EXTRA: Sox/WGN not radical change

Still the voices, for better or worse ...

For those of you still having fits over this week’s announcement that the Chicago White Sox are shifting their radio broadcasts (for the next three seasons) to WGN-AM, relax.

Yes, that station once spreading the Tribune Co.’s image throughout the nation’s airwaves did develop an unnatural closeness to the Chicago Cubs – helping to bolster their image as a cutesy batch of losers.

... of White Sox baseball

BUT THE REALITY is that in sports broadcasting, it’s really the ball clubs that are in charge. It’s still going to be the voices and personas of one-time White Sox ballplayers Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson who will be doing the games. It’s still former ballplayers whom the White Sox think are best employed in the broadcast booth, and not on the field as a manager or coach!

Besides, WGN has the history of Chicago in its background – even that part of the history that occurred around 35^th Street and Shields Avenue.

It was long-time Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse who actually was the voice we find on the recordings of that September 1959 night when the White Sox actually won the pennant (not that he’s to blame for the city officials who celebrated by sounding Chicago’s air raid alarm system).

Comiskey Park on Brickhouse statue

Maybe it should also be noted that the only time the legendary Chicago broadcaster got to do a World Series was that very same ’59 Go-Go Sox ball club that, sadly enough, lost in six games to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

GOING ALONG WITH the tradition of the times, the World Series paired up the lead broadcasters for both ball clubs – creating a Vin Scully/Jack Brickhouse team that many baseball-minded people would regard as a broadcast fantasy pairing; both recipients of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Frick Award for broadcasters.

Besides, the Cubs have been off WGN radio for a few years now. The tie was already broken.

Nobody liked this image

It’s not like the ghost of Ron Santo is going to return from the Great Beyond to become the Voice of the White Sox, just as he spent the final years of his life adding to the image of Chicago Cubdom by being their radio voice.

Now as someone old enough to remember the sight of an aging Santo trying to play infield for the White Sox, that truly would be a dreadful thought. But it’s going to be the same sounds of Sox baseball – only at a different spot on the radio dial.

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Is Jose Quintaña trade the next Jon Garland deal? Or next Sammy Sosa?

The only surprising part about the Chicago White Sox trading away their top pitcher on Thursday is where he wound up – many baseball fans were convinced Jose Quintaña would wind up wearing the pinstripes and interlocking “NY” logo of the New York Yankees.
 

Changing uniforms, but not his home city

Instead, Quintaña is going to the Chicago Cubs; who gave up four ballplayers in their minor league system. Including the two who supposedly were the top prospects they had for their future.

IT’S ONE OF those deals that could come back to bite the Cubbies on their behind if any of those young ballplayers develops into a key to the White Sox’ next championship ballclub – whenever in the future that may occur.

It would be the Cubs’ luck that the “Cuban revolution” taking place on the Sout’ Side will win a pennant, and one of these no-longer-a-Cub players will get the key hit to win the Sox their second world series of this century.

Of course, baseball fans know there always is uncertainty.

For it also could turn out that Quintaña could be the key to gives the Cubs a jolt this season and helps them return to the form that enabled them to win their first World Series of this century just last year.

IN WHICH CASE, it would be just like the White Sox to provide the key piece to enable the Cubs to be able to claim to have more World Series titles in recent years (’05 for the White Sox and ’16 for those baby blue bears) than they do.

Cubs fans' fantasy all-Chicago trade?

So this trade is a gamble, as much of baseball always is. No one knows for sure how things will turn out, and we’ll probably need to wait a couple of decades before we can definitively say if somebody seriously screwed up with Thursday’s deal.

Could this wind up like the 1998 trade where long-forgotten pitcher Matt Karchner went to the Cubs for a minor league ballplayer who turned out to be Jon Garland – one of the starting pitchers who led the White Sox to that ’05 World Series championship.

The White Sox fans' retort

I’m sure that’s the dream from the perspective of 35^th Street.

ALTHOUGH UP AT Clark and Addison streets, they’re probably thinking more along the lines of that 1992 trade where the Cubs gave up an aging (but still capable) George Bell in exchange for a young outfielder whom the White Sox had written off as too stubborn to learn new ways of improving himself as a ballplayer.

Both of these Steves pitched better ...

Some six years later, Sammy Sosa hit those 66 home runs in a season and began that six-season streak in which he began bashing home runs at a pace only matched by Babe Ruth at his 1920s peak.

