Since I picked up my first bat as a young boy, baseball has been my favorite game.  I couldn’t play it enough or watch it enough.  When I was 10 years old, I remember someone telling me that Major League teams played 162 games during the regular season.  I thought about that and actually felt sorry for the players, because…when you consider the season lasts April through October…it just didn’t seem like enough games. That’s because when we got out of school in early June, we played baseball…or some form of it…as many as three or four times a day.  I played the game every chance I got.

However, Major League Baseball has changed in many respects since then.  Expansion, teams switching leagues, expanded postseason play, bigger and stronger players, the designated hitter, the use (and expanded use) of replay and other rules’ changes make the game different from what it was in the 1960’s.  Some of the changes I have liked, some I haven’t.  Most of them have involved trying to improve the experience for baseball fans.

My biggest beef right now involves Commissioner Rob Manfred’s obsessive focus on “pace of play”, which directly connects into the current use of the replay system.  Manfred has complained that games are lasting too long, and while I am fine with certain tweaks regarding this, I think the overall worry about how long games run is excessive.  For instance, games in 2017 lasted three hours and five minutes, up 4-and-a-half minutes from 2016. Manfred is now beaming about the fact that ballgames in 2018 are now running at a few seconds less than three hours.  Uhmmm?  Do you think the average fan really notices that five minutes?  Because baseball is a game that is not dictated by a clock…like football, basketball and hockey are…it lasts until someone wins, however long that takes.  Most people don’t attend baseball games with the mindset of “Gee, I can’t wait for this to end so I can go do something else”.  In an effort to speed up games, Manfred wants to enforce a 20-second pitch clock (with the approval of the owners and players), has already limited mound visits to six per nine innings, pitchers no longer have to throw any pitches to issue intentional walk and the game is experimenting with a softball rule in the minor leagues this year where, if a contest goes into extra innings, each half-inning opens with a runner at second base.  I REALLY hate that last change, because it violates the spirit of the game…that a baserunner somehow earn his way on via hit, error, walk or being hit by a pitch.  One team in one of the lower minor leagues this year pitched a no-hitter, but lost in extra innings because of this ridiculous “runner at second” rule.

I also don’t like the new mound visit rule.  Teams had been limited to two mound visits by managers and coaches before being forced to take a pitcher out of a game.  Mound visits never really bothered me nor did the several pitching changes that could happen in the same inning…that’s because it was part of the game’s strategy and if a manager wanted to burn-up his bullpen in one inning that was on him.  Opposing managers also had to figure out which hitters to use against which pitchers.  That’s the part of the game also…or was.  Bring it back.  Also bring back the four-pitch intentional walk.  I read once where when an opposing team once tried to intentionally walk Ted Williams, but he reached across the plate and stroked a hit.  In the 1972 World Series between Oakland and Cincinnati, A’s catcher Gene Tenace faked calling for an intentional walk with Johnny Bench at-bat, jumped back behind home plate, pitcher Rollie Fingers then fired the ball down the middle, striking out Bench.  Wild pitches being thrown during an intentional walk have also led to some unexpected, yet exciting moments on the base paths.  And, quite frankly, throwing four balls outside the strike zone only takes a few seconds and dumping the four-pitch intentional walk has done very little, if anything, to speed up games.

I am fine with the 20-second pitch clock, where a pitcher has to make a delivery to the batter within that amount of time or a ball will be added the count.  That’s fine, because some pitchers will stand there and hold the ball forever if you let them.

If Rob Manfred really wants to improve baseball’s “pace of play” then he needs to fix the replay system.  It was first implemented in 2008 in order to review if possible home runs were fair or foul.  That was fine.  However, the replay system was expanded 2014 to include several other parts of the game, including close calls on the bases.  Managers get one challenge through the first six innings and two from the 7th-inning on until the end of the game.  Umpires can also decide late in games to use replay without a manager’s challenge.  If a manager’s challenge to a call is upheld, he gets to keep his challenge and can use again later if he wants.

Here are the drawbacks of the expanded replay system.  When a challenge is made to an umpire’s call, sometimes fans have to sit and wait as two umpires walk over to a dugout, put on some headsets, connect up with replay review officials watching the game in New York, and then sometimes have to wait for over five minutes for a decision to made.  Baseball says those rulings are supposed to be made within 2-to-2 1/2 minutes…but that often doesn’t happen.  Those situations often become tedious and slow down games.  It also doesn’t help that now, that after every close call, a manager or coach is calling upstairs to his team’s replay reviewer to determine if he should challenge a call.  I can’t count the number of times there’s been a close call at the end of an inning and players start running off the field and then have to stop and stand around for a minute or longer while waiting to see if the call will be challenged.  Guess what?  That’s boring and ruins the game’s flow…and I don’t buy the argument that it’s “about getting the call right”.

