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Good Comp, Bad Comp

The great play-by-play man Jason Benetti and I had wanted to do something together. This is it. For far too long, baseball scouts have been comparing ballplayers to, well, only ballplayers. We all know that’s not a wide enough focus. Zoom out, people.

In Good Comp, Bad Comp, Benetti and I compare a ballplayer we appreciate to absolutely anything. We may go high-minded; a player has been a painter, a musician, a novel, and a TV series. Or we may go low brow; players have been likened to a milkshake, a tractor, and a big tall statue. You don’t know. Neither do we, until we do it.

Then you vote. Who got it righter? Or wrongest? You decide.

All episodes will be archived here.

Our most recent effort? The iconoclast Trevor Bauer.

Before that? The White Sox’ excellent veteran leader, Jose Abreu.

Vote here:

Previously, the HOF lock Albert Pujols.

Before this, we had finally gotten to a current guy for the first time, and of course it had to be the best player in the game. Mike Trout.

The first one was Bartolo Colon.

During the second one, we reveal who won the first one. And so on. And they told two friends. And so on.

The second one was Rickey Henderson. Spoiler alert: I nailed it.

Episode 3 is Randy Johnson. Obelisk or Novel? Watch.

Episode 4? The incomparable Old Hoss Radbourn.

Suggest candidates in the comments below.

Check back for COMP goodness; they’ll all be right here.

Baseball, Collected Wisdom, Favorite Appreciations, Matt’s Satisfying Expressions

Ballpark Collecting Time is Here, NOW.

It’s never too late to start something that will take the rest of your life to accomplish.

I wanna hit every MLB ballpark.  Lots of people go on or have completed this quest.  It’s absurd, really, how many of them I’ve not been to.  I get jealous when I see tweets like this from friend and colleague Chris Tannehill:

20!  The man is barely in his mid-30’s.  His ballpark list is incredibly impressive, like a Bert Blyleven curve. Plus, he seems to have had very pure, solid fan experiences at the parks, with beers and snacks and friends and such.  I’ve so often been working; upstairs with snooty, carefully detached media, unable to hang out where the real people are and fully feel the building.

“Other than hanging with family, the ballpark visits are probably my favorite thing,” says Tannehill. “Obviously I love to travel but don’t have the time or money to see the world; seeing ballparks allows me to explore the country.”

You’d think I, a baseball romantic bred into this passion essentially from the womb, would have been one of the many who collect ballparks.  I am a man whose pronunciation of “#baahhhhseballl” was so lampooned on the radio that it turned itself from insult to compliment almost daily.    A Twitter account was born just to keep the ridicule flowing.

And yet, my ballpark list feels meek and inadequate, like a Doug Jones fastball.

Last Friday night, amid accompanying my wife on a work trip to Dallas (I have some free time these days), we decided to hit the stadium in Arlington. An insurance company I’d never heard of has the rights, so “Globe Life” isn’t just what all us Earthlings are living every day, it’s the home of the Texas Rangers.

The teams were bad.  Hell, one of them was the White Sox.  Dylan Covey got absolutely destroyed, the Sox played like the clowns Reynaldo Lopez accused them of being a couple weeks ago, and it was 10-0 Rangers by the 3rd. But hey, Matt Davidson pitched in the 8th!

That was awesome….the man showed a legit curve and splitter. He said afterwards it was a dream come true.

StubHub got us great seats behind the plate for under a hundred bucks, and we stayed all night until the postgame fireworks, accompanied by a well-crafted Beatles medley.  This was my kind of night.  Adrian Beltre didn’t do anything special, but I’m still glad I saw him. And maybe it was the weird 17% alcohol drinks in mini-baseball shaped cans, but I enjoyed watching the teams have to go through the motions of playing out the game because they must.  It reminded me of times I have sung at terrible, corporate parties.  The band knows the gig absolutely sucks by the middle of the first set….the crowd barely pays attention, we are sonic wallpaper.  But you play your best.  You finish the night with professionalism. It’s a job.

This column appears in full on the Score’s website, here.

BUT…here, you can comment, let’s get a thread going.  What’s your ballpark count at right now?  What traditions do you do at each new park?  Talk to me.

Homegirl wore the Rangers hat, just so her White Sox loathing was clear. True Story.

 

Baseball, Sports

The Destruction Of Belief

The game I love is irreparably harmed.

With 13 names added to the lists of cheaters and liars, the specter of PEDs looms larger than ever. The carnage is not just the worth of the guilty, or their isolated reputations.

Remember that sense of wonderment when, say, Cecil Fielder hit 51 in 1991? Go further back to George Foster hitting 52 in 1977.

We’ll never have it cleanly again. That’s unquestionably the greatest casualty in all of this.

Growing up, one of my favorite baseball trivia questions was this: Who are the only five men to hit 50 or more homers in a season twice. Until the late 1990s, the answer was Ruth, Mays, Mantle, Jimmy Foxx and the oft-overlooked Ralph Kiner.

Now, that list is nine. Sammy Sosa hit more than 60 three different times. There were 16 seasons of 50 or more homers between 1900 and 1995. There have been 26 in the 18 years since.

Now, in conversation or watching a game, praise a power hitter. See how fast the “juicing” rejoinder comes.

