Ballpark Etiquette Certification Card

The Zambrano stuff is just TOO easy. I’m going to go a different route this time. I went to both White Sox winners this past weekend, so far the most part it was a good time. Yes, I know, you’re happy for me. But dammit, people need to learn some ballpark etiquette! Hell, I’d be in favor of requiring all fans to go to a ballpark etiquette class every other year just so they can get through the damn turnstile. If it’s to a means of everybody in the park to having an even better time, I’m all for it. You must present your “Ballpark Etiquette Certification Card” with a photo ID before you can even present your ticket for game entry. I’m joking of course, but it’s really not a bad idea to generate some extra revenue if one had to pay a fee to receive said card and could create an entire department of jobs, but I’d rather there weren’t any “Etiquette Nazis” asking fans to present their card or be removed from the premises. All I’m really asking is for people to use their common sense to display some common courtesy and not be completely oblivious to those around them. There are many subtle things people can do or not do to make the game more enjoyable. For instance, all of the chairs are connected to each other and the quarters are close so it would be nice if you didn’t bounce your leg up and down as it’s brushing mine. Don’t kick the back of my seat if you don’t want me to “accidentally” spill something on you or smash your face into a jelly. If you’re a sore-loser Cubs fan leaving Comiskey early because your “Cubbies” are losing in the 5th inning and as you walk past two nice 50-something ladies who try to tell you that your fly is open, DON’T simulate masturbation and ejaculation as you stand on the stairs near the tunnel. The next courtesy goes for all levels of the ballpark, but especially for the upper deck where the seating is much steeper. During actual play of an inning, under no circumstances unless a medical emergency, stand out of your seat. Sit your ass down! You do not need to stand during any transaction with a vendor. If you’re such a slob that you can’t reach your wallet and it’s absolutely necessary to stand to get out money, do so rapidly between pitches so that no one behind you misses any of the game. One pitch can mean the whole game. If you stand, the row behind you has to stand and the row behind them had to stand and so on. I paid $35 to watch the game in the 500 level in the 18th row and all I can see is the back of your douchy haircut pulled back in a white headband with your sleeveless shirt to show the section that you have a pregnant worm for an arm. And when the people behind you DO tell you to sit your ass down, that’s not your cue to blow kisses at them, it means sit the F@CK down hillbilly!

As always, tune in to Cover 3 every Monday evening, except for July 5th, from 7 to 9 on sportstownchicago.com

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Back to .500

And just like that, the White Sox are back to .500, actually above .500 for the time being! They currently stand at 35-34 a .507 percentile and 4.5 games behind the Twins in the AL Central. They’ve spent the past two weeks feasting on the underbelly of the Major Leagues, the NL. The White Sox have always played well in Inter-league play, but they’ve dominated it this year going 11-2 with 5 Inter-league games left on the schedule, all of which will be wrapped up this coming weekend in part two of the Crosstown Classic on the Southside. They even beat up on an excellent pitcher Tommy Hanson on an excellent, best record in the NL team in the Atlanta Braves. The Braves will be a better test for the White Sox as they have 3 good oitching matchups and both teams have been hot as Atlanta won five straight before taking the loss to the Sox last night. They’re certainly a better test than the hot-grabage the Bucs and Nats put out between the foul lines. General Manager Kenny Williams is never a true “seller” but he was definitely on that end of the spectrum a couple of weeks ago, and now he’ll be looking to make an addition to the team to make a better run at the AL Central. They’re looking for left-handed pop in the batter’s box and possibly a left-handed reliever. Adam Dunn and Lance Berkman have been rumored to be on the White Sox radar. Berkman has been struggling at the plate and with injuries, especially to his knee which kept him on the DL for the beginning of the season. He does pick up the ball pretty well and could spell Konerko at first base. Dunn has been mashing with 17 homers, 8 of which came at home in a spacious National’s Ballpark. Imagine that man hitting within the smaller dimensions of Comiskey! I’m sure a few fly balls in that park turns into homers in this one. The bad news is, the Twins have been rumored to be the front-runners to acquire former Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee from the soon-to-be-selling Mariners. The AL Central will be all but won if they make that acquisition.

As always tune in to Cover 3 on sportstownchicago.com every Monday evening from 7 to 9.

