time Jewish base. For another, the club often is likened to my Chicago Cubs baseball favorites in that it has gone an epochal period (59 years) without a Premier League title.

 It’s done pretty well of late, joining the half-dozen clubs that annually vie for the English crown, but it hasn’t been able to shake a rep for playing poorly when the stakes are high. Son Mike says that none of his Spur-fan friends believes the team will win today—it never does in such a match. But—hey!—if Americans can get to like soccer, anything’s possible.