Could Chicago baseball fans wind up rooting for pair of Expos to make Hall?

It’s not likely there will be many Chicago baseball stories to tell Wednesday night when we learn who, if anyone, will be the newly-elected members of the baseball Hall of Fame.
 

Rest of world will see MB, while we'll see Old English

The officials in Cooperstown, N.Y., are scheduled to announce their new members during an evening ceremony, with the new members being inducted during summertime ceremonies.

NOW I DON’T have a ballot, or any say, in who gets picked. So this isn’t one of those columns written by someone justifying why they picked who they did and informing the world why they’re wrong for disagreeing with them.

I’m just a fan. Someone who has watched countless ballgames throughout the past four decades and has devoted too much of my life to following the activities of the American and National leagues (usually rooting for the former).

I’m realistic enough to know that one-time White Sox Magglio Ordoñez or former Cub Derrek Lee aren’t going to be honored. In fact, if you’re determined to pay attention only to a Chicago angle, then you’ll be obsessed with whether or not one-time Cubbie slugger Sammy Sosa gets enough votes to even remain on the Hall of Fame ballot for future years.

Ramos, Pate will see their baseball card values boost

Or will this be the year he finally fades into anonymity; quite an outcome for the guy who two decades ago was one of baseball’s biggest names. But now has to deal with the “s-word” tagged to his name, even though there is no hard evidence (nothing admissible in court) that would convince people he used steroids.

WE’LL JUST FORGET those three seasons (1998, 1999 and 2001) when he managed 60 or more home runs in a season – a feat NO OTHER ballplayer can come close to matching.

An unsung beisbol star

Personally, I’m intrigued to see what becomes of Tim Raines and Vladimir Guerrero – a pair of outfielders who had their best years playing for the no-longer-existing Montreal Expos.

If I had any say, I’d vote for the two of them, without caring about anyone else on the ballot. Although I’m sure there are those who will disagree about either being included and will be particularly outraged that I don't care about their own 'pet' player (such as Ivan Rodriguez or Larry Walker).

Should he really overshadow Raines?

Raines was a star player of the 1980s who managed to keep playing ball into the 21^st Century. He was a base stealer; he could run and stir up offensive activity.

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE those modern fans who think the stolen base is overrated (foolish them) and don’t care that Raines has more stolen bases than all but three other players. It doesn’t help that one of those three is a Raines contemporary – the famed Rickey Henderson.

While I see Raines as one of the best ever, they merely see the second-best of his own era. Which is nonsensical!

Raines, however, could wind up becoming the closest we get to a legitimate Chicago angle. For he also played for the Chicago White Sox in the early 1990s and was a part of that 1993 ballclub that won a division title (hitting .444 and scoring five runs in the playoffs against the ultimate World Series champion Toronto Blue Jays).

Top base thieves of all-time, not just '81

He also returned to Chicago in the mid-2000s for three seasons – which made him a first base coach for that World Series-winning team the White Sox had in 2005.

AS FOR GUERRERO, there isn’t a hard Chicago connection – he played for the Los Angeles Angels, Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers, along with Montreal. But one of the funniest moments I ever saw in a ballpark took place at Wrigley Field and involved Guerrero.

 

Will he get another chance next year?

It was 2003 and the Expos were in town to play the Cubs in what turned out to be one of the last games they played here before relocating to Washington, D.C. Guerrero hit a home run not only over the left field wall, but over the bleachers and out onto Waveland Avenue.

Cubs fans gathered outside the ballpark tried to partake in the tradition of throwing back a home run ball hit by a visiting team player – only the people out there had such weak throwing arms that they couldn’t get the ball back into the ballpark. Their tosses kept hitting the screen that offered protection to nearby homeowners.

Truly worth a chuckle to see the effort by Cubs fans, who showed us firsthand that day why none of them were playing for the Cubs.

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Comiskey, Wrigley to live on in Tribune, but will Tower last long?

It’s the quirky story of the week; the Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue that has bricks and rocks from various sites around the world is getting two new additions to its façade.

A Wrigley Field brick will soon be across the street from Wrigley Building

Specifically, bricks from Comiskey Park (torn down in 1991) and Wrigley Field (whose outfield seating was rebuilt during the winter) are going to be embedded into the building that the Chicago Tribune always viewed as the castle from which Col. McCormick and his successors ran their news empire.

BASEBALL FANS WILL have no problem viewing those structures as some sort of historic places worthy of inclusion in the tower – which also includes bricks from the dome of St. Peters Cathedral, the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall.

Then again, the Tribune Tower also includes a brick from the structure on Ontario Street where McCormick himself was born. Which I’m sure the colonel thought was the most significant of the roughly 160 bricks and rocks he managed to obtain for the collection.

Which is supposed to emphasize the idea that the gothic structure on Michigan Avenue is just as significant a structure as any of those other places.

For what it’s worth, the new bricks (new by Tribune Tower standards, old by baseball standards) will be installed come Friday. People will now be able to pass by, and there are bound to be a few baseball types who will make a point of checking out the building so they can see a piece of the old park.

Tribune now owns a piece of White Sox ...

ALTHOUGH TO BE honest, the demolition of Comiskey Park a quarter of a century ago was done in a way to maximize the amount of rubble that could be kept for souvenirs.

My point being that there are so many Comiskey Park bricks out there (distinguished from Wrigley bricks in that they’re covered with whitewash) that they’re not particularly rare.

I remember once seeing a pile of them as part of a touring exhibition of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and there are many White Sox fans who managed to snag themselves a brick that they now regard as the equivalent of a holy relic.

Every now and then, I even see a Comiskey brick up for sale!

AS FOR MY own family, there actually is a seat from the original Comiskey Park. Although throughout the years we managed to lose track of who had possession of it, and it may well have been disposed of by one of the family members who isn’t as attuned to baseball as the hard-core fans are.

... just as they once owned the Cubs

Then, there’s the Wrigley brick – which is available because when the outfield structure was reconfigured to accommodate those video boards, the outer walls needed to be rebuilt.

So there are Cubbie bricks to go along with Sox bricks. Baseball fans of all Chicago persuasions will be able to claim relics.

And now the Tribune Tower is regarding them both as a piece of Chicago history.

Will their spirits now linger on ...

ALTHOUGH A PART of me thinks that these bricks are just bricks. The lasting part of having attended ballgames in both structures is the memory of those games – even though many of the “intriguing” moments I have seen were performed by visiting team ballplayers (Reggie Jackson at Comiskey and Vladimir Guerrero at Wrigley hit two of the hardest balls I have ever seen).

Which means these two bricks are now part of the Tribune structure, which may someday soon not have the same meaning it has held for the nearly one century it has been in existence.



... at Tribune Tower as well?

Tribune is now two companies (the broadcast properties and the newspapers) and who is to say how long they will continue to be housed there? Which could make for an interesting predicament.

When the day comes that the structure at 435 N. Michigan Ave. is demolished, will there be eager scavengers picking through the rubble in hopes of finding that Berlin Wall brick? Or a piece of Comiskey?

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