A PROVIDENTIAL TIE

 

       There’s a new college-football Game of the Century every few years, and some years there are more than one, but for me there will ever be one, even though it was played in the last century. That was the Army-Notre Dame game at Yankee Stadium in New York on November 9, 1946, which makes this year its 75^th, or diamond, anniversary. A more-precious commemoration couldn’t be found.

       The game was contested in the glow of the victorious end of World War II at a time when college football ranked with baseball and horse racing as our nation’s premier sporting entities. The world was smaller then, so its highlights stood out in greater relief than they do now. To say the nation stood still while the contest played out might be an overstatement, but not much of one.

       The game’s objective qualifications for G of-the C honors are substantial. The U.S. Military Academy was at the crest of its war-years football glory, carrying a 25-game winning streak and ranked No. 1 nationally, the place where it ended the 1943 and ’44 seasons. The Fighting Irish also were unbeaten and ranked No. 2, although many thought they deserved the top spot. They looked like a dynasty in the making, which is what they turned out to be.

       Army’s coach was Earl “Red” Blaik and Notre Dame’s was Frank Leahy, both Hall of Fame bound. Backfield stars Felix “Doc” Blanchard and Glenn Davis, “Mr. Inside” and “Mr. Outside” respectively, led the Cadets while returning war vets quarterback Johnny Lujack and tackle George Connors led the Irish. The game featured four actual or eventual Heisman Trophy winners (Davis in 1944, Blanchard in ’45, Lujack in ’46, and Notre Dame end Leon Hart in ’49), something that never happened before or since.

       My personal reason for enshrining the game was less, uh, catholic.  I was eight years old at the time, living around the corner from Our Lady of Lourdes church in Chicago’s Ravenswood section, the only Jewish kid in a mostly Catholic neighborhood. Some of my pals, and most of my nonpals, were vocal Notre Dame fans, and in the weeks preceding the game their bleatings became too much for me. I’d never seen adults play football except in movie newsreels, and wouldn’t have known “Doc” Blanchard if he’d stuck a tongue depressor in my mouth, but in an effort to silence them I made a number of bets that Army would win. A lot of bets, actually.

       If the gesture made me feel good, the feeling was fleeting. It quickly became apparent to me that one of two things would happen: I’d lose the bets and suffer the consequences of being unable to pay because my net worth amounted to, maybe, 35 cents, or I’d win and be obliged to try to collect, a process that probably would yield more bruises than cash. November 9 loomed as doomsday, for sure.

       Those were radio days, and I tuned in to the contest on our home Emerson. I groaned whenever Notre Dame threatened to score and reacted similarly to each Army thrust. Back and forth the two sides heaved in a grinding, error-filled (10-turnover) defensive battle, and my stomach heaved with them. Against all odds, the outcome was a 0-0 tie. Everybody said that suited nobody, but everybody was wrong because it suited me fine, providentially so.

       The anniversary caused me to do some research on the game, and some of the results seem worth mentioning. College teams back then played nine-game schedules, while those of today play regular seasons of 12 games and up to three more in playoffs or bowls. Mighty Army’s line, tackle to tackle, averaged 194 pounds a man while Notre Dame’s averaged 214, both about 100 pounds a man less than current editions.

       Players often went both ways then, and some of the game’s most important plays were defensive ones by players better known for their offensive skills. Arnold Tucker, Army’s quarterback, intercepted three passes as a defensive back and Lujack, functioning similarly, made a game-saving tackle on Blanchard.

       The tie permitted Army to keep its No. 1 ranking for the week, but while it played out its season without a loss it beat a weak Navy team by just 21-18 in their finale. Notre Dame finished stronger, thrashing Northwestern, Tulane and Southern California by a combined score of 94-6 and, as they do today, the displays enabled them to top the year-end Associated Press poll, which was considered definitive at the time.  Notre Dame would win 21 straight games after the Army tie and except for a 1948 tie with Southern Cal would go unbeaten into 1950. Its players who were freshmen for the Army game would finish their college careers with a record of 36-0-2.

       While I didn’t exactly root against Notre Dame in the Big Game, my childhood experiences rarely left me unhappy when the school lost in sports.  Nonetheless, my time as a sportswriter tempered that stance, as it did other such blanket aversions. Terry Brennan, a star of the ‘46 Irish team and later ND’s head football coach, retired to Chicago’s LaSalle Street financial district, and I came to like him quite a bit while interviewing him for a column.

