EXTRA: Opening Day too early? Nah!

Spring training is ovah! It’s time for the 2019 regular season to begin.

Future super-dooper star? Or a dud?

Sure enough, the Chicago White Sox began their season Thursday (their attempt to redeem themselves from last year’s 100-loss debacle) in Kansas City (where the Royals were even worse in 2018), while the Chicago Cubs were in suburban Dallas/Ft. Worth to take on the Texas Rangers.

FROM HERE ON in, the ballgames count for something. We’ll get to see if that prediction of the Cubs finishing in fifth place this year has any legitimacy to it, while the White Sox’ so-called youthful talents will have the chance to show they really will be stars who can take the Sout’ Side to a championship.

Of course, there are some people who are grousing over the date – this is the earliest that Major League Baseball has even begun its season, which will allow for more off-days during the regular season. But some fans are complaining about the weather.

As though they believe baseball is solely a warm weather sport that should only be played in California or in the Deep South.

So perhaps the Cubs playing in Arlington, Texas isn’t too abhorrent to them. But Kansas City (where the noon-hour temperature was 63 degrees and cloudy skies)? No amount of quality barbecue could make up for the less-than-ideal weather.

PERSONALLY, IT DOESN’T bother me. Mostly because I find the game itself more intriguing than that of any other sport. Particularly the very factor of the pitcher vs. hitter – the constant duel to see which one comes out on top.

Recalling past Sox memories

No amount of football tackles or basketballs being stuffed into hoops overhead can match up to it.

And as for the chill in the air? Well that’s just the reality of weather in the Midwestern U.S. or the East Coast. In short, the places where baseball is a long-standing factor and traditions are built. Unlike places like Phoenix or San Diego, where Major League baseball almost has a fake feel to it.

I’ll take a good White Sox/Royals brawl on Thursday, as two teams are desperate to show they’re not as worthless as some fans would try to dismiss them as. Particularly those Chicago Cubs fans who just can’t handle the thought that anybody root, root, roots for anybody other than the Cubbies.

ANYWAY, IT’S SPRINGTIME (it became official last week). And the first game to be played in Chicago comes April 4 – with the White Sox taking on the Seattle Mariners.

Wrigley faithful to convene again for 2019. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

With Chicagoans getting their first chance to see the alleged youthful star Eloy Jimenez playing in left field. We’ll get to see if he’s worth the six-year (with two option years) contract worth just over $70 million – more than any other ballplayer has ever received before even playing his first major league game.

We’ll have to wait a few days longer before the Wrigley Field faithful can pack their way into the ballpark – for which they’ll grossly overpay for the privilege of tickets to the ol’ ball game.

For as the old Harry Simone Songsters told us all those years ago, “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame.” Even if the temperatures Thursday were only in the mid-50s.

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Fans falling from the skies! Is a genuine major league baseball worth it?

First, Arlington, Texas. Now Phoenix. Is it destined to happen someday in Chicago?

I’d like to think that it is just a Southwestern U.S. phenomenon that makes those people go too far to try to catch a foul ball while attending a professional baseball game.

BUT THE REALITY is that it isn’t. If anything, I’m surprised we haven’t had more incidents, including at the two ballparks right here in Chicago.

At stake is the concept of people in the upper decks of seating at stadiums who are so eager to catch a stray baseball hit into the stands that they wind up falling over the railings.

Just this weekend, a Texas Rangers game turned tragic when a fan who supposedly was trying to catch a baseball as a souvenir for his six-year-old son tumbled out of the stands and fell to his death.

Then on Monday at the festivities leading up to the All Star Game, a fan nearly fell out of the stands. Only the fact that his brother and a friend were able to grab him and pull him back up kept him from taking a 20-foot plunge – which could have been crippling, if not fatal.

IN THAT CASE, the fan was present to catch balls hit during the Home Run Derby that is part of the All Star celebration He and his buddies had already managed to get three baseballs.

It was the attempt to catch Ball Number Four – a ball hit into the stands by Milwaukee Brewers slugger Prince Fielder – that caused the near-fall.

Now I’m sure there will be some people who will claim that the fans in Arlington and Phoenix were being absurd in their desire to get a baseball, and that somehow it is their own fault. We may well hear that canard from the ideologues about “taking responsibility for one’s actions” who won’t want to hear any sympathy for these two.

Yet I can’t help but think that these two are merely among those types who let themselves get swept up in the moment when a stray baseball gets hit in their vicinity. Throughout the years in various stadiums, I have seen this kind far too often. Something like this will happen again.

NOW IN ALL the years I have attended ballgames, I have never caught a foul ball or home run ball (I prefer to sit near the infield, so the latter is less likely for me). But I have seen the types of people who get all excited at the scramble that inevitably results when a ball winds up in the stands.

I even recall the closest I ever came to such a catch of my own. It was the one  game I watched at U.S. Cellular Field from the club level – those mid-level seats intermixed with the private boxes that some people swear is the only way to watch a sporting event; and other people just swear at.

I was in a seat overlooking home plate and to the left of me was open air. If I had been sitting about five feet further to the left, I would have caught this particular foul ball.

But nobody was sitting there. I would have had to make a seriously-risky reach to come close to catching it. I probably would have come crashing down on a fan sitting in the lower deck, so I let it go. Which got me an inning’s worth of derision from the people sitting around me, many of whom thought I should have made something resembling a dive to try to get the ball.

I HAVE NO doubt that some of those people, if they had been in my particular seat, would have made the dive.

All to get a baseball with no particular significance to that particular game – which in and of itself was merely one of 81 games the White Sox played in their home stadium that particular season.

It’s not like the ball would have had any particular value to a collector of sports memorabilia. It would merely be one of thousands of foul balls that get hit into the stands at major league games every year.



Which is why I was pleased to see on Saturday that when Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees got that 3000^th base hit of his career with a home run to the left field seats, there wasn’t some massive scramble that resulted in somebody getting hurt.



THAT BALL COULD have had some value to Yankees fans, at least one of whom would have been enough of a sucker to pay for it if given the chance. But would it have been worth getting hurt? I can’t see it.

So as we prepare for the baseball season to resume on Thursday (following the American League’s 5-1 loss Tuesday to the National League in the All Star Game), perhaps we should be giving some thought to the way we behave while sitting in the stands.

That is, if we're not obsessing with the beginning Wednesday of the perjury trial of former star pitcher Roger Clemens.

We ought to be agonizing about why the White Sox can’t get their act together and play up to their potential (I’d argue the Cubs ARE playing to their potential). Not about which fan is going to lose his (or her) balance and come crashing down upon me sitting in the lower deck, all in pursuit of a souvenir whose market value is $169.99 per dozen.

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