Which for a while made Cubs fans want to think of this trade as some sort of ultimate steal. Except that with all the steroid speculation that the rumor mill insists on tagging to Sosa, there are many White Sox fans who feel nothing but relief that their favorite ballclub doesn’t have to live with that albatross around its neck.

... for the other Chicago ball club

According to the Chicago Tribune, this is the 15^th time the two Chicago ballclubs have made trades with each other. We’ll have to see how things pan out.

THERE WILL BE some White Sox fans who will give extra scrutiny to outfielder Eloy Jimenez and pitcher Dylan Cease – who are now part of the Sox’ future rather than the Cubs. Although considering that the Cubs had these ballplayers this season at teams in South Bend, Ind., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., it would seem that maybe 2019 is the soonest we’ll see them in Chicago.

Still a freakish image to contemplateS

Although it wouldn’t be unheard of for one team’s player to have better luck on the other side of Chicago. I still remember former Cub Steve Stone (yes, the broadcast guy) being a key pitcher for that 1977 White Sox team that seriously contended for a championship, while Steve Trout (a local boy from suburban South Holland) missed being a part of the ’83 White Sox team that went to the playoffs but made up for it the following year by being a part of that ’84 division-winning Cubs ballclub.

So what’s it going to be for Quintaña?

Will Thursday go down in baseball history “infamy” for this trade? And on which side of Chicago will it wind up being detested, while beloved by the other part of the local baseball fandom?

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Baseball is back! Or, is 2019 the year us Chicago fans ought to look forward to?

There are some of us who consider ourselves Chicago baseball fans who are deluded enough to think the new season began Sunday night what with that ballgame played in St. Louis. But for those of us who will always view the existence of the Cubs as an irrelevancy, the season begins Monday.

Waiting for the first smashed window of '17. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

For the Detroit Tigers are in town to play the Chicago White Sox, while other ball clubs also get their first games of the 2017 season in as they try to keep alive the illusion that they’re legitimate contenders for a championship this year.

WE’LL GET OUR introduction to the concept of “Guaranteed Rate Field” (which is really nothing more than a U.S. Cellular Field relabeled), while Chicago Cubs fans will have to wait a few more days before they’ll be capable of seeing their favorite ball club take to the playing field live.

Since that night in early November when we saw the sight of the World Series ending with an extra-inning infield groundout, some of us filled our need to see athletic activity by enduring the misery of the Chicago Bears or the mediocrity of the Chicago Bulls.

Personally, I took to following beisbol in the Latin American leagues, where Puerto Rico got to see some highlights.

A Boricuan ball club won the Caribbean Series, beating a team from Mexico in the championship game. While in the World Baseball Classic, a team from Puerto Rico had dreams of going through the tourney completely UNDEFEATED before, in its final game, it fell short to a United States nation team.

Quintana still the White Sox ace, for now!

ALL OF WHICH were moments to enjoy watching. But there is still something special about the return of American and National league activity. The ability to go out and watch a ballgame live – which is an experience unlike any other sporting activity.

There’s nothing quite like the battle between a pitcher and a hitter – each trying to outthink the other so they can come out ahead in a ballgame.

By comparison, watching a seven-footer stuff a basketball through a hoop mounted 10 feet in the air seems so cheap.

I’m anxious to see the series of activity that will take place over the course of the 162-game seasons that our city’s two major league ball clubs will play. I’ll probably even follow the activity of the minor league ball club in Geneva, or the independent leagues that have teams in places like Joliet, Schaumburg, Crestwood or Gary, Ind.

Did you see 'ESPN, the Magazine' report about all the Twinkies Moncada ate?

NOT THAT I seriously expect to see a championship ball club in the area (no matter the delusions of those Cubs fans who think they’re now entitled to a string of seasons of historic sporting significance).

There’s a reason why no National League team has won two straight World Series titles since 1975-76 – it’s tough! Particularly with all the rounds of playoffs we now require before teams even get to a World Series. Even the American League has only produced two teams (the New York Yankees of 1977-78 and 1998-2000 and Toronto Blue Jays of 1992-93) that succeeded.

Is Kris Bryant so wonderful ...

Besides, those Cincinnati Reds teams that were successful those two years had talent that cause some people to think they were amongst the best baseball teams EVER (although anyone who’s serious knows the Oakland Athletics of ’71-’75 topped them).

I don’t think anybody seriously thinks the modern-day incarnation of the Cubs is THAT great. Or that any of their individual ballplayers are at the top of the list of even the Cubs’ elite (unless we’re prepared to finally dump the image of Ron Santo as an all-time great just because we now have Kris Bryant).