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Assessing the White Sox

We’re 60 games into the season, well more like 65….or so, but by now General Managers have assessed their teams. It’s time to determine whether to buy or sell. The baseball teams on both sides of town are in a seemingly perturbing predicament. The White Sox, thus far, have stood pat. A.J. Pierzynski’s 10 and 5 vesting rights have been implemented as of this past Sunday. One could think that should he have been moved this season, it would have been before the rights kicked in, but the truth is it really doesn’t matter all that much. Rumor had it that the Rangers had and may still have interest in A.J. as they’ve tried out a trio of catchers this season, none of which produced what management expected for a team in the race for the AL West. Jarrod Saltalamacchia can’t hit big league pitching and he turned into Rube Baker of the motion picture Major League II with his troubles of getting the ball back to the pitcher, not even dirty magazines could help this kid out. I’m sure White Sox GM Kenny Williams performed his due diligence and listened to and is listening to offers for A.J., but for one, he hasn’t been hitting well especially compared to last year, and two, he’s got that sort of negative reputation and the ol’ “punch me” face. Yet, the vesting rights still don’t hold much water as Pierzynski has all ready said that he’d be willing to waive his no-trade clause should the White Sox fall further out of contention and be given the opportunity to be moved to a contender. Mark Buehrle’s 10 and 5 rights kick in in July, so there should be a circus following him in the coming weeks. Buehrle, if not all ready, is rapidly turning into a NL pitcher. He has a limited no-trade clause that will soon turn into the full no-trade, but I have to believe that at this point in his career that he’d only accept a trade to an NL contender by the name of St. Louis. They have a good shot at winning the NL Central, they’re looking for starting pitching, and it’s Mark’s hometown.
The starting pitching got off to a slow, nay, a bad start. The staff is starting to come around as they’ve thrown nine quality starts in a roll and they have won 8 of their last 10. The problems are that the Twins win when the Sox win and they lose when the Sox lose. (Although, the Sox did gain a game last night to bring them to 6.5 games back). Also, Jake Peavy is now experiencing dead-arm. His next start is being pushed back to Saturday and possibly further. I know, first thing’s first and the Sox have to get back to .500 and the they’re still 3 wins away from reaching that goal, but it would be nice to steal more games away from Minnesota along the way. The Sox were once 9 games below .500 so there’s been a little progress. Some fans, including this one, may have taken the staff for granted and just expected them to produce quality start after quality start right from the beginning and continue to do so the entire season. Hopefully they’re back on the right track though. Rios and Quentin were the next big questions and Rios has been stellar and Quentin is seemingly a fallen star thus far. Rios is on pace to be the first 30-30 White Sox while having the best average on the team by far at .313. Konerko is second at .294. Quentin has struggled mightily with a .213 average. The silver lining for Quentin has been his average with runners in scoring position hitting at a .314 clip. That has helped him to pot a respectable 36 RBI as he seems to come thru when the Sox really need him.
All the talk of this “Ozzie ball” ((which isn’t even real, and I’d like to know who coined that term so I can hate them directly) it’s just known as small ball and it’s the way baseball has been played for over a hundred years, a style that is still alive and well and living in the National League), hasn’t panned out as expected. Sure they have a lot more stolen bases this year and that has helped to move guys into scoring position, but most guys still can’t lay down a bunt and are just plain bad at situational hitting. White Sox have missed out on plenty of opportunities when all they needed was a sacrifice bunt or fly or a grounder to the right side. And as I’ve pointed out before, the Sox are still reliant on the long ball! They’re just doing it throughout the entire lineup as opposed to a few base-clogging power hitters. This brings me to the latest and greatest White Sox news…the call-up of Dayan Viciedo. Mark Teahen went on the DL with a broken middle finger, Jason Nix wasn’t getting it done in the field or with the bat so he was designated for assignment, and they can’t ask Omar Visquel to play every day at 43 years old. So, Vicideo is back at The Show. He brings a power bat to the lineup, which I like because though the thought of playing small ball to win the Central is a nice idea to entertain, it has failed and the Sox have to play to the small dimensions of their ballpark to win more games. Viciedo’s stat line for this year in triple A has been pretty good. He’s your typical free-swinging Cuban prospect with extra pop. He batted .290 with 14 dingers and 14 RBI. He posted a poor OBP drawing just 8 walks with 52 strikeouts in 255 plate appearances (courtesy of baseball-reference.com). But, like I said, the Sox aren’t doing much as far as situational hitting goes anyway, so they may as well have another masher on the lineup card. This is besides the fact that they’re hoping he’ll be the shining star they’ve paid him to be in the coming years and it’ll be good to get him some quality major league at-bats.
Tonight the White Sox will face rookie Phenom Stephen Strasburg. It should be a good game as Gavin Floyd takes the bump coming off a strong performance in which he took a no-hitter into the 7th and was the tough-luck loser. Strasburg has command of 4 major league pitches. Considering the fact that he’ll be pitching at home and facing AL pitchers in the batter’s box, his strikeouts should easily reach double digits. The White Sox handed a much less dominant 8-0 Carlos Silva his first loss of the season, hopefully they can keep that trend going and give Strasburg his first loss of his Major League career.

As always, tune in to Cover 3 every Monday evening from 7 to 9 on sportstownchicago.com. A huge thanks to Matt Spiegel of WSCR 670 The Score for joining the show last week.

Also, a shout out to Jay BLAAck and Joe Quelleville! Thanks Mayor Richie!

