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.

EXTRA: Sosa hits lucky 7, lives to endure another year of Hall skepticism

In terms of enshrinement to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., one-time Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa got his behind beaten yet again.

Some three-quarters of the 440 sportswriters who cast ballots would have had to support Sosa for him to be inducted. Only 7 percent of them actually believed all those home runs he hit (608 – of which nearly 300 came during a six-year span that made Babe Ruth look like a fat man with little girl legs if you listen to Seinfeld's take on George Steinbrenner) were legit enough to warrant their support.

BUT IT IS enough to comply with Hall of Fame rules to keep Sosa on the ballot for yet another year.

So the debate over whether there was anything legitimate about Sammy Sosa and the stretch of popularity the Cubs gained during that era at the turn of the 20^th to the 21^st centuries will continue for yet another year.

Which I’m sure is quite an ordeal for Sammy himself. As much as his ego loves every bit of public attention he can get, he wants to be loved – not derided by the fans he once thought would think of him as the new “Mr. Cub” to replace the now-late Ernie Banks.

Personally, my own hostility toward Sammy Sosa has declined significantly from the days he hit all those home runs and Cubs fans tried to use him as the image that proved the superiority of their favored franchise.

I FIND THE more that Cubs fans now want to bad-mouth Sammy, I’m inclined to support him. Particularly since it seems that Cubs fans wish they could erase him from the team’s collective memory. Something they should never be permitted to do.

Besides, I wasn’t kidding when I made the Babe Ruth comparison. From 1998-2003, he hit so many home runs (including three seasons of 60 or more, which no one else has ever done) that you literally have to go back to Ruth at his peak in the 1920s in order to find someone better.

No matter what you think of the whole steroid issue and whether Sosa’s sudden loss of a command of the English language was just a cover-up for drug use, those home runs were still hit.

You can’t ignore them. They’re forevermore in the record books.

ALTHOUGH I FIND it interesting to see there will be a slight Chicago presence this summer in Cooperstown when Hall of Fame induction ceremonies take place.

Ken Griffey, Jr., will be remembered primarily as a Seattle Mariners great who also got to play for the Cincinnati Reds team that his father, Ken Sr., had once been a crucial member of.

But toward the end of his career, Griffey donned the number 17 jersey of the Chicago White Sox and got in a few games on the Sout’ Side.

Just like Steve Carlton and Tom Seaver, to name a couple of other Hall of Famers who included the White Sox on their career roster so as to get a few more games in the big leagues.

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A-Rod to the White Sox? The concept is not completely out of the question

The New York Yankees have suffered a humiliation, and somebody must pay! Will the Chicago White Sox be the alleged beneficiary?

The ballclub that finished the regular season this year with the best record in the American League managed to get swept in four straight games of the final round of playoffs by the Detroit Tigers – which, we all know, is the ballclub that only made it to the playoffs because of the White Sox’ pathetic play in September.

THIS YEAR DEFINITELY won’t be a year where the American League puts up its best ballclub against the National League champion in the World Series that starts next week.

Which has Yankees fans seriously peeved! (Actually, the word that most accurately describes them is one much too vulgar to be published here). They’re looking for a person to take their abuse out on!

And it would seem that the fans and management want to blame Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez – who for the record-setting kind of contract he has is supposed to be “the man” who leads the team to championships.

Instead, he didn’t hit worth squat. In fact, his play was so bad that the final two games of the playoff round against Detroit, Rodriguez was sat on the bench.

WHICH APPARENTLY GAVE him time to engage in one of the old tricks of a ballplayer – tossing a ball at a babe in the stands, in hopes that under the guise of asking for an autograph, she’ll hand over her phone number.

Rodriguez seems to have been more interested in getting himself some blonde companionship for after the ballgame, rather than trying to focus on winning the ballgame itself.

Personally, I think it’s possible for a ballplayer to focus on winning while not completely ignoring his surroundings.

But the mood is ugly in New York these days (uglier than usual, I should say).

THERE ARE THOSE who want Rodriguez traded away. There has been speculation that he will wind up in his hometown of Miami; which makes me wonder how he would react playing for manager Ozzie Guillen.

But there also is speculation that other teams might be interested. On Friday, I saw one list of clubs that emphasized that someone of Rodriguez’ “stature” would have to play for a “big-market” ballclub. No Kansas City Royals for him.

And that list basically came down to the two Los Angeles-area teams (the Dodgers and the Angels) and our very own White Sox!

Personally, I’m inclined to think that the White Sox are the bottom team on any such list. I’m not sure I see it happening – even though current White Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis is likely to leave soon (he was only a one-season pickup to bolster the ballclub for a potential World Series that never happened).

THERE WILL BE a vacancy at that position. There would be room for Rodriguez on-the-field. Although I suspect the Yankees would have to agree to pay virtually all of what remains of Rodriguez’ contract for the notoriously-cheap White Sox to seriously think of pursuing him.

But we also have to admit that the White Sox have a history of picking up big-name veteran ballplayers whose best years are behind them. It’s like a stint on the South Side is a part of the path toward athletic retirement.

Wear the Olde English script “Sox” before trying to figure out what to do with the rest of one’s life.

Hall of Fame ballplayers such as Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton (and likely Hall of Fame member Ken Griffey, Jr.,) all had their stints in Chicago near the end of their careers.

HECK, LET’S NOT forget of such players as one-time relief ace Sparky Lyle (a Cy Young Award winner) or slugger Jose Canseco – who also have a bottom line of statistics in agate type indicating they played for “Chi-A” as their very last employer in Major League Baseball. I'm sure Sox fans with time on their hands can name dozens of other big-name ballplayers throughout the decades who finished up here.

In that context, it would make all the sense in the world for Alex Rodriguez to have a stint with the White Sox.

But then again, Rodriguez may well be capable of playing another couple of regular seasons in the major leagues. He probably isn’t completely washed up as a professional athlete. He’s just no longer the superstar that he once was with the Seattle Mariners (and whom the Yankees thought he would be for them).

Which probably means he’ll go to Los Angeles or Miami (where he lives during the off-season) and play for a bit.

THEN, HE’LL WIND up coming to Chicago to finish up in the black-and-white pinstriped uniforms that – from a distance – sort of look like Yankees uniforms.

So let me write a premature “Welcome to Chicago, Alex Rodriguez.” He’ll be here around 2015 and will get in a few final ballgames that will be considered an embarrassment to his career – while White Sox fans will speculate about how wonderful it would have been if he could have played for the ballclub a decade or so earlier.

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Seaver or Carlton?

Ken Griffey Jr. is now a member of the Chicago White Sox. But will the eventual member of baseball’s Hall of Fame have a Chicago stint that bears more resemblance to Tom Seaver or Steve Carlton?

Both of those men were among the top pitchers in the National League back in the 1970s, and both finished up their playing careers with stints with the White Sox. Griffey was once arguably the best ballplayer in the game back in the 1990s, and he will now spend a part of the end of his playing career on the South Side.

BOTH SEAVER AND Carlton got into the Hall of Fame, and no one who thinks of those men at their best will give any thought to their time in Chicago.

Yet Seaver was still a competent pitcher for the White Sox, and he actually managed to achieve his statistical goal of a 300th victory on Aug. 4, 1985 while wearing a Chicago uniform (but pitching against the Yankees in New York – the city where he had his greatest days with the cross-town Mets).

Carlton merely pitched for part of one season (1986), the year he bounced from his longtime baseball home in Philadelphia to the San Francisco Giants to Chicago, where he won 4 games, lost 3 and had a 3.69 earned run average for a forgettable fifth place ball club.

I’ll be content if Griffey can provide a little aura to a contending White Sox team whose veteran bat (first baseman Paul Konerko) can’t seem to hit a thing these days. I don’t expect a repeat of anything Griffey was capable of doing back in his days with the Seattle Mariners.

BESIDES, GRIFFEY’S DAYS in Chicago will be limited.

My understanding is he gets bought out of the rest of his contract, so the White Sox are giving up two middling minor league prospects for two months worth of a veteran whose best days are behind him.

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