... that Cubs fans will drop Santo's status?

THEY MAY HAVE an interesting ball club. But there’s no guarantee of a World Series title, or even an appearance. Perhaps similar to the White Sox, who likely will show some signs of competence, but we’ll be waiting to see if there’s potential for long-term growth for the Sox.

Personally, the part of me following Chicago baseball is more interested in the potential for 2019 – which would be the centennial of that infamous World Series when the White Sox lost to the Reds and eight players ultimately were indicted on criminal charges they were offered money to lose!

New season brings back old memories

Maybe 2019 is the perfect timing for a White Sox team to grow into a championship team in its own right and play in a World Series against the Cubs.

A real-life “City Series” (the only in Chicago since 1906) that would help resolve many of the bar-room arguments about “Sox vs. Cubs” – and letting us see the inherent superiority of a certain Sout’ Side ball club.

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Mexico, Cuba beisbol officials gave Miñoso an honor U.S. officials haven’t

I don’t expect the death Sunday of 1950s-era Chicago White Sox star Minnie Miñoso will get quite the lasting attention that the passing back in January of Cubs star Ernie Banks did.

For one thing, there probably aren’t the extenuating circumstances concerning his estate (only $16,000) and the fight over whether to cremate his remains (and scatter the ashes at Wrigley Field like some fans would want to see happen) that Banks has. Minnie was less controversial in that aspect.

WE’RE NOT LIKELY to see the statue of Miñoso inside of U.S. Cellular Field moved for a week to the Daley plaza near the Picasso. Then again, I don’t think hard-core White Sox fans would care much about such a gesture.

It’s kind of like the whole attitude of White Sox fans toward their team – they know how great Miñoso was, and think it’s the rest of the world’s loss that they couldn’t appreciate it.

Just as the continued failure of officials with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to recognize Miñoso’s U.S. major league career with hall of fame induction – most recently for this year.

The committee that was considering ballplayers from the 1950s through the 1970s wound up picking nobody for induction this year, including Miñoso despite his many American League All Star team appearances and the Rookie of the Year honors the Sporting News gave him in 1951. He also was the first black Latin American ballplayer in the U.S. major leagues (although the first African American ballplayer with the White Sox was Sam Hairston, who came along a few months after Miñoso).

THE CONSOLATION, SO to speak, is that with Miñoso passing away now, he would not have been around for the induction ceremonies to take place in July. That will lessen the sting a little bit.

Then again, it doesn’t mean the baseball career of Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso (a.k.a., the Cuban Comet, el Charro Negro and Mr. White Sox – to try to match up with Banks’ Mr. Cub) didn’t get some recognition during his lifetime.

Back in 1996, the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame in Monterrey inducted Minnie because after retiring from U.S. baseball following 1964, he went to Mexico and served as a ballplayer and, later, a manager in the Mexico Pacific League through 1975 – and excelled there too.

Then last year, baseball officials in Cuba decided to resurrect their long-dormant Hall of Fame in Havana by picking 10 new members (no one had been inducted for more than half a century).

AMONG THE TEN picked was Miñoso, who started out his baseball career playing in Cuba’s professional league – where he kept playing during the winters of the 1950s simultaneous to being with the White Sox. He kept playing there until the Castro “revolution” caused the old professional leagues to be shut down in 1960, and Miñoso decided he’d rather be an exile in the U.S. rather than live in his now-Communist country.

He became a U.S. citizen in 1976 – the same year he returned to the White Sox as a coach and also had the first of several at-bats that allowed him to claim to have been a professional ballplayer in parts of six decades.

Which, sadly enough, may be the only thing a younger generation of baseball fans remember him for; being the oldest ballplayer to actually get a base hit in a ballgame (off Sid Monge of the California Angels – who coincidentally enough is also a Mexico Baseball Hall of Fame member inducted in 2004).

Banks and Miñoso have one thing in common – athletic careers tied so closely to Chicago ball clubs that they never got the chance to play for a championship team. No World Series appearances for either.

BANKS WAS A part of that 1969 Cubs team that collapsed in September to the New York Mets, while Miñoso had just been traded away (to Cleveland) when the White Sox managed to win an American League championship in 1959.

Although Miñoso was a White Sox employee when the team won the World Series in 2005 – and it was a kick to be able to see him in that team parade that wound its way from the ballpark and Chinatown north to the Loop.

