Sox as mediocre, Cubs as dreadful, as we should have expected for ‘14

We’re at Memorial Day. Which in addition to giving us countless excuses for political people to pay tribute to military veterans (in hopes they’ll vote) is the perfect time to look at our city’s baseball clubs to figure out what they’re worth.

The highlight for '14

The White Sox have played 52 games thus far, while the Cubs have taken the field for 48. Finally a large enough sample for us to start talking intelligently about what the teams are worth.

THE WHITE SOX are winning about half their games, while the Cubs have the worst record of any team in the National League (18 wins, or a .375 winning percentage).

Which is what should have been expected – except from those more delusional Cubs fans who desperately wanted to believe the White Sox would be just as bad as they were. In short, that we’d relive 2013 all over again.

As for those Sox, the presence of Jose Abreu has turned out to be as good as anyone had a right to expect. He hasn’t played in a little over a week because of an inflamed left ankle, yet he still is among the American League leaders in both home runs (15) and runs batted in (42). He’s up there with Nelson Cruz of the Baltimore Orioles in both categories.

Abreu, a Cuban defector, likely will be the highlight of the season for Chicago baseball for 2014 once he returns to play some time next week. And that’s taking into account the fact that he’s bound to have a slump at some point this year.

IT IS GOING to hurt that we’re now just approaching the time of year that weather gets better and attendance starts to shoot up.


No longer No. 2 at position No. 6

Yet the White Sox, who are averaging just over 19,000 tickets sold per game (who knows how many are actually showing up?), have the drawback of knowing that the teams whose games usually draw larger crowds (the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and those cubbie bears) were scheduled for the dreariness of April and May.


W. Bush and Mantle weren't really there

And as for the fact that the Yankees spent all of last week in Chicago (playing both the Cubs and White Sox), the highlight games may well have been the two games where the Yankees came from behind to win in extra innings).

White Sox fans are going to get a lot of second-rate games scheduled for the prime of the season. It may well be that only the hard-core fans show up the rest of 2014. And we’ll get nit-wit Cubs fans who will claim that’s evidence the White Sox have no fans – instead of evidence that the fair-weather fans turn out at Wrigley Field.

Not about to be caught any time soon

IT ALSO TURNED out this past week that Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter played his 2,584^th game at his position, surpassing legendary White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio. Although with Omar Vizquel still being a couple hundred games ahead of Jeter, the one-time White Sox shortstop (along with Cleveland and Seattle) will keep his mark of 2,709 games played there.

Where the crowds aren’t what they were back in the days of Sammy Sosa and all those home runs. But they’re still averaging just over 32,000 tickets sold per game, and in the Top 10 of Major League Baseball games.

When will he return?

Who’s to say why? All I know is I hear the talk about how the ballplayers in places like Des Moines, Iowa; Knoxville, Tenn.; and suburban Geneva are going to develop and turn the Cubs into legitimate contenders someday.

Yet the decades during which I have followed professional baseball have taught me there are many talented minor league ball players who, for whatever reason, don’t make the major league adjustment.

I ALSO COULDN’T help but be amused by the new hitting coach the Cubs hired for their top minor league affiliate in Des Moines – one-time Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez.

Is David Ortiz next for Cubs?

He’s also going to be a ballplayer for the Iowa Cubs, although Cubs executive Theo Epstein says Manny won’t be in Chicago anytime soon.

Epstein was general manager back when Ramirez was part of the Red Sox’ powerhouse that won a couple of World Series titles. Which makes me think Epstein – for all his talk of looking to the Cubs’ future – is firmly planted in the past.

Which means it could be a long, long time before the Cubs amount to anything worth talking about. Maybe around the time that Sosa himself is welcome back in Wrigley Field.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Will Hawaii reclaim Obama from 2nd City?

A part of me always wondered if Barack Obama and first lady Michelle would spend their retiring years living in Honolulu – deciding like many other people to live in a warm-weather climate for those Golden Years.

It would seem I’m not alone, as there already are people in Hawaii who are trying to get the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library of the future built on that Pacific Ocean island, instead of where many of us would have figured it to be located – in the Hyde Park neighborhood, possibly as part of the University of Chicago.

IT IS EARLY, so it should not be a shock that nobody in Chicago has taken much in the way of action to try to get the library located here. Which is why Hawaii officials are hoping that getting an early start will allow them to one-up Chicago.

The state Legislature earlier this year approved a resolution saying it thinks the Obama library should be in Hawaii – on account of the fact he was born and (largely) raised in Honolulu, and up until two years ago still had a grandmother who lived there.

Officials with the University of Hawaii, the alma mater of both of his parents, are creating study groups to pick a site for such a library/museum that would glorify the four (or eight) years of an Obama Administration.

Hawaii officials also will meet next week with officials of both the National Archives in Washington the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., in hopes they can get advice about what they need to do in order to develop a proper presidential library.

ALL OF WHICH makes me wonder if Hawaii will get such a jump on Chicago that the city won’t have much of a chance to play catch-up when the time does come to give serious thought to where the Obama years are best remembered.

Personally, I think any Chicago site can hold its own to anything in Honolulu, particularly since I would think a site on the mainland in the city that is the transportation hub of the United States would be more easily accessible.

But when one considers that the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum is in an isolated place like Grand Rapids, Mich., Honolulu comes off as looking downright attractive. I would think the number of kooks who come forward to picket an Obama library/museum of the future in Hawaii would be fewer than in most places.

What other events were floating through the air along the shores of the southeastern corner of Lake Michigan?

HIZZONER JR. TELLS WEIS CRITICS TO PIPE DOWN: Mayor Richard M. Daley said he wishes people who are trying to make an issue out of Police Superintendent Jody Weis meeting with streetgang leaders would lighten up on their criticism.

Weis had a meeting last month at the conservatory at Garfield Park, in hopes of letting gang leaders know just how miserable federal prosecutors could make their lives if violence continues to be committed by gang members.

Aldermen Bob Fioretti and Joe Moore said earlier this week they think it is inappropriate to do anything that could be perceived as granting recognition to the gangs, with Fioretti saying it amounts to, “negotiating with urban terrorists.”

But Daley said Tuesday he is willing to have his police chief try anything if it can help reduce violence. “If you can save one life, you’ll sit down with anyone,” he told reporters.

NUMERO NOVENTA Y NUEVE: For the next month (or two, if the Chicago White Sox actually make it into the playoff picture), uniform number 99 will sit his dreadlocked buttocks on benches around the American League, and will hit an occasional home run on behalf of the South Side.

That will be Manny Ramirez, the man whom some baseball fans once thought would be a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame (along with one-time Boston Red Sox teammate David Ortiz), who officially joined the White Sox on Tuesday in Cleveland.

I doubt the Ramirez presence will make much of a difference when it comes to the lines of statistics, although his presence for the month of September will make what could be an otherwise dreadful month a little more entertaining. At age 38, Ramirez just isn’t what he once was with the bat.

Then, when Ramirez leaves for whatever cellar-dwelling ballclub is willing to give him a big-money contract for 2011 and beyond, we will be able to add Ramirez to the list of one-time star ballplayers (Steve Carlton and Ken Griffey, Jr., to name a couple of recent cases) who extended their careers on the South Side. And uniform number 99 will likely wind up being retired by default (since I don’t know who else would want to wear it).

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