Keeping a Lid on It

If you're a bona fide Cub fan, look before you leap was tattooed on your chest at birth. Scarred by years of championshiplessness and near-misses, buoyant emotions like joy escape from you with the frequency that inmates do from a Federal supermax prison.

You aren't given to throwing caution to the wind and cavalierly expressing elation merely because it's May and your team is in first place. No, you have learned to conserve your feelings the way a miser does their money.

Between opening day and the All-Star break, you raise taciturn to a level that is the envy of every Scandinavian nation on earth. You have a stiff upper lip that makes Viagra jealous. If you were any more reserved you'd be a table in a hot and very trendy restaurant.

You—of all people—know the baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint, and that premature displays of emotion only worsen the fall when the inevitable occurs in the latter stages of it.

No sir.

Talk to me in September.

Fast-forward to September. The Chicago Cubs are playing at a 92-win clip and are steaming towards a post-season appearance. And after months of silence, you're ready to blog about it from the rooftops.

There's no chance of overtaking the mighty St. Louis Cardinals for the division title, but the Pittsburgh Pirates' hold on the lead wild-card slot appears vulnerable. And after the arid, desert-like desolation of the past several seasons, any cup of water is a good cup of water.

Even if it's only to play the role of speed bump for the eventual National League pennant winner.

The pitching is still a little thin, but the hitting is stellar and more importantly, timely. The defense is improving, and if they could just get a decent pitcher in exchange for the habitually inattentive Starlin Castro, they could really be something.

Of course, as evidenced by your predictions for last season's Bulls (who died a coward's death against the injury-ravaged Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semis), prognosticating isn't really your ken.

With the numeric certainty promised by the calender that 2015 is not 2003, anything could happen. And with the Chicago Cubs, anything usually does. The horrors of 1969 and 1984 and 2003 are not as far away as our calculators would have us believe.

October is a portal to failure. A razor-lined pothole set to deflate whatever sort of roll the earnest and wide-eyed Cubs happen to be on. October is a film noir-inspired femme fatale, luring the feckless Cubs to their doom.

But if a half-century of Cub fandom has taught you anything, it's to enjoy the moment. Free of expectation.

The Cubs won yesterday. Life is beautiful.

You hope.

The Tyranny of Pitch Counts

Chris Sale was on fire. Through eight innings, he had allowed two measly singles and struck out the side in the eighth, giving him fourteen for the game. The White Sox held a 1 - 0 lead. 

Then something strange happened. (Apologies to White Sox fans, who may feel the White Sox holding a 1- 0 lead was strange in and of itself.)

Citing Sale's 111 pitches, White Sox manager Robin Ventura pulled him for reliever David Robertson. 

While this doesn't quite qualify as off-the-charts stupid since Robertson has been one of the few bright spots this year for the Sox, it does qualify as curious in light of Sale's mastery.

And as luck would have it, this wasn't Robertson's night. After a walk, a single, a wild pitch and an intentional walk which loaded the bases, Robertson surrendered a single to Rangers' pinch-hitter Mitch Moreland and the White Sox lost 2 – 1.

You have to wonder how Sale, who was humming like a small-block Chevy V8, would have fared.

Afterwards, Ventura was upfront about his reason for pulling Sale; he wasn't tired, cramping or otherwise diminished. It was merely the number of pitches Sales had thrown. Nothing more.

At times, it seems that little else matters in modern baseball. Pitch counts have become so all-important that pitchers in the midst of no-hitters are now pulled merely because of the number of pitches they have thrown.

Ace pitchers are even held out of post-season play for fear their arms can't bear the strain.

Stratospheric salaries certainly have something do with it, especially when pitchers with eight-figure salaries are going at it. (What does it say when premium players are paid so much the people who sign their paychecks are afraid to play them?)

But it doesn't explain pitch counts rearing their ugly heads when the number-four guy on your staff is pulled because he, too, has tossed a certain number of pitches.

If you haven't already guessed, I'm confused.

How is it that twenty-first century pitchers, with their healthy diets, sophisticated workout regimens and access to health care undreamt of just a few decades ago can't pitch like their peers of a century ago, whose workout regimen—with the exception of a privileged few—was their off-season job?

