What should we think of rebuild; does All Star Abreu have future in Chicago?

Chicago White Sox fans are likely to get the highlight of 2018 come next week in Washington, D.C., when first baseman Jose Abreu starts for the American League in the baseball All Star game scheduled for next Tuesday.

Could Jose become a White Sox immortal someday?

Abreu, it seems, got so many fan votes that he is the top player at first base for the league. Which is an accomplishment, since first base is usually a position so overloaded with top hitters that many a talented ballplayer throughout the years has been crowded out of the All Star game because that was their position.

SO IT WOULD have been understandable if the best ballplayer the White Sox employ these days would not have made it onto the league’s All Star team.

But he did. White Sox fans will be able to enjoy that bit of glory that at least one of the players on their dreadfully mediocre team of 2018 is worth having around. He’ll be the bragging rights that Sout’ Side-oriented fans will be able to chat about next week.

And it could wind up being the bit of a boost for the White Sox, who are trying to justify their lack of concern over the 30-win, 60-loss (as of Monday) team the White Sox are putting forth this year.

We’re supposed to be in a rebuilding mode, which means the potential for young talent that will someday surround the veteran Abreu with equal talent – to the point where in just a couple of years, it will seem odd that the White Sox could ever have delved to the lows that we’ve seen last year and this.

Payton played for weak Bears teams before '86

THEN AGAIN, CONSIDER that things can change quickly in baseball.

It was just three years ago that the Kansas City Royals were a World Series-winning ball club. Now, they’re a team with only 25 wins this year – and the reason the White Sox can claim to not even be the worst ball club in their American League division; let alone all of baseball.

Of course, there are some people out there who are convinced that what the White Sox ought to be doing with their best current (and one of their best ever) ball players is – repeat after me – “TRADE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Could Abreu top Minnie for top Cuban Sox

The theory being that some other team wishing to have Jose’s big bat (12 home runs and 59 runs batted in, as of this week) to help them win THIS YEAR might be capable of giving up some young “kid” who might be capable of being a star come 2020 or 2021.

WHICH, THE WHITE Sox marketing people will claim, is the time about when it might be possible to expect the ball club to “not suck” quite so bad as they do now.

Abreu being the ballplayer who’s already 31 years old (meaning he’s on the tail end of his physical prime as a ballplayer), and it might be helpful long-term to let go of him now, rather than thinking he’d still be of use at ages 33 and 34 (which is what he’d be if still a part of the White Sox) in ’20 and ’21.

Of course, if the Chicago Bears had followed the same line of logic, they would have let their immortal star Walter Payton leave just before that Super Bowl-winning year of 1986 and those contending teams of the late 1980s.

We’d probably have Bears fans now ranting about how the team gave up on “Sweetness” and didn’t include him in the chance for athletic glory at the team’s peak.

SO IS THIS just a matter of sports fans who can feel malcontent regardless of what their favorite team actually does?

Is the "L" flag destined to return to Wrigley?

Keep Abreu, and they’re being shortsighted. Get rid of him, and the White Sox will regret it if he and his big bat are the missing piece of a contending team the White Sox hope/wish/dream they’ll have around 2021.

Because personally, I could see how that future White Sox contending team could be one built around Abreu – who will wind up being the leader of a core of Cuban and other Latino ballplayers who play in the mold of past White Sox stars like Minnie Miñoso and Luis Aparicio.

Besides, it could also be that many of the people who want Abreu dealt away from Chicago are nothing more than Cubs fans realizing that 2016 is history, their own “winning” ways aren’t forever and it’s just a matter of time before the “L” flag becomes the symbol flown atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard on a regular basis.

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EXTRA: O.J. vs. “Sweetness” – several hundred dollars difference these days

A couple of bucks for his cardboard

I remember back when O.J. Simpson was a big deal as an athlete – an All-Pro football player with the Buffalo Bills who also had charisma and charm and was well on his way to a celebrity lifestyle.

Now, he’s the guy who did nine years in prison (for supposedly threatening to harm people whom he says stole sports memorabilia from him even though many will forevermore think him guilty of the other crimes for which he was acquitted), and apparently became lucky enough this week to learn he qualified for parole from a Nevada corrections facility. He could be released by October.

Worth $1,000 if authentically autographed

I COULDN’T HELP but look up a little bit of data on the sports memorabilia market – particularly that involved with the trading cards that used to be a kiddie-thing, but now get treasured by people wishing to relive their sporting memories.

For what it’s worth, the book value for an O.J. Simpson card from the 1976 set produced by Topps Chewing Gum is $5.63, but only if it’s in prime physical shape. For anything less, a buck or two is about all O.J. is worth these days, according to SportsLots.com.