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Stanley Cup Finals Game 5 Breakdown

Coach Q decided that he needed to make some line shake-ups and he did that by breaking up the 1st line. It was Hossa and Kopecky with Toews this game. This gave a good balance to each line as it spread out the speed of the team. The Hawks’ power play was much better in Game 5 as the went 2 for 4. They missed out on their first opportunity when Krajicek was called for cross-checking 2:50 into the game. Dave Bolland gave the Flyers a chance of their own when he was called for cross-checking himself with 10:45 left in the 1st. With 8:44 left Hartnell was guilty of a high stick. During the power play Byfuglien absolutely trucked Powe for his 30th hit of the series. Big Buff had eight total hits in the game and leads the series in hits by far. Seabrook was credited with the first goal of the game. It was a power play goal that bounced off of every body’s favorite defensemen Chris Pronger, which made that particular goal a little bit sweeter. Steeger got the primary assist as Brower got the secondary. The Hawks continued to apply the pressure and scored a second goal with 4:34 left in the 1st. Bolland (Sopel, Byfuglien) was standing at the side of the net when he threw the puck off of Leighton’s skate and bounced into the net. The boys in the Indian-head sweaters didn’t stop there in the 1st either. With 1:45 Versteeg (Seabrook, Byfuglien) fired a snapper just over the right shoulder of Leighton, who may have been screened for a split second that was just long enough for the the puck to sneak past him. The Hawks had 13 shots on goal in the first, but the 2nd period didn’t start out so well. Philly decided to go back to Boucher for the second time this series, but :32 into the period Hartnell (Leino, Briere) potted a lay-up goal. Kopecky lost the puck along the boards and Leino fired a drive at Niemi, one which he thought he had covered up, but it squirted out for Hartnell to tap in and the Flyers were on the board. The Hawks answered quickly less than three minutes later when Kane (Ladd,Sharp) put the biscuit in the basket. Ladd fired a shot that was blocked by Pronger, but bounced right back to Ladd who found the trailing Kaner with a pass at the left side of the net. The Flyers responded even quicker cutting the lead in half when Timonen (Briere, Leino) scored the Flyers’s 2nd goal of the game. Byfuglien has his own way of responding when he downright WRECKED Pronger in the corner. It was a hit similar to the crumbling of the Walls of Jericho. It was very satisfying to say the least. Both teams traded penalty kills at mid-period. Soon after, Niemi made yet another disgustingly awesome sliding pad save. With 4:22 left in the 2nd, Pronger went to the penalty box for hooking Kaner. Pronger got his butt handed to him all night, whether it was by Big Buff putting Pronger shaped holes in the boards or Kaner skating circles around the old man. Seven seconds later, you guessed it, Byfuglien (Toews, Keith) potted a power play goal from just in front of the net thru the 5-hole of Boucher. Pronger wasn’t on the ice to cross check Byfuglien from behind in front of the net, what a shame. The Hawks should have had another power play, but there was no call when Campbell caught a stick to his face and two, count them, two refs missed it. After two periods, Big Buff had a goal and two assists. The Blackhawks continued to have good play through the neutral zone and had even better fore-checking, especially by Captain “Serious” Toews. However, the Flyers were still able to scratch out a goal with 13:24 left in the game when van Riemsdyk pocketed a big rebound from Krajicek. Van Riemsdyk must have grown some goal-muscles because he decided to cross-check Hossa in the back, which of course wasn’t seen by any of the refs, and sent Marion to the locker room for a few moments to regroup. Hossa did come back though and played with even more inspiration as if he needed any more. Byfuglien blew up Timonen and a ref on the same hit. The guy was all over the ice and later he gave Leino and then Pronger consecutive bell-ringing hits. With 9:22 Steeger went to the box for high sticking Pronger, but it was an excellent penalty kill as the Flyers were only able to get one shot on goal. The Hawks even almost scored a shorty by Toews as he collected a sweet drop-pass from Bolland, but to no avail….this time. Sharpie potted one from Kane with 3:52 left in the game and that was pretty much the dagger to the heart, although Gagne did cut the lead to two as he was able to score when Keith broke his still on a slapper and had to defend the zone stick-less. Eddie Olczyk pointed out that late in games defensemen with the lead should revert back to the harder wooden sticks, as opposed to the fiber, composite, whatever you want to call it stick so things like that don’t happen. The Hawks were playing well enough to get away with it this time though. The Flyers pulled Boucher and with 2:05 left in the game Byfuglien did a good job to settle the puck down and center it and scored an empty-netter to put Game 5 to rest and give the Hawks the 3-2 series advantage headed back to Philly. Buff, Bolland, and Steeger all were +3 for the game. Niemi had 23 saves and the Hawks had a faceoff advantage of 38-31. The Blackhawks came out with a good pace, attacked the net and kept up that pace throughout the game for the most part. It was the best response that they could have executed coming back from Philly and if they play their game again, this series will be over on Wednesday. If not, we’ll see the boys for the last game at the UC this season on Friday and hope the bounces go their way.

As always tune in to Cover 3 every Monday evening from 7 to 9 on sportstownchicago.com

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