Fixing replay wouldn’t take much heavy lifting.  Under my plan, teams would only get two challenges per nine innings. That’s it…whether you win a challenge or not.  Once a challenge is used, it’s gone. There would also be no team replay reviewer.  If a manager wants to challenge a call, he decides right then and there to do so or the game continues.  Official replay reviews would last a maximum of only 2 1/2 minutes.  If a reviewer in New York can’t make a decision in that amount of time, the umpire’s initial call stands.  Simple…and Manfred then gets his wish for improved pace of play.

There has also been much debate on how baseball should use the designated hitter rule.  It was adopted by the American League in 1973 (after several years of seeing the National League be more popular) to add more offense and excitement to the game.  The NL has, so far, has rejected the DH.  Some are clamoring for the game to become uniform…either use the DH in both leagues or get rid of it completely.  I disagree.  I like the difference between the two leagues and seeing the contrasting styles of play, something Manfred has said that he sort of enjoys as well.  While I love seeing the sluggers who work as DH’s in the AL, I also love the strategic chess game that managers in the NL have to play in trying to determine how to best use their pitching staffs and position players without the DH.  For those of you who that argue the designated hitter creates more offense, and thus, a more exciting brand of baseball, here is something to note…as of June of this season, AL teams were scoring an average of 4.39 runs per game.  NL teams were at 4.35.  Not a big difference.

Lastly, I think baseball needs to move on expansion.  Add two more teams.  The cities I have heard being considered include Montreal, Las Vegas, Portland, Nashville, Charlotte and Mexico City.  Adding two more teams would also push both the American and National Leagues to 16 teams.  As part of expansion, I would like to see Houston returned to NL, where the Astros have an important history. Former Commissioner Bud Selig, a native of Milwaukee, started the league-switching mess by moving the Brewers to the NL in 1998 because he said Milwaukee was a “traditionally a National League city”.  Well, that very same argument can, and should, be used when talking about the city of Houston.  Also, since the Astros have changed leagues, the NL no longer has a presence in the State of Texas. I don’t think that’s right.

Expansion would also increase interest in the game, not just in the places that would get the new teams, but also with baseball fans in general.  Some complain that expansion “waters down” the game’s talent base, there is an important counterpoint.  Because the game’s talent would be spread a little thinner, especially its pitching, there would likely be an uptick in offense.  For those who want more scoring in baseball, this is your solution, because it’s been historically shown that more runs are scored when the majors adds more teams.

For me, baseball has always been THE GAME.  I still love it every bit as much I did when my grandfather first hung a whiffle ball on a string on a low hanging branch in his front yard when I was six years old, handed me a bat and told me to take some swings.  Hours and hours of doing that helped permanently burnish into my heart that there was no better game on Earth.  I still feel that way, but for the game to continue to thrive and grow some simple fixes at the major league level should be made.  If they are made, I believe the “Grand Old Game” will be made even grander.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In writing this blog, I decided I would tackle current hot-button topics involving sports and social issues.  Two weeks ago, in my first attempt at doing that, I took on the subject of some NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.  The controversy began a couple of years ago when the practice was initiated by then-San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick.  To recap what occurred, Kaepernick, who is bi-racial and was adopted and raised by white parents, said he was taking a knee during the anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.  As we all know, his actions sparked a firestorm of controversy…not just because of his beliefs, but because of his chosen way of expressing those beliefs.

I will be the first one to admit that I think Kaepernick’s portrayal of things in this country are not very well informed and inaccurate in many respects and I don’t believe his method of expressing his thoughts “on company time” was the right thing to do.  The US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but that right doesn’t necessarily extend to your time on the clock at work, when you can possibly hurt the bottom line of the business you work for with grandstanding about an issue you have a personal passion for.  In other words, while I respect his right to voice his opinions, he should have done so on his own time.  Doing it while representing the 49ers and the NFL helped cost him a job in the league, along with the fact that he’s no longer a very productive player.  Kaepernick has since responded by suing the NFL, claiming the league and its teams colluded against hiring him after he was cut by the Niners because of his personal beliefs.  This announced fan of Fidel Castro, who once warmed up before a game by wearing socks depicting police officers as pigs, has forgotten something important…The NFL and its teams are private businesses and, as such, are under no requirement to hire anybody. If they believe that signing Kaepernick will adversely affect their profits (NFL attendance was down by 10% last year and TV viewership was also down), in this country, they are not legally forced to give a less-skilled player with controversial beliefs a job.

