Nothing lives forever, except maybe in the ball fields of our memories

There are times it seems that Chicago White Sox fans will forevermore live off the memories of 2005, while Chicago Cubs fans are a determined batch to make us all think of 2016 as the GREATEST SEASON OF ALL TIME!!!, what with the World Series they actually managed to win that year.
 

'05 Sox now permanently in past

Yet nothing lasts forever. Both of those baseball seasons are most definitely in the past.

AND EVEN THOUGH some of us would like to have our memories overcome reality, we have to admit that while the championship flags will forevermore be displayed in Chicago, the winning is over.

At least for those of us who focus our attention on what is happening now.

I couldn’t help but be amused by the announcement that Kyle Schwarber, the Chicago Cubs hitter whose return from injury at season’s end gave the team a boost that may well be the factor in them beating Cleveland and winning the World Series, is going back to the minor leagues.

While Tadahito Iguchi, the second baseman from Japan whose four-year stint playing baseball in the United States included his performance with the World Series-winning Sox (making him the first Japanese-born ballplayer on a U.S. championship team), is on his way out of baseball.

AS THINGS TURNED out, Iguchi’s U.S. baseball career also included stints with the Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres before he returned to Japan – where he resumed playing ball for the past decade.

 

'16 level of play a thing of the past?

He’s now with the Lotte Marines in Japan’s Pacific League, and in fact at age 42 is now the oldest player in the league. As things turned out, his joint Japan/U.S. career saw him get more than 2,000 base hits – making him one of only seven players to achieve that goal.

He’s a Japanese ballplayer who got a taste of U.S. baseball. Although to those of us in Chicago who enjoyed the first local team to win a World Series in this century, he’ll forever be more.

He’s virtually an honorary Chicagoan – that’s what happens when you become a crucial part of a local championship team whose importance goes beyond the .278 batting average with 15 home runs and 15 stolen bases he garnered that year.

 

Can Kyle rejuvenate the way 'Mick' did?

TO THE CHICAGO Sout’ Side, he’s as big a name as Ichiro Suzuki – the Japanese star ballplayer who has been playing in this country for 17 seasons now and may well become the first ballplayer to get elected to the Halls of Fame celebrating baseball that exist in both countries.

But Iguchi is now gone, making him the final member of that ’05 White Sox team who was still going to the ballpark to play baseball and getting paid for the privilege. 2005 may be 12 years in the past, but it feels even longer away in the distance.

Then, there’s Schwarber, who got hurt early in 2016, recovered in time for the playoffs and World Series, and had the batting average over .400 and managed to get on base 10 of the 20 times he batted in the World Series.

But that was last year – as much a part of the past as that of Iguchi boosting the White Sox to victory. For 2017, he had a batting average of .171 and had struck out some 29 percent of the times he came to the plate.

THAT BATTING AVERAGE is worse than that of the famed Mario Mendoza, the 1970s-80s infielder who hit .215 for a career, and is considered to be the standard for how bad a hitter you can be PROVIDED you have other positive characteristics.

 

How bad can you hit/still play in Comiskey Park?

Not that it means Schwarber is finished in baseball – even though he’s now a member of the Iowa Cubs of the Pacific Coast League. I’m sure Cubs baseball people are hoping he becomes the equivalent of Mickey Mantle – who during his own rookie season of 1951 was sent back to the minor leagues by the New York Yankees following a slow start.

A couple of months of hot hitting (,361 batting average, 11 home runs and 50 runs batted in) and he returned to New York for 18 more years of Hall of Fame-quality play.

So what’s it going to be – Schwarber is the equivalent of “the Mick?” Or further evidence that talk of the Cubs’ dynasty was premature and that ’16 is just as much a memory as 2005?

  -30-

EXTRA: Baseball truly a global game, even though some wish it weren’t

So just what should we make of the fact that Ichiro Suzuki, the aging outfielder for the Miami Marlins who was the first big star ballplayer to come to this country out of Japan, has theoretically topped Pete Rose for the number of base hits in his career?

I say theoretically because Suzuki hasn't officially reached the 3,000-hit milestone yet (he needs 21 more base hits to achieve that goal), while Rose over the course of his career playing for the Cincinnati Reds and other National League teams got more than 4,200 hits.

BUT WHEN ONE contemplates the fact that Suzuki got some 1,278 base hits while playing for nine seasons for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan’s professional leagues.

Making him some sort of international hit king at the professional level. While some others are all too eager to denigrate the achievement in various ways. They’re determined to claim it is an irrelevant goal that we shouldn’t pay any attention to. Then again, there also were those who couldn’t stand it when famed Japanese ballplayer Sadaharu Oh hit more home runs in Japan than either Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron managed in the United States.

While I personally admit that I think adding up Suzuki’s 1,278 Japan base hits and his 2,979 (as of Wednesday) hits in this country is an oversimplified stat that means about as much as getting the most pinch hits during the third week of August, I don’t like the hostile tone of those overeager to diminish Ichiro.

Who has a significance both athletic and cultural in the way he became the first non-pitcher of any significance from Japan to achieve success in U.S. baseball.

I'LL BE THE  first to admit the professional leagues in this country do play ball at a higher level than any other place o Planet Earth, but not because of any supposed superiority by naturally-born U.S. citizens when it comes to the game.

If anything, it is because our professional leagues literally attract the best the world has to offer. And that is because of money. All of those Latin American stars on major league teams across the country probably would have stayed back home if they could have made as much money doing so as they get here.

I’ll go so far as to say that the only reason the Central and Pacific leagues in Japan are not considered superior to the U.S. American and National leagues is because of all those “foreigners” whom some baseball fans seem to wish they could do away with.

Heck, just think of how much better the Dominican or Venezuelan leagues would be if they could keep all their home-grown talent in their native countries?

I WONDER IF the people most anxious to denigrate the Suzuki achievement are the ones who wish he’d have somehow stayed home, thereby depriving fans here of the chance to enjoy the skill with which he has played baseball since coming to this country back in 2001.

Or many of the other great stars of recent decades who have made our ball clubs in this country capable of playing at a higher skill level than ever before?

Such as Minnie Miñoso, who played many years in the outfield for the Chicago White Sox of the 1950s, but also has stats from playing professionally in Cuba and Mexico that give him a cumulative total of 4,073 base hits.

It’s a shame that it’s only now after his death that we’re fully appreciating what a talent we had playing in our fair city.

EVEN THOUGH HE has yet to make the Baseball Hall of Fame in this country Miñoso is in the Halls of Fame in both Mexico and Cuba. Which may be the ultimate achievement that Suzuki achieves if he becomes the first inductee of the Halls of Fame both in Japan and Cooperstown, N.Y.

Although that would pale in comparison to the record of Martin Dihigo, a black Cuban native who actually is in the Halls of Fame in Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Cooperstown, albeit for his performance in this country back in the Negro leagues of old -- which is why most fans of this country are totally clueless of this international sensation known as El Maestro or El Immortal.

It’s a good thing we can claim to have seen someone such as Ichiro actually having played ball – and only a shame that we never got to see him don a Chicago uniform.

Although knowing the White Sox’ history of acquiring aging stars after they’re washed up (anyone remember Steve Carlton, Jose Canseco or Ken Griffey, Jr., in a Sox uniform?), we may get him on the Sout’ Side come 2018 or so. 

  -30-