Is 'City Series' shifting to off-field issues; is Sale or Chapman Chicago's biggest baseball off-field flake?

The Chicago White Sox take on the Chicago Cubs this week for their annual head-to-head competition that is more about bragging rights than anything else.

 

Will he challenge for flakiest Chicago ballplayer?

But this year, it seems we’re going to be in a competition more to see which team has the flakiest ballplayer bearing a Chicago uniform.

WILL WHITE SOX pitcher Chris Sale’s recent outburst over a throwback uniform, when combined with his defense of former would-be slugger Adam LaRoche for wanting to have his son hang around the clubhouse all the time, give him top billing?

Or did the Chicago Cubs manage to give themselves the bigger baseball head case with their acquisition of top-notch relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman on Monday from the New York Yankees?

There are those who think Sale is the best American League pitcher these days, while there are those who think Chapman is the key to ensuring that 2016 will go into the books as the first season in 71 years that the Cubs won anything of significance!

While others wonder if the flakier natures of these particular ballplayers is what will keep their teams out of contention.

FIGURE THAT IT was just earlier this season that the Yankees acquired Chapman knowing that he was facing a suspension that would cause him to miss the first month of the ’16 baseball season.

He supposedly was so good that his problems were worth having him around.

Except that the Yankees have been so mediocre this season – playing at about the same level as the White Sox are – that the Yankees were more than willing to give him up in exchange for several ballplayers who could have been the future of the Chicago Cubs franchise.

 

Will Sale retain his 'title/"

The Cubs, after all, believe they can win something now, and were willing to take the chance on giving up the 2018 World Series victory in exchange for a chance at winning something this year.

AND CHAPMAN, ALONG with Sale, is proof of that old baseball adage, “You’re Only As Smart As Your Batting Average.”

A ballplayer who can produce on the playing field will be tolerated no matter how ridiculous or absurd his quirks are. A ballplayer who is merely a nice guy will find himself traded away or released in an instant.

It is those 14 (league-leading) wins and respectable 3.18 earned run average that have Sale being tolerated even though he was the guy who threw a hissy fit over being asked to wear a throwback uniform jersey that would have made him look like Ken Kravec.

It is those 20 saves in 21 chances with an outstanding 2.01 earned run average this season that have the Cubs all too eager to have Chapman – he the guy who got a suspension for an incident involving domestic violence against his girlfriend.

WHICH WAS THE reason his former team, the Cincinnati Reds, were willing to give up on him and ship him off to the Yankees – who let him go when he did not immediately become the on-field salvation of the ’16 season. He lasted so little in New York there are very few baseball cards depicting him in Yankee pinstripes.

 

How many reading this wondered "Who's Ken Kravec?"

Which makes me wonder what the mood will be on Thursday at Wrigley Field – which is the day the White Sox and Cubs play the last of their games against each other this season. It also is the day that Sale’s suspension for jersey vandalism is up and he can play ball again.

Could Thursday be the day we get a Sale start for the Sox, and a chance to see a blown save by Chapman for the Cubs?

While the fans in the stands speculate about which guy is flakier and also engage in their usual city series silliness of trying to out-shout each other in their chants over which team sucks the most!

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EXTRA: Cubs win at home? Not really; not yet no matter what fans say!

I’m having the same reaction now that I had when the Boston Red Sox won a World Series in 2013 and everyone was going on and on about the historic significance of the fact that the final game was at Fenway Park.

The last (and only) time a Chicago ball club won a World Series at their home ballpark came on Oct. 14, 1906 when the White Sox achieved victory at the old South Side Park just south of the current U.S. Cellular Field. And yes, that was the World Series where the Sox beat the 116-victory Chicago Cubs 4 games to two.

I thought the fact that Red Sox fans got to storm their own home field really didn’t matter all that much. The fact that it had been 95 years since that had last happened was no big deal.

I ACTUALLY LOOKED it up, and found that the Cleveland Indians haven’t won a World Series at their home field since 1920, while the Chicago White Sox only did it once – in 1906 when their final game against the Chicago Cubs was at the old South Side Park  (at what is now Pershing and Wentworth avenues).

And as for the Cubs? Their only two World Series victories (1907 and 1908, both times against the Detroit Tigers) came in Michigan, rather than the old West Side Grounds that is now the University of Illinois Medical Center.

They’ve never won a final game at home, to have fans tearing up the turf while ballplayers jump all over each other in a big pile before tearing off to the team clubhouse to douse each other with champagne and have the baseball commissioner present the team president with a rather uninspired-looking trophy.

That is the factual basis of the people going on and on saying that Tuesday was significant because the Cubs won their first postseason series at Wrigley Field – ever.