        I did several pieces on Gerry Faust, the Notre Dame coach from 1981 through 1985, and kept in touch with him as I did with few other column subjects. Promoted from the high-school ranks to high-pressure ND, he didn’t shine in South Bend (his record there was 30-26-1), but he’s a fine guy and I wished him well in everything he did.

       And when the NCAA in 1996 instituted overtimes to eliminate football ties, I sighed on behalf of foolish little boys everywhere.

                

 

FALL BALL '21

 

               Of all the things whose loss depressed me during the pre-vax pandemic days of last year, the Arizona Fall League was near the top of the list. This annual baseball exercise for young minor leaguers was scratched, leaving a giant hole in my fall schedule. I rejoiced when it returned this year, back at its October-November calendar place after starting in too-hot September in 2019. By me, autumn is the best time of year in the desert, warm but not hot and with the bluest skies on the planet. If you’re planning a trip it’s the best time to come.

               The league ends its six-week, six-team, 36-game run on Saturday with its championship game, but team results are secondary to the league’s real purpose, which is to serve as a finishing school for some of the game’s top prospects in the 21-to-25-year-old age range. Each team sends seven to compete against their peers under the eyes of scouts, real and self-appointed. I’m one of the latter.

               MLB, which picks up the tab for the thing, also uses it to test proposed game changes. The big one this year was requiring two infielders on each side of second base when a ball is pitched, eliminating the radical shifts teams use to squelch pull hitters. The league batting average after four weeks was .267, against the Majors’ 2021 regular-season .244, so it seems to have worked in hyping offense. I hope they keep it.

               The size of the bases was increased to 18 inches square from 15, to prevent some first-base collisions and give base stealers a bit of a boost. Another good move, says I. A “robo ump” home-plate camera system to relay ball-strike calls to a live ump was installed at one of the league’s six ballparks, Salt River Fields in Scottsdale. It operated seamlessly; I judged that most fans didn’t know it was working until they were told. Its game-wide adoption is inevitable.

               Pitch clocks of 15 seconds with bases empty and 17 seconds with runners on were used, and enforced often enough to be noticed. I’ve seen no figures on game times but noticed no speedup. Lots of walks (22 in one game, 17 in another) was one reason, lots of strikeouts (to be expected these days) was another. Those usually are underestimated in discussions of baseball’s time problems.

               Talentwise, no player jumped out in the way Vlad Guerrero Jr., Kris Bryant or Nolan Arenado did in previous AFL go-rounds, but there were B-plus prospects aplenty. This year’s crop was headed by SPENCER TORKELSON, who was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 amateur draft, by the Detroit Tigers, after breaking Barry Bonds’ and Bob Horner’s home run records at Arizona State U. Just about all No. 1s appear in the bigs soonish and he’ll be no exception. The big first-baseball’s early-minors stats didn’t dazzle but he hit well here, going 9 for 20 with 8 walks and 4 strikeouts in seven games. Then he sprained an ankle, never to return, but it was apparent he got what he came for.

               The best prospect I saw was outfielder LARS NOOTBAR, 24, of the St. Louis Cardinals, but he was a ringer, having played 58 games with the Cards last season. The left-handed hitter is a finished product in the field and at the plate, where he showed power that belied his trim physique. One home run he hit at Camelback Park in Glendale cleared the fence and berm behind it and rattled around on the pavement in front of the Chicago White Sox’s spring headquarters building. He also has his own cheer—when he came to bat Cards’ fans on hand shouted “Noot! Noot!”

               The best all-around player I saw was outfielder ELIJAH DUNHAM, a New York Yankees’ chattel. Just 22 years old, he’s among league leaders in hitting (at .348) and had walked 13 times with just 8 Ks. He’s a perpetual-motion machine on field; in one game I saw he had three hits, walked, was hit by a pitch, stole a base and threw out a runner at second from left field. He also tore his pants and, probably, leads the league in dirty uniforms.

               The biggest surprise has been NELSON VELASQUEZ, a 22-year-old outfielder from Puerto Rico and property of my Chicago Cubs. Ranked as the Cubs’ 29^th best prospect coming in, and a 2017 5^th round draft choice, he’s hitting .366 with a league-leading 9 home runs and 1.194 OPS, which stands for on-base plus slugging. He has a sturdy build and quick, compact right-handed swing. Having stripped their roster to its skivvies the Cubs have plenty of holes to fill and can’t afford to ignore him.

               JETER DOWNS, 23, named to play baseball, is a middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox chain who hits stronger than his slim build. The mellifluously named J.J. BLEDAY, 23, the 4^th player picked in the 2019 draft by the Miami Marlins out of Vanderbilt U., oozes power and potential. Outfielder MATT WALNER, 23, from the Minnesota Twins’ chain, is a big guy (6-foot-5) who hits big and strikes out a lot, which makes him a typical major leaguer. First baseman JUAN YEPEZ, 23, from Venezuela, signed at age 16 by the Atlanta Braves and traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, and with five minor-league seasons under his belt, is near the top of every AFL hitting category.

 There are three catcher spots on just about every 26-man MLB roster, so WILLIE MACIVER’s prospects look good. He’s 25, a bit elderly for the AFL, but catchers take time to develop. The Colorado Rockies’ possession is speedy for the position, having stolen 20 bases at the AA level last season.

Pitchers are hard to track in the AFL because they appear only every fourth or fifth game, and then usually for short stints, but I saw a few standouts. More good news for the Cubs came from CALEB KILLIAN, 24, a tall righthander they obtained from the San Francisco Giants in the Kris Bryant trade. He got bashed for 8 earned runs in his 2-inning debut here but then pitched 12 scoreless innings. His minor-league card shows 112 strikeouts and just 13 walks with three Class A and AA teams last season. He has outshone RYAN JENSEN, a higher-touted Cubs’ pitching prospect and the team’s No. 1 2019 draft choice. Jensen struck out the first two batters he faced in a game last Monday, then gave up 10 hits and a walk to the next 17. Online speculation the next day concluded he must have been tipping his pitches.

R.J. DABOVICH, 22, from the Giants’ chain, throws in the high 90s, strikes out many and walks many, too. He was fun to watch. SETH CORRY, 23, also with the Giants, had the best curve ball I saw and wasn’t afraid to use it. JOHAN DOMINGUEZ, 25, from the Dominican Republic and the Chicago White Sox, has strikeout stuff.

There’s a week left in the season so catch a game if you’re in the neighborhood. You, too, can be a scout.

 

 

 

NEWS & VIEWS

 

               NEWS-- BRAVES, ASTROS SQUARE OFF IN THE WORLD SERIES

               VIEW-- YAY, BOO

               My rules for rooting in matters of sport are simple. As a born and bred Chicagoan, and resident there for 50 years, I root for any team that has the city’s name on its jerseys. Period.

               As a kid I had teams I hated, mainly the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. That was because they regularly beat up on the teams I rooted for. I also thought the members of those teams were bad people, on general principles rather than because of any specific reasons. Virtue, I believed, was the exclusive province of my Cubs, White Sox, Bears, etc. How could it be otherwise?

               As an adult, and later a sportswriter, I tempered the “hate” part of the above equation, having learned that good guys and jerks are about equally distributed among our sporting entities. My anti-Yankee stance in particular was blunted by my contact with Joe Torre, the team’s manager in the late 1990s and early ‘00s, whom I found to be a pleasant and gentlemanly person. Now I’m firmly neutral about the Yanks, as with other non-Chicago teams.

               But the current baseball World Series, matching the Braves of Atlanta, Georgia, against the Astros of Houston, Texas, provides an exception. I’m for the Braves and against the Astros. The reason should be obvious to any sports-page reader. Between late-season 2016 and mid-season 2018, the Astros perpetrated one the biggest frauds in the history of any sport by stealing opponents’ pitch signs and relaying the results to their hitters.   

               Yes, sign-stealing is a baseball tradition, and all teams do it or try to, but this was no canny coach’s trick but an organized, team-managed project with electronic help, a TV camera in the team’s home-park centerfield stands. It was cheating on a grand scale and it worked, contributing to the team’s 2017 World Series victory. It was discovered only after a player the team traded away clued in his new teammates to the scheme. How it figured this wouldn’t happen boggles the mind.

               Once exposed, the Astros pleaded guilty, or pretty much so. They were fined $5 million and docked some draft picks. Three men (general manager Jeff Luhnow, field manager A.J. Hinch and his bench coach, Alex Cora) first were suspended and then fired. It is testimony to the seriousness with which capital “B” Baseball took those actions that Hinch and Cora got other managerial jobs as soon as they became available, Hinch with the Detroit Tigers and Cora with the Boston Braves. In baseball the wages of sin are more wages.

No players were penalized, assertedly because they contributed to the investigation but probably because the owners didn’t want players’ union grief. The other penalties were similarly soft. The Astros should have had their ’17 title revoked and their 2020 (or 2021) season cancelled. I know, that last thing wouldn’t have been good for anybody’s business, but I’m just sayin’.

The playing- field core of the team’s 2016-2018 roster—Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel—are still around, hammering out hits and soaking up money and home-crowd applause. Excellent as they are, their actions should lump them with the steroid-using cheaters when they come up for Hall of Fame consideration.

Among the most-galling parts of the scandal’s aftermath has been the way the press, etc., has come to treat it. Journalists love to portray athletes as battling obstacles, and the booing the ‘Stros receive in foreign parks is viewed as one of those, bravely overcome by the doughty Houstonians. Teesh and double teesh.

NEWS: THE PHOENIX SUNS’ DEANDRE AYTON BREAKS OFF CONTRACT TALKS, CLAIMING LACK OF “RESPECT” FROM THE TEAM

VIEW: BELIEVE THE MAN

Ayton, the first choice in the 2018 National Basketball Association draft and the starting center on the Suns’ league-runnerup unit last season, is a fourth-year player and thus is eligible for a star’s five-year maximum-extension contract, currently worth $172.5 million. He asked for that in talks but the team balked, reportedly offering only three- or four-year pacts. A few others in his draft class, including the Dallas Mavericks’ Luca Doncic and the Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young, had gotten the max, setting  Ayton’s teeth on edge, as it were.

“I want to be respected, to be honest,” he was quoted as saying. “I want to be respected the way my peers are being respected by their teams.”

His answer was widely haw-hawed, but I don’t think it should have been. Player salaries in our Big Four pro spectator sports have climbed so high as to be abstractions to the young men who get them. Separated from any earthly needs, they have become valuable mainly as status symbols, like a player’s position in a playground choose-up game.

Let us consider where Ayton is coming from. At age 23, with just a year of college (or, at least, college ball) under his belt, the seven-footer from the Bahamas already has received almost $28 million for his NBA labors, and is due to get another $12 million this season. Even after taxes, etc., that’s enough to absolve him and his family from work for several generations. In all likelihood he’ll earn several times that $40 million before he’s done playing, max-extension or no. He’ll be able to buy an island in his home chain when he quits, so a few million dollars more or less is no big deal.

It’s not much different down the pro-jock food chain. The average salary in the NBA is more than $8 million a year, which means many players earn more in a month than their fathers earned in a lifetime. Even the league’s minimum annual salary of almost $600,000 should be enough to give a young man a nice cushion for later endeavors.

 That’s great by me-- as Babe Ruth said (or is said to have said), “nobody who works for somebody else is overpaid.” Respect, though, is another thing. There’s a worldwide shortage of it, with no end in sight.

 

SIDE DOORS

 

               The two-year-old saga about rich people trying to buy their kids’ way into high-toned colleges now is playing out in the courts, with predictable results. A number of the 50 or so people charged with giving or receiving bribes have pleaded guilty and been handed prison sentences measured in months instead of years. It’s no news that our courts treat upper-class criminals more kindly than less-favored ones, and the trials now in progress in Boston should have similar outcomes.

               The connection with sports is that most of the finagling that was done involved phony athletic credentials that allowed bribe-getting coaches to sneak academically unqualified aspirants past their school’s admissions officers. This is a familiar feature of American academe, so familiar it has a name-- “side-dooring.” That entrance portal is available to jocks of many stripes with no criminal involvement. Ivy League schools routinely bend their admissions standards to improve their teams and so do other NCAA members that claim not to award athletics scholarships. That also goes for our national military academies, which additionally will arrange prep-school rides for the athletically talented who haven’t made the grade in high school.

               It’s been noticed by some that the Government minions behind the current prosecutions had to stretch to identify a victim in the frauds. That issue also arose in a 2018 episode in which an FBI “sting” operation netted some coaches and middlemen for funneling under-the-table money from the shoe-company Adidas to A-level basketball recruits being wooed by schools affiliated with the company. The immediate parties in that one (the kids, coaches and Adidas) all stood to benefit from the schemes so it was decided that the universities involved had been defrauded, even though their coffers would have swelled had they succeeded in landing the kids in question. If they were capable of doing so, prosecutors might have blushed advancing that theory.

               College-sports revenues didn’t much come into play in the present cases because its side-door portals were connected to such “minor” (i.e., non-revenue) sports as tennis, soccer and water polo. That was because sought-after football and basketball recruits tend to be so well known that unfamiliar names can’t be slipped into the mix. In the minor sports admissions people tend to take the word of coaches for who should and shouldn’t be given special treatment, thus opening the way to manipulations.

               About $25 million was said to have changed hands in the deals, funneled through William “Rick” Singer, a former basketball coach who ran a firm that facilitated college enrollments. One of his biggest conduits was Rudy Meredith, a one-time soccer coach at Yale who pocketed $400,000 in one admissions scheme and lined up $450,000 in another before investigators stepped in.

But while corrupt coaches got most of the money some went to the supposedly victimized schools. A case in point involved Stanford U and John Vandemoer, its former sailing coach. A September 27 story in the New York Times, by Billy Witz, tells how Vandemoer turned over to the university the $770,000 he received from Singer to help gain entry for two students. The story said he pocketed nothing but was fired nonetheless and spent a day in jail and six months in house arrest after a felony guilty plea for racketeering conspiracy he says he entered because he couldn’t stand the expense of a criminal trial.

Putting aside the question of why any university save the Naval and Coast Guard academies needs a sailing team, the episode sheds light on the role in the bigger college-sports picture of men’s non-revenue sports and just about all of those for women. Begun to create recreational outlets for students, they now are maintained in part to enable the big-timers to claim they’re not just football or basketball factories. They survive because of small but dedicated alumni factions and, since the 1972 enactment of the so-called Title IX, the need to satisfy a government requirement that women and men have equal access to athletics scholarships.

 Except for a few places like Eugene, Oregon (for track and field) and Iowa City, Iowa (wrestling), the teams don’t pay their own way and depend on various kinds of charity to continue. They live precarious existences, always waiting for the axe to fall in the next economy wave. Revenue losses from Covid-19 brought wholesale slaughter to the minor-sport ranks; by one published tally 35 NCAA Division I schools alone cut 112 such teams between January and June of this year.

The Times story made clear the ties between Singer and the august institution in Palo Alto, California. It said that when Vandemoer turned over one Singer check for $500,000 to Bernard Muir, Stanford’s athletics director, he was met with warm congratulations. When the coach tried to explain the source of the money Muir cut him off, saying “we know Rick.” The piece said Singer was known to other Stanford coaches and sometimes entered Vandemoer’s office unannounced even though a key card was needed for access to the athletics-department building. Stanford’s “side door” also included a front door, it seemed.

The list of colleges with which Singer did business was long, also including Georgetown, the U. of Texas, UCLA, Cal Berkeley and Southern Cal. One female student he “helped” was a family friend of a USC trustee. Far from being victims of the frauds, the universities involved were beneficiaries. The corruption that sustains their entertainment enterprises runs deep. At the least it should spur Congress to take a critical look at the tax-free status their athletics revenues enjoy.

 

 

 

LUCK

 

               Of all the adages swimming around in our heads maybe the dumbest is the one about how it’s better to be lucky than good. It’s a common one in sports, trotted out every time an errant play turns a game. Gary Kasparov, the chess champion and no-nonsense guy, wrote it off rightly as ridiculous. Said he, “In any competitive endeavor you have to be damned good before luck can be of any use to you.”

               This is not to say that luck plays no role in sporting outcomes—far from it. Every day a bloop hit or phantom pass-interference call decides a contest, to the glee of some and despair of others, and having money on the game multiplies the hurt to losers. Every gambler can regale you for hours about the “bad beats” he’s suffered, more than anyone else has had, for sure. The good breaks he’s received usually are forgotten in the recitation.

               In team sports as elsewhere, the role of luck can be quantified, more or less. The more games that are played in any competition the less luck figures into the final standings, and the more points that are scored the less it can determine any individual result. By those guidelines Major League baseball with its 162-game annual regular-season schedule, and NBA basketball, with its single-game point tallies of 200 or so, are the least luck-bound and low-scoring ice hockey and soccer are the most, with football somewhere between.  Hockey has a term to describe the games decided by fluke goals: “Puck Luck.” But even there random occurrences tend to balance out over an 82-game National Hockey League schedule and the best teams usually come out on top.

               Come playoff time, however, the leavening effect of the long run disappears, and randomness is magnified. Baseball’s post-season begins with a couple of one-and-done “play in” games that round out the final playoff fields of eight teams, four in each league. Those are total crap shoots.  The best-of-five games divisional series’ follow, then the best-of-seven league-championship and World Series rounds.  Taken together that’s a good chunk of starts, but sweeping one round doesn’t affect later ones, so survivors start from “go” each time.

               The subject of luck occurred to me because the Chicago White Sox, my No. 1A favorite team (the Cubs are No. 1), are in the playoffs. If luck in the broad sense really matters in baseball, then the White Sox are among baseball’s biggest losers.  But they recouped much of that in 2005 with a mind-boggling hot streak that resulted in their World Series victory.

               What the Irish call “bad cess” began for the Sox when they committed baseball’s all-time worst blunder by getting caught throwing the 1919 World Series, resulting in the lifetime suspensions of the heart of the roster that also had won the ’17 title. That would be their last championship in 88 years, a span of futility topped only by my Cubbies’ 108 years ending in 2016.   In that period the Sox won but one American League pennant (in 1959) and rarely challenged for another. Their best team in that era was that of 1994, when they led their division into August only to have the remainder of the regular season, and the playoffs, cancelled by a players’ strike. That never happened before and hasn’t since.

               Relatedly, the Sox have spent the last 40 years as the No. 2 team in a two-team market, trailing the Cubs in every financial category.  Bad management decisions contributed to that status, but so did geography, their South Side of the city trailing the Cubs’ North Side as an entertainment lure. That’s denied them the wherewithal to be regular title contenders in a money-driven game.

               As 2005 dawned few saw the Sox as world beaters, and man-for-man they weren’t. They wound up winning 99 regular-season games without leading any important league individual statistical category, taking a Golden Glove or Silver Slugger award or having anyone elected to play in that year’s All-Star Game. What they had was a group of solid veteran position players led by first-baseman Paul Konerko, outfielder Jermaine Dye and catcher A. J. Pierzynski, and that year’s best and luckiest starting-pitching rotation. Mark Buerhle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland and Jose Contreras went through the season injury free, each making 30-plus starts and pitching 200-plus innings. If that wasn’t lucky nothing is.

               The Sox’s good fortune really kicked during the playoffs. They swept the Boston Red Sox in the Division Series, beat the L.A. Angels four games to one in the ALCS and eliminated the Houston Astros in straight sets in the World Series. Their 11-1 record has been matched only once, by the 1999 New York Yankees, in the extended-playoff era.

               This is not to say the wins were easy or without oddities. With his team leading 4-2 in game two of their series, Red Sox second-baseman Tony Graffanino muffed an inning-ending double-play grounder that set up the Chicagoans’ winning three-run home run. Scott Podsednik, a speedy but light-hitting White Sox outfielder who’d hit no home runs in 568 regular-season at-bats, hit one against the Red Sox and a walk-off shot that gave the team a 7-6 win in World Series game two.

 Buehrle, Garland, Garcia and Contreras pitched consecutive complete-game wins against the Angels, an eye-popping feat 16 years ago and just about impossible now. Game three of the Houston series was won in 14 innings on a home run by Geoff Blum, a backup who’d had just one previous post-season at-bat.

In a play that still amazes, game two against the Angels went into the bottom of the ninth inning in Chicago tied 1-1. With two outs, the canny Pierzynski swung and missed a low pitch for strike three but saw that the ball might have skimmed the dirt and took off for first base while the Angels were leaving the field. After extended and spirited discussion the umps let him stay there. His pinch runner stole second base and scored on a Joe Crede hit for a Sox 2-1 win. TV replays showed the ball was cleanly caught but they weren’t used to affect decisions until three years later. Bad luck, Angels.

The White Sox team that’s going into this season’s playoffs looks like better on paper than the ’05 edition.  It features a cast of flashy young hitters, a good starting staff and the baseball’s best 1-2 bullpen pair of Craig Kimbrel and Liam Hendriks. Alas, though, it so dominated its weak division that it played few regular-season games of consequence and often seemed uninterested as it plodded through a near-500 second half.  At their best the Sox can beat anyone, but they can lose to anyone, too. A little good luck wouldn’t hurt.   

    

TOO FAT

 

               Another National Football League season is here—goody-goody—and as usual I’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time watching it on the tube. I’m hard-pressed to explain this. Basketball players are better athletes than footballers and the numberless hours I spent on Chicago’s softball diamonds gave me a mental and visceral connection to the parent sport of baseball. By contrast, as a too-little kid I steered clear of the “F” sport, my participation pretty much limited to autumn games of "touch" in the alley behind my Paulina Street home.

               In recent years I’ve also developed moral qualms about football. Beyond a doubt it’s a gladiatorial sport that requires players to roll the dice with their health. I tell myself they’re volunteers, and adult pros accept the risks they face, but I doubt if many make the choice with the full understanding of what could be in store for them. Neurological injuries caused by the game’s incessant head butting are the main danger; a recently reported survey of 3,500 retired NFL players, average age 53, showed that 12% said they were suffering with “severe” cognitive issues, and 25% said they had symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety. That probably understates the true extent of the situation, because self-reporting usually minimizes such things and neurological damage can manifest itself many years after the causative blows.

On top of that is the damage to bones and joints that football brings. Rare is the NFL player who hasn’t gone under the knife at some point as a high-schooler, collegian or pro, and multiple surgeries are the rule for veterans. Mark Schlereth, who spent 12 seasons as an offensive lineman with the Washington (then) Redskins and Denver Broncos (1989-2000), underwent 29 operations, 20 on his knees (15 left, five right) and the rest on his back, shoulders and arms. A connoisseur of such things, he’s said “If I could take back the back surgery, I’d take another 20 knee surgeries instead.”  

Joint injuries generally aren’t life-threatening, but even when corrected surgically they tend to get worse over time. Joints that have been injured are more prone than others to arthritis and other ravages of age. I recall seeing Dick Butkus, the personification of football ferocity, hauling himself around stiff-legged 25 years after his playing days ended. As a result of his football injuries he has a metal knee replacement, and other surgeries left one leg 1 ½ inches shorter than the other.

But while brain and joint damage stem from the nature of football and, thus, are inevitable, another important football health issue isn’t. I mean the sort of intentional obesity to which some players, especially linemen, subject themselves. In brief, most of those guys are too fat, and have to be to keep their jobs.

 There was a time when a “big man” playing at or near his natural weight could have a fine NFL career; the starting O-Line of the 1965 Green Bay Packers, a great team by any measure, consisted of center Ken Bowman, guards Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston and tackles Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski, each of whom weighed in at between 230 and 250 pounds. Today, they’d have to buy tickets to get near an NFL field at those weights.

As late as 1985 300-pounders were considered freakish in football; remember the fuss when William Perry, a defensive lineman nicknamed “The Refrigerator” for his blocky build and love of food, debuted with the Chicago Bears at that weight? It turned out he was a pioneer. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the average weight of starting offensive linemen in the league jumped from 254 pounds in 1970 to 277 pounds in 1990, to 309 pounds in 2000 and to 315 pounds today.

The reason for the increase is simple: the bigger a lineman is the harder he is to move. Some of the increase may be muscle, but most is fat. One study I came across reported that the average body fat of an NFL lineman is 24.8%, 0.2% short of the clinical definition of obesity. That was about twice the body-fat average of players at the other positions.

Football players work hard and maintaining their weight is about as much trouble as gaining it. A case in point was Joe Thomas, a perennial All-Pro offensive tackle in his 11 seasons with the Cleveland Browns, ending with his 2018 retirement.  He played football in high school at about 240 pounds, bulked up to 300 at the University of Wisconsin, and added about 25 pounds more as a pro. His 6-foot-6 frame enabled him to do that without loss of mobility, but it was not without effort. A piece last year on overweight football pros on the ESPN.com website described his typical daily playing-days menu thusly:

               Breakfast—Four pieces of bacon¸ four sausage links, eight eggs, three pancakes and oatmeal with peanut butter.

               Lunch—Pasta with meatballs, cookies and “a salad maybe.”

               Dinner—A whole deep-dish pizza, a sleeve of Thin Mint Girl Scouts cookies and a bowl of ice cream.

               On top of that came a couple of daily protein shakes and between-meals and bedtime snacks. “If I went two hours without eating I’d want to cut off your arm and eat it,” he told the ESPN reporter. “We got weighed on Mondays and if I lost five pounds my coach would give me hell.”

               Fun it wasn’t, he continued, saying he “crushed Tums” nightly but still had constant heartburn, and gulped various pain meds and anti-inflammatories to cope with his aches. In the first two years of his retirement he began eating and exercising “like a normal human,” threw away the meds and lost 60 pounds. “The health benefits were amazing,” he exulted.

               The other side of the coin is grim, as personified by the abovementioned Mr. Perry. His weight crept up throughout a nine-year NFL career (1985-94) and kept climbing in retirement, eventually nearing 450 pounds. He lost most of that later, but not in a healthy way. Now, at age 58, he’s in a wheelchair, suffering from diabetes and circulatory issues, among other things.  One only can hope that the memory of the cheers he received in his prime eases his current condition.

               The NFL’s unhealthful fatter-the-better regime could easily be halted by the league establishing an upper limit on weight. Olympic freestyle wrestling did this in the 1980s after huge men, such as the 400-pound American Chris Taylor, had come to dominate the heavyweight division by size alone.  A top weight limit of 130 kilograms (286 pounds) was put into effect for the 1988 Games and by 2021 it had been adjusted to 125 kg (275).  That’s big enough, dontcha think?

              

 

 

 

BASEBALL ZOMBIES

 

               For some baseball teams September is the month for edgy watching of scoreboards for the progress of the divisional races, or, at least, a lingering hope for same. For others, that hope has been abandoned and the remaining games exist only for the accumulation of gate receipts and individual stats.

               Unfortunately, my home-town Chicago Cubs and my new-home Arizona Diamondbacks are in the latter category, and have been for some time. Indeed, both have been zombies since early summer, plodding along from defeat to defeat with no hope of reward. Such is the downside of baseball’s long, long season. It would have been merciful to put both out of their misery long ago.

               An interesting argument could be made over which of the two teams is worse. The D’backs have an overall edge with a 44-90 won-lost mark as of Monday (9/1) to the Cubs’ 58-75, but the Arizonans have been less terrible in recent weeks. They started the season well enough, posting a 14-12 record in April, but then took a cannonball dive by going 8-48 in May and June, a scarcely believable fall when it’s remembered that baseball is a game in which the best teams win about six of 10 while the worst go about 4-6. Included in that May-June swoon was a 24-game road losing streak, the worst in the sport’s officially recorded history.

               The Cubs have had a weird year, begun with the off-season trade of their best starting pitcher, Yu Darvish, for a passel of pink-cheeked prospects. The message sent out by that deal was clear, but the team began well enough anyway, winning 38 of their 65 games at mid-June. Gravity then set in, leading to losing steaks of 11 and 12 games since, with a record 13-game home losing streak among them. They engineered an epic salary dump at the July 31 trade deadline, erasing just about all human reminders of their 2016 World Series triumph. Since late June they’ve been the worst team in baseball, with no end in sight.

               Nobody expected much of the 2021 D’Backs, so the Cubs’ collapse was the most notable. Pending free agency dictated that they let go some of their World Series core, but few expected that Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant all would be jettisoned, along with the ace relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel. That was in addition to the veteran outfielder Joc Petersen, who’d been moved earlier. The haul the Cubs received in return included only two bona fide Major Leaguers, second baseman Nick Madrigal and relief pitcher Codi Heuer, both from the Chicago White Sox, and Madrigal already was out for the season with a hamstring tear.

               It would be nice to report that the Cubs had a bunch of promising young minor leaguers ready to debut at Wrigley Field, but such was not the case. MLB.com’s ranking of minor-league systems had the Cubs 22^nd among the 30 teams before the July moves, and they moved up only four spots afterward. Some of the newly acquired players are pups, too young to be reflected in such rankings, but it can’t be said that that other help from below is near at hand.

Instead, the Cubs have filled their roster with journeyman players with little long-term upside. The prime example of that is outfielder Rafael Ortega, who has played well in Chicago but is 30 years old and with his seventh big-league organization. Frank Schwindel, Matt Duffy and Patrick Wisdom are similar in age and biography. Two of the team’s remaining vets, Ian Happ and Jason Heyward, have struggled all year to get their batting averages above .200, and can’t be counted as assets.  Trusty vet Kyle Hendricks is their sole proven pitcher.

To create any interest among the Cubs’ faithful owner Ricketts will have to open his purse big time in the offseason. A reputed billionaire, and with one of the game’s highest ticket-price structures, he should have ample resources for that, but he does strange things so who knows? If he falls short my friend Eddie Cohen, founder of Cubs Fans Anonymous, is threatening to revive that organization and have followers march on Wrigley with torches and pitchforks.

The D’backs’ prospects are at least as discouraging. This season has revealed several useful young players, including second baseman Josh Rojas, first-baseman-outfielder Pavin Smith and catcher Daulton Varsho, and MLB.com rates their farm system as ninth best. But their pitching is beyond woeful, last week ranking 29^th among the MLB’s 30, and it will take more than minor-league help to correct that.

 The team went the big-money route in 2020, luring the San Francisco Giants’ World Series hero Madison Bumgarner to the desert with an $85 million contract, but he’s been mediocre at best and has three more years and $60 million owing. It got a pick-me-up a few weeks ago, when lefty Tyler Gilbert threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in his first big-league start, but he’s no kid at age 27 and got whacked for four runs on nine hits in five innings in his next start.

I can’t look into anyone’s pockets so I don’t know what resources the D’backs owners can command, but by rep they don’t match those of the Cubs. The team doesn’t draw well even when it wins so much help from that source is unlikely. The team stood pat last off-season, hoping for internal improvement. It’ll take a truckload of that to get it out of its present rut.