By comparison, there’s another card from that same set – one portraying Chicago Bears superstar Walter Payton. Admittedly, that card (which I remember actually owning as a kid) gets value added because it was the “rookie” card for Payton – he was a fresh prospect from Jackson State University who was just beginning his days of trying to make the Bears a respectable team. Fantasies of a Super Bowl were still a decade away in the future.

The same price guide gives a book value for the Payton at $207 – and for what it’s worth, I found one person Thursday on eBay who had such a card and already had bids of $449.99 for it.

Book value: About one dollar

QUITE A DIFFERENCE for pieces of cardboard from the months following the Bicentennial whose only real difference is the image they depict.

And also an example of just how far the mighty are capable of falling in life. A point we should all keep in mind on those occasions when we’re tempted to do something stupid.

Although those of us who remember the Naked Gun movies that included Simpson as an actor know that the “real” villain amongst athletes is Reggie Jackson. After all, he was going to kill the queen!

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Does Payton knowledge change Super Bowl Shuffle memory? Not one bit!

Depending on where in the country you live (some people are going to be deluded into thinking that either the Philadelphia Phillies or the Buffalo Bills are more important), Walter Payton is once again on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine.

No, he hasn’t done anything new. He hasn’t done anything, period. To riff on Chevy Chase for a moment, Walter Payton is still dead.

IT’S JUST THAT there’s a new book being published – one that purports to be the definitive biography on the one-time star running back of the Chicago Bears. And one that tells us that Payton abused drugs, experienced mood swings later in life that had him contemplating suicide and was less-than-faithful toward wife Connie during their marriage.

Now all of this stuff may be true. Not that I care much. For I didn’t know Walter Payton as a person. Nor did many of the people who are now getting all outraged and claiming that it is somehow disrespectful to report on Payton’s failings as a human being.

They want the illusion maintained that Payton the person was somehow as gifted as Payton the athlete. Which in the case of 99 percent of professional athletes is a serious miscalculation.

I’d argue that it doesn’t really matter. In fact, we’re probably better off realizing that the people on the playing field of the various games we enjoy watching for our entertainment are really just human beings like you and me.

BEING CAPABLE OF throwing a curve ball with a sharp break on a reliable business or being able to stuff a basketball into the hoop isn’t what makes one a preferable excuse for a human being.

It isn’t even the discipline that it takes for one to develop such athletic skills through constant (and single-minded) practice throughout the years. If anything, you could argue that it is a flaw that a person didn’t use such dedication to develop some skill that could better benefit humanity.

My point is that Walter Payton was a ballplayer. For those of us who didn’t know him personally, that’s all he was. Why we should feel compelled to make him into more than that probably says more about our flaws than Walter’s.

So those people who want to “spit” on Jeff Pearlman (or commit more severe bodily attacks) because he would dare to take down “Saint Walter” are being absurd. When Mike Ditka said he would plant a hocker on Pearlman if he ever saw him again, all he did was showed that Ozzie Guillen is far from being the biggest ball of hot air to ever be involved with Chicago sports.

NOW BEFORE ANYBODY starts saying that I’m not appreciating what Walter Payton meant to Chicago, I’d argue that I really do. I was in junior high school when Payton was a rookie out of Jackson State University, was in college back when the Bears won their only Super Bowl title with Payton and was in the early years of my time as a reporter-type person in Chicago when he finally quit playing.

I’d say the only reason Michael Jordan gets a bigger rep than Payton is those six NBA titles, compared to only one NFL title for Walter.

But do our memories of what happened on the turf at Soldier Field really get impacted because of what we know about Walter as a person? I’m not downplaying the significance of abuse of prescription drugs (the death of Michael Jackson easily shows us what can go wrong).

Although with all the battering that a professional football player takes during his career, I’d be amazed if Payton was NOT taking some form of pills to cope with the pain.

AND AS FOR the part about infidelity, he’d hardly be the first professional athlete to cope with life on the road by cheating. I’d argue that is an issue for his wife to deal with in whatever way she is most comfortable doing (and my understanding is that Connie and Walter came to some sort of forgiveness just before he died in 1999).

It doesn’t change the recollections I have every time I hear the “Super Bowl Shuffle” and think of that one Bears team that actually managed to “win the whole thing” during the past half-century.

If anything, I’m more offended by Payton’s one-time teammate, Dan Hampton, saying he plans to blow off the ’85 Bears visit to the White House on Friday, in part because he doesn’t approve of President Barack Obama’s politics.

Which means he just politicized an event that could easily have been about fluff – a sin bigger in my book than acknowledging athletes as mere people.

BESIDES, BASED ON the excerpts of Pearlman’s book, I have to admit to getting my biggest kick out of something other than the so-called salacious stuff.

For it seems the post-football Payton had an appetite that could have put William Perry to shame. “Pilgrimages” to Bob Evans for eggs and bacon (with side orders of sausage) and taking advantage of a card offered to him by a Wendy’s corporate executive for free food.