Chicago is long overdue for a World Series that doubles ...

THAT LITERALLY WAS the headline on the back page of the New York Post on Wednesday, along with a cutline saying that one-tine broadcaster Harry Caray would have been “proud” of the celebration Cubs fans conducted following their 6-4 victory Tuesday night that advances the Cubs to the final round of the National League playoffs against the winner of New York Mets/Los Angeles Dodgers.

That last sentence is what makes me think all of the hullaballoo over the Cubs’ victory is much adieu over nothing.

Cubs fans are going on and on as though they already have reached a historic achievement, when they really haven’t won a thing yet!

... as a City Series, to settle city supremacy for the 21st Century

All they have done to this point is match the same level of play they achieved in 2003 – when they made it to the final round of National League playoffs before losing to the then-Florida Marlins. Actually, made it to being within one game of winning that round – before all that Bartman nonsense crept its way into Cubs lore.

CONSIDER THAT IF the Cubs do lose to the New York/Los Angeles winner in the final playoff round that begins Saturday, history will record that the ’15 Cubs were no better than St. Louis, Pittsburgh or the New York/Los Angeles loser.

Nobody will think that the Cubs achieved something significant by winning the pompously-named “National League Division Series.” There won’t be an NLDS pennant flying over Wrigley Field next year.

The years 1945 (last National League championship) and 1908 (last World Series title) will still retain their significance. Going around acting as though your team has already won what matters is the best way possible to tempt fate and ensure that the baseball “gods” do wind up smiting the Wrigley Field scene for yet another year.

Besides, I can’t help but think that the hard-core of Cub fandom really cares where the final game of a championship season is played.

BACK IN 2005, the Chicago White Sox took their own championship dreams even though the division clincher (in Detroit), division series winner (in Boston), league championship (in Anaheim, Calif.) and World Series win (in Houston) ALL came on the road.

Lost last game of '06 series, yet still a Hall of Famer

I don’t think anybody seriously thinks less of that championship year – which was the first for a Chicago ball club in the life of anyone under age 60. Actually, that status will remain – even if the Cubs do manage to beat the New York/Los Angeles winner, then the best of the American League to win a World Series.

And as for White Sox fan-dom, their reaction if the Cubs do wind up prevailing this year will be something along the lines of, “It’s about time, ya losers!”

Then we can start wishing for a World Series that doubles as a City Series – so we can settle the White Sox/Cubs debate for the 21^st Century – just as that 1906 series (with the Cubs losing to the Sox four games to two) set things for the 20^th Century.

  -30-

EXTRA: 12-5? Ugh! On so many levels

The “excitement” (or lack thereof) of the Crosstown Classic is over for the year.

Highlight of the week?

The Chicago White Sox took three of the four games, and are now exactly a .500 ball club (18 wins, 18 losses). Compared to the 12-19 record of the Chicago Cubs.

I’M NOT GOING to get too worked over the White Sox’ loss Thursday. It’s just proof that on any given day, any professional baseball club is capable of beating up on any other team.

Even the Cubs being able to defeat the White Sox, here and there.

The 9^th inning attempt at a rally for the few fans who held out to the very end of the game Thursday might have prompted a moment of excitement.

Although the idea that it took more than four hours to get through a nine-inning ballgame is – in my opinion – a dreadful experience. If I had to rely on mass transit to get back home, I wouldn't have been able to hold out to the very end.

BAD BASEBALL WAS played all the way around Thursday night. In fact, about the most excitement generated by Chicago baseball this week is the fact that the new Sports Illustrated is out – and Cuban slugging sensation Jose Abreu is on the cover.

“The Power of Jose Abreu!” we’re told. That’s what happens when you lead the American League with 12 home runs and 35 home runs thus far this season – although only one of those RBIs came during the four-game set against the Cubs.

With a batting average rising from .254 to .266, before sinking to .261 after going one-for-four Thursday night.

The best thing we can do is move on with this season – the Arizona Diamondbacks come to the South Side on Friday while the Cubs head for Atlanta to play the Braves this weekend.

  -30-

You know it’s a dead season when a “No. 14” is the “City Series” highlight

This year doesn't come close to matching '06

It was kind of cutesy to learn that the Chicago Cubs felt compelled to pay tribute to Paul Konerko this week – what with him expected to retire from playing professional baseball after the end of this season.

Honored in home of Cubs' No. 14

It’s nothing on the scale of what New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is getting from every ball club the Yankees play against this season.

BUT SEEING THE Cubs put aside the natural, century-old rivalry between Sout’ Side and North, Sox and Cubs, to acknowledge that Konerko has been a significant figure in the history of Chicago baseball was nice.