So, along comes athletic apparel giant Nike, who has just kicked off the marketing campaign for the 30-year anniversary of its popular “Just Do it” slogan by including Colin Kaepernick as one of the faces of that effort.  Nike’s ad featuring Kaepernick is a close-up black and white photo of his face with the words “Believe in something. Even if it costs you everything” written on it.  Really Nike?  I mean…Really?  Please explain to us exactly what Colin Kaepernick has given up.  He is said to have grown up in a warm and positive family environment, went to college for free because he was good at playing a sport and then spent six years in the NFL, which by one estimate I read, provided him with the base to help him build a personal fortune of $61 million.  Nike is also now paying him millions to be a part of its new marketing campaign.  Yep, I really feel sorry for this man who lives a lifestyle that 99% of us in this country can only dream about.  Folks, the struggle is real!

Let’s now compare Kaepernick to true civil rights’ icons like Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who were assassinated for spearheading efforts to provide those of color with equal rights and whose actions led to several important and needed reforms in this country.  Go look at the row after row of white crosses and Stars of David in fields near the beaches of Normandy, France where thousands of soldiers died fighting for a cause that they believed in…ensuring the freedoms of a lot of people they never knew.  Or how about the single parents out there who have to hold multiple jobs to make sure their children have food on the table and decent clothes to wear.  Those are real examples of sacrifice…people who believe in something so much, that they are willing to give up everything they have for those beliefs…including, in some cases, their very lives.  So Nike, don’t lecture us about the alleged sacrifices of a multi-millionaire who simply doesn’t get to play football any more.  It’s offensive to those of us who see the real struggles of people who quietly go out there everyday and make a real difference in this country and on the planet.

Nike’s decision to use Kaepernick as a spokesman also rates, at best, as a pretty questionable marketing strategy.  Even if 50% of the country agrees with Kaepernick (an estimate that is probably too high), the company has just angered the other 50% of Americans who likely respond by no longer spending money on its products.  Nike’s stock dropped 2% on Tuesday when the Kaepernick ad was released, costing it an estimated $2.6 billion dollars.  While I am sure company officials are confident of a financial rebound in the long run, I am not so sure.  Americans have long memories as evidenced by the fact that many of them who swore off the NFL because of Kaepernick and the other anthem kneelers continue to boycott the league.  This Summer I tuned-in to a handful of telecasts of some NFL preseason games just to check on their attendance.  In many cases, the optics didn’t look very good.  I guess we’ll just have to see what happens during the regular season.  However, people in this nation have always used their wallets to let companies know what they think of their business decisions and have made them pay for those decisions they didn’t like.  Remember the “New Coke”?

I suspect, in time, Nike will find out what the NFL, the San Francisco 49ers and the other teams already know about Colin Kaepernick…that he’s generally about as well-liked as a rattlesnake in a moving car and that level of unpopularity makes him a business liability.  At that point, Nike officials will probably do what those other entities did…dump him and move on, but not before paying him millions of dollars to help their company lose billions.  I guess we’ll see how much Nike is willing to sacrifice for what it believes in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In pondering possible topics for this week’s column, I felt compelled to deal with the situation involving the suspension of Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer for his failure to properly report and deal with an issue involving former assistant coach Zach Smith, who was fired earlier this year after allegations surfaced that he had committed acts of domestic abuse and violence.  It’s an important subject…but unlike others talking about this story, I will not be analyzing Smith’s alleged actions, what Meyer knew and when did he know it, or the seemingly tepid response to the matter by officials at Ohio State University.

When I decided to tackle this issue, it came down to what it does in most other things in my life…what’s right and what’s wrong.  As I thought about everything that I’d seen and read about the Smith-Meyer-OSU matter, it kept coming back to the core issue of domestic violence and how bad and wrong it is.  The story I am about to tell you is a very personal one and it’s the first time in my life that I have ever spoken openly about it.  It may also likely be the last time I do so…because it’s about a very painful part of my life that I have kept private for a long, long time.  I won’t feel good for me in telling it, but I am doing so because I want you to have some important perspectives about the impact of domestic abuse on families.

When I was five years old, my parents divorced.  I grew up with my mother and brother (who is four years younger than I am) and only got to see my father every other Sunday.  It was hard, because in the 1960’s, divorce didn’t happen as much and there was a stigma often attached to it. People looked at the three of us differently and often treated us differently as a result.  When I was 12, my mother met someone and married him.  I was thrilled.  There would be a man in the house…someone who would play catch with me, take me to ballgames and who could teach me general “guy stuff”.

