By: Mike Carter
As anyone in America knows right now, the Midwest of our country has been locked into a “polar vortex” this last week that has seen temperatures drops to -25 below zero with -50 wind chills.
For the better part of the last three days, many of us have been stuck indoors avoiding this icy blast of winter weather. I escaped to my office today to check on our school building and do some work. It looks like it will be 29 degrees on Saturday. Welcome to Chicago.
This morning as I made breakfast for my kids and chugged my coffee, I had MLB “Hot Stove” on in the background. They showed clips of large semi-trucks being loaded up with Spring Training gear and moving out on the road to Arizona or Florida. That made me smile, and momentarily snapped me out of my doldrums. Most media outlets covered the Super Bowl, and while I watched the game, I care little for the outcome or the machinations around it.
I glanced at my outside thermometer and saw that it was -25 despite the bountiful sunshine.
It doesn’t seem that close to Spring Training, but it is, with only two weeks until pitchers and catchers report for duty. And as has been written by many of the great writers, hope springs eternal. It’s not just that the start of the season lets us think that our team is starting with a clean slate and that anything is possible with the upcoming season. To me, there is more to it.
Spring carries with it the promise of renewal. The snow and ice will melt, the sun will be warm on our faces again, our grass and perennials will explode back into life. Our kids will pull out their bikes again, and laughter will fill the air outside, grills will be cooking, and a parent will play catch with their kid for the first time. I have an eight-year-old son, Jack, who is just learning the game, and I can tell you, I never take the opportunity to play catch with him for granted. In this world, you never know what each day is going to bring and being able to play a simple game of catch with a child is a moment to be treasured and cataloged. By the way, Jack asks me every day if the White Sox have signed Manny Machado yet. Not yet, buddy, but we’re hopeful…right?
Every year since I was a teenager, I read Tom Boswell’s “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.” I have the same tattered copy that is now yellowing and faded. But the words never cease to pump the blood through me on these cold days, waiting for Opening Day. Boswell wrote, ““The crowd and its team had finally understood that in games, as in many things, the ending, the final score, is only part of what matters. The process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.”
I understand his point here more fully as I advance into middle age. In sports and in life, we tend to judge things by who wins and who loses. We value winners and shun the losers. But Boswell points out that the final score has little bearing on the full breadth of the game. If life is a game, we will all lose, as death becomes the great equalizer for all humans. It’s the process that counts for more than the outcome. How did we get there? What did we take from life along the way? What experiences did we gain? More importantly, what did we give back to life along the way? What’s funny is we don’t think about this as we are processing which free agent is going where, when we think about who will win the final job in our team’s pitching rotation, or when we are playing catch with our kids. At the end of this season, only one team will have won the World Series. There’s an excellent chance it won’t be any of our favorite teams. Does that mean that the year has been a loss if your team finishes .500?
No. Because if you take the opportunity to watch a game with friends and family this year, if you get to attend a game in person in 2019, and you enjoy it, look what you have done. You are part of the process and pleasure of this great game, this perfect game. I bet unless something significant happens at this particular game you watch, you won’t even remember if your team won or lost the game. You’ll remember who was with you. The time you shared together; that’s the process, the pleasure, the grain of the game.
This is the magic of it. As I sit here and wait for the furnace repair guy to come and fix our cafeteria heater, this is what I think about; the time of year has come when my baseball fog starts up and my fantasy baseball prep begins in earnest.
Here are some other random musings:
- What is going on with the cold Hot Stove? Rumors abound about the big-ticket guys Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, but no one is signing as those trucks pull out to the open highway for Spring Training. The consistent chatter is that very few teams have expressed interest in either Harper or Machado, although both are among the most talented players in the game. What we think we know is that only the White Sox have made a formal offer to Machado at this point. The Phillies and the Padres also appear to be in on each player as well. But as rumors go, who really knows? Will one of the elite teams, like the Yankees or Dodgers, make a late play for either generational talent? I am not one to defend billionaire owners, and I have heard the whispers of collusion this winter, but I do see their perspective: these long-term megadeals are almost always bad business decisions for the owners. The only true long-term deal that proved valuable was Alex Rodriguez. The deals for Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano, and Joey Votto look like bad deals at this time. All are still valuable players, but not at these average annual values. I can understand owners being lukewarm on making a ten-year investment on either Machado or Harper. Could each guy sign a shorter deal with an outrageously high annual value? Two-three years, $35 million a year? Time will tell, but we need some movement soon.
- There are still quality free agents out there. For teams that do not get Harper or Machado, there are plenty of other very good players looking for homes. Guys like Dallas Keuchel, Craig Kimbrel, Josh Harrison, Marwin Gonzalez, Adam Jones. Would signing any of these guys make you forget that you lost out on a bigger ticket? But if your team is close to contention, each one of those five guys mentioned here could really help your club. I would guess lots of short-term deals are on tap for many of these guys.
- It’s looking more and more based on what we are seeing that a work stoppage will take place. Major issues abound in the business side of the game: salary floors, stopping tanking (made popular by the Cubs and Astros), changing free agency rules, and pace-of-play issues. Major headaches await and I don’t know that either side will do what is necessary to avoid a stoppage. Keep watch this summer. The current agreement runs out in 2021.
Happy Birthday Jackie! - Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday just passed by. Sadly, he has been gone almost fifty years. One could make a valid argument that he was one of the ten most important Americans in the Twentieth Century for his contributions not only to the game of baseball, but also to America itself. I hope he’s stealing home on Yogi Berra in heaven…by the way, that iconic play shown often, he is safe.