I even got a kick out of the “gift” the Cubs gave Tuesday to Konerko – one of the number cards used in their allegedly-quaint hand-operated scoreboard. Specifically, a number “14” – to match up with the uniform number Konerko wore during his 16 years with the White Sox.

It’s not like this year’s version of the Cubs is ever likely to score 14 runs in any given inning; although I suppose it is possible that Cubs pitching will have several instances in which they will give up that many runs per inning.

Konerko retirement cycle not on same scale

I guess the Cubs will just have to ensure that high-scoring rallies by the opposition go to at least 15 runs at a time.

THAT MOMENT ALSO appears to be the highlight of the “Crosstown Classic” between our city’s two ball clubs; even though I still think that label sounds lame and I prefer to think of it as the “City Series” – which technically hasn’t been played since the Second World War.

Much has been written already about the level of apathy expressed by fans toward this year’s four-game version of the series.

A mediocre White Sox team, combined with a truly dreadful Cubs ball club, doesn’t exactly make for a must-see series – particularly since the current ways in which Major League Baseball operates has turned the series into just another set of games (all won by the White Sox, thus far) over the course of the 162-game season both ball clubs will play.

Dull series another reason to bring back Ozzie?

We’re still early enough in the season that the standings don’t mean much. Memorial Day is the date on which we can start to see how well a team is truly playing – there just haven’t been enough games thus far.

SO I WASN’T at any of the games at Wrigley Field (although it has been a decade since I have set foot in that ball park – which I remember because the Cubs lost to the Montreal Expos; who ceased to exist after ’04).

Nor did I feel the need to show up at U.S. Cellular Field Wednesday (although that was quite a catch by shortstop Alexi Ramirez to create that 9th inning double play). Nor will I likely be there Thursday night for the final game between the two until 2015 (because I really don’t see the scenario in which both Chicago ball clubs manage to make it to the playoffs, win their respective league pennants, and wind up playing in the World Series).

I care enough about what happened that I did take the time to look up the box scores. But I have been doing that all season, and would have done so regardless of whom each team was playing.

This series just isn’t intriguing enough now – this is one of the off-years that are bound to come. The kind that test how committed one is to following a ball club.

Remember '98

WE DON’T HAVE Ozzie Guillen going around talking about how rat-infested Wrigley Field was (one of the drawbacks, that and those troughs, of being 100 years old). Nor do we have A.J. Pierzynski trying to rile up the crowd after getting slugged by Michael Barrett following a home plate collision.

We don’t even have shortstop Mike Caruso achieving the highlight of his miniscule major league career during a city series.

We just get to “Wait ‘til Next Year” in terms of a White Sox/Cubs series that is on-field interesting – a concept that we are way too familiar with in this city.

  -30-

City Series not worth the hype

This weekend is far from the first time Chicago's two major league teams have faced each other. Take this 1909 confrontation at the West Side Grounds. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

Every year in Chicago sees two weekends when the local population gets absolutely stupid – the weekends when Major League Baseball so decrees that our White Sox and the Cubs ought to play against each other.

Considering that the two teams have actually managed to last this long in their respective seasons in first place in their respective divisions, fans this year are getting particularly ridiculous.

ANY CHANCE OF actually getting tickets (without paying a ticket broker’s ridiculous price markup) for this weekend’s three-game series at Wrigley Field (or next weekend at U.S. Cellular Field) is long gone.

Many people are planning their weekends around the concept of being able to watch the games on television – including the Sunday night game, when ESPN has so decreed that the Sox/Cubs matchup will be broadcast nationally.

So am I the only Chicagoan who is willing to admit I could care less about this series?

I am bracing myself for the pompous rhetoric that will be spewed by the fans of whichever team manages to win at least two of the three games in each series, trying to claim that some “great moral supremacy” is conveyed by that fact.

IT IS NOT.

This weekend could very well turn out to be the most over-hyped event in Chicago sports this year (and Second-most over-hyped event in sports nationwide behind any match-up between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox).

Now don’t take this as some sort of sign that I hate baseball. I don’t.

In fact, it is a particularly pleasurable sport, as I have always enjoyed the “head game” (as prominent writer Roger Kahn refers to the dueling nature that occurs when a pitcher faces a batter). And I am interested in seeing how the White Sox turn out (with mild delusions that they can actually hold on through season’s end in October to win their division) in 2008.

BUT THE CIRCUS atmosphere that crops up every year around the Sox/Cubs series manages to turn me off of actually watching the games. Nothing that actually happens on the playing field will warrant the attention (not even if there’s a repeat of the incident when a brawl resulted from White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski plowing through a former Cubs catcher who was improperly blocking home plate) given to these games.