“Let’s just say they knew him at the Wendy’s drive-thru,” Pearlman quoted someone as saying. “He loved those free burgers.”

Be honest. Isn’t at least a part of you wondering how many patties (single, double or triple) Walter had on his burger, along with what toppings?

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Park District brings question to my mind – “Are they kidding?” about Payton

In theory, I want to give the Chicago Park District a pat on the back for taking a hard line stance with regards to the family of Chicago Bears great Walter Payton, who want to put a statue of “Sweetness” outside the stadium where the Bears play.

That stadium, of course, is Soldier Field, and it has been owned by the Chicago Park District for decades. It was originally built to be a public facility for sporting events to be witnessed by the masses of Chicago.

IT ALSO WAS to serve along with Navy Pier as a memorial to the military personnel of this nation – Soldier Field and Navy Pier. Now if we could only find something in this city to name for the Air Force and the Marines, we’d have the perfect set.

But it is because of that tradition that the building that seats more than 60,000 people for Bears games eight Sundays each year is a military memorial that the Park District is refusing to allow the Payton statue.

They told the Chicago Tribune that putting up the statue would diminish the memory of the soldiers, even though I’m sure the masses who tailgate outside Bears games probably think more of Payton than any soldier.

It is a nice ideal. I’d like to think that the Park District is sincere in saying such a thing.

BUT I AM one of those people who thinks that the 2001 renovation of Soldier Field killed off any semblance of the building being a war memorial – even though the renovated stadium’s advocates will claim that people can now check out the columns that pay tribute to soldiers.

In fact, any time people mock the Yankee Stadium renovation of the mid-1970s as somehow ruining the historic character of that building, I’d argue that the Soldier Field renovation was worse.

It literally got the building knocked off the National Register of Historic Places, because the changes to put in all those seats that sort of hover over the field (as though it is better to be sky-high than many rows back) obliterated the feel of what made Soldier Field architecturally unique.

So the idea that anyone seriously believes it is a war memorial any longer is absurd, although it probably maintains more character than Navy Pier, which has been turned into a commercial shopping center for the tourist-minded among us.

IN SHORT, CHICAGO has in recent years dumped on what was supposed to be its significant memorials to the military.

So the idea that anyone is now trying to use the military and its supposed presence as an excuse to avoid making some change is absurd.

Particularly since I can envision this rejection managing to offend many Chicago Bears fans who see how so many other new stadiums include among their decorative elements all kinds of statues paying tribute to the top ballplayers in those particular franchise’s histories.

Even in Chicago, just about every other building used for professional sports has these statues – with the best known being that one of Michael Jordan dunking a bronze basketball outside the United Center – and across the street from the Chicago Stadium where his Hall of Fame-quality pro basketball career began.

HECK, EVEN HARRY Caray gets a statue (the one that intoxicated Chicago Cubs fans like to load up with cans of Budweiser) outside Wrigley Field just for slurring his way through 17 years worth of Cubs baseball broadcasts (he really was on top of his game with the St. Louis Cardinals and the White Sox).

So I’m sure there are people who are going to be critical of the Park District and accuse them of disrespecting the memory of Payton, a Hall of Fame football player in his own right.

It turns out that Payton’s widow, Connie, wants this memorial to her late husband (who hasn’t played for the Bears in two decades and has been deceased for 10 years now, time flies too fast).

She’s willing to arrange to have the statue made and to donate it, provided they promise to erect it in a place where it will be seen (and not just become the receptacle for bird droppings).

EVEN THE BEARS themselves (who, let’s be honest, often show a knack for boneheaded public relations moves) are on board, saying they will try to talk some sense into the heads of their landlords to allow for the statue to be erected somewhere.

So I’m wondering how the Park District will wind up backing away from their “military memorial” stance while trying to pretend they didn’t change a thing. For the reality is that modern-day governments build these stadiums (or – in the case of the Chicago Park District – renovate them to the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars), but then give the teams total control over how they are used.

In some cases, they even let the teams have the bulk of the revenues that are earned (parking, concessions) from staging private athletic events in what ostensibly are public buildings.

Just so long as nobody gets the “bright” idea of trying to pay tribute to the memory of the definitely un-immortal Bobby Douglas. For that one, I would be willing to buy the “soldier memorial” excuse.

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Walter Payton for Vice President?

That was Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s choice, if he had to pick a sports-related person to appear on the ballot with him – although he also threw a bone to Michael Jordan.

For those of us who remember his moment of introduction last year for Monday Night Football, Obama’s recent interview about sports-related topics for ESPN is a tad more legitimate – particularly since he says he wishes baseball could get its own act together with regards to steroid use by ballplayers (without Congress or the federal government getting involved).

And for those who wondered, he stood up for the White Sox, saying he’d root for them in the World Series if they played against the Cubs.

The interview aired Monday night, and can be seen (http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3553404) again here.

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