“Tom Terrific” had his great moment w/ Chicago, no matter how some forget

Tom Seaver was one of the great ballplayers of the 1970s – a star pitcher whom some would call the best of the decade. And while he’s in the baseball Hall of Fame for his days with the New York Mets, we shouldn’t forget the stint he had with the Chicago White Sox.

Sox won't forget Seaver anytime soon

Seaver popped up back in the news this week when his family made an announcement that, at age 75, he has been diagnosed with dementia. He’s going to suffer the malady of memory loss in his old age – to the point where the Seaver family says he’s through with having a public life.

HE INTENDS TO live out his days at the vineyard he has operated in California, doing some work, but mostly trying to enjoy a retirement.

Yet thinking of Seaver brings back to mind the stint he did with the White Sox in the mid-1980s.

It was only by pure fluke, and Mets mismanagement, that he came to Chicago at all for the 1984 season. Under the rules that existed then, the Mets left Seaver unprotected on their roster – mostly figuring that at his late-30s age, no one would try to claim him.

But the White Sox had just won a division title in 1983 and came close to making a World Series appearance, and also had the fairly new ownership of Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn who were eager to try to stir up attention for the ball club.

HENCE, THE WHITE SOX made a claim to Seaver, and he wound up deciding to come to Chicago after all – leaving the Mets where he was considered something of a team legend.

The baseball logic of the move was that a veteran pitcher like Seaver could help put the White Sox over the top and make them champions. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Seaver in 1984 won 15 games – the most of any White Sox starter that season. But the rest of the team slumped to a 5^th place, 74-win, 88-loss record. The previous season’s Cy Young Award winner as best American League pitcher Lamarr Hoyt finished with a losing record, and eventually was traded away for future star shortstop Ozzie Guillen.

Seaver pitched for the White Sox through early 1986, and wound up winning 33 games during his time wearing the “license plate SOX” uniforms whose design the team still loves to pay homage to on Sundays.

On receiving end of Seaver achievement

AND WHILE SOME people like to go out of their way to minimize the fact that Seaver ever pitched in Chicago, one can’t ignore the fact that one of the highlights of his overall career came during those years.

I’m referring to Aug. 4, 1985 when Seaver pitched a complete game victory against the New York Yankees – which turned out to be the 300^th victory of his career. The shorthand statistic that verifies Seaver’s place as one of the best pitchers ever.

Perhaps it was only so appropriate that the White Sox played that game on the road at Yankee Stadium. Meaning so many of the Mets fans who had cheered Seaver on 
throughout his peak years got to see his great moment – and took to rooting for the White Sox to whomp the Yanks on their own home turf.

Throughout their baseball history, the White Sox have had more than their share of aging ballplayers who did a stint in a “Chicago” uniform. Take Steve Carlton – the man most often tossed up as challenging Seaver for “best pitcher” of the ‘70s.

IN 1986, CARLTON pitched for three teams, including the White Sox, for whom he won four of the nine victories he achieved that season, before the Sox let him go to.

His Hall of Fame moments outside of Sox

Carlton’s mediocrity bordering on forgettability in a White Sox uniform is more typical than that of the Seaver story – who has earned himself a place as possibly the best star ballplayer for another team to enhance Chicago.

Some, I’m sure, will argue it’s really Carlton Fisk – the one-time Boston Red Sox catcher who wound up playing for the White Sox through the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Who, by all coincidences, was the catcher in Seaver’s 300^th victory.

It’s a moment that will live on in baseball highlight videos, and perhaps that’s good. Because it’s not likely Seaver himself will be able to recall much of the great baseball moment, as the passage of time and the frailty of the human body takes its toll.

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EXTRA: 8-8 a double historic date for Chicago baseball both sides of town

Future Hall of Fame pitcher Rich Gossage once joked he'd only wear the Sox shorts if given a matching halter top. But he wound up getting a save in the victory the Chicago White Sox acheved over the Kansas City Royals. 

Aug. 8 is one of those dates we’d otherwise ignore, but ought to acknowledge for the moments of baseball trivia it produces here in Chicago.

For it was on this date in 1976 that the Chicago White Sox first wore the version of a uniform that included short pants. There was a double-header that day, and the White Sox showed off their knobby knees during the first game -- in which they beat the Kansas City Royals.

THE SECOND GAME that date gave us a ball club reverting back to their long pants and losing ways of the ‘76 season, although the Sox did dig out the shorts again later in the month, and actually managed to beat the Baltimore Orioles 11-10 in 10 innings while wearing them on Aug. 21.

The date also became significant 12 years later when the Chicago Cubs tried to get cute in their first staging of a night baseball game at Wrigley Field. The game was scheduled for the date otherwise known as 8-8-88. The only problem was it wound up raining heavily that night and the game was called before they could get in enough play to make it an official ballgame.

Hence, the first night game ever played at Wrigley was actually on Aug. 9, 1988. That’s what happens when one tries to get cutesy – the baseball “gods” wreck havoc upon your plans for silliness.

 

Then the rain came falling from the skies, ending play after merely 3 innings

Does this mean that the baseball gods, by not hitting Comiskey Park with a tornado some 12 years earlier, secretly approved of the shorts scheme? Or just that night games at Wrigley are a true abomination that I’m sure the bulk of the Lake View neighborhood would still think true!

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A-Rod won’t don pale hose during his lengthy baseball career; Chicago won’t get a last chance to “boo” him

It’s a trend that our very own Chicago White Sox like to take on – aging star ballplayers who wind up finishing their careers on the South Side of Chicago with such unmemorable stints that most fans quickly forget they ever played here.

 

He'll never wear White Sox pinstripes

To the degree that I often wondered if Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees was destined to become yet another ballplayer in this category – somebody who’d wind up finishing his career getting in a few games playing for the White Sox.

IT MAY BE the big difference in character between the Chicago White Sox and the crosstown competition, the Chicago Cubs.

For the Cubs have a history of letting young ballplayers go who later wind up with other ball clubs having careers making them worthy of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. – pitchers Bruce Sutter and Greg Maddux, just to name a couple.

While the White Sox wind up being the aging dumping ground of guys like Ken Griffey, Jr., who when he was inducted earlier this summer into the Hall of Fame and people were going on-and-on about the highlights of his professional career, no one was thinking about the 41 games he played for the White Sox in 2008.

Then again, with a .260 batting average and only 3 home runs while wearing the black and white with pinstripes of the Sox, there wasn’t much to remember.

 

Just a few ballplayers ...

JUST LIKE STEVE Carlton or Roberto Alomar – who got into the Hall of Fame despite their lack of heroics in Chicago. Or Tom Seaver, who is a Hall of Famer whom many people barely remember as a White Sox.

It would have totally been in the ball club’s character to acquire Rodriguez, whom the Yankees have been eager to dispose of because he’s NOT of the quality any more that will make him a candidate for Hall of Fame induction.

 

... whose athletic demise and  final paycheck ...

He could be just like Jose Canseco, the aging slugger from the 1980s and early 1990s who ended his playing days in the early 21^st Century by hitting the last 16 of his 462 career home runs in Chicago.