Having to listen to the ridiculous rhetoric is just more than I can take.

This will be one three-game series where I will be content to look up the box scores after the fact to see how the players did, and if anything truly significant happened.

For those who are now going to say I can’t be much of a baseball fan if I’m not willing to watch the actual games, I’d say that’s absurd.

SINCE THERE’S NEXT to no chance I could actually get tickets to attend any of the games (I’m not willing to spend that kind of money), I would have to watch television. And the simple fact is that watching a sporting event on television is (first and foremost) watching a television program – not a ball game.

I can get wrapped up in the pitch-by-pitch activity of a ball game while watching from the stands, particularly if I can get a seat on top of the infield where I can make out what the pitcher is throwing. Watching on television is just too distracting, particularly if the broadcast crew gets hung up on trivial activity or on showing off their newest graphic elements (like the crew with Fox Sports always does) that usually add nothing to one’s understanding of baseball.

So I likely will try to find some other way of getting a live baseball fix (a part of me is considering a trip to Gary, Ind., to see the Railcats of the Northern League take on the Schaumburg Flyers – all the other Chicago-area minor league ball clubs are on the road this weekend).

Besides, even if I could get tickets to the Sox/Cubs match-up this weekend, I’d probably take a pass. In the same way that New Year’s Eve is for amateurs, so is a Sox/Cubs game. Too many halfwits who only come out because they think the games are an “event” where they “must be seen” to prove they are “somebody” populate the stands.

THAT WAS MY experience the one time in my life I actually did go to a Sox/Cubs match-up (in 1999 at then-New Comiskey Park). Even then, the attraction for me was that I went with several of my co-workers, most of whom were Cubs fans who experienced a deep funk when the Sox came from behind in the 9th inning to win.

Too many of the people who will be in the stands this weekend will be the clowns who are determined to show they are “man” enough to wear a Cubs jersey on the South Side and scream stupid epithets, or to wear blackface with white lettered “Sox” logos on their cheeks while sitting in the sun at Wrigley Field.

This is the weekend that Chicago’s real baseball fans shudder. Those of us who find a beauty in the game will be disgusted at the way in which it is buried under a mass of trivia.

The fact that both of these teams are in first place only complicates things, since everybody wants to envision the scenario by which the White Sox personally crush the Cubs’ hopes of winning a division title. (Nobody with any sense seriously envisions the alternate result).

PEOPLE OF CHICAGO, repeat after me. “It’s only June.”

If both Chicago ball clubs are still in first place come Sept. 1 (as they were in 2003), then we can seriously start talking about the possibility of both Chicago ball clubs making it to the playoffs and possibly having an all-Chicago World Series (the first, and only, since 1906).

Anyone who brings up the subject before then is being ridiculous.

And anyone who tries to turn this into South Side/North Side warfare is being ridiculous.

SO I DON’T want to see anymore of the car commercial featuring managers Ozzie Guillen and Lou Piniella skipping rope and riding bicycles together. I don’t care what the Las Vegas gambling geeks set for odds on this series – or the chance either/both teams win their respective leagues’ pennants.

And I definitely don’t want to know the results of the Chicago Sun-Times self-promotional contest to determine whether the skanky women who exist at Wrigley Field are better looking than the tough Sout’ Side broads one finds at U.S. Cellular.

All I can think of with regards to this “contest” is one of the most honest moments I have ever seen in a film – 1997’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” which starred Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz, and set their climactic confrontation in the women’s wash room at “the Cell.”

Seeing the two about to get into a fight while surrounded by a bunch of toughs wearing various styles of Sox jerseys reminded me of some of the women I have encountered at the ballpark throughout the years – none of whom I would guess will be in attendance for the “silly show” posing as baseball this weekend and next.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: My childhood memories include the 1977 baseball season when both (http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubssox/cs-080618-1977-chicago-cubs-white-sox,1,4835846.story) Chicago ball clubs were in first place through the end of July. Neither team won so much as a division title, let alone a league championship.

What’s more likely to happen? The White Sox will win their second American League championship (http://chicago.nationalsportsreview.com/2008/06/19/ws-stands-for-white-sox-and-world-series-%E2%80%93-coincidence/) in four years, or the Cubs will go for their 100th straight season without a World Series victory.

Apparently, I’m not the only person who realizes that the baseball played this weekend (http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/sports/bauman/1007609,2_2_AU16_TWOCENTS_S1.article) and next is not the “make it or break it” moment for Chicago sports.