Early on, it was sort of that way, but things quickly changed. He was partier and a drinker.  As a matter of fact, he was an alcoholic, and was physically and mentally abusive. This man got especially meaner and more abusive when he had way too much to drink.  He hit my mother on a number of occasions and, while he never hit my brother or me, this man scared the living daylights out of me.  He also often belittled my mother and the two us of a regular basis along with ruining our family’s finances.  He was only about 5’10, but was stocky and strong and had spent part of World War II in the Navy Air Corps.

His actions eventually helped turn my mother into an alcoholic as well.  When they were both drinking, there would be a lot of arguing and fighting.  It often felt like hell on Earth.  I rarely brought friends to our home and didn’t date in high school because I didn’t want to bring anyone to the house and see something I didn’t want them to see.  Back in the 1970’s, I believed everyone but me had the perfect “Leave it to Beaver” happy, home life.  I felt guilty and ashamed for not doing something to help my mother.  The regular verbal assaults I suffered from my stepfather, and then my mother, left me with only a trace amount of self esteem and confidence.  I said as little as possible at home and spent most of my time alone in my room, which was separated from the house by a breezeway, just off the laundry room and the garage.  I often would go to school mentally worn out and with an upset stomach.  I was guarded there too and did what I could to keep a low profile me because I learned at home that to be noticed was to make a target of yourself.  I felt I had no one I could talk to.  My brother and I were too far apart in our ages, had different interests and friends and my real father had re-married and had a new family of his own, so I felt he had enough responsibilities already without having to deal with my problems.  Being ashamed of what my home life was, I didn’t want to talk to any of my friends about what was happening because it was embarrassing and back in the 1970’s, the thought was that what happened in your house, stayed in your house. In short, I felt I had no one, I was nothing, and I was locked in a tight little box facing an uncertain future.  If I had an issue at school or someplace else, I generally just tried to deal with it myself as best I could.

I give all the credit to God for turning my life around.  Getting the opportunity to go away to college and being on my own, I was able to prove to myself that I had value.  It was like coming up for air after being held under water for a very long time.  I changed.  I realized I could be anything and anybody I wanted to be.  After being bullied by my stepfather for so many years, I started to take on any bully who messed with me or my friends.  I led with my mouth, but was more than willing to back my words with my fists if the need arose.  I never started trouble, but never backed down from it either.  When I returned home during school breaks, I decided I would never back down to my stepfather again either.  As a matter of fact, my mother had to step in between us a couple of times to stop potential physical altercations.

While I was able to navigate my way through my own personal storm to the other side, as I have gone through adulthood, I have realized that I still bear the mental and emotional scars from those years of being mentally beaten up.  I still feel the sharp pang of guilt for not doing more to help my mother from being physically abused and every now and then, a little voice still pipes up in the back of my head and says “You’re not good enough and you never will be” .  I admit it takes a lot to work through those feelings.

I am telling you all these things, not because it’s therapeutic for me to do so or I that want your sympathy or hear you say “Poor Chuck”.  If you are reacting that way, then you’ve missed the point.  This is my story, but it’s not about me.  It’s about the other spouses and kids who are now going through what my mother, my brother and I went through.  No one said or did anything to stop our abuser, just as took way too long for someone to stop to Zach Smith from doing what he supposedly did.  When I hear stories about people like Smith and Urban Meyer it brings back some very painful memories for me and I wonder why these kind of incidents continue to happen.  They shouldn’t…and they don’t have to.  If you know of a similar situation, please DO something about it.  Call your local authorities and report it.  Reach out, if you can, to those who are hurting and let them know you care and that they are not alone.  No man, woman or child should ever have to go through the trauma of domestic abuse and violence.  So again, I urge you to step up for those who are too ashamed or afraid to help themselves.  Be the voice for those who feel voiceless.  Care enough and maybe someday this awful stuff will finally stop occurring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back when I was a small boy, one of my heroes was my grandfather.  Spending time with him was always special and, like candy, I could never seem to get enough of it.  Born in 1902 in Chicago, my grandfather was very patriotic.  He loved America with all of his heart, but he came by it naturally.  His father came over from Germany and worked hard to build the largest flour company in the Windy City.  His first name was officially “Karl”, but he went by “Charlie” because that was more American.  He also refused to teach my grandfather and his siblings to speak or write in German because, he told them, “We are Americans and in America, we speak English!”

