Sandy Koufax double-header, of sorts, against Chicago – sted of Super Bowl

For those of you who (like me) can’t even pretend to care about New England vs. Atlanta, or the Super Bowl in general, I’m sharing a couple of bits off a web site I have discovered that puts out old baseball radio broadcasts on YouTube for listening.

A football “championship” that means nothing to our local sports scene (because all it does is reminds us that the Chicago Bears are nowhere near talented enough to be in contention) needs an alternative. Unless you’re really watching just so you can see a Budweiser commercial that some are trying to claim has deep sociological meaning and is a political statement on the issue of immigration.

INSTEAD, HOW ABOUT a White Sox/Los Angeles Dodgers matchup, as in from the year 1959. Specifically, Game 5, where the White Sox facing elimination managed to stay alive in what was one of the strangest games ever – a 1-0 White Sox winner in which the only run was scored on a double play.

For those of you who absolutely can’t handle the thought of watching the Sox, I also dredged up a broadcast of an old Cubs game – one from 1957 in which the North Siders were in the borough of Brooklyn to take on the Dodgers at Ebbets Field.

That was the Dodgers’ last season out east, before they made the cross-country jump that led to them playing the first World Series ever in Los Angeles (and drawing a 92,706 crowd for that Game 5 – which, by the way, is still a record attendance).

For what it’s worth, Sandy Koufax was the starting Dodgers pitcher in both ballgames – going up against Bob Shaw for the White Sox and Dick Drott for the Cubs.

OF COURSE, BACK then, Koufax wasn’t the superstar he became in the mid-1960s. That World Series game was the first such game the Dodgers ever trusted him with, and he wound up on the losing end – although his Dodgers team ultimately won the World Series two days later in a game played at Comiskey Park. In '57, he was just the "bonus baby" everybody thought belonged in the minor leagues rather than Brooklyn.

As for the Cubs, I’m not going to spoil the outcome of the game. You can listen for yourself.

Although anyone with any sense realizes that because it’s the Cubs, of course they’re going to lose. But you will get to hear a moment when future Hall of Famer Ernie Banks manages to get a home run off future Hall of Famer Koufax!

Which I suspect will be sufficient to satisfy the hard-core of Cubbie faithful who decide to tune in.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Personally, I’ll be checking out the Caribbean Series matchup Sunday night between the Granma Alazanes of the Cuban League and Mexicali Aguilas of Mexico’s Pacific League. The Caribbean Series is in its fifth day in Culiacan, Mexico, and will end

Tuesday with the championship game for bragging rights of Latin American baseball, which likely will be a better ballgame than anything the Patriots or Falcons do on the gridiron in Houston.

EXTRA: What do we do with Sosa?

When I think back to the baseball playing career of Sammy Sosa, a pair of other ballplayers come to my mind – Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax.

Now this isn’t one of those stat-guided similarity things (one such list says that Sosa’s comparable ballplayers are guys like 1970s-era stars like Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson). I’m talking about ballplayers whose careers bear some strong similarities to the Sosa phenomenon that was the ONLY reason the Chicago Cubs got national attention a decade ago.

IT’S JUST THAT when I think back to the six-season time period (1998-2003) that Sosa was hitting all those home runs (including three seasons when he managed to hit 60 or more, and one other season when he led the National League), you literally have to go back to Babe Ruth at his 1920s peak with the New York Yankees to find another ballplayer who could pop the ball out of the ballpark at a greater rate.

Slammin’ Sammy was downright Ruthian at his peak.

And yet, I fully appreciate the fact that it took Sosa a full decade of hanging around the major leagues (bouncing from the Texas Rangers to the Chicago White Sox to the Cubs) before he finally did anything notable.

You could argue the only reason he managed to last long enough to do anything special is because he was playing for mid-1990s Cubs teams that were so god-awful that they could afford to keep him on the roster.

OR PERHAPS THOSE teams were so god-awful because they had ballplayers like Sammy Sosa.

The very idea of a ballplayer in his 10^th season rising to superstardom (as he did back in June 1998 when he managed 25 home runs that month, and 66 for the season) is just so unheard of.

You literally have to look to the 12-year career of Sandy Koufax as a pitcher for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers to find anything comparable.

Through his first six seasons, Koufax was a wild-throwing pitcher with a losing record. In seasons seven and eight, he settled down and became respectable.

IT WAS THE final four seasons that Sandy Koufax became SANDY KOUFAX!!! and did all the things that we now remember him for and wrongly assume he was doing for his entire career as a professional ballplayer.

These are the thoughts that popped into my head when I learned that former Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood said Sunday during ceremonies at Wrigley Field that he wishes the team would retain its former star ballplayers – including Sosa, whom Wood said did “special” things while wearing the Cubby bear blue.

Just like Sammy’s six-season Ruthian stint, which whipped this city into a frenzy that could match up with anything Michael Jordan accomplished in basketball with the Chicago Bulls.

