Dawson to find himself in middle of Hall of Fame '20 fiasco over Jeter?

The world of professional baseball just had its Hall of Fame induction ceremonies for this year, yet it seems that a prominent Chicago ballplayer will find himself in the middle of a stink over next year’s rituals.

Forner MVP in middle of Jeter affair

At stake is that the Hall of Fame usually invites all of its living members to attend the ceremonies each year. That would include Andre Dawson, who was inducted back in 2010 for his seasons of excellence with the Montreal Expos, but whom some fans prefer to remember for his stint with the Chicago Cubs.

WINNING A MOST Valuable Player award while wearing Cubbie blue can have that effect.

But now it seems that Dawson, along with one-time Cincinnati Reds star Tony Perez, are saying they may not bother to show up for the 2020 induction ceremonies.

Although we won’t know until year’s end, there are those who are convinced that next year’s Hall of Fame ritual will wind up being a celebration of New York Yankees star Derek Jeter.

Who as it turns out went from being the toast of Manhattan to being an owner of the Miami Marlins. He’s now baseball management. His own team, and in a city of tropical glory.

IT’S JUST A shame, in a sense, that the Marlins haven’t played worth squat during the years he has been in charge.

Still bitter about losing his job?

But as it turns out, back when Jeter became a part of Marlins’ management, both Dawson and Perez had been working for the Marlins as coaches. Both were amongst the people who lost their jobs because Jeter wanted to dump the ‘old’ way of doing things – and perhaps add an overtone of New York Yankee-style glamour.

For what it’s worth, both were later re-offered their jobs, but at significant pay cuts. Along with demands that the two stay out of the team clubhouses and not show up in uniform during spring training camp.

Which must seem a significant blow to the athletic egos of the two, both of whom seem to still hold a grudge. Dawson says he probably won’t attend because he, “doesn’t have a sense or feeling like I want to sit on that stage to hear what (Jeter) has to say.”

PEREZ IS MORE blunt, saying he doesn’t want to be a part of any day that celebrates the big star of the New York Yankees’ dominance over baseball in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Yankees glamour diminishing

“It wasn’t nice, what happened at the end,” he said.

So will Dawson or Perez be missed if they turn out to be no-shows? Maybe not! Chances are good that the baseball fan-types who will make the trek to Cooperstown, N.Y., because of Jeter aren’t going to notice who doesn’t show!

It will be a celebration of their guy, and nothing else. And as for the out-of-town (as in non-New York) fans, they’ll probably just think of it as another moment of dissing the Yankees – which is something they’re used to doing every moment they get.

IT MEANS WE won’t have to hear again the stories of that 1987 MVP award that Dawson won even though he was playing for a Cubs’ ballclub that won only 76 games and finished dead last in their division.

Will Jeter top Jordan as management failure

It also shows just how much of a blow that the Jeter image has taken with the fact that his Marlins’ teams, which in 2018 finished with a 63-98 won/loss record – which is actually even more pathetic than that Cubs team that had Dawson’s big bat to make things interesting.

It seems that some guys are not going to be interested in leeching off the Jeter persona on his big day. Because Jeter’s persona may have dived down even deeper than that of Michael Jordan.

For the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association have had way too many pathetic seasons since 2006, when Jordan transitioned from being the Hall of Famer of the Chicago Bulls into management. Almost as though Jordan is determined to take over the athletic losing ways of the Chicago Cubs – unless Jeter can top him in Miami.

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Sports fans say they want escape from life's tensions, but mostly only want their own attitudes reinforced

I found myself enjoying some baseball this weekend, in the form of the college baseball tourney recently renamed for one-time Chicago Cubs star Andre Dawson.

The new namesake of HBCU tourney

That tournament played this weekend in the much milder weather of New Orleans gave the University of Illinois at Chicago Flames a chance to start out their season away from the Saturday afternoon snowfall we had in Chicago. But the rest of the schools participating were southern in nature, and most were the HBCUs of the country.

THAT’S AS IN Historically Black Colleges and Universities – the schools that date back to when black people were excluded from traditional higher education, so a class of colleges sprung up to create opportunities.

Those colleges aren’t exclusively black enrollment anymore, but there are some people who feel more comfortable trying to get a higher education in an environment where they’re not the minority. This weekend, places like Alabama State, Alcorn State, Grambling, Southern, Prairie View A&M and Arkansas-Pine Bluff got to show their stuff on the baseball diamond.

I’m sure there are going to be some people who will be offended that such a tournament is taking place. The Major League Baseball website is filled with nameless comments calling the tourney "a joke" and emphasizing they'd never heard of it before. But then again, they’re the ones whose idea of integration is that everybody act as though they were white.

