By Roger Wallenstein

Baseball in the Time of Coronavirus made its debut over the weekend amid joyous cries of “Baseball is Back,” empty stadiums, cardboard cutouts of fans, dubious rule changes, and the inconsistent wearing of face coverings by players, coaches and umpires. Weirdness reigned.
Dr. Anthony Fauci began the festivities on Thursday by throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in Washington. Maybe shot-putting would be a better description as the ball arced far to the left of home plate, touching down about 50 feet from the nation’s leading epidemiologist. As futile as it was, I’ve seen worse from White Sox relievers.

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Posted on July 27, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Baseball, being a game rich with numbers, has a new statistic in this shortened season that just might be the one analytic which will determine whether all 60 games for each ballclub will be played. Of course, I’m referring to the number of positive tests for COVID-19 that potentially could sideline an entire team if folks aren’t careful.
So far the results appear promising although this virus doesn’t differentiate between ballplayers and factory workers where the track record is alarming and dangerous. Tests for players and other personnel last week totaled 10,458, and just six – five players – came back positive. That’s so far below the Mendoza Line that you have to reach back to pitcher Bob Buhl, who in 1962 went hitless in 70 at-bats with the Braves and Cubs, for a close comparison. We can only dream of the days when world health emulated Buhl’s futility.

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Posted on July 20, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Before there was the Dominican Republic, Panama, Venezuela, Mexico or Puerto Rico, there was Cuba.
As in professional baseball, in which Cuba led all Caribbean and South American countries in 1878 with the inception of the Cuban League. That’s just one little tidbit from César Brioso’s Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Baseball in Cuba. With today’s absence of the game formerly known as the National Pastime, a baseball fix is welcome, and Brioso’s tome has been preferable to watching the Korean League at 5 a.m.

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Posted on July 13, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

The issue of service time was one of contention included in the sordid public display of selfishness on the part of Major League Baseball and the players association as plans for this season were negotiated.
Surprisingly, the owners easily gave in to the players on this one item, agreeing to grant a year of service even if nary a game is played this season.
All of which means that players eligible to become free agents after the 2020 season, will still retain this vaunted privilege. Stars like Mookie Betts, George Springer, Marcus Semien and Trevor Bauer, despite playing in a 60-game season as was announced last week, will remain eligible to entertain multimillion-dollar offers this fall while all other players can add a year on their journey to free agency.
We often hear about today’s players’ reverence for the past. They recognize the cruel and unjust treatment endured by Jackie Robinson as he opened the door for all the other Black players who followed him. Prior to the formation of their union in 1966, each individual player was at the mercy of the owners when it came time to negotiate one-year contracts rather than the common multi-year agreements of today. Any alert present-day athlete understands how powerless his brethren were decades ago.
Nevertheless, do today’s players know what service time meant 80 years ago when both benchwarmers and All-Stars missed entire seasons because their country needed them during World War II?

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Posted on June 28, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Friends of mine growing up who were Sox fans often had parents and grandparents who emigrated from the South Side. They landed in the leafy environs of Highland Park on the North Shore to flee the burgeoning African-American population brought on by the Great Migration. The White Sox were part of their heritage.
Our family was different since my parents were Cincinnatians who came to the Chicago suburbs in the early ’50s because of my dad’s job. He rooted for the Reds, the ones who played ball. Being a patriot and a conservative Republican, he did a 180 when it came to the other Reds.

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Posted on June 9, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

The tributes are pouring in bearing the news of Ed Farmer’s death on Wednesday. From Jerry Reinsdorf to Daniel Palka, the White Sox family, the people who knew him, have disclosed details about the team’s play-by-play radio broadcaster that were pretty much unknown to those of us who never met the man.
We were aware that Farmer suffered from a genetic renal disease and that he received a kidney, basically saving his life, from a brother a number of years ago. We knew that Farmer was a champion of the organ donor program and that Secretary of State Jesse White visited the radio booth every season touting the program in Illinois.
We didn’t know that Farmer’s mother died at age 38, and his dad passed at 41. If we ever were aware that Ed appeared before a congressional committee, testifying about receiving a donated kidney, we had forgotten.

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Posted on April 3, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

While teaching at a progressive, experimental school in the ’70s, the suggestion of creating a national holiday, or at minimum a school observance, was a rather easy sell. Of course, I’m talking about Opening Day, which passed quietly Thursday amid the surreal pandemic that we’re enduring at the present time.
Retreating almost 50 years, the school was Van Gorder-Walden, or VGW as we called it. Former Latin School head Ed Van Gorder was the founder, and Walden was a farm in southeastern Wisconsin where each student in grades K-12 spent a month in 10-day chunks during the fall, winter and spring. The city campus was on the top floor of the Catholic Charities building at 721 North LaSalle Avenue.
Much has changed in the past half-century, but the beginning of the baseball season remains a staple of our lives. Opening Day represents a new awakening, high hopes, almost-spring, tulips and daffodils, and, of course, a dose of foolish aspirations.
In the mid-’70s, I suggested to Headmaster Van Gorder that 20 or 30 students accompanying me to the South Side for the Sox opener would represent a cultural experience unmatched by any other event. Using the city as a classroom, riding public transportation, and increasing our breadth of experience all were tenets of the curriculum. Ed dwelled on the request for the better part of maybe 15 seconds before approving the proposal.

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Posted on March 27, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Coronavirus might have been on my mind last weekend, but upon being introduced to people, I behaved as I always do. I shook their hands.
In the interest of full disclosure, I walked into Sloan Park in Mesa on Sunday where the Cubs were entertaining the Diamondbacks. My pal, another Roger, an avid and longtime White Sox devotee, lives in Mesa. He reserves a space for 60 of his friends each season at the Party Deck at the spring home of the Cubs. Enticing that many old folks to drive 30 miles across the Phoenix sprawl to see the Sox play in Glendale isn’t an option. He’d find no takers. So he plays host at Sloan.
Even though we intensely had been following the news, taking note that old people are most susceptible to the COVID-19 bug, when any of Rog’s friends extended their hand, I shook it.
Was that force of habit or my internal dialogue telling me unwisely that I’m feeling good and in little danger of getting the virus? I’m still trying to figure that out.

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Posted on March 11, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

Spring training, as every manager will aver, is a time for drill after drill, emphasizing the little things that can make the difference between a win or loss once the long campaign commences. Winning teams rarely botch hitting the cutoff man, defending the bunt, pitchers covering first, and so many other nuances and details of the game.
But once the games count for real, predictably within the first week of play, a guy beats out an infield roller to the first baseman because the pitcher was late getting off the mound. For sure we’ll see outfielders not only missing the cutoff man, but throwing to the wrong base as the runners advance into scoring position. Plays that should be backed up aren’t.

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Posted on March 2, 2020

By Roger Wallenstein

I just love old sluggers. Guys getting long in the tooth who continue to do what they were born to do. They still can smash baseballs into the far reaches of stadiums across the land while perky little infielders they once played against and hard-throwing pitchers they once faced exited the scene years ago.
Guys like the Big Hurt, who at age 38, slugged 39 homers and drove in 119 for Oakland in 2006. He followed that up the next season in Toronto with 26 and 95. And Big Papi, who in his final four seasons averaged 35 round-trippers and 110 RBIs before finally calling it quits when he was 40.
Nicknames suffice for these two gentlemen. We all know who they are.

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Posted on December 30, 2019