By Roger Wallenstein

He played in just 12 games for the Yankees in 1919 with just a couple of singles in 22 at-bats, not exactly the kind of numbers that would enable him to stick around the next season when Babe Ruth arrived in The Bronx.
However, his life in professional sports was just beginning for the 24-year-old George Stanley Halas.
Once again, all 53 Chicago Bears displayed the “GSH” initials on their left sleeve on Sunday, as they presented new coach Marc Trestman with a 24-21 victory 94 years after the team’s founder tried to figure out how to hit the curve in the American League.
Folks who feel a sense of relief now that football has returned need not be weighed down with guilt. Even though the baseball season has three more weeks to run before it reaches its merciful conclusion, no one needs to chastise local fans for abandoning ship weeks ago.

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Posted on September 9, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

Labor Day is such an innocuous, nondescript holiday. No fireworks, no counting down the seconds until midnight, no turkey, no gift-giving, not much of anything. I heard there was a parade in Naperville but other than the Napervillians, I can’t imagine circling September 2 on my calendar.
The first Monday in September simply has morphed into a marker for the end of summer. What sane person looks forward to the last day of summer? When I was a kid, school always began the day after Labor Day. Same deal when I was a teacher. Didn’t make any difference. Labor Day was not something you looked forward to.

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Posted on September 2, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

This was the kind of weekend we expected before the season began. Playing against the front-running Texas Rangers, our guys dropped the first game by a lopsided 11-5 count but came back against one of baseball’s best in Yu Darvish on Saturday and finished the deal on Sunday.
But that’s just part of the story that included the return of A.J. Pierzynski – and to a lesser extent Alex Rios – along with the Civil Rights Game on Saturday which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

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Posted on August 26, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

The r-words, rebuilding and reloading, are not being uttered as often this morning by those who still remain interested in the fortunes of the White Sox. More in vogue is the t-word – turnaround.
Regardless of the label, the recent nine wins in 14 games provide the sense that the situation may not be as hopeless as it seemed just before the current streak. You remember that. Ten straight losses and 13 setbacks in 14 games at the end of July into early August.
Maybe we lost more than a few devotees at that juncture, and you couldn’t blame them. An 8-19 June already resulted in fans losing interest almost as quickly as the Bulls in the immediate post-Jordan era.
But hold on, folks. Memories tend to be short in the sporting world. Maybe we do have a few glimmering gems to clutch as the season begins to wind down.

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Posted on August 19, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

Tyler Flowers has been just one disappointment this White Sox season amongst multitudes of transgressions. But this one easily could have been avoided.
Flowers simply is playing out of position. No, I’m not saying that Tyler should be patrolling first base – he’s appeared there five times during his career on the South Side – but he’s not a front-line catcher either.
However, he does stack up favorably as a backup, which he more or less has become with the arrival of Josh Phegley a few weeks ago.

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Posted on August 12, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

You know it’s bad when you’re following the Charlotte Knights versus the Norfolk Tides on the computer while the Sox and Tigers provide the background on television.
But that’s what it has come to. The only drama Saturday evening in Detroit wasn’t so much whether the Sox could beat Max Scherzer – of course they couldn’t – but whether they could score against him. Again, that didn’t happen in the meek 3-0 loss.
Tracking Avisail Garcia’s first games in the White Sox organization – he joined the Knights last weekend after being part of the Jake Peavy deal – enticed me more than what was happening in Detroit as we count down the games to the end of the 2013 season, which can’t come quickly enough.

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Posted on August 5, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

While tailgating a few years ago in Seattle prior to a Bears-Seahawks game with my older son, who lives in the Emerald City, I discovered what a sheltered life I had been leading.
“What the hell are you doing,” was my reflex reaction when a kid – I had no idea who he was – jabbed his car keys into a full can of beer.
“You old geezers don’t even know about shotgunning a beer,” the kid sneered as his key punctured the middle of the can thoroughly soaking him before he could get his mouth around the hole. He was lucky if half the beer reached the intended destination.
My approach was and remains, See Beer, Open Beer, Drink Beer. If that’s being an “Old Geezer,” so be it.

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Posted on July 29, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

The season stretches for 162 games over six long months, one of which is even called “the dog days.” Preparing to play every day of the week presents a constant mental challenge. Half the games require living out of a suitcase. The bone-chilling cold temperatures of April and May give way to the oppressive heat and humidity like that which hung over the Cell on Friday night.
However, who among us believes that any of these and other extenuating factors excuse the athletes – the individuals who are paid handsomely to play a game they ostensibly love – from giving a maximum effort? Who would argue that it’s OK not to make every attempt to catch a pop fly? Or dive for a grounder headed for the outfield? Or run out every ground ball?
Because of the All-Star break, Alex Rios hadn’t played in four days, and as far as anyone knew he was superbly-conditioned when he jogged out to right field for the opener of the three-game series with Atlanta on Friday evening. In some weird way, this could have been a fresh start in an otherwise miserable season for the Sox, at least a chance to gain some respectability between now and the beginning of October.

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Posted on July 22, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

The bad news was the “dreaded lead-off walk” that Matt Thornton yielded in the bottom of the 11th inning yesterday. Of course, the good news was the color of his Sox – Red and not White.
In case you missed it, Thornton strode to the mound in a 2-2 game in sun-drenched Oakland for his first appearance since 2005 in anything but a White Sox uniform. Matt walked the first hitter who advanced to third on a sacrifice and ground out. Thornton walked the next guy before Oakland’s Josh Donaldson delivered a soft single to right field, sending Thornton and his new Boston teammates down to defeat.
After making a team-record 512 relief appearances for the White Sox and giving up fewer hits than innings pitched in six of his eight seasons with the South Siders, Thornton was the first to be traded last week in what is rumored to be an active period for general manager Rick Hahn before the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline.

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Posted on July 15, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

When you lose 27 of your last 37 games, score a paltry seven runs in nine games for your newly-named All-Star pitcher, rank next to last in all of baseball in runs scored, and field better than only two American League teams after being the best last year, you had better do something to put a positive spin on this mess of a 2013 season.
So last week Sox general manager Rick Hahn skipped town and flew to the Dominican Republic to hype the signing of a 16-year-old kid to a $1.6 million dollar contract, the most cash the franchise has ever shelled out for a Latin prospect.
“We are sure [he] will have a tremendous impact,” gushed Hahn, talking about 6-foot-3, 225-pound Micker Adolfo Zapata, the second-ranked international prospect by MLB.com. (Baseball America has him at No. 9.)
Of course, that remains to be seen. Theoretically, first the kid needs to take driver’s ed and Algebra II, and then we’ll see whether he can catch up to a 95-mph fastball or hit the cutoff man.

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Posted on July 8, 2013