They are the first to scream “racist!” (or their favorite taunt, “reverse racism!”) whenever something comes along that forces them to admit racial bias still exists. They don’t want to be called out on their own Archie Bunker-like tendencies.

Helping to advise new HBCU tourney

IT WAS NICE to see that Major League Baseball is giving this particular tournament some support and publicity. What with Dawson (who played college ball at the historically-black Florida A&M University) giving his name, and one-time Chicago White Sox manager Jerry Manuel serving as a consultant.

For what it was worth, it was nice to be able to ignore the Saturday snowfall that reminded us winter ain’t through by any means to see baseball being played – with the Flames overcoming a 4-3 deficit in the 9^th inning to ultimately win the ballgame 9-5.

Which makes me feel sorry for those people who are going to want to think I wasted my Saturday afternoon away by watching some lower class of baseball. One they probably think is not worthy of any public attention.

Wrong sport? Or knucklehDeaded fans?

Probably the same kind of people who get upset whenever anybody points out the declining number of black ballplayers currently on Major League rosters. They’ll argue black people just don’t play baseball that much, and we shouldn’t think it an issue.

LIKELY, THEY BELIEVE the lasting lesson of 2014 and the Little League World Series that the Jackie Robinson West team from Chicago is that a majority-black ball club can only win if it cheats.

Yet this kind of attitude isn’t limited to baseball and springtime. Take hockey, where also on Saturday several Chicago Blackhawks fans were ejected from the United Center for their racially-tainted taunts of visiting team players.

Specifically, of Devante Smith-Pelly, a forward for the Washington Capitals who is one of the few black players in the National Hockey League.

When he was sent to the penalty box during the game, Blackhawks fans taunted him with a reminder that they thought he was playing the wrong sport.

FOUR FANS WERE kicked out of the stadium and the Blackhawks issued an apology, yet the Internet is filled with rants (anonymous, of course) contending that people were too sensitive about the slur (which was “basketball, basketball, basketball).

Black Lives matter activists “can call for the deaths and killings of police officers and that’s considered free speech?... Enough of this out-of-control absurd political correctness,” one Chicago Tribune commenter wrote.

Now playing for Toronto, Granderson was on hand to root for alma mater Flames

Of course, the very phrase “political correctness” has become a way of judging one’s racial attitudes – the ones who toss it out usually are upset that they’re being called out for their own bouts of verbal nastiness. As though their free speech right entitles them to the last word on EVERYTHING!

The sad part is that it means we can’t get away from this racial nonsense even at the ballpark or the stadium. Even though the ironic part is that many sports fans claim they follow ballgames as a form of escape – what they really seem to want is to have their own close-minded thoughts reaffirmed.

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Where’s John Scott?

I kind of felt sorry on Sunday for John Scott.

He was an outfielder in professional baseball who, in a sense, made it to the top of his profession. He has three lines of type in Baseball Encyclopedias indicating he played parts of two seasons with the San Diego Padres and one year with the Toronto Blue Jays back in the team’s first year of existence in 1977.

HE WILL FOREVER be able to say he was a major league baseball player, and I realize there are many people who would desperately have liked to have made that claim – but cannot.

Yet on Sunday, when Andre Dawson was giving his acceptance speech upon becoming a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., Scott was, well, who knows? He hasn’t done much that has attracted public attention (which can be positive in that he hasn’t seriously screwed anything up) since leaving baseball (where he is a career .222 hitter who managed all of two home runs in his career).

What ties the two men together is that staple of memorabilia – baseball cards. The set issued by Topps Chewing Gum for 1977 includes card number 473, which depicts four rookies all of whom have that fresh-faced look of a full life of baseball glory ahead of them.

One of them is Dawson, who is the reason this card has a book value of $20 (compared to the perhaps $0.50 it would command if it didn’t have a Hall of Fame player on it). Another is Scott.

WHAT IT AMOUNTS to is that the highlight of Scott’s baseball career could literally become that he once had his picture put on the same piece of cardboard as the man who went on to become the Hawk to a generation of North Siders (Sout’ Siders know who “The Hawk” really is).

While Dawson went on to play baseball into the 1990s and is beloved to certain Cubs fans, how many Blue Jays fans except for the most hard-core remember the man who was a part of their team’s original ballclub?

While Dawson managed to get himself immortalized, Scott’s career ended at age 26 in 1978, when his attempt to stick in baseball with the Springfield Redbirds of the old American Association produced a .281 batting average, 50 stolen bases – and no interest by the parent club St. Louis Cardinals in promoting him back to the major league roster.