It comes from a friend, from a fan, or in your own mind. In my case it comes from a Twitter follower, a texter to the radio show, a co-host, a producer.

I can’t fight them on it. Truly.

Cynicism has been rewarded, time and time again. And I hate it.

I once argued passionately to credit Jose Bautista for the work he did with hitting coach Dwayne Murphy in Toronto. This lifelong power prospect and (to that point) bust started to swing earlier and pull absolutely everything.

He worked, trusted and rebuilt his approach. You can read all about it if you want.

But no one wants to hear it. Most would much rather scream “roids” and end the discussion.

Chris Davis, a lifelong power prospect and bust, has become more patient (though his plate discipline stats of late have come back to earth), and he says he has matured in Baltimore. You can read all about if you want.

Most aren’t interested.

One friend posted on social media that he “can’t wait until Chris Davis gets exposed.”

This is the emotional damage baseball has wrought upon itself.

The innocent are no doubt being victimized by this, daily. And we don’t know who they are.

I was mad about steroids for years, with a righteous anger to find the wicked, demonize them and safely return to praising the clean.

The rage is gone. Resignation has set in. This is not a good prism by which to view something you love.

So by what method could you rediscover that sense of wonder?

•Shut down every interaction with the “roids!” screamers and bury your head in the sand? We can’t do that; so many shamefully did it in 1998 and beyond.

•Abandon the appreciation of the home run? I greatly appreciate pitching, diving catches, triples, opposite-field singles and perfect cutoff throws. The problem is, the longball is pleasing.

•Accept that everyone is conceivably cheating and therefore still credit those who are clearly better than the rest? I’m not quite ready for that last option, though it seems in some ways the safest.

Joy might be rekindled with pure unabashed skepticism.

What we have to do is this: Know the stories of the athletes we watch. Understand the genuine talent, efforts and improvement that are sometimes evident.

A light bulb that went on is not always some fabricated myth. A healthier mindset is not always some fraudulent cover.

Are there drugs involved? How can anyone really argue against the possibilities?

All I can argue for is the full picture.

I hope the testing catches up with the users in a way that allows trust to bloom again.

I hope improvement gets acknowledged, even amid the doubts.

And I hope our relationship with the game gets easier.

Baseball, Fatherhood

The Best Baseball Moment of The Summer
September, 2014.
He has a blue, fat whiffle bat that he loves to hold and swing. He sees it in the bag of sports stuff in the trunk and wants to bring it into the back seat and the living room.

No dice, kid. But outside? Any time you want.

He really likes falling down. Digs flopping around on the “big bed.” He likes fire trucks and ambulances and school buses and vans and choo choo trains.

And yes, he’s starting to like baseball. Not in the viewing or aesthetic sense, but he’s realized that hitting a ball with a bat is seriously pleasing. His first batting coach, mom, did an excellent job directing his stance and swing while kneeling behind him. Daddy pitched, trying to target that Eddie Gaedel-sized strike zone.

We have a friendly boy, who loves to say hi to anyone and everyone. If kids are playing, he’ll join. Baseball is great social lubricant for all of us.

MJ is 6, runs like a deer, and pounds the whiffle ball with power. My boy sees him often, plays with him, and aspires to be older and wiser. MJ’s father, Irving, and I have talked about Jackie Robinson West, the Sox bullpen and principally the obvious happiness of our spawn. We talk about how to make it last as long as possible.

My boy swats and misses the ball chaotically. Once it has slowed to a stop on the ground, that’s when he gets in his best swings. Pounding away at it looks deeply satisfying.

It’s been a good baseball summer for us. We’ve been to multiple games on both sides of town. His interest level rises a bit each time.

For him, and for me on those days, the win-loss record means nothing. The popcorn better not be stale.

You may remember me writing in this space about how I’d decided to not imprint any particular fandom onto him. That mandate holds. I thank the Cubs for their generous gift of an official youth glove on the occasion of his first game, but it made its way to Goodwill. I thank the White Sox for the cuddly Pillow Pet, but a lucky parent has hopefully found that donation.

When he asks for an item with a logo from either team, it’s his immediately. But that decision is not mine.

If I were laying odds, the White Sox are the favorites. The atmosphere of that ballpark is incredibly conducive to a child’s good time. Play areas, endless food varieties, air-conditioned concourses and more. A toddler can’t wrap his brain around why Wrigley is special right now. The beauty of the ivy and other optics only holds for so long.

For now, I’m just glad he likes to play. It’s a good game. Baseball is an endless cerebral challenge, and for a boy his age, it’s also a dexterity, patience and attention-span challenge.

He is my son, and it’s the great pleasure of this life to help him discover and repeat things he enjoys, whatever they may be.

These past few weeks in the NFL have made all of us need sports to be an escape more than ever. It can be found by diving into the growth of Cubs prospects, the majesty of Chris Sale or the farewell to Paul Konerko. It can be found by marveling at the A’s collapse, rooting for it to be the Royals’ year or never missing a Clayton Kershaw pitch.

In his cousins’ front yard, he held out his glove hand flatly. Daddy threw the ball from 30 feet away or so, with plenty of arc. It landed in the open mitt. His first real catch.

The crowd went wild on the front steps.

Best moment of the baseball summer.

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