Whose diet consisted of whatever was available and affordable?

Remember—no one was popping into supermarkets to pick-up tomatos, broccoli and pomegranates during the early-twentieth century winters of Walter Johnson's and Christy Mathewson's primes. 

In fact, only those who lived on a farm or in a temperate climate even had off-season access to fruits and vegetables.

And yet the front-line pitchers of yore regularly racked up twenty or thirty complete games a year. Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Christy Mathewson all enjoyed Hall of Fame careers even without helicopter coaches tallying their pitches.

Ditto Warren Spahn. Bob Feller. Sandy Koufax. Ferguson Jenkins. Tom Seaver. And Jim Palmer. 

Nolan Ryan surpassed two-hundred complete games in his career, and it's looking like he'll be the only pitcher of the Internet age to do so. Roger Clemens, he of the twenty-four years in the major leagues and untold amounts of steroids, managed just 118. Greg Maddox, after twenty-three years in the bigs, compiled just 109. 

If fact, no pitcher since 1986 has even managed twenty in a season.

So where are these carefully-managed careers headed? With today's pitchers being treated like vintage Ferraris, that must mean Cy Young's 511 career victories are in danger. As are his 7,356 innings pitched. Surely Ed Walsh's all-time low career ERA of 1.81 is feeling the heat?

No. No. And no.

For all of the tender, loving care they receive, twenty-first century pitchers don't loom any larger than their fore bearers, unless the conversation is about career earnings.

I don't see them dominating the game year in and year out a la Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal. I don't see them blanking the opposition in the post-season, which was another supposed benefit.

Then what, exactly, is the point?

Is it to extend a pitcher's capacity to earn ungodly amounts of money? To ensure physical therapists have ample free time? To keep the guys in the bullpen from getting bored?

You could say I'm an old guy grousing about the good old days, and how the present is different and doesn't measure up. And you'd be a teeny weeny bit right.

But tell me how Stephen Strasburg's single complete game is worth his twenty-four million dollars in career earnings. Or how the career-long coddling he has received has yielded the game's most dominant and feared pitcher.

The clock is ticking.

Ron Santo

I’m sorry, but I can’t see the belated election of Ron Santo to baseball’s Hall of Fame as anything but borderline cruel. Perhaps I’m afflicted with an undiagnosed case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe it’s the crass capitalism of Christmas.

Or maybe it’s the smug and exclusionary politics that kept an earnest, deserving ballplayer from the Hall for decades as he battled the diabetes that would eventually kill him.

None other than baseball-obsessive Bill James named Santo as one of the ten-best third basemen ever. Not of the 60s. Not of the modern era. Ever. How is it that someone so good remained excluded for so long?

There are a dearth of third basemen in the Hall. According to Baseball Almanac, just eleven. Only the position of catcher (thirteen) even comes close. Yet Ron Santo, nine-time All-Star, five-time Gold Glove winner, breaker of a sixty-year-old league assist record at the position somehow wasn’t good enough.

Third base is an extraordinarily difficult position to play. It is physically demanding, and as such, makes long-term success as a hitter (the primary criteria for entrance to the Hall of Fame) unlikely. Despite their often powerful builds, only two third basemen have ever surpassed 400 home runs. None have 3,000 hits.

Third base is a meat grinder. It devours baseball players.

There are only a few obvious choices at the position. Mike Schmidt. Brooks Robinson. Eddie Mathews. Pie Traynor.

While admittedly a shade below their stature, Santo was nevertheless the premier National League third basemen of his era, second only to Robinson in all of Major League Baseball. He was clearly and obviously a rare talent.

And coupled with his private struggle with diabetes, his success at one of sport’s most-difficult positions was remarkable. Ron Santo was given a life expectancy of twenty-five years. Think diabetes is a tough battle now? What do you think it was in 1964?

More than any of his quantifiable athletic gifts, Santo’s greatest asset was his heart. It was a relentless and powerful one.

Admittance to any type of club is invariably political. It is often no more than a popularity contest. And for inexplicable and unfathomable reasons, it was one Santo had to die to win.

Having spent fourteen of his fifteen years in baseball as a Chicago Cub, it is an irony Ron Santo no doubt appreciates.