He got to end his major league playing days by finally getting to see a Comiskey Park fireworks display in celebration of his own home runs, instead of just hearing the echoing of “boos” from fans p-oed that a Sox pitcher threw another stinker of a pitch that wound up deposited into the outfield seats.

... came while wearing "white" sox

THIS HONESTLY WAS what I always expected the end of baseball would be for Alex Rodriguez – an unceremonious attempt to stretch out his career for a few more ball games. With the confused catter-calls coming from the stands – generations of Sox fans booing and heckling him for playing for the Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers and Yankees being muted because his hits finally benefitted the White Sox.

Although the reason it won’t happen is because Rodriguez announced Sunday he won’t play anymore following the Yankees’ ballgame Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays. He’ll get to finish out this season and next in some sort of unspecified role as a consultant.

Even Jose Canseco got a final farewell in Chicago

But his horrific play (batting only .204 this season and he didn’t even play back on July 4-6 when the Yankees made their only visit to Chicago this season) meant there weren’t many hits to be had.

As it turns out, Rodriguez’ Chicago finale turned out to be the final weekend of July 2015 when the Yankees played a three-game series at U.S. Cellular Field. The crowd reaction literally was a mess of people wanting to tell dumb steroid jokes and taunts mixed with Yankees fans still wishing to celebrate him – and one girl sitting behind me in the outfield seats making a point of wishing Rodriguez a “Happy Birthday.”

IT WILL BE intriguing how Rodriguez – the guy who lost the 2013 season to a suspension because of steroid-use allegations – gets remembered. Because with 696 home runs (as of Sunday), it makes him one of the all-time greats – ahead of Willie Mays (660) and not far behind Yankees immortal Babe Rush (714).

Not everyone heckled Rodriguez in Chicago

And certainly better than legitimate White Sox Hall of Famer Frank Thomas (521) or “is he, or isn’t he, a fraud” Cubs star Sammy Sosa (609). But some are going to be too eager to taint the Rodriguez memory with steroids, just as they have done with Sosa and many other ballplayers of recent years.

It makes me reminisce of the ballplayers of my childhood era – guys such as one-time Sox slugger Dick Allen.

 

He who took a Most Valuable Player title while representing the South Side and was critical of artificial turf by saying, “If a cow can’t eat it, I won’t play on it.” You just don’t get ballplayers like that these days.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Maybe the White Sox will wind up having Ichiro Suzuki on their roster some time in the near future. The Miami Marlins outfielder clinched his position in baseball immortality by getting his 3,000th base hit (a triple Sunday off Colorado Rockies pitcher Chris Rusin) playing in the U.S. major leagues (he has another 1,200 or so hit from playing professionally in Japan). Which means he's now an aging ballplayer whose past his prime and whose best years (with the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees) are most definitely in the past -- perfect for a stint at 35th and Bill Veeck Drive! For what it's worth, Suzuki made his only visit to Chicago this season last week when the Marlins lost three games to the Chicago Cubs, although the White Sox will be in Miami for a weekend series beginning Friday.

Parque story more relevant because he was a journeyman ballplayer – not a star

I remember former Chicago White Sox pitcher Jim Parque primarily because he would fiddle around with his laptop computer in the clubhouse and on a few occasions wrote first-person pieces about being a ballplayer that got published in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Well, it appears that Parque didn’t forget how to send a piece of copy to the Sun-Times, which on Thursday published his account of how he used human growth hormones (a.k.a., steroids).

THAT MAKES HIM yet another professional athlete to use a substance that some sports fans want to view as cheating (it is intended to bolster one’s strength in an artificial manner).

Much of the attention has gone to the “big names” of baseball – Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmiero, the Cubs’ very own Sammy Sosa. I’m sure there are Cubs fans who would love it if Frank Thomas were found to have used some artificial substance for all that muscular bulk he has, just to shut up White Sox fans who snicker at the Cubs’ expense every time Sosa’s name comes up.

Yet I can’t help but think the Parque account (assuming he’s not leaving any details out) is more significant. Because it tells the story of a guy whose career was basically over, and was using HGH in an attempt to regain the strength he once had.

Not that I think that justifies the use of HGH. By his own admission, he wrote that he knew he was doing something that would be looked down upon when he first injected himself with the substance.

HE EVEN ADMITS to being suspicious of the needles and chemicals when they first came because they didn’t look anything like he expected them to when he first learned about them by perusing the Internet.

But he used them anyway, which makes me think that ballplayers throughout the ages have a similarity about them.

I remember reading “Ball Four,” the ballplayer diary of 1960s pitcher Jim Bouton, who wrote he suspected that if a ballplayer were offered a drug that would boost the speed of his fastball, but at the expense of a year or two of life, the ballplayer wouldn’t hesitate to take it.

Now I know the Chicago Tribune responded to the Sun-Times account by having their former ballplayer – one-time White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell – write a commentary calling Parque a marginal ballplayer who overwrote a story about himself.

YET I THINK the fact that Parque is not is a star is what makes his story more significant. He had the average career – literally, parts of six seasons in the major leagues, without ever making the kind of money that would enable him to spend the rest of his life not working.

Parque didn’t use these drugs to give himself superhuman strength to enable him to break all kinds of records and “desecrate” the baseball record books with tainted accomplishments – which is the image all too many baseball fans want to use when discussing the issue.

After hurting his shoulder and realizing he didn’t have anywhere near the strength he used to, he turned to an artificial means. Which may be “wrong,” but I’m not sure a lot of people in his situation would have behaved differently.

Personally, I will continue to remember Parque for that one respectable season he had – in 2000, when he was one of the White Sox starting pitchers (not the top pitcher) on a team that won the most games in the American League that season, before going down to defeat in the first round of the playoffs against the Seattle Mariners.

OF COURSE, THE Yankees wound up winning the pennant and World Series that year, so perhaps it really doesn’t matter much whether the White Sox won or lost that year.

And as for those people who now are going to want to brand him, I’m going to wonder why they get so bent out of shape on this issue.

I honestly believe that the ballplayers who misuse such drugs are doing harm to their own bodies. In the end, they will pay with whatever physical misfortunes they bring upon themselves.

That is a far worse punishment than any of the talk some sports fans will spew about the need for “lifetime bans” or “asterisks” being attached to any statistical achievements they might have accomplished on the playing field.

AND IN THE end, this issue might be more significant as a story about the modern trends in competition among the Chicago newspapers, rather than as an issue involving steroids in sports.

Parque for the Sun-Times. McDowell for the Tribune.

When was the last time one saw former White Sox pitchers using the opposing newspapers (and their accompanying websites) to tell their story?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Extra, Read all about it! Chicago newspapers this week used former White Sox pitchers (http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/1681419,CST-SPT-parque23.article) to try to bolster (http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/black-jack-white-sox/2009/07/former-white-sox-pitcher-jim-parque-and-steroids.html) their readers’ comprehension of steroids in sports.

The one-time first round draft pick of the Chicago White Sox won nearly half the games of his career (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/parquji01.shtml) in that one season the White Sox took a division title.

