Whole slew of kids show off potential to be Chicago Cubs infielders of future

I have been to enough baseball games during the course of my life that I have seen similar scenes many times – a ball gets hit into the stands, a kid or kids attempt to catch it to gain themselves a souvenir.

'Kid' who got 2 baseballs at Sunday's game. Photo provided by Chicago Cubs

And one may get his (or her) fingers on it briefly, but somehow can’t hold onto it.

MEANING THAT SOMEONE else wound up going home with the baseball. Some kid gets a memory of how he “almost” got a souvenir. Or else maybe they interpret it as “evidence” that “baseball sucks!” (and they’d rather play video games in the future).

So I can’t say I was surprised by the incident at the Sunday ballgame between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals – one that has managed to gain national attention and shows the general intelligence level (not very high) of the kind of people who take to Twitter to rant about anything and everything.

In that incident, a Cubs’ coach picked up a stray ball on the playing field, saw a cutesy little kid sitting in the front row and tried flipping a soft toss of the ball to the kid.

But the kid was a klutz, couldn’t hold on to the ball, it fell to the floor under the seats, and the guy sitting behind him managed to grab the stray ball.

VIDEO OF THE incident quickly got posted to the Internet, and under headlines such as, “When going to a baseball game, DON’T be this guy,” the story quickly circulated about the over-bearish oaf who deprived a cutesy little kid of a baseball.

The Cubs, not wanting to have negative publicity stemming from a ballpark incident (even one that they were in no way to blame), found the kid and arranged for the kid to get a baseball autographed by Cubs infielder Javy Baez.

Provided moment of goodwill

They also arranged for photographs of the cutesy kid wearing a too-big Cubs cap showing off his baseballs. Yes, baseballs. For it seems that the kid already managed to gain a ball earlier in the game.

Despite the nonsense Tweets from twits who raged about the bully of a fan, it seems the guy had managed to gain several baseballs throughout the game and had given them to kids sitting in the stands surrounding him.

INCLUDING THE CUTESY kid whom he supposedly deprived of a ball on live television.

Now one can argue that there might be something overly aggressive about a fan who manages to get so many stray baseballs (personally, I have never come close to getting a ball, even though I have gone to ballgames live for more than four decades).

But what I took from this particular incident is that we probably shouldn’t pay much attention to anything anyone says through Twitter. It is too often the means for saying meaningless things.

While I myself have a Twitter account (@tejeda_gregory), I’m not about to say there’s much significance to anything said in 140 characters – and often feel like I’m surrounded by those with nothing better to do with themselves. While I’m usually the first to find something snotty to say about Chicago Cubs fans, we certainly don’t have the bully or oaf that Twitter twits claimed.

AND AS FOR people snagging baseballs at games, the usual rule of thumb is that you have to hold onto the ball in order to stake a claim to it. Otherwise, tough luck.

It reminds me of an incident years ago I saw at a Chicago White Sox game. A ball hit foul into the stands. It bounced around a bit. A kid tried to grab it but couldn’t hold on. It wound up in the next section, where a semi-drunken adult finally snagged it.

What sticks in my mind is that the guy was white, the kid was black and several adults sitting near the kid who also were black tried to shame the “white” guy into giving up the ball. He wouldn’t, and I’m sure there’s at least one individual out there with unpleasant memories about baseball as a result.

It makes me wonder if we had the Twitter twits back then if a racial incident could have been created out of what happened. Particularly if one of the kind of people who feed religiously off every word President Donald Trump spews were to have gotten ahold of the moment.

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Who let the police out on Halloween? Have things changed that much?

I have to admit to paying a little more attention to Halloween this year; it probably was the sight of my niece and nephew taking part in the holiday festivities that prevented this past weekend from being a total mourning spectacle.

My niece, Meira, is still peeved her fangs didn't stick

But just what has become of this holiday that I recall as such a childhood gorge-fest – being able to go around the neighborhood and gather up candy. The good stuff would be wiped out within a day, while the real nasty stuff is probably still tucked away in a jar somewhere all these decades later.

MY OWN HALLOWEEN memories center around one year I wore some costume that supposedly made me Speed Racer – as in the cartoon character, but not the one from that crummy film version made many decades later.

There was a Halloween parade throughout the school building, then we hit the surrounding neighborhood after school until it got dark.

Then we engaged in our sugar rush!