His claim to fame in Blue Jays history? He was the lead-off Blue Jays batter in their first game ever, on April 7, 1977 against the Chicago White Sox (the game that was played even though it snowed heavily throughout). He was struck out by pitcher Ken Brett.

BOTH DAWSON AND Scott were equals, in a sense, back in the spring of ’77, as they had hopes of lengthy careers playing baseball in Canada. Dawson made the trip players dream about that ends in Cooperstown. Scott took the trip that occurs much more often, struggling (and failing) to stay in baseball while playing in Springfield, Ill., the very next season.

I wonder if he has any memories of the capital city, or of eating a “horseshoe?”

For his sake, I hope his life has turned out well, post-baseball. At the very least, the value of his baseball card just shot up significantly – all due to Dawson.

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Posturing galore on Wednesday

I’m dreading Wednesday.

That is going to be a day for all the gasbags to come crawling out of the woodwork and express their “outrage” over the great injustices that will be committed that day.

WHAT MAKES IT worse is that there isn’t even just one issue that will cause the rhetorical pontification that will spout up that day. Politics and sports – take your pick. There are going to be ticked off people.

Wednesday is the day that an Illinois government commission will meet both in Chicago and at the Statehouse in Springpatch to discuss the “fate” of the Thomson Correctional Center. That also will be the day that the Baseball Hall of Fame will inform us which ballplayers – if any – wind up gaining admission this year.

The big, fat balls of gas will come out on both issues, and we’re going to hear so much pompous rhetoric – particularly if onetime Montreal Expo Andre Dawson (who played a few years with the Chicago Cubs) doesn’t get it, while the other side of town will give us some people seriously outraged at the concept that former Chicago White Sox outfielder Harold Baines never gains more respect from Hall of Fame voters.

The scary thing is that their rhetoric will be just as intense as the cheap talk coming from the political people at the Thompson Center and at the Statehouse.

FOR IT WILL be on Wednesday that the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability will use modern technology to meet without gathering in the same room to express their thoughts about the fact that the federal government wants to purchase the unused maximum-security state prison from Illinois government – so as to provide a place to locate some of the people alleged to have committed acts of terrorism against the United States who now are being held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

State officials even go so far to say that they may reach a decision on what to do with this issue when they meet on Wednesday.

Hah!

I will be the first to concede this is a serious issue. It is legitimate. It ought not to be ridiculed by anyone.

BUT THE IDEA that anything that will happen on /Wednesday will resolve this issue is a laughable concept. For the bottom line is that this is a federal issue. It is going to be the Congress and the president who ultimately settle this score.

All that is going to happen on Wednesday is that a lot of state officials, some of whom have Election /Day interests at stake come Feb. 2, will make pompous statements meant to make themselves look firm and authoritative to the people of their home districts who foolishly elected them once and likely will send them back to Springfield to continue to do “the people’s business.”

The state at some point will have to take some sort of vote approving the sale of the prison that was meant to be opened in the early 2000s as a way of giving the state a modern maximum-security facility – but never was properly opened because the state’s financial problems made it impossible for them to afford to operate it.

In short, Thomson was the fancy new house that we never could afford, and now someone is willing to take it off our hands at something resembling a fair price.

BUT WE’RE GOING to hear the politicking from Republican officials who will parrott the partisan rhetoric of their federal government counterparts – bringing inmates from Guantanamo Bay to Thomson somehow makes us Illinoisans (and Chicagoans in particular) a target for terrorist plots.

Ignoring the fact that the city’s size and amenities already do that, Wednesday will be another case for political people to manage to say something stupid, all in the name of trying to get themselves re-elected. I wish I didn’t have to hear it.

But we’re going to have to listen to more of this trash talk at our local level, on top of the identical arguments that are made at the federal level. At least there, there is legitimate procedures that need to take place. There are Republicans who can hold up the actual purchase of the prison if they are that determined to try to make President Barack Obama look bad.

Of course, all they will really do is make themselves look inane. But that has never stopped political people before. I’d like to think that I could somehow escape the political trash talk by simply looking elsewhere.

BUT THEN, I’M going to encounter all those Baseball Hall of Fame types who already are polluting the Internet with their tyrades. Bert Blyleven in the Hall of Fame? I hardly think so, although here in Chicago we’re going to get our focus of people either feeling self-righteous indignation that Dawson had to wait nearly a decade before being accepted, or more disgust if he (probably rightfully so) gets overlooked again.