EXTRA: Did anybody have Mark Buehrle on Thursday as their ‘pick to click?’

Frank Smith is no longer unique. The man with the anonymous name now has to share his athletic designation with Mark Buehrle.

Both Buehrle and Smith were pitchers for the Chicago White Sox, and until Thursday, Smith was the only Sox pitcher who had ever thrown more than one no-hit ballgame.

SMITH WAS A major leaguer with the White Sox, the Boston Red Sox, the Cincinnati Reds, the Baltimore Terrapins and the Brooklyn Tip-Tops. The latter two teams were in the long-defunct Federal League, which shows you how long ago Smith played ball.

For the record, his White Sox no-hitters came on Sept. 6, 1905 against the Detroit Tigers, and Sept. 20, 1908 against the Philadelphia Athletics.

Now, Buehrle has matched him, with his April 18, 2007 no-hit game against the Texas Rangers, combined with his perfect game (got everybody out) on Thursday against the Tampa Bay Rays.

None of the 14 other White Sox pitchers who threw no-hit games managed to do more than one for the ball club. Their ranks include such stars as Ed Walsh and Ted Lyons, notorious names such as Eddie Cicotte, and such un-immortal talents as Francisco Barrios (who on July 28, 1976 combined with John “Blue Moon” Odom to throw a no-hit game against Odom’s old ball club, the Oakland A’s).

OF COURSE, BUEHRLE also becomes the second White Sox perfect game pitcher ever – not since Charlie Robertson tossed one on April 30, 1922 against the Detroit Tigers.

I’m kind of jealous, since I have never seen a no-hit game being pitched. I have seen some come close, but fail. So naturally, Buehrle pitches his game on a day when I had no time to spare to watch television (let alone go out to the ballpark for a day game).

For the record, I can’t help but think many White Sox fans will enjoy the thought of Buehrle’s first no-hit game more. After all, that was the game in which only one Rangers player got on base – Buehrle walked Sammy Sosa.

And we all got our kicks watching Sammy look like a chump when Buehrle promptly picked him off first base. Although watching DeWayne Wise’s stumbling catch that preserved Buehrle’s achievement comes close to matching that moment.

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Sosa no longer outrages me like he used to when way too many adored him

I can remember the day not so long ago when Sammy Sosa was the face of the Chicago Cubs and the image of the prevalence of the Latino ballplayer in the U.S. major leagues.

He was the home run hitting slugger with a childlike sense of humor, although there were times when Sosa’s schtick came across as being too much like a real-life Chico Escuela.

IN FACT, ABOUT the only people who didn’t think of Sluggin’ Sammy as a baseball golden boy were written off as hopeless cranks whose real reason for not appreciating all that was good about Sosa was the fact that they spent their spare time rooting for the Chicago White Sox.

Petty jealousy, Cubs fans would claim.

But now that the suspicions of some baseball fans have been confirmed with circumstantial evidence published by the New York Times that Sosa failed a drug test for steroids back in 2003, does this mean that White Sox fans are the only people on Planet Earth with their minds grounded in reality?

And what does it say that the only person wanting to be seen in public with Sosa these days is Jose Canseco, the former baseball slugger who admits his steroid use and claims baseball officials are harming his income by refusing to employ him. He wants Sosa to support a lawsuit he is considering filing against Major League Baseball.

ACTUALLY, LET’S GET one thing straight. Sosa passed the test. Failing would mean that no traces of banned substances were found in his system.

So now that people who are quick to dismiss Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmiero will eagerly add Sosa’s name to the list, what should we really think?

For the fact is that back in a certain era of just under a decade ago, Sosa was the face of Chicago athletics. And he also was the modern-age Latino ballplayer personified.

To drop from such exalted status to that of a non-person in a matter of six years is truly unique.

WHAT MAKES SOSA unique is that his rise to sports stardom was so shocking – he had been a journeyman ballplayer for nine years in the major leagues before doing anything that even came close to hinting at stardom.

Both the Texas Rangers and White Sox had given up on him, with the White Sox deciding that his stubbornness to work the kinks out of his swing at bat would prevent him from ever becoming a truly great hitter.

I know many Cubs fans want to believe that White Sox fans somehow wish their team had never given up on Sammy, and somehow were jealous. It just isn’t so.

It’s because we remember how awful a ballplayer he was during his early 1990s stint with the White Sox, and because we always suspected that the only reason he hung on with the Cubs for so long before finally hitting all those home runs was because the Cubs had such awful teams.

THEY COULD AFFORD to keep a baseball-playing hack like the pre-home run hitting Sosa on their roster for so long.

My point is that my years of nitpicking Sosa (who hit for such awful batting average and struck out so often when he wasn’t hitting home runs, and also was a mediocre-to-terrible defensive player) came years ago.

To me, I don’t see what is to be gained by ganging up on Sosa these days.

My initial reaction to hearing from my brother, Chris, about the reports that Sosa how had something resembling a positive steroids test was to shrug my shoulders and say, “meh.”

DO I THINK this amounts to some evidence that the whole concept of the Chicago Cubs as a superior baseball franchise back in the late 1990s (the days when the Cubs would draw about 2.9 million per year and the White Sox bottomed out at about 1.2 million) is a fraud? Probably.

But the Chicago baseball fan in me doesn’t really care about coming up with more evidence of the Cubs’ natural inferiority. Perhaps that is the after effect of rooting for a team that actually wins a World Series in my lifetime.

If anything, it is the part of me that takes an interest in Latin American ballplayers that wonders what will become of the Sosa legacy.

For the fact is that from 1998 to 2003, Sosa the ballplayer was, for lack of a better word, Ruthian. It was in that era that he became the only ballplayer to hit 60 or more home runs in a single season three times, and hit nearly half of the home runs that he accumulated during a 17-season career.

IT WAS THAT inhuman era that made Sosa a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame, where currently there are only 11 members who were born in Latin American countries.

Now that we have to look skeptically (and the fact that some Hall of Fame voters are refusing to back Sosa rival Mark McGwire makes it very likely they will dump on Sosa as well), does this mean a little less recognition for the Latino ballplayer?

Perhaps we should have suspected something was wrong just by looking at Sosa’s achievements. Despite being the only player to hit 60 or more home runs three times, it should be noted that in none of those three seasons did he ever lead the National League in home runs.

Nor has he ever been the Major League home run leader for a single season or a career.

SLAMMIN’ SAMMY WAS an inhuman home run machine (when he wasn’t striking out) who always had someone else (McGwire or Bonds) hitting just a little bit better.

So the part of me that follows the White Sox can smirk a bit at Sosa’s predicament (who now is seriously going to argue against Frank Thomas as the best Chicago baseball player of the 1990s?), while the baseball fan in me is already spent with Sosa criticism.

And the Latino in me wonders how many Latino kids were inspired by Sosa’s image, only to have it crushed these days with these latest reports?

Perhaps as much as seeing my favorite ballplayer as a kid, New York Yankees outfielder Lou Piniella, now wearing that ridiculous Cubby blue on a daily basis.

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Is Hairston an honorary Mexican?

