From beisbol to baseball: looking forward to another dreadful season

I don’t seriously expect the World Series to be played in Chicago this year. Yet that doesn’t mean I’m not getting all giddy about the fact that baseball is back for 2013.

The Chicago White Sox begin their training camp for the season come Tuesday, while pitchers and catchers for the Chicago Cubs actually reported to their Arizona-based camp on Sunday.

NOT THAT I was waiting for those events to achieve a baseball fix.

Personally, I spent the bulk of the past week watching the Caribbean Series – the week-long tourney between the champions of professional leagues in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico that gives us the campeone de Latin American beisbol.

No, I didn’t stay up ‘til 3:30 a.m. on Friday to see the Obregon City Yaquis of Mexico’s Pacific League win the tournament (beating the Escogido Lions of the Dominican Republic 4-3 in 18 innings).

But it was intriguing to see competitive baseball played at a quality level, while seeing some of the Latin American peloteros who in coming years will be playing for ball clubs in the U.S. major leagues.

IT WAS EVEN a chance to see former major league ballplayers such as Karim Garcia and Fernando Tatis continuing their careers as professional ballplayers – while also seeing one-time star shortstop Miguel Tejada play at a star level rather than the level of an aging ballplayer hoping to latch on this season with the Kansas City Royals.

And as someone who was rooting for the Mexican champion to win the tourney, it was intriguing to see the Yaquis’ right-fielder – Marlon Byrd, whom Cubs fans will remember for his outfield play at Wrigley Field in recent seasons.

Perhaps it was good that he was the only ex-Cub on the ball club – or else we’d be learning if the ex-Cub Factor has the ability to take down Latin American ball clubs in the Caribbean Series.

Byrd isn’t a Cub anymore (he’s hoping to latch on this spring with the New York Mets), but is hoping that his .318 batting average, 16 home runs and 46 runs batted in in 57 games playing this winter in Mexico will help improve his chances of playing this season in Queens, rather than with the AAA affiliate Las Vegas 51s.

IN SHORT, IT was the perfect set up week to the idea of spring training. We won’t get any of those exhibition games from Florida or Arizona for a few more weeks. But at least we have the promise of another 162-game season; which can be intriguing even if there isn’t a serious hope of a pennant race either in Bridgeport or Lake View.

I’m honest enough to realize that the White Sox will probably have a “winning” season (at least 82 victories), which is what they accomplished last season. Whether that is good enough to win a division title and qualify for playoffs come October is really going to be a question about how mediocre the rest of the American League Central division is.

Having to rely on someone else’s less-than-stellar play is NOT the key to a successful season. When the big off-season move is retaining the “star” pitcher and not acquiring anyone new, it’s not evidence of a re-crafted ball club.

Although it probably will be better than the Cubs; who are on the continuing process of Theo Epstein to turn them from trash to champions in coming seasons. But the shift of the Houston Astros from the Cubs' division to the American League could result in the Cubs being a last-place ball club this season.

IT’S GOING TO be a long and arduous rebuilding process, and one that may wind up in failure. Although I’m sure the Cubbie faithful will continue to show up at Wrigley Field in hopes of catching a glimpse (with apologies to Steve Goodman) of the “ivy-covered burial ground.”

But even when played poorly, there is still an appeal to baseball – the perpetual challenge of the “head game” one-on-one challenge between pitcher and hitter, the hot defensive plays in the field, the base hit that comes at a key moment, and the sight of a knuckleheaded fan who loses track of the on-field activity and snatches a ground ball that was still in play.

It was such that I even felt the need to dig out a copy on DVD this weekend of The Stratton Story – the fictionalized take starring James Stewart as one-time White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton whose potential star career got washed away due to a hunting accident. Seeing the film footage of the old Comiskey Park had its own appeal.

So even if former Cub Byrd’s inclusion in a championship ball club is the on-field highlight of 2013, the return of baseball to our burgh will still be one of the year’s highlights for Chicago. All the more appropriate that this year's season begins on April Fool's Day!

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Poll says 54 to 32. What else is new?