This year, I was at my father’s house in suburban Homewood on Saturday, where I literally saw three different occasions where a police squad car with its lights flashing and sirens blaring went driving down the rather residential block upon which he lives.

THERE LITERALLY WAS one point when the squad car with lights flashing was parked right outside my father’s house – although they weren’t there for us.

When I asked people in the neighborhood what was going on, nobody else seemed shocked. It seems this kind of attention is what they have come to expect.

Which makes me wonder “What the &#$!” I think I literally would still be creeped out at the sight of uniformed police officers having nothing better to do than check out the trick-or-treaters as they were walking from house to house.

And yes, when I checked later, I was told there was no specific incident being responded to by my father’s house. This literally was just the regular patrols through the neighborhood on a Halloween.

IT MAKES ME wonder what our society has become when we feel the need to have the ‘police state’ in force on what is one of the childhood top holidays! The same thing that, in Gary, Ind., has local officials discouraging trick-or-treat altogether in exchange for a city-sponsored party with way too much candy and games on hand.

Not that I didn’t know that local officials pay a lot more attention to the trick-or-treat spectacle than they used to. I have heard many local governments set their hours for when kids are supposed to be encouraged to trick-or-treat.

Although I know of one local government official in suburban Oak Forest who made sure this year to clarify that those “official” hours for candy-gathering are merely recommended.

The police didn’t have the authority to bust any seven-year-old who had the nerve to ask for a Three Musketeers mini-bar at 7:03 p.m.

ALTHOUGH I ALSO noticed while driving through the Mount Greenwood neighborhood on Friday that the Chicago Police were en force along Kedzie Avenue as the trick-or-treat, costumed crowd were out a day early.

And police were there to guide traffic to ensure that there wasn’t a sudden story about a ghost getting run over along 115^th Street by some driver who was clueless enough not to see all the costumed kids and parents suddenly walking all over the place.

I do kind of wonder what these actual police would think of my niece Meira – who at age 12 came up with some girly-type police officer costume that she ghouled up with makeup and fangs to be a sort-of zombie. A zombie cop – complete with handcuffs. But no police baton!

Although in the best memory of a kid upset his costume got covered up with a heavy coat, she was upset that the fangs she paid nearly $10 for wouldn’t stick!

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EXTRA: Clark, the cubbie bear -- something about ’14 Cubs will be cute

CLARK: Where's Addison?

The Chicago Cubs let it be known they're going to join the ranks of professional ball clubs that feel the need for a gigantic fuzzy creature roaming the stands to entertain the fans at those moments when the on-field game is just too dreadful to watch.

He’s going to be known as “Clark,” and it appears he will be a teddy bear-like concoction meant to generate an “aw, how cute?” reaction from mothers, who will take their kids over to check him out while at the ballpark.

Should 'Bull' and 'Pudge" have been mascots?

I CAN’T HELP but think, though, that if the mascot is going to be named “Clark,” he ought to be a part of a pair – with the other named “Addison.” It’s the logical play off the name of the location of Wrigley Field.
 

It’s not like it’s even unheard of for a ball club in our city to have dual mascots – remember “Ribbie” and “Roobarb,” who annoyed an entire generation of Chicago White Sox fans back in the 1980s.

It might be worth the time for whoever gets the job of being “Clark” to meet with the one-time “Ribbie” and “Roobarb” to learn about the natural attraction of people to want to take a punch at whatever big, fuzzy thing is blocking their view of the ballgame.

From Sesame, to 35th, streets?

There used to be Sox fans who thought it was cute to do such a thing. Of course, it didn’t help matters any that nobody could figure out what Ribbie and Roobarb were supposed to be, or that Ribbie (I think, I could never tell them apart) looked like a rip-off of Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE Cubs fans will think they’re too refined to beat him up. They’ll probably take to pouring their warm, stale beers on the baby bear. That costume is going to be downright rank by season's end.

All I can think is that it will be a downright miserable job to have to portray “Clark” for 81 games at Wrigley Field – along with whatever other promotional stunts the Cubs schedule. The mascot may well be the highlight of the 2014 season.

Is Southpaw throwing w/ right arm?

One final note – a message for “Clark.” Turn your cap around and wear it like a ballplayer!!!!!

For that reason alone, “Southpaw” (the current incarnation of a mascot for the White Sox) wins points over you. Although Ribbie and Roobarb top you both for their ability to cope with the Comiskey crowd of old.

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