For those of us Chicago baseball fans who can remember back more than a decade, Jerry Hairston comes to mind when we think about the guy who got to play whenever Harold Baines needed a rest, or when the White Sox were in dire need of a pinch hitter.

For those people who pay any attention to professional baseball in Latin America, Hairston was also memorable because of the way he included the Mexican League in his professional career – a four-year stint with the Mexico City Red Devils, in between time with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the White Sox.

BUT NOW, HAIRSTON is reinforcing his Mexican baseball credentials. He’s the father of two members of the Mexican national team that will take the field for the glory of “los Tri-colores” during the World Baseball Classic.

Jerry Jr. (who spent one year with the Cubs) and Scott both get to play for Equipo Mexico because their mother was a Mexican citizen.

So the fact that White Sox pitcher Matt Thornton is a part of Team U.S.A., as is Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly, isn’t the only Chicago angle to the baseball tournament taking place during the next couple of weeks.

And for those who want to know more about Los Hermanos Hairston, check out the Chicago Argus’ sister weblog, The South Chicagoan (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/).

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EDITOR’S NOTES: What exactly constitutes a Mexican (http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090125&content_id=3770858&vkey=wbc&team=) these days?

Mexico’s professional baseball league fills the gap (http://www.baseball-reference.com/h/hairsje01.shtml) in the senior Hairston’s career.

Are the White Sox putting themselves on the verge of Obama overkill?

I’m curious to see what happens Wednesday in Glendale, Ariz.

This is the day at which the Chicago White Sox are hoping to have a “special guest” visit them at their new spring training facility in the suburbs of Phoenix. The team is trying to take advantage of the fact that all the political people of any significance in Chicago root for them (compared to the Cubs, whose biggest political fan is now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich).

AMONG THOSE PEOPLE who root for the White Sox is the guy who lives in the White House.

Yes, Barack Obama is doing his tour of the U.S. to tout the benefits of the now-approved stimulus package that Republican politicos will be all too quick to demonize if it doesn’t work 100 percent perfectly.

And with that tour bringing him to the Southwestern U.S. on Wednesday, White Sox officials figured perhaps they could get the president to show up.

Considering that Obama these days is behaving as though he’s still on the campaign trail rather than serving as the Leader of the Free World, perhaps it would only be natural for him to show up at a ballpark and let himself be seen with the White Sox pitchers and catchers who are required to show up early.

THE BIG GUNS of the White Sox lineup (including Jim Thome, whose home-run in that tie-breaking end-of-season game last October gave the Sox the division title over the Minnesota Twins) won’t be on hand for another couple of weeks.

Yet I really want to believe that an executive of any type (except for the chairman of the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf) is too busy these days to be spending a leisurely day (or even just an hour or so) at the ballpark.

Not that this is the only opportunity Obama is being offered to help tout the ball club that represents Chicago’s South Side.

The White Sox also have offered to have him be present to do “first pitch” honors at their opening game of the 2009 season against the Kansas City Royals. Considering that the president usually gets the first pitch duties at the opening game of the entire season, it would serve to put the White Sox in a prominent point of the Major League Baseball schedule if it were to happen.

BUT SHOULD IT turn out to be impossible for Obama to be back in Chicago to attend a game at U.S. Cellular Field in early April, there’s also another chance for the president to do some sort of White Sox-related duty.

The Charlotte Knights, a professional baseball club in the International League, also wants Obama to do the “first pitch” honors at one of their games.

I have never heard of U.S. presidents doing first pitch duties at minor league ball games.

But the fact that the Charlotte team is the top-level minor league affiliate of the White Sox could give Obama a chance to show off that ratty old cap he persists in wearing. Perhaps he can even figure out a way to do some politicking in North Carolina in conjunction with the ball game.

MY POINT IN engaging in this diatribe is to wonder if the White Sox are getting a tad ridiculous in their promoting the fact that when Obama was a South Side resident, he was inclined to go along with his neighborhood ties and attend games at 35th Street and Bill Veeck Drive (a.k.a., Shields Avenue).

It borders on tacky behavior for the White Sox (who even have a portion of their team website devoted to the fact that Obama does not wear the baby-blue and red cap of the Chicago Cubs) to continually tout his presence.

It is more obnoxious than those television spots the team used a few years ago that gave us reasons why the White Sox were superior that included as their ultimate reason, “The Mayor Likes Us Better.”

True sports fandom is something that can’t be forced, although it can be cheapened with such repetitive (and ridiculous) stunts as constantly trying to remind us whose cap Obama chooses to wear when he goes jogging, or shopping, or engages in any casual activity.

IT MAY GET to the point where some people try to dump on the White Sox because Obama is aligned with them.

I couldn’t help but notice that Topps Chewing Gum (the people who for decades have done baseball cards) came out with a 90-card set that depicts the political life of Obama. One card uses the photograph of Obama in a jersey and cap throwing out the first pitch prior to one of the American League playoff games from 2005 (what a wonderful year).

But in that photo, the Old English Script “Sox” logo has been airbrushed off the jersey and cap. The end result looks generic, and some people might see the dark pinstripes on the jersey and presume he’s wearing a New York Yankees outfit.

I’m sure the very thought makes many a South Sider shudder almost as much as the sight of that Obama-themed White Sox cap that is now for sale.

BUT IF THE White Sox had much in the way of sense (I wonder at times), they’d ease up on trying to ram down our throats at every opportunity the fact that Obama is not among the people who dance with glee every time they get within a half-mile of Clark and Addison streets.

We’ve all seen him in the “Sox” cap. We get it. Quit behaving in ways that make being a “Sox” fan seem as tacky as the sight of Blagojevich in that Cubs jersey with his name sewn on his back shoulders.

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Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

White Sox mascot to help represent Illinois in D.C. inaugural parade

Tourists to the District of Columbia and residents of the capital city are going to get a garish sight when they happen to catch a glimpse of the float included in the inaugural parade that is meant to represent Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois.

To be pulled by a John Deere-brand tractor (the company is based in Moline, Ill.), the float will have a display meant to represent what the Land of Lincoln is all about.

BUT INSTEAD OF having some young girl in a tiara and sash that declares her to be Miss Illinois something-or-other waving her hand, one of the things meant to represent us will be a fuzzy green blob (that’s the best way I can think to describe it) waving its left paw to the masses gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue.

I can’t help but wonder what all those people who don’t have a direct tie to the South Side will think of the sight.

Will some think that we’ve gone goofy in Illinois and/or Chicago? Perhaps they’ll think some creature from the California float snuck onto the Illinois float to try to take over, or that Rod Blagojevich wanted to be a part of the day’s festivities, but had to put on a silly costume in order to sneak in because nobody would let him in as himself?

Because what those people will really be seeing, is Southpaw.

FOR THOSE OF you who have no clue who Southpaw is, the character is the official mascot of the Chicago White Sox baseball team. The guy who wears the costume at White Sox games and at public appearances on behalf of the team is now in the District of Columbia, waiting for his participation in the inaugural parade.

The White Sox (whom Obama has often said are his rooting choice for a professional baseball team) approved inclusion of their mascot on the Illinois float – probably with delusions that it would result in lots of national publicity for the ball club spinning about in their collective head.

