NEWS & VIEWS

               NEWS—The National Football League’s silly season—otherwise known as the preseason—is in full swing.

               VIEW—Fans have their fingers crossed that their teams can survive it without calamity.

               The old saw “no news is good news” never applies more strongly than during the NFL’s August exercises. Everyone, the owners included, has come to believe that four practice games in preparation for the regular season is excessive, but by contract and greed they’re trapped in it for at least this year.  The only headlines that come out of the games concern injuries, which are inescapable whenever football is played. Every team will suffer losses, the only question being how many.

               The league and its players association already have begun talks about the labor pact that expires in March, 2021, and the owners reportedly have proposed cutting the preseason by two games while adding two to the now-16-game regular campaign. Uh-uh, say the players (so far), the season is plenty long enough as it is.  Simply eliminating two August games is an unlikely option because of the revenues they generate, the teams continuing their odious practice of adding them to season-ticket packages. At full price, of course.

               The plus side is that, increasingly, NFL teams are deemphasizing the preseason in other ways. Regulars—especially quarterbacks-- play little if at all and contact drills are employed sparingly, as they are between the games that count. Spurred by the growing awareness of the dangers of head-butting whenever it occurs, they’ve come to believe that the benefits of the rock-‘em, sock-‘em practice sessions of yore aren’t worth the cost. Hey, even stopped clocks are right twice a day.

               NEWS: More Major League Baseball teams extend the protective netting in front of their stadium seating areas.

               VIEW—It’s about time.

               MLB this season decreed that all of its teams install nets reaching to the ends of the dugouts, but four—the Chicago White Sox, Washington Nationals, Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros—have extended them farther, even to the foul poles. That came after a two-year-old girl was severely injured in May by a foul ball hit into the stands at Houston’s Minute Maid Stadium.  A half-dozen more teams have said they’ll be installing extensions beginning next season.

               That’s good because people in the lower seating areas just past the dugouts are at greatest risk from the sort of line-drive fouls that can cause the most damage. The pop-up kind travel at lesser speeds and, at least, give people time to either protect themselves or get out their mitts.

               I’m a big fan of staying behind the netting at ballparks, partly because I think behind-the-plate seats are best and partly because I keep a scorecard and don’t want to always be on alert for flying objects. My favored seats for AZ Diamondback games at Chase Field are in the upper deck, where few fouls reach.

               Foul-ball tip: when a player fouls one off to any part of the park he’s a pretty good bet to do it again to about the same area during the same at-bat.

               NEWS—The minor leagues’ hottest young hitting prospect belongs to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

               VIEW—Them that has gets.

               The young man in question is Gavin Lux, a 21-year-old, lefty-hitting middle infielder from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was the Dodgers’ first pick in the 2016 amateur draft, the 20^th player chosen overall. Signed as a skinny 18-year-old, he got off to an unremarkable start in the rookie and low-A leagues, but while adding 40 pounds (to 205) blossomed into a formidable batsman, hitting a combined .324 in A and AA ball in 2018, .313 in AA early this season, and an eye-popping .456 in his first 32 games  (136 at bats) at AAA Oklahoma City. You’ll be able to see him soon because the Dodgers say they’ll call him up to the Majors in September.

               Lux is said to play older than his years, probably because of the life-long attention he’s received from his uncle, Augie Schmidt. Schmidt was the No. 2 player chosen in the 1982 draft, by the Toronto Blue Jays, but never made it to the Bigs after five seasons in the minors and left the game to finish college. Gravitating to coaching thereafter, he’s been head baseball coach at Carthage College in Kenosha since 1988, posting a 67% winning average and collecting lots of Division III trophies.  Schmidt’s father coached at the school before him, suggesting deep baseball genes.

               An internet search quotes observers likening Lux to Cody Bellinger as a hitting threat for the already-potent Dodgers, MLB’s currently winningest team. We’ll see about that but YouTubes of some of the youngster’s home runs are impressive. And if that isn’t enough, the kid kinda looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.