Now, both are gone. Although if it turns out in the near future that Miñoso does get U.S. Hall of Fame induction, he’ll be compared to another Chicago Cub – Ron Santo, who got inducted in 2012 right after his death.

And the next time I work my way out to U.S. Cellular Field for a ball game, perhaps I’ll have to go find that little concession stand near third base where they sell Cuban sandwiches (pork and ham, with pickles and Swiss cheese on toasted French bread) in honor of the “Cuban Comet” himself.

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The day will come when people think it strange that “WGN” ever meant Cubs

Soon to be a historic relic

Some things about Chicago are eternal – such as the idea of the Chicago Cubs who have been in the National League ever since it started play back in 1871.

But when it comes to how many Cubs fans follow their favorite ball club, there are going to be some serious changes. The idea that one tunes their radio or television to WGN (720 AM, Channel 9) to catch a ballgame every afternoon is going to become a piece of history.

JUST LIKE THE Stevens Hotel, Riverview amusement park or the International Ampitheatre.

It was in recent days that it became learned that WGN radio was letting Cubs broadcasts go – even though they’ve been on that radio station since the days when Al Capone’s gangs terrorized Chicago.

Cubs games will shift to WBBM-AM radio, with some speculation that games eventually will shift to the sister station owned by the company, WSCR-AM – the station with the sports-talk radio format.

That station currently carries Chicago White Sox broadcasts, but there’s the chance that the team may move on to another broadcast alternative in another year or so. The White Sox radio channel could soon be the preferred alternative for the Cubs.

AT LEAST ON those occasions when a new generation of people actually bothers to listen to a radio.

It seems that the new generation of people that doesn’t want to read news or books on printed paper also doesn’t think much of listening to a ballgame on a radio. They want it on whatever portable devices they carry with them.

Also likely to become history

So I’m sure that from the Cubs’ perspective, not having their games on WGN radio any longer isn’t so bad. It is a relationship that served its purpose all these decades, but also ran its course.

Even though the rhetoric is that it is WGN that wasn’t interested in keeping Cubs games, at least not at the same rate the station was having to pay the ball club.

PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL TEAMS increasingly want to be paid big bucks for the rights to carry their games. Either that, or they want to have their own channels where they can control every aspect of a broadcast – and all the advertising revenue that goes along with it.

It’s also why I’m sure the Cubs will not lose sleep over the fact that WGN America, the cable television version of our local television station that people across the country get to see, is willing to let Cubs baseball go.

Will Santo disappointment live on?

Those fans around the country who really care about the Cubs (and I don’t doubt there are all those rural Iowa, Illinois and Indiana bumpkins – the great-grandchildren of Three Eye League baseball fans – who do care) will find other options.

The time will come when only Chicago residents will get to see Cubs games on a “WGN” channel. At least until the day we get Cubs TV (channel 364, or whatever, on our television channel lineup), which will offer us constant games, rebroadcasts, historic clips, and sports talk shows around the clock.

WHO KNOWS? JUST as the old television program “This Week in Baseball” in its final years gave us a digitally-created version of host Mel Allen after he died, perhaps Cubs TV will give us Ron Santo recreated.

Santo redux could give us introductions, before young 20-something broadcasters who look cute on camera tell us about how badly the Cubs blew their latest ballgame.

And just think, there could be a touch of the past, too. That Brant Brown-inspired Santo cry of “Oh noooooooooooo!” could live on whenever the cubs do something bad. And Cubs fans will lap it all up.

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Derrick Rose the face of Chicago pizza?

It amused me to learn Thursday that Chicago Bulls star player Derrick Rose has become a significant owner, and will now be the face of, Giordano’s pizza.

For me, it is just too much of a stretch to have to associate his name with those deep dish or stuffed pies. While I know this statement will make me sound like an antique, I can’t help but think that I was eating Giordano’s pizzas long before there ever was a Derrick Rose.

I MEAN THAT literally. The Bulls star who is trying to resuscitate his athletic career from torn ligaments wasn’t even born yet back when I first had a Giordano’s brand pizza.

The idea that a company that has been around Chicago for as long as Giordano’s (some four-plus decades) is turning to a ballplayer to promote its image (athletic careers are so unstable and can come crashing down at a moment’s notice) just strikes me as bizarre.

It’s not a slam against Rose – who is the local-boy favorite who made it out of Englewood to stardom until his injury. But what happens when Rose’s career is over?

Is Giordano’s now the company whose billboards have a blank space (insert face of fly-by-night athlete here) for their self-promotion?