Now there are a couple of professional sports franchises who have costumed mascot characters that are a significant part of the teams’ public character. Just about any fan of professional sports in this country knows what the Philly Phanatic is.

In fact, there’s always “The Famous Chicken,” who has become bigger than his original ball club, the San Diego Padres (who now employ a giant costumed missionary named “Friar” to dance around in between innings).

THEN, THERE ARE teams like the White Sox with “Southpaw,” a character created a couple of years ago out of hope that he could help enhance the child-appeal of the ballpark atmosphere at U.S. Cellular Field. Nobody outside of the hardcore fandom has a clue what it is supposed to be.

I don’t know how successful Southpaw has been in trying to gain the love and respect of White Sox fans, or of Chicagoans in general. There are many in our city who don’t have a clue as to his existence. He certainly isn’t beloved.

For every kid who gets a kick out of a giant ball of green fuzz shaking their hand in between innings, there are several (slightly inebriated) adults who find his presence irritating – usually because they think they have to have an attitude that if something didn’t exist in the ball park when they were kids, it must be bad.

In short, Southpaw certainly isn’t a figure that I think of as universally representing our city or state.

I CAN’T HELP but wonder why Jerry Reinsdorf didn’t send the mascot of his other professional sports team in this city – Benny the Bull of the Chicago Bulls would likely have had greater recognition upon being seen by the masses from around the nation. It would also seem to work better, since Obama himself has indicated that while he likes watching the White Sox, basketball seems to be his preferred sport.

So what will the nation think of Southpaw when he gets his national introduction on Tuesday? Will they think he’s cute? Or will they wonder what “Oscar the Grouch” is doing wearing a White Sox uniform?

There is one plus. At least the White Sox no longer have their dueling mascots from the 1980s.

Just think of how ridiculous people would think Illinois is if they were to see the sight of Ribbie and Roobarb engaging in slapstick while roaring down Pennsylvania Avenue on their motorbikes?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: There will be moments of sophistication and high culture as part of the Inauguration festivities on Tuesday. Then, there will also be moments such as those (http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090115&content_id=3745736&vkey=news_cws&fext=.jsp&c_id=cws) involving Southpaw.

Jesse White will go from being the guy whose bureaucratic action stalled Roland Burris (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/elections/obama_inauguration/chi-obama-parade-09-dec09,0,2963946.story) from becoming senator for one week to being the namesake of the tumbling team that also will represent Illinois in the parade.

Moline-based John Deere will have dealerships in Pennsylvania and Maryland provide the tractors that will pull floats (http://www.publicopiniononline.com/ci_11482546) in the inaugural parade.

This (http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/cws/community/southpaw.jsp) is Southpaw.

BARTOLO’S RETURN: Are the White Sox a dumping ground for aging stars?

I’m starting to wonder if there is something in the character of the Chicago White Sox that makes them a “dumping ground” of sorts for aging ballplayers past their prime.

The White Sox made an attempt to bolster their pitching rotation by signing aging hurler Bartolo Colon, who once was an aspiring star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians who also had some solid seasons for the Los Angeles Angels.

BUT AFTER HAVING an injury-plagued season in 2008 with the Boston Red Sox (he only got into 7 games out of the 162-game season), he found himself unemployed to the point where he was willing to listen to the White Sox – who are hopeful his arm can recover to the point where he can be a useful ballplayer in ’09.

But it was similar logic that caused the White Sox to take on other aging stars, all of whom clearly showed that their best days were in the past and that no one would remember their careers for anything that was achieved on the South Side.

Take the career of Sparky Lyle. He was once one of the best relief pitchers in the American League, and combined that skill in throwing a slider with a prankster nature (Sparky’s derriere and birthday cakes had unusually close relationships on many occasions) to make him one of the most notable ballplayers of the 1970s.

Fans of the New York Yankees remember him as one of their team’s all-time stars, while Red Sox fans remember him as a would-be star who got away (does anybody remember Danny Cater?)

BUT LYLE’S CAREER included a stint in Chicago. In fact, this is where it all ended for Sparky as a major league ballplayer.

The White Sox picked him up for the latter half of 1982, and about all that was proved was that the Philadelphia Phillies (who employed him the first half of that season) were justified in getting rid of him.

In 11 games, he pitched 12 innings, and managed to get the final save of the 238 he managed to build up during his career. Otherwise, it was a forgettable stretch of time.

Is something along those lines what we’re likely to see from Colon? An aging star for the Indians will give the White Sox nothing, except some speculation in future years about what the White Sox could have achieved had they not let him go following one year he was with the Sox in 2003 (winning 15 games that season)?

IF THAT IS the case, the Colon is the latest version of Rocky Colavito.

For those too young to remember Rocco Domenico Colavito, he was a star slugger in the 1950s and early 1960s who entertained Indians fans of that era. In fact, the more irrational of them (perhaps it’s something about drinking water from the Cuyahoga River) talk of the “Curse of Rocky Colavito,” which refers to his trade to the Detroit Tigers and the fact that the Indians have not won a World Series championship since.

On a side note, that is the difference between Chicago Cubs fans and fans of real baseball clubs. Indians and Red Sox (Babe Ruth) fans talk of curses caused by the trading away of star ballplayers, while the Cubs think they’re cursed because some Andy Frain usher had the sense to kick a fan with a goat out of the ballpark.

Eventually, Colavito wound up with the White Sox. It was 1967, the year they lasted in the pennant race to the final weekend of the season, before getting swept in a season-ending series to the last-place Kansas City Athletics (who departed the Midwest a few weeks later for their current home in Oakland).

COLAVITO WAS A part of the reason the White Sox couldn’t rise above the pennant race pack consisting of the Red Sox, Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins.

When a Colavito bat was supposed to be a major factor in their pennant drive, the fact that he hit only .221 with three home runs and 29 runs batted in over 60 games is worthy of blame.

It is awful.

Are we destined to see something similar from Bartolo this season? Will those of us White Sox fans who are hoping the ball club can once again contend for a division title someday be blaming Colon’s girth and age for failing to inspire the Sox?

AGE 35 IS not old in real life. But when it comes to athletics, it borders on ancient – even in today’s era where physical conditioning enables some devoted athletes to play ball well into their 40s.

The problem is that Colon has never been a conditioning freak.

The 235-pound weight indicated by baseball officials is likely a generous estimate. I remember the one time I interviewed him coming away thinking this was someone whose girth was larger than mine.

So Colon will be remembered as the guy who managed to win 150 games thus far during his 12-season career pitching in the major leagues, and he got 135 of those wins during a span from 1998 to 2005.

ONE CAN ARGUE he was once one of the best pitchers in baseball.

But a combination of age, physical conditioning and the sense that anything that can go wrong to a Chicago ball player will makes me wonder if the White Sox are destined to be the team that allows him one last game pitching in the major leagues – in between stints on the disabled list.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: After getting White Sox fans to briefly believe he was returning to Chicago in 2008, Bartolo Colon signed a contract to play ball on the South Side (http://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2009/01/15/Bartolo_Colon_returns_to_White_Sox/UPI-62431232051556/) during 2009.