Those numbers represent a new poll – one that shows Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., solidly leading his Democratic primary challenger – former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, whose bid for a political comeback isn’t looking too good these days.

JACKSON: Rigged in his favor



This poll was done by a group called We Ask America, which in its own analysis makes extensive mention of all the “controversies” that are supposed to be capable of  taking down Jackson come March 20. But then in giving us the figures, it says that voters in the far South Side and surrounding suburbs district “aren’t buying into conventional wisdom.”

AS THOUGH IF they were likely to vote the way they’re supposed to, Jackson would lose. It sounds a bit biased to me, almost as though the poll-taker wants to believe that this is another “Dewey Defeats Truman” in the making.

Personally, the results don’t surprise me in the least. They strike me as being completely in line with the people who live in Illinois’ Second Congressional district in the second decade of the 21^st Century.

Which is to say that this is a district with a significant African-American population – even though its southern edge is in Kankakee County. It’s not really a fair game. This district is rigged in Jackson’s favor.

I have no doubt that Halvorson, the former state legislator who served one term in Congress before losing in 2010 because those Will County voters thought her “too liberal,” is working her hardest to draw out the vote for herself. I’ll even give her credit for not blatantly playing racial politics in the model of a 1980s-style “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak.

BUT IT WILL be a factor, and I don’t just mean black people voting for Jackson because he’s black.

HALVORSON: Could be doing worse



That We Ask America poll shows that only 21 percent of African-American people want Halvorson (compared to 65 percent who want Jackson). Among white people, 62 percent want Halvorson, compared to 29 percent for Jackson.

Considering how many more black people there are in this particular congressional district, that’s a huge advantage. When one also notes the Latino and Asian votes also swing in Jackson’s favor, one only wonders how badly Halvorson would be doing in the polls if she weren’t taking so many white votes.

What else is notable about life these days from the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan?

WHO REMEMBERS APARTHEID?: I felt a blast from the past, so to speak, when I heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson refer to the reform package being contemplated by the Chicago Public Schools as little more than “educational apartheid.”

He, and many hundreds of activists who protested the public schools Wednesday morning, said they fear the plan to close some schools and redo others will only benefit select students – with the masses being left for refuse.

“It’s a type of segregation when, within the same school system, you have an upper tier and a lower tier. It is apartheid,” Jackson said, with the reference to the one-time South African setup that relegated the nation’s black majority to minority status within their own nation.

He has a point, although I’d argue it already has taken place with the way many people with children of school age go out of their way to avoid certain school districts that contain too many “undesirable” elements. The question I’d have is to wonder how many of the Chicago Public School children even know what “apartheid” was.

WANT TO WIN AN ELECTION? CALL A CHICAGO MAYOR: President Barack Obama made the announcement about his re-election committee, formally making 30 individuals co-chairmen of the efforts.

Included among those, the Chicago Tribune reported, were the Chicago-tied (and former White House chief of staffed) Rahm Emanuel and William Daley.

Which means Obama expects the current Chicago mayor, and brother of the former Chicago mayor, to use all their skills and powers to ensure that he does not become unemployed next January.

Particularly with the involvement of Daley, whose father is alleged by the ideologues to have “stolen” the 1960 elections for John F. Kennedy, I’m just wondering how long until we get similar conspiracy theories spewed for Obama. Which may be the best evidence of how frayed the Republican presidential efforts will be. The opposition will look for excuses, rather than victory.

A NEW LOOK FOR A BALLPLAYER: It doesn’t surprise me at all to see the modern-day ballplayer bearing tattoos. But Chicago Cubs outfielder Marlon Byrd now has one all over his right arm (the one he throws with) that definitely stands out.

For what he did was had a portion of the “Man in the Arena” speech given by Theodore Roosevelt (as in former U.S. president) back in 1910 inked up and down his arm.

You can check out ESPN if you really care to read what Byrd likely will read every time he gives his arm a look. But political statements from Teddy Roosevelt usually aren’t what one expects from a professional athlete at any level.

Most ballplayers I have encountered would hear the name “Teddy” and think “Ballgame,’ which was the nickname that one-time Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams liked to use to refer to himself.

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