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to confess, it must be nice to have the kind of money to buy one-self a brand-name product to associate with their own image. Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Rose paid an undisclosed amount for his share of the company, which he’d like to see become more of a national player on the restaurant scene.

Which just might be possible, on account of the fact that whenever I travel outside of Chicago, I have no problems finding restaurants that offer “Chicago-style pizza” – only to find out that those pizzas bear no resemblance to anything that any self-respecting Chicago consumer would ever consider consuming.

No matter how hungry they might be.

A chain of Giordano’s, done right, could well spread the concept of real deep dish or stuffed pizzas to other parts of the nation.

IT COULD ALSO make Rose so wealthy, if done right, that he doesn’t have to worry about ever playing ball again – except to assuage his ego.

Now for all of you who are on the verge of sending me e-mail messages telling me something along the lines of “Giordano’s sucks!!!,” I don’t need to hear it.

I never proclaimed it to be the best pizza.

But back when I was a kid, pizza largely was a thin-crust offering. The quality deep-dish came from Uno’s or Due’s – which meant a trip downtown. That’s not always convenient when one decides to indulge in the slices that are a meal in-and-of themselves.

GIORDANO’S WAS THE place that had so many locations that you could get a passable pizza pie without having to make a long trip.

I still remember the location of the Giordano’s I first ate at – and my mouth still waters whenever I go near it, even though now it is a long-vacant storefront. Giordano’s left there a while back.

Now, I have moved up, and consider myself fortunate to live near a Lou Malnati’s restaurant that will deliver.

I do find it a little humorous that Rose won’t be able to do any kind of business tie-in between himself, Giordano’s and the Chicago Bulls. The NBA team, after all, has a business deal with DiGiorno’s – those frozen pizzas that like to think they’re some sort of gourmet delicacy.

FROZEN PIZZA IS frozen pizza – regardless of the details. Let’s just hope that Giordano’s doesn’t decline to the level of the last Chicago athlete who tried to make extra money from pizzas sold in his image.

Because the concept of Ron Santo’s Pizza was foul enough that, perhaps, the one-time Chicago Cubs third baseman deserved a lengthy delay getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame for that reason alone.

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A second Hall of Famer for 80-80 Sox?

When Ron Santo’s surviving spouse gives the speech Sunday to accept his membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., he will become the second member of the 1974 Chicago White Sox to gain such immortality.

The first, of course, came a few years ago when relief pitcher Rich Gossage gained admission to the Hall of Fame. Gossage was in his third year in the major leagues that year, although showing signs already of how overpowering he could be.

WHICH WAS THE exact opposite of the Santo career in baseball – which spent so many years with the Chicago Cubs, then gained one last season playing in Comiskey Park.

Where the White Sox faithful greeted the ol’ heel-clicker with banners reading, “Welcome to the Major Leagues, Ron Santo!”

It was a final year of a career that may or may not have ended prematurely due to what we now know was Santo dealing with the physical effects of diabetes.

It should not be a shock that he was basically a utility infielder for the White Sox – backing up Mexico Baseball Hall of Fame member Jorge Orta and Bill Melton. A .221 batting average, only 5 home runs and 41 runs batted in, and 72 strikeouts in 117 games played.

HIS WHITE SOX stint has nothing to do with him being in the Hall of Fame. Which is a large part of why I personally have problems getting all excited about his candidacy, and will be glad to see the Santo hoopla come to an end.

For what I remember firsthand was that final season, which came at about the time I started following professional baseball on a regular basis. Much of the Cubs time was just before my time, and from what I read it seems that the Boyer brothers (Ken of the St. Louis Cardinals and Clete of the New York Yankees) were regarded as the top third basemen of that era.

I don’t see either of them getting admitted to the Hall of Fame anytime soon.

But Ron’s in. I’m sure it’s the highlight of this year for Chicago Cubs fans, and personally I’m more curious to see if the White Sox can snatch back first place on Sunday with a  win against the Detroit Tigers.

AND PERHAPS I’LL reminisce a bit more about that ’74 ballclub, which was one of the first I remember following. 

For as it turns out, that ballclub had another player whom the new-school stat geeks like to tout as a potential Hall of Fame pitcher. None other than Jim Kaat, who in that season had a 21-win, 13-loss record with a 2.92 earned run average and 142 strikeouts in 277 1/3 innings pitched.

Whodathunk that the 80-win, 80-loss ball club (compared to 66-96 for the Cubs that season) would have the potential for three Hall of Famers – and none of them would be named Dick Allen?

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