Sale incident highlights wacky baseball Saturday
Columnist Jay Dunn looks back on a crazy Saturday of baseball highlighted by a Chicago White Sox pitcher cutting his jersey.
There was no full moon last Saturday night. I know, because I checked.
Everything seemed normal when my wife and I returned from dinner at a local restaurant. I found I had a choice of three games to watch on television and decided to dial in the one that was in extra innings. I watched as the visiting team advanced a runner to third base with two out. When the next batter, a lefty, stepped to the plate the catcher stood with his left arm extended – the classic signal that the batter would be intentionally walked.
The pitcher’s offering was a lob that was well out of the catcher’s reach. The catcher retrieved the ball only after it bounced off the backstop. The runner, however, remained on third base. After that the catcher went into his normal crouch, the pitcher attacked the batter and eventually forced him to ground out to end the inning. I flipped the channel. I found a game in which the home team was having a big inning, which forced a pitching change by the visitors. The home team pitcher apparently felt he was seated on the bench too long. He moved to one end of the dugout and began loosening up, throwing to a teammate standing in the other end of the dugout.
I’ve been watching baseball for 65 years and in less than 15 minutes I had seen three things I had never seen before.
I flipped the channel again.
I flipped it just in time, it turned out, to hear an announcer report that the Chicago White Sox pitcher Chris Sale had been scratched from his scheduled start. No, the announcer said, he hadn’t been traded. He had ripped up all of the throwback uniforms the team was scheduled to wear that night and as a consequence he had been sent home.
That’s when I went outside and looked for the full moon. Any moon would do. I was wondering if I had made a wrong turn on my home from the restaurant and arrived on another planet.
He did what? He ripped up the uniforms?
No. Ballplayers don’t go through the clubhouse tearing up uniforms. They just don’t.
Sale has been, by far, the best pitcher on the White Sox this season is one of the contenders for the American League Cy Young Award. According to multiple reports the White Sox are trying to trade him for prospects, but their demands are very high. Reportedly, they want five top-drawer prospects in exchange.
Consequently, plenty of scouts were on hand, expecting to see him pitch Saturday night. Coincidentally, the promotions department had chosen that game as the one in which the White Sox would wear replica uniforms that matched the ones worn by the 1976-79 White Sox – navy blue with wide lapels.
I remember those uniforms very well. They were the brainstorm of Bill Veeck – possibly the only bad idea Veeck ever had. Most people considered them ugly and the players who had to wear them hated them. I’m not sure why anyone would purchase a ticket to a game on the promise that those uniforms would make a one-day comeback, but some people did. The players were, obviously, expected to wear them.
Sale complained that the uniforms were uncomfortable and consequently hindered every player’s ability to compete. He said the team was putting its players at a competitive disadvantage for the sake of a promotion. He decided that was wrong, and while his teammates were taking batting practice, he took it upon himself to correct that wrong. Snip, snip, snip. Thank you, Chris Sale, for revealing the ugly truth that professional baseball is a business and sometimes the owners, shockingly, make decisions with an eye on the balance sheet rather than their team’s won-loss record.
Oh, by the way, those same owners are doing such a poor job of running the game that they can afford to pay you only $9.15 million this year. Actually, they’re now going to pay you a little less. Your rampage cost you a fivegame suspension without pay. That means you were docked about $282,000.
Perhaps if you had to do it all over again, you would just lay on the floor and kick and scream. Not only would that be more mature, but it wouldn’t be as expensive.
Moreover, I could watch baseball on television instead of studying astronomy.
A FEW STATISTICS: (Wednesday’s games not included): Top fielding percentages by position: P -- Kyle Hendricks, Cubs 1.000 (31 chances); C— Yadier Molina, Cardinals .999; 1B—Will Myers, Padres 1.000 (828 chances); 2B – Robinson Cano, Mariners, .995; SS—Jose Iglesias, Tigers .990; 3B – Nolan Arenado, Rockies .990; LF—Colby Rasmus, Astros 1.000 (109 chances), CF – Carlos Gomez, Astros 1.000 (161 chances), RF – Curtis Granderson, Mets 1.000 (171 chances)… 33-year-old Justin Verlander of the Tigers leads the American League in innings pitched with 138 1/3…The Marlins are 2128 against teams in their own division. They’re 31-18 against everybody else… In his last nine games the Cardinals’ Jed Gyorko has belted seven homers, doubling his total of the season…Aaron Sanchez of the Blue Jays is 10-0 since April 29. He also has six starts that resulted in no decision for him but a loss for his team…The Red Sox have scored 557 runs, which is 60 more than any other AL team… Reds pitcher Dan Straily is 0-for-27 as a batter with 23 strike outs. However, he shares the major league lead in sacrifice bunts with nine…The Rockies have played in only 20 one-run games and have won only seven of them.