My grandfather joined the US Army in 1918, near the end of World War I, at the age of 16.  He spent two weeks driving an ambulance (at high rates of speed I’m told) around Chicago before the war ended and he was quickly discharged.  When World War II broke out, despite being almost 40 years old, my grandfather refused to be left out left out of the fight.  He used some connections he had to finagle his way into the US Navy Seabees (the Navy’s construction battalion) where he served, again in Chicago, as a Lt. Commander overseeing the distribution of materials used to build landing crafts.

Like his father, my grandfather loved this country and the principles it represents.  In the den in his home was a framed picture of the US flag (which now hangs in my house).  When a ballgame would come on the television in that room, we would all have to stand while they played the national anthem.  I never minded then, because like him, I too loved my country and standing for the anthem seemed like the right thing to do in thanking the millions of men and women who stood up for, and continue to stand up for, all the freedoms the citizens of this nation are privileged to enjoy.  Many of them paid the ultimate price for those freedoms by laying down their very lives while countless others suffered very serious life-changing physical or mental injuries.

Fast forward to today, there is now a debate about standing for the national anthem prior to NFL games because a group of players from various teams have decided to use that time to protest, generally either by kneeling or raising a fist in the air.  They say they are protesting police brutality and/or social justice issues.  They say that it is their 1st Amendment right of “freedom of speech and expression” to do so.

First of all, while I agree they do have every right to feel however they want to about certain things and express those opinions, I will add they don’t have the right to do it “while on the job”.  When you are at work, you are generally expected to check your personal opinions at the door, because your thoughts regarding certain issues could affect your company’s bottom line.  For instance, openly speaking your mind about political, ethnic, religious, gender or other social matters has the potential to cause your company to lose clients or anger co-workers who disagree with you, thus making it harder for them to work with you, which impacts the company’s productivity, which…again…can put a damper on it’s ability to generate profits.  When you’re on the company’s time and the company’s dime, your company has every right to enforce certain rules of behavior.  While you do have the right to speak your mind in this country about politics and other subjects, you have to do it on your own time…a fact number of NFL players seem to have lost sight of.

It hasn’t helped that the weak-kneed NFL owners refused to enforce a regulation in the league’s own handbook that requires players to stand for the national anthem and then earlier this year backed off on a new policy that would have had the players stand for the anthem and those that didn’t want to would remain in the locker room until its playing was completed.  Not a terrible compromise, but the players’ union complained and the weak-kneed owners buckled to that pressure and suspended the new policy.  Talk about the tail wagging the dog!

I have heard some players and a number of commentators who support the players’ anthem protests, say “It’s not about disrespecting the service of our veterans or our flag”, but I beg to differ. By using the pre-game anthem as a time of public protest, you turn both our veterans and our flag into props for your protest.  I also find it ironic that some of the protesters who gripe about police tactics, kneel or raise a fist on a field surrounded by police officers who are there specifically to protect their safety and expect protection from them if an incident takes place.

Here’s my question to those players who are supposedly expressing their passion about certain social issues with their pre-anthem protests…How many of you have actually taken the time to visit with your community, state, federal and local police department officials to talk to them about your concerns, better understand where they are coming from and then offered your help in developing ways to fix the problems you are so fired-up about?  Damn few I’m betting.  In other words, your anthem protests are accomplishing very little…except that they are making a lot of people angry, which has impacted your team’s and the NFL’s profit margins, since game attendance and TV viewership has declined since you initiated these protests.  And how many of you players who talk about injustices in America, but generally got free college educations for playing a sport and now make millions of dollars to play that sport, have contributed financially to help solve the ills you see in our country?  Again, I’d say not many of you have done that and I don’t have much respect for those who complain about a problem but don’t do anything to help solve it.

I suggest you NFL players who are thinking about raising fist or kneeling during the next pre-kickoff anthem go visit a VA hospital beforehand and see the number of veterans in that facility who are still suffering from serious wounds they suffered years ago to fight for, and protect, your freedoms and million dollar lifestyles.  Then go talk to the widows and children of the 96 police officers who have died this year protecting the lives and properties of those in their communities.  After that, go into your own community and work to make it a better place…not just with your money, but your time.  Lastly, please stand to honor the US military members and police officers who bravely put their lives on the line everyday to make this the greatest country in the world.  No, America is not perfect.  It never will be…because it’s made up of 350 million imperfect people.  However, we have always strived to learn, grow and be better.  For instance, the US is the only country in world history to fight an internal war to end slavery and since then has passed several key civil rights laws to better ensure that all Americans are treated equally. I am also willing to bet that even more of them will be passed in the future.  That’s I will always stand when the national anthem plays…to thank and remember all of those who have given us, and continue to give us, the opportunity to be greater tomorrow then we are today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton