Archive for August, 2008

I don't know about his choice for veep, but Obama knows what he's talking about in at least one regard. Here's a snip from a transcript of an interview with ESPN's Stuart Scott airing at 5 PM tonight:

Scott: “If the Cubs and the White Sox both make it to the World Series?

Obama: “I would be going.”

Scott: “Who would you root for?"

Obama: “Oh, that's easy. White Sox. I'm not one of these fair weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game. It's not serious. White Sox, that's baseball. Southside.”

Has Obama just put his Chicago vote in jeopardy? 

In other Sox news, Joe Crede has come off the disabled list after a full month; DeWayne Wise has been put on it with a strained adductor. 

Ted Cox e-mails the following about the baseball game between the U.S. and China broadcast today, which the U.S. won 9-1:

"Things getting interesting in the big U.S.-China baseball showdown. China hit four U.S. batters, and one guy who got hit responded by plowing over the Chinese catcher at home plate when he got the chance. The Chinese responded to that by beaning Matt LaPorta -- the guy the Tribe got from the Brewers in exchange for Sabathia -- in the ear. "

The BBC reports three ejections for China--including manager Jim Lefebvre.

UPDATE
More from Ted:

"Get this: the Chinese got their one run in the 9th on a homer by Yang Yang, the catcher who had been plowed over by Schierholtz after he was hit earlier in the inning. Yang ran the bases full speed holding his no. 1 index finger in the air, then stomped on home plate. Pitcher Blaine Neal shoulda dusted the next guy off, but simply retired the side for the win, although on the last out, a comebacker to the mound, he did make a point of running over and tagging the batter as he came up the line."

LaPorta has a mild concussion.

I was on vacation last week -- in Miami of all places -- when Jose Contreras pulled up lame covering first with a torn Achilles tendon. It's a career-threatening injury, especially given the Cuban-born pitcher's probable age, so his career -- his White Sox career, anyway -- flashed before my eyes. I recalled particularly the game in 2005 when he outdueled Randy Johnson -- then pitching for the New York Yankees -- and began the Sox' determined march toward their championship. Up to that point of the season the Sox had merely been a hot first-place team, and Contreras had been "erratic," as I described in a column of the time. That day, however, was beastly hot, and the Cuban was in his element. My Sox pal Kate splurged on scalped tickets, and we watched from sunny seats in left field (it was a brief pleasure when the shade from the foul pole crossed our faces) just beyond the Sox' bullpen.

We went down and watched him warm up, with Contreras using a big ball -- almost the size of a 12-inch softball -- to warm his arm and spread his fingers for the split-finger fastball he was mastering. Masterful he was that day, and the Sox won, and it began a streak of 17 straight wins for Contreras extending into the next season -- still a Sox record. He won the first game of the playoff series with the Boston Red Sox that fall, and the first game of the Sox' four-game sweep of the Houston Astros in the World Series. That's when we were coming up with the nickname of "Churchy" for him -- after a Churchill, a big Cuban cigar named after British prime minister Winston Churchill (whom I believe preferred Romeo y Julietas), also reminiscent of Churchy LaFemme, the turtle character (who was likewise bare-headed beneath his admiral's hat) from the classic Walt Kelly comic strip Pogo.

The great thing about Churchy was that he was human, not a machine (in marked contrast with, say, Michael Phelps). After struggling in New York upon signing with the Yankees after his defection from Cuba, he thrived with the Sox when he was reunited with his family. He struggled last season while going through a divorce, but righted himself, for the most part, this season. He was quiet, yet skittish, emotional, yet surprisingly steely when on, and when he was on -- as he was in that stretch from Aug. 21, 2005, until the Fourth of July the following year, that's right, July 4, 2006 -- he was a sight to behold.  So come back, Churchy; we're rooting for you. But if not, hey, you've given us quite enough.

Call me a masochist, but I just went hunting for more comment on last night's piss-poor Sox game. That's how I came across southsidesox.com, whose analysis of the Sox' 8-3 loss to the Tigers struck me as a lot more astute than anything I've read in the dailies lately (have to differ with him on third base coach Jeff Cox's boner, though, and I think Alexei Ramirez has had a big upside this year). The site's motto "Watching the Treadmill to Nowhere" perfectly captures the excruciating experience of watching Vazquez, who has lost five out of his last six and has a 5.88 ERA over his last eight starts despite ranking among the major league's top ten in strikeouts (with 142, he's number ten). Big whoop. 

After the tornado-alert sirens stopped wailing in the Loop Monday night, we came out of the Reader basement and ran to the State and Grand subway station. The train north stopped a long time at Addison, where the platform teemed with Cubs fans heading home.

What happened? we asked a young woman who boarded our car with her dad. "Cubs lost 2-0," she said. "They called it after five." The two of them seemed pretty sure that if the game had continued the Cubs would have pulled it out -- it's been that kind of year.

About an hour and a half later, after inspecting the tree that had come down in our parkway, falling into our neighbors' front porch, I walked to the diner at the end of the block for something to eat. There was baseball on the flickering TV there. Highlights? I thought. No, it was play-by-play. The Sox? I wondered. No, it was the Cubs. They were in the seventh inning now at Wrigley, still trailing 2-0.

The game hadn't been called after all. It was held up after five -- delayed for two hours and 45 minutes, in fact. But then it resumed.

I don't think it's easy to walk out of a ball park thinking the game is over when it isn't.  It takes an aggressive failure on the part of management to explain what's going on. As I said, it wasn't just those two fans. The el platform was packed.