I remember being at Wrigley Field for the next-to-last game of the 2001 season – one in which Sosa hit 64 home runs. In that game, Sosa hit number 62, and I still remember the man sitting in front of me turning to a group of kids and telling them, “That’s what makes it worth skipping school.”

I CAN REMEMBER when the only people who bashed Sosa were White Sox fans – whose comments were dismissed as being bitterness that Sosa never amounted to anything during the 2 ½ seasons he played on the South Side (and later complained that the ballpark was in part to blame because it was “too big”).

Now, everybody seems to want to join in the Sosa-bashing party. I don’t buy that it’s because of steroids. Heck, anybody back then could have seen what was happening. They chose to turn their heads.

I’ve even heard the line of logic that it was because he “walked out” on his ball club in the last game of 2004 (which also was his last with the Cubs, who traded him away shortly thereafter). Although the idea of a ballplayer on a losing ballclub having a hissy fit certainly isn’t unique to Sosa.

Which makes me think that the people who are now dumping on Wood for suggesting image rehabilitation for Sosa ought to lighten up.

BESIDES, I EXPECT they’ll get their chance to fully rejoice come next year when the Baseball Hall of Fame announces its vote tallies – and Sammy falls short of induction in what is his first year of eligibility for baseball’s take on immortality.

It’s going to take a lot more than Kerry Wood for anybody to seriously want to rehabilitate the name of Sammy Sosa.

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Baseball is more than a game, that some don’t seem to want to actually play

I can’t help but be repulsed by the mentality that seems to think something wise was done this weekend by the Chicago Cubs and the Washington Nationals; both of whom took their best pitchers and decided to end their seasons now – even though there is nearly a month to go with in the season.

It bothers me more in the case of the Nationals than the Cubs. The latter ballclub isn’t accomplishing much of anything this season – and the presence (or lack thereof) of Jeff Samardzija isn’t going to radically change anything.

BUT THE NATIONALS are actually a first-place ballclub in their division. They could very well be a playoff-bound ballclub.  It really would be pathetic if Washington were to have a ballclub make its first World Series appearance since 1933 WITHOUT its top pitcher.

What happens if this IS the Nationals’ year, and pitcher Stephen Strasburg winds up never pitching in a World Series because his team doesn’t make it back? Strasburg could wind up being just like Frank Thomas – whose only appearance on a World Series team was entirely from the bench. Injuries kept him from actually playing much of 2005, and not at all during the playoffs or World Series.

Even the great Walter Johnson managed to pitch in the 1924 World Series for Washington (being the winning pitcher in the seventh and final game).

For Strasburg, it is a shame. But it was one brought on by physical injuries.

IN THE CASE of Strasburg, it seems to be a case of a short-sighted ballclub gambling on a future that may never arrive.

The fact that the Nationals ballclub would think this is some sort of strategic move is evidence that professional baseball has changed – and not necessarily for the best!

It is part of the modern-day strategy that believes in pitch counts and innings limits, and ignoring that a pitcher who truly is worth anything is capable of reaching limits beyond the levels that too many managers artificially set.

The theory with Strasburg is that he was recovering from anterior cruciate ligament surgery (the proper name for the procedure originally tried by Tommy John back in the mid-1970s) meant to rebuild his arm after he suffered what once would have been a career-ending injury.

THIS WAS SUPPOSED to be the year that he got limited use, with future seasons intended to be when he would have his full comeback.

In the case of Samardzija, it would seem that team officials figure this was the first time he ever really pitched a full season of baseball in the major leagues (more innings this year than his whole career to date combined).

Does this mean the Cubs believe that NO one is capable of pitching a full season of professional baseball?

It’s definitely a long ways away from 1974 when Nolan Ryan pitched 332 2/3 innings for the California Angels, or when Wilbur Wood of the Chicago White Sox kept getting sent out to pitch every four games even though he nearly lost 20 games that season.

IN WOOD’S CASE, he also managed to win 20 games (with a 3.46 earned run average that season). He was the best arm on a mediocre ballclub, which used him repeatedly because it was their best attempt to win ballgames.

Nowadays, Wood would have been shut down to “spare” him some embarrassment – not taking into account the fact that Wood would have been more embarrassed by not pitching.

Now I know some claim that these innings restrictions can add on seasons to a ballplayer’s career. They’ll cite cases like Sandy Koufax or Fernando Valenzuela of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Koufax suffered from arthritis and retired at age 30 because his arm couldn’t take the strain any longer, while Valenzuela’s last years as a ballplayer were incredibly mediocre. Both will claim they were overused by the Dodgers, and could have lasted longer had their pitching stints been rationed out.

YET I’M NOT convinced. It’s as though some people think they can erase the chance of the fluke incident that cannot be statistically predicted.

In fact, I’d like to think that Strasburg these days is disappointed that he’s not pitching in the heat of a pennant race – even though Nationals’ management has said uncertainty over whether he would continue to pitch was actually causing him more mental anguish.

A part of me would like to think that Strasburg and Samardzija are capable of “sucking it up,” bearing down and going for another month.

Because there really is no guarantee that there will be a “big game” in the future that he’s being saved for by shutting him down for now.

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