When combined with the complaints about Baines (who despite his quality statistics is now paying for being such a quiet, mild-mannered personality when he was an active ballplayer), it is going to be hard for me to figure out whether the sporting-type or the political-type people are being more ridiculous.

Chicago sports fans might have to settle for cheering the election of Roberto Alomar, the one-time star second baseman who played some non-descript ball with the White Sox toward the end of his career.

In short, Wednesday might turn out to be one of those days I lock myself away in my apartment and hide under the covers while the kooks complain. Somebody wake me up when its Thursday.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Winter street “dibs” is anti-Chicago spirit

Now that the “holidays” are over with the completion of Christmas and Hanukkah (and proceeding through Kwanzaa), the bulk of us can move on and accept the fact that we’re now in winter.

And with the coming of the heavy snowfalls of recent days, we’re going to get to hear more blowhard rhetoric from people who claim they’re “sticking up” for their inalienable right to park in front of their home – even if it means they have to turn the street into a junkyard in their attempt to “claim dibs” on a parking spot.

COUNT ME AMONG the ranks of those who thinks it downright ridiculous that Chicago would want to claim this bit of selfishness as some sort of character trait.

But there are those who will claim it is part of what makes Chicago unique that some of us think we have the right to own a parking spot for our automobiles once we have dug them out of the heavy snow.

These people think that because they were inconvenienced by snow, they now deserve some sort of perk. That’s ridiculous.

To me, it is one of the realities of urban life that automobile parking is inconvenient. I accept it as a fact that when I venture into certain neighborhoods of the city, it will be difficult to find a parking spot if I choose to bring my car. On days when it snows and some potential spots get covered over, it becomes that much more difficult.

SO THE IDEA that some people think they can “own” the space where their car was just because they had to dig out the shovel is so anti-urban. If you’re really that determined to hang on to that parking spot, then perhaps you shouldn’t move your car.

My basic philosophy on this issue is “you move your car, you lose the spot.” If you want to be able to drive around and have some sort of guaranteed parking near your humble abode, go live in a suburb.

Those people who insist on cluttering their vacated spots with old chairs or other junk are merely one step up from litterers. I have no problem with the police treating them as such. The fact that the Chicago Sun-Times went so far Sunday as to editorialize on the side of the nitwits (http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1958985,shoveled-own-it-editorial-122709.article) is a holiday-season embarrassment for the newspaper.

What other “issues” are of concern to those of us who choose to live on the shores of Lake Michigan at this time of year, rather than along the Gulf of Mexico or some other place with warm weather?

I WISH THEY’D MAKE UP THEIR MIND: My brother, Chris, and I have always joked about Sam Sianis, the long-time owner (and nephew of the founder) of the Billy Goat Tavern, whom we claim will go along with any gag if it means free publicity for his chain of establishments.

So it wasn’t any surprise (to me, at least) that Sianis played along with celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of the opening of the original Billy Goat on Madison Street near what is now the United Center.

He even went so far as to correct Gov. Pat Quinn, who according to news reports botched the old “no fries, cheeps” line from the old Saturday Night Live sketches that allegedly were based on the Billy Goat shtick.

The problem is that I know that at least one of the Billy Goat locations, at 303 S. Wells St., actually serves fries, no cheeps. Not that they’re particularly good fries. Besides, there’s still the sentiment that the only “real” Billy Goat (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1960293,billy-goat-cheezborgers-122709.article) is the one on Hubbard Street underneath Michigan Avenue.

WILL LES EXPOS LIVE ON?: I understand that Chicago Cubs fans are going to get all worked up into a lather over whether former outfielder Andre Dawson deserves to be in the baseball Hall of Fame. He had a couple of respectable years playing with the Cubs in the late 1980s.

Perhaps I should say more than “respectable,” on account of that Most Valuable Player award he took while (http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/league-of-her-own/2009/12/chicago-cubs-headlines-for-sunday-let-the-annual-hawk-in-the-hall-discussion-begin.html) playing for a last place Cubs team.

Yet I’m just wondering how much Cubs fans are going to rant and rage if Dawson actually gets 75 percent support from the sportswriters who will vote this year, on account of the fact that Dawson actally played more seasons and had the bulk of his best years as a player with the now-shuttered Montreal Expos.

Will we have to endure some sort of claim that the Cubs are being slighted when Dawson’s bronze plaque depicts him wearing the “MB” logo of the Expos rather than the cutesy “C” of the Cubs? It will be even more ridiculous than the occasional White Sox fan who still rants that Carlton Fisk’s plaque emphasizes his time with the Boston Red Sox.

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