By Roger Wallenstein

Take the mountains and mountains of data. Celebrate the sabermathematicians all you want. Let your infielders shift on every pitch if that’s your fancy. However, no matter how you manipulate all the bits, bytes and algorithms, there’s one rule in baseball that rises above all else: Throw strikes!
You needn’t look further than Thursday’s painful White Sox elimination game in Oakland under the cloudless California sky for the prime example. For the uninformed, there is no defense when your pitchers walk guys. There is zero possibility of retiring a hitter if four pitches wide of the strike zone are delivered. There are no walks in tee-ball, no doubt giving the 6-year-olds a false sense of security, but once pitchers begin throwing the ball toward the plate, the game becomes a different proposition.

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Posted on October 2, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

First, a word from the apologists of which this writer counts himself. Maybe not hard core but certainly a member of the clan.
The apology is an oft-repeated rationale even as the dust is just settling on a historic 60-game major league baseball season. Before a game had been played, had any White Sox devotee received assurance that the team would finish 10 games over .500 and make the playoffs, they would have been head over heels excited, thrilled, and exuberant. The over-under for wins was 31.5, and the fellows won 35.
So why all the teeth-gnashing and worry, and, in some bastions, panic? Because we’ve been treated to the highs and low, the peaks and valleys these past couple of months. The Sox humiliated sub-.500 teams to the tune of 23-5 but against the better clubs, the record was 12-20.

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Posted on September 28, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Many years ago I was teaching fourth- and fifth-graders math, or arithmetic to be more precise. Managing to stay one lesson ahead of the eager scholars, I used the term “placeholders” to explain what to insert in the tens or hundreds column, when, in fact, there was nothing there. Not surprisingly, zero was and remains the placeholder.
I’m unaware if math teachers today continue to utilize the term “placeholders,” but the world of baseball, thank you very much, easily can embrace the concept.

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Posted on September 21, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Missed the Saturday dance
Heard they crowded the floor
Couldn’t bear it without you
Don’t get around much anymore
– Music by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Bob Russell
I find myself mouthing the words to this old standard with near shocking frequency these days because, I suppose, I actually don’t get around much anymore. And when I do, I’m careful to mask up and social distance. I’ve always enjoyed the song, but nowadays those lyrics have far greater significance than when they were written in 1942.
Take Friday night, for instance. The White Sox were returning home a game ahead in the AL Central Division. They had won 17 of their last 22. Everything was pointing to the playoffs. A hint of fall was in the air, yet these late summer evenings remain blissful now that the 90-degree heat and humidity have bid us adieu for the season. This should have been the perfect night to watch the most exciting team in years on the South Side, not on television but at the ballpark.

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Posted on September 14, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

“He was riding around on an ATV,” remembered Joe Winograde, a painting contractor in Napa, California. “You could tell he was digging it. He wore bib overalls and a flannel shirt. Pretty sure he had his dogs up there, too.”
That was the Tom Seaver folks like Joe, who happens to be my nephew, knew in the Napa Valley long after Seaver had traded in his spikes and glove for a shovel and pruning shears. His passion switched from striking out big league hitters to growing cabernet grapes on 3½ acres of Diamond Mountain outside of Calistoga.

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Posted on September 7, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

We called it Running Bases. Other kids might have known the game as Hot Box. Whatever its name, as few as three kids could play, and the game could go on for hours.
Two bases, maybe 60 or 70 feet apart, could be anything from squares drawn with a stick in the dirt or a couple of those orange floppy rubber bases common to our PE classes. Two basemen and one runner. The object was to get caught off base as the fielders tossed the ball back and forth and then to reach either base safely. If you were tagged out, you traded places with a defender. Advancing to the base where you didn’t start would earn you a point.
This could be exhausting because the runner’s stops and starts, feints and dodging required stamina, creativity and dexterity. The game frequently was interrupted when one or more participants wound up writhing on the ground, gasping for air, and laughing uncontrollably.
Which was similar to my reaction Friday evening as the White Sox botched a game-tying rundown in the ninth inning against the Royals.

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Posted on August 31, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

You look and listen for the smallest signs, the indicators that provide a speck of hope that we’re turning the corner. Rarely can you find them on TV or the newspaper where information about vaccines and remedies for this monster virus are slow to develop and are months, if not years, away.
So the other day when I looked from my fifth-floor balcony at the basketball court across the street, I stopped and made sure I wasn’t being deceived. But there they were. After being summarily removed months ago along with all the other hoops around the city, the rims and nets hung conspicuously from the backboards. It was as though they had reappeared by magic, clandestinely in the night or certainly at a time when no one was watching.
There was no announcement. A crowd didn’t gather. If the mayor had made any proclamation, I hadn’t heard it. But there was no mistaking what I saw.
Was this a sign? Did this mean that social distancing protocols could be relaxed? In the few days since the rims were reinstalled, the sounds of bouncing basketballs, though far fewer than in recent summers, had filtered into the air. Can normalcy be far behind?
Answers are scarce these days, and if you were depending on the weekend’s intercity series – the Crosstown Classic or whatever you want to call it – between the Cubs and Sox, the cupboard was bare.

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Posted on August 24, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

An amusing baseball story, since debunked, featured the greatest leadoff man in history, Rickey Henderson. Seems that in 2000, when Rickey signed with the Mariners as a free agent, he encountered first baseman John Olerud, another fine player, who always wore a batting helmet in the field because of a brain aneurysm he suffered in college.
Olerud explained his situation to Henderson, who said that was such a coincidence because he knew a guy he played with on the Mets who also wore a helmet in the field.
“That was me, Rickey,” said Olerud.
Henderson may have reached base about 40 percent of his plate appearances while scoring more runs and stealing more bases than anyone in history, but the interchange with Olerud also disclosed another aspect of Henderson that the sabermathemeticians can’t measure. The game was all about Rickey, whose ego barely fit into the stadiums in which he performed, perhaps explaining why he played for nine different teams in his 25-year career.

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Posted on August 17, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Pitchers are terrible fielders. If confirmation is requested, the first couple of weeks of this shortened season provide more than enough evidence.
Thankfully for the White Sox, much of this ineptitude has been displayed by the opposition, helping the local crew to an 8-8 record thus far after losing a 5-4 decision in 10 innings to Cleveland on Sunday night.

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Posted on August 10, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

“Please, Gramps, tell me some stories about baseball and the pandemic, then I promise I’ll go to sleep,” pleaded the boy.
“Alright, as long as you’re asleep by the time your parents come home,” replied Grampa. “I don’t think they’ll let me stay with you again any time soon if they find you still awake at this late hour. What do you want to know about those times so many years ago?”
“Were the White Sox any good?” the youngster asked.

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Posted on August 2, 2020