Colon is considered one of the best Los Angeles Angels ballplayers ever. Somehow, I doubt (http://www.halosheaven.com/2008/12/27/702907/top-100-angels-bartolo-col) he will achieve the same status in White Sox history.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Former Lottery chief now social secretary

While most people were paying attention to President-elect Barack Obama on Monday because of his Treasury Department appointments, the one that caught my eye was his choice of a social secretary.

The woman who will be in charge of the staff that coordinates social engagements in the Obama-run White House will be Desiree Rogers, the one-time Illinois Lottery director under former Gov. Jim Edgar.

ROGERS, IN RECENT years, was working for Allstate Financial as manager of social networking, and had also been president of Peoples Gas for several years.

But the political stint that set up her ability to draw these corporate gigs was her six years as director of the Illinois Department of the Lottery. Which is an official way of saying she ran the modern-day (and completely legal) equivalent of the old “numbers” racket.

Rogers was in charge of the state agency that managed the lottery in a way that made it seem glamorous and fun and a path toward achieving dreams, rather than just some flaky games with near-impossible odds by which people who least could afford it were throwing away their last dollar to buy a “chance” at getting rich quick.

I can remember being a reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago who covered Lottery press conferences featuring some of the tawdriest people who could be found by Central Casting, only to be staged by Rogers and her staff in ways that made their stories sound like the “American Dream” come true.

IF IT SOUNDS like I’m saying that Rogers is an expert at presenting fantasy, then perhaps she is perfectly qualified for the job of coordinating the details by which the Obama White House becomes a magical place (think JFK’s “Camelot,” only 21st Century and more urban), instead of the setting for a presidency that is getting hit with an unpopular war and devastating economic struggles on Day One.

One bit of irony strikes me in the appointment. Back in the day when Rogers was a state agency director, her husband was John Rogers, an executive with Ariel Capital Management who back then had his own political appointment with the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (McCormick Place and Navy Pier). Now, he’s one of three Chicago-oriented co-chairs of the committee coordinating the inauguration festivities.

If someone had told me some 15 years ago that we would someday have an African-American couple from Chicago living in the White House, I would have guessed it would be the Rogers, with their long-time friends, Barack and Michelle, being brought along to work on their White House staff.

What else was notable about the news of the world, as perceived from the World’s Greatest City on the shores of Lake Michigan (and don’t say Milwaukee).

HOOVER ELEMENTARY WAS SLOW ON THE DRAW: So much for the suburban Calumet City school that wanted to be the first in the nation to rename itself for Obama. Ludlum Elementary School in Hempstead, N.Y., will get that “honor.”

Officials with the Hoover-Shrum School District had wanted to rename their elementary school from honoring former president Herbert Hoover to Obama. Officials in the district had implied they wanted the first “Obama School” in the nation to be an Illinois school.

But while Calumet City school officials were trying to build up support, officials with the New York-based school district just up and went and adopted the new name.

This could just be the start of a trend to rename thinks for Barack. Some reports note that officials in Antigua want to rename their Caribbean island nation’s mountain from Boggy Peak to Mount Obama.

SINCE WHEN IS A SENATE SEAT AN X-MAS GIFT?: Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be trying to insert some levity into the oh-so-serious debate about a U.S. Senate replacement for Barack Obama, but is it really appropriate for him to think of his appointment as a “Christmas gift” to some Illinois politico?

That’s how he referred to his yet-to-be-made decision about picking an Obama replacement, for which he has had some talks with political people interested in the post. And he reportedly had a telephone conversation with Illinois’ other U.S. senator – Richard Durbin – Monday afternoon.

Considering how many people around Illinois seem offended that Blagojevich has any say in the replacement (Illinois law lets him make the pick, based on whatever criteria he thinks is relevant), it is mistaken for Blagojevich to even joke about the Senate position as though it is his to grant, rather than a position of responsibility to the people of Illinois.

Of course, there’s one thing tackier. That was seeing Blagojevich and the Illinois first family taking part Monday in ceremonies at the Thompson Center state government building to light the state’s official Christmas tree. Couldn’t they wait until Friday, after Thanksgiving, rather than join the masses who are stretching the holiday season out way too long.

WE’RE NUMBER TWO?!?: I’m still trying to figure out the logic of the Chicago White Sox shelling out a few million dollars to break their lease to have spring training in Tuscon, Ariz.

The White Sox were sharing a fairly new stadium complex with the Arizona Diamondbacks for pre-season workouts and exhibition games, but now will go to Glendale, Ariz., where they will share a brand-new stadium complex with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As I comprehend it, the White Sox are moving to a suburb of Phoenix along with nearly a dozen other major league teams. Travel expenses and details will be minimal, compared to when they trained in Tuscon – about a two-hour bus ride from most other teams they would play in Cactus League activity. Either way, the White Sox wind up being the “number two team” in their own spring training park.

One bit of historic irony in the move – the Arizona Cardinals football team play their games in a stadium in Glendale. Back in the days when they were the Chicago Cardinals representing the Sout’ Side in the NFL, they played their games at the White Sox’ Comiskey Park.

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Professional baseball and the Olympics – will Obama impact the sports world?

It always amuses me the degree to which political people, who have the authority to impose significant change to our society, go ga-ga whenever they’re in the presence of professional athletes.

Those same athletes could usually care less about anything political – unless it winds up having a direct impact on their narrow world focus.

SO WHILE SOME people are pondering whether Rahm Emanuel made a mistake in giving up a chance to be Speaker of the House someday so he could be President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff now, and others are trying to figure out who will sell their soul to the devil/Rod Blagojevich for a chance to be a U.S. senator for two years, there is yet another subgroup that has its priorities set differently.

How will Obama’s presidency impact athletics?

Think I’m exaggerating? I’ve already read several accounts of various athletic-related issues to which Obama will have an affect just because of his pending move from Hyde Park to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., in the District of Columbia.

The obvious one is that people are saying the love the international community has for the Obama persona will reflect well enough on the United States that this country may very well get to host the summer Olympic Games in 2016.

IT IS EXPECTED that since the U.S. Olympic Committee is putting its bid to host the games behind Obama’s adopted hometown (in a stadium to be erected within walking distance of Obama’s Hyde Park home), that Barack will now use his influence to twist the arms of the International Olympic Committee and make them realize that Chicago is a superior city to Madrid, Toyko or Rio de Janeiro – the other towns under consideration.

I think people are overestimating the aura of Obama. Yet the history of the IOC is one filled with many decisions that have little rationality behind them. Who’s to say Obama wouldn’t have an impact?

But this isn’t even the only Olympics issue that Obama allegedly will affect.

There are people in this country who believe that the presence of a President Obama will also persuade IOC officials to reinstate baseball and softball as Olympic sports.

BOTH OF THOSE games were played possibly for the last time at the Olympic Games this summer in Beijing. They were dropped from the 2012 Olympics to be held in London – on the grounds that there isn’t enough international interest in either sport.

Yet the Canadian Press reported Thursday how Major League Baseball officials who would like to see baseball reinstated are looking favorably upon Obama to boost the international perception of the United States, which they think was the real reason baseball was dropped.

How better to punish the United States than to say nobody cares about its “National Pastime?”

Yet among people connected to the business of Major League Baseball, Obama’s election is not seen as a complete positive.

MANY OF THOSE high-salaried athletes were more than inclined to buy into Obama opponent John McCain’s rhetoric that Barack would “spread the wealth,” including that of star ballplayers who think that a .280 batting average or a 3.90 earned run average completely justifies $10 million per year – guaranteed for six seasons. And if they actually do excel, then one had better roll out the fleet of Brinks’ trucks to handle their cash.

Some agents look at Obama’s promises to boost the top federal income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, and react by thinking they have to negotiate new contracts for their clients that would focus on having as much of their income as possible paid under the old tax rate.

Scott Boras, the agent who represents many of the biggest bucks names in baseball, told the Associated Press how he may negotiate new contracts for his clients in upcoming weeks that seek significant signing bonuses to be paid out before the end of the year – just to get around paying the proposed new tax rate (which actually is a return to the rate that existed under President Bill Clinton).

Should we assume that Barack Obama is not the friend of the ballplayer?

IT WOULDN’T SHOCK me to learn that the few ballplayers who think at all about electoral politics lean Republican. Many of those social conservatives who tout “traditional” values tend to think of the local athletes as a favored part of the culture, which means many of these ballplayers were raised thinking of themselves as special.

Why should they be eager to dump on a group that looks favorably upon them?

Yet that doesn’t mean all baseball people are dreading an Obama presidency.

Take the Chicago White Sox, the team that has long been a part of the character of South Side Chicago and which Obama adopted as his favorite when he picked Hyde Park to be his home neighborhood some two decades ago.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday that the White Sox have already offered up an invitation to Obama to attend Opening Day 2009 – to be held April 6 against the Kansas City Royals.

That would give the White Sox a Presidential Opener, an annual tradition that would be a publicity coup for the White Sox – and Chicago baseball in general. The closest this city has ever come to a presidential opener was 1994 when then-first lady Hillary Clinton tossed out the first pitch (and got a sloppy kiss from broadcaster Harry Caray to start the Chicago Cubs’ season).

But it also threatens baseball traditions, which usually has the president throw out the first pitch of the season either at the first game for the Washington Nationals’ opener (which is scheduled for April 13 against the World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies) or at the first game of the entire season (which is scheduled for April 5, although ESPN – which wants to broadcast the first game that day – has not yet chosen which two teams will start their season a day early to comply).

Could Barack Obama’s presence be enough to get Major League Baseball to start off its season in 2009 on the South Side? Or would Obama get pressured to do his ceremonial honors at some other team’s Opening Day?

AND IF OBAMA did snub the White Sox, would their fans ever forgive him? Probably not?

Because when it comes to political vs. athletic allegiances, these sports people have their priorities – and it certainly isn’t in favor of the Leader of the Free World, no matter where he comes from.

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Yet another year goes by without the World Series being played in Chicago

The World Series begins Wednesday, and those dreams some of us had of an all-Chicago affair deciding a U.S. professional baseball championship for 2008 are so dead they’re burned to a crisp.

It’s going to be the Tampa Bay Rays against the Philadelphia Phillies. While I can’t say I really care who wins the thing, I must admit to taking some interest in potential Chicago angles to this series.

IT IS THOSE Chicago angles that makes me think all of us in the Second City ought to be rooting for the Devil Rays (I don’t care if that name offends the locals, it’s a sea creature and it sounds better than just “Rays”).

In fact, this ought to be something that could potentially unite fans of the White Sox and a certain other ball club that had delusions of winning a pennant.

Take the Phillies, a ballclub that like the Cubs dates back to the 19th Century. And it is a team that quite possibly has an even more pathetic history than the Cubs (who were a respectable National League franchise for the first third of the 20th Century).

While the Cubs have only won two World Series in their history (1907 and 1908), the Phillies are a team that have only won the series once (1980) in their history.

JUST IMAGINE THE anguish Cubs fans would feel if the Phillies were to win the World Series, thereby giving them just as many overall victories as the Cubs? Ever since the Braves changed the losing character of their franchise history in Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta by rattling off a dominant string of division titles and five league championships in the 1990s, it has been the Phillies and the Cubs as the historic doormats of the National League.

And if the Phillies were to win a World Series, it would create the perception in some minds that they too have dumped their losing ways, leaving the Cubs all alone (except for a few dumpy expansion teams) at the bottom of the baseball pool.

They went from being convinced this was THEIR year to potentially being left alone in the loser pool.

I don’t think I could handle the mass depression that the North Side and its sympathizers would sink into. In fact, I think such depression would make Cubs fans even more unbearable.

BUT THERE ARE a pair of other reasons for which I will admit to taking some interest in Tampa Bay winning a World Series title – even though they have only been in existence for 11 years (it took the Houston Astros 44 years of existence before they won their first National League pennant, and are still waiting for that first World Series title).

Those reasons are pitcher Chad Bradford and outfielder Cliff Floyd – both of whom found their baseball fortunes at a point this year where they wound up signing to play for Tampa Bay.

Floyd is a Chicago area native who played his high school ball in suburban South Holland (the same high school that produced one-time Chicago Bull Eddy Curry and former White Sox and Cubs pitcher Steve Trout). He’s also the guy who grew up a White Sox fan (claiming Harold Baines as his favorite ballplayer) who later went on to play for the Cubs (in 2007).

This could literally be the year that all Chicagoans can unite behind rooting for a hometown guy to have that BIG moment, thereby making him a local sports legend for the remainder of his life – even if his “local” moment came for another city.

CHICAGO SPORTS FANS have so little history of baseball heroes in October that we’ll settle for a local boy done well somewhere else – just like we don’t hold it against Bill Skowron (who learned how to hit while playing slow-pitch softball back in the 1940s) that he had his baseball heroics playing for the New York Yankees back in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Then, there is Bradford, a relief pitcher who I still remember from the beginning of his career when he was with the White Sox.

Bradford is not the BIG MAN who comes into a game to finish it off. He’s the guy who pitches to a hitter or two at a time in mid-game, to prevent a messy situation from becoming a complete disaster.

What makes him unique is that he’s a sub-mariner. He throws his pitches with a motion that’s not quite underhand. But it definitely isn’t a sidearm throw.

I STILL REMEMBER the first time I ever saw him pitch (in 2000 in a late-season game against the Seattle Mariners). As it turned out, I had a seat that game in the lower deck straight behind home plate.

I got the same view of the pitcher that the catcher and umpire had, and I still remember the break on Bradford’s pitches as being absolutely freaky. He doesn’t throw overly hard, but I can’t hit him even in my dreams.

While I realize the White Sox shared the same doubts about Bradford (how can such a freakish throwing motion ever work long term?) that many conventional baseball people have, I must admit to being intrigued that he has lasted for so many ball clubs throughout this decade (the average major league baseball player’s career is only four seasons – he’s already lasted for nine).

If anything, I’ll watch Bradford come into ballgames and try to envision “What if?” As in, what if Bradford had been kept in Chicago? What could he have achieved on the South Side?

THEN, THERE’S THE biggest “What if?” What if we had lost the White Sox to St. Petersburg, Fla.?

Don’t forget that the monstrosity of a stadium that Florida officials built in the mid-1980s in hopes of luring a major league team to the Tampa Bay area nearly lured the White Sox (Thank God for political manipulation, Springfield-style, that kept the team in Chicago).

That World Series title in 2005, along with division titles in 1993 and 2000, and generally winning records throughout the 1990s and 2000s, could have easily been achieved by the “Florida White Sox.”

I’m willing to throw the fans of Tampa Bay a bone and let them finally have a winning season (including an American League pennant and a chance at a World Series title), particularly since it means those of us who are Sout’ Siders at heart got to keep our historic ball club.

SO GO RAYS! Beat the Phillies (even if our junior senator, Barack Obama, is being deluded enough by his campaign manager to root for Philadelphia).

And preferably, they’ll do it in less than six games. Because I’m really not in the mood for a Republican stink over the Obama infomercial on Oct. 29 delaying Game Six of the World Series. We have enough stupid issues in Campaign ’08. Here’s hoping baseball helps avoid another one from arising.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: All those people who placed pre-season bets on Tampa Bay to win the World Series this year (back when the odds were 200-1) have the potential to clean up (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8_fAf0_P0VnrmKibfTL7ywUv8ugD93UEN4G0) financially.

There are two Rays players (http://www.baseball-reference.com/f/floydcl01.shtml) with the potential (http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/bradfch01.shtml) to stir up Chicago interest.

How will David Letterman mock Tampa Bay baseball these days (http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/index/php/20020327.phtml)?

A history lesson (http://whitesoxinteractive.com/History&Glory/SaveOurSox.htm) about what could have been.

No ball game today in Chicago!

A question to be pondered by Chicagoans on both sides of the baseball partisan split. Which concept is more depressing?

Is it the sight of all those unsold souvenir books in bookstores and supermarkets proclaiming "This is the Year!" that no one wants because it reminds Cubs fans of just how quickly (and tackily) their ball club failed in the National League playoffs this year?

OR IS IT the lack of a sight of similar souvenir books celebrating the fact that the White Sox also won a division title in 2008, and did so with a truly historic flourish at season's end? But because of the way the White Sox barely lasted longer than the Cubs in American League playoff action, there was no time to put something together.

I can't think of any White Sox fan who's that anxious to buy something now. You can't even find caps with a patch or t-shirts proclaiming the 2008 A.L. Central Division champions. And those Cubs shirts and caps that were mass-produced out of a delusion that this truly WAS the year are already marked down significantly in price.

It just means we're shifting attention to next year.

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7-2 + 10-3 + 3-1 = 0-3 & outta there

So much for the dream of an all-Chicago World Series.

The Chicago Cubs managed to become the first team to get knocked out of the playoffs, losing their third straight game to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

NOT THAT CHICAGO White Sox fans should gloat – the only thing that made the Cubs the first team knocked out of the playoff picture as opposed to the White Sox is that the Cubs started postseason play one day earlier last week.

Sunday could very well be the final game of ’08 on the South Side – unless the White Sox shape up pretty quickly.

So Chicago will not get a $100 million shot into the local economy by having the Cubs in the World Series, or a $154 million jolt from an all-Chicago series. There might still be a chance of a $72 million boost from having the White Sox in the series, but the fan in me is bracing myself for the worst – yet another Chicago-less championship season.

Now some people are going to get offended at my having any thoughts about this particular portion of the 2008 Major League Baseball postseason, since I am an American League fan who has made it clear that in an all-Chicago World Series, I would be rooting for the White Sox.
Does this headline (above) equal this one (below) in terms of Chicago Tribune types jumping the gun in anticipation of an event that didn't happen?

AND I AM not among those people who would rather NOT see the Sox in an all-Chicago series because I would “fear” the thought of losing to the Cubs. When it comes to pressure moments, NOBODY loses to the Cubs.

No matter how much Cubs fans like to talk about their favorite team as being some sort of elite franchise in professional baseball along the lines of the New York Yankees, this is a ball club with a legacy (particularly in the past half century) more akin to the St. Louis Browns.

So I was not surprised to see the team suddenly become so weak. I think the quintessential moment of the Cubs’ stint in the playoffs came Saturday night in the seventh inning when the North Side’s ball club managed to get two baserunners on, including Kosuke Fukudome (who managed his first base hit of the playoffs).

At that moment, so-called big bopper Alfonso Soriano came up. A big hit could have made the game close. A home run could have tied it. Instead, he weakly flied out to right field. And the rest of the Cubs lineup couldn’t do a thing to drive in those runs.

NOW I DON’T want to appear as though I’m gloating about a Cubs’ loss. But I have to admit it is a relief to know we’re now going to get a few months rest from the fan rhetoric of recent months – all that talk that this year was THE year for the Cubs, that they were entitled to think from Day One that a World Series victory was inevitable.

I’m even going to giggle at the thought of the Chicago Tribune, which published a glossy book of photographs paying tribute to the Cubs’ season, entitled “This is the Year!”

Uh, no it isn’t.

The Cubs ought to realize how fortunate they were this season to make it through the year without any serious injuries. If they had, they would not have dominated their division so thoroughly this season.

HECK, THEY MIGHT have had a season more akin to the White Sox, who although they were in first place for much of the year had to put up with the Minnesota Twins lurking close behind all year, and even threatening to win the division in the final days.

For all those people who want to argue that 2008 was some sort of “historic” season for Chicago sports because of the Cubs, I’d argue that the most interesting baseball happening this year was the White Sox’ season finish.

Defeating Cleveland, Detroit and Minnesota three straight games played on three consecutive days to finally clinch their division title (knowing that a loss on any one of those days would end the season in failure) was a remarkable achievement.

I think it was more awesome than any Cubs game – moreso than that no-hit game Carlos Zambrano pitched against the Houston Astros in Milwaukee.

OF COURSE, MAYBE I’d think a little more of that no-hit game if I didn’t remember the last time a White Sox pitcher successfully reached that achievement – Mark Buehrle in 2007 against the Texas Rangers.

What does it say that Chicago pitchers can do the job against Texas ball clubs?

And on a final note, 2008 will go into the books as the first time in 102 years that both of Chicago's baseball clubs finished the regular season in first place. But with the modern-day structure of playoff baseball, both of our home city's teams appear as though they will fall short of the ultimate goal - a league championship.

So now it's going to be 103 years (and counting) since the last all-Chicago World Series. I only hope to still be alive when it happens again.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Tom Boswell of the Washington Post is usually a top-notch baseball writer, but I can’t help but wonder (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100302276.html) if he wishes he could “take back” this column written just prior to Saturday night’s Cubs’ loss.

Now that we’re going to be at 101 years and counting, we are going to have to listen to much (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=snibbe/081002&sportCat=mlb) more rhetoric about curses.

Figure for yourself how much money people would spend if another World Series would come (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=31102) to Chicago.