JERRY REINSDORF’S 2024 White Sox are a civic disgrace — a scarlet letter now and a pox forever upon him, his family name and the soft-spined regional “leaders” who have enabled him.
Book jacket of Ed Kranepool’s autobiography
From the back pages of MLB history, Ed Kranepool could care less.
Kranepool has informed perspective. At age 17 he played briefly for the 1962 New York Mets. That’s the record 120-loss expansion outfit that Reinsdorf’s diamond-challenged South Sliders have dead aim on.
But Kranepool also saw the other side. That came seven years later when he was the only survivor of ’62 to play from spring water to champagne spray when the Miracle Mets of Gil Hodges won the 1969 World Series.
“So I went from the outhouse to the penthouse,” Kranepool said. He wound up playing 18 seasons for the Mets (1962-79).
He’s 79 now and lives in Florida with Monica Kranepool, his wife of 40 years. Both have survived major health challenges in recent years.
“I’ve gotten calls lately about the White Sox, but there’s not much to say,” Kranepool said. “I don’t care if they lose more games than that original Mets team. It was a bad baseball team with a bad mix of young guys and some great older stars whose best years were behind them.
“In a clubhouse like that, when you’re young like I was, all you want is to learn and get better and have the season end. But whether the White Sox finish with more losses than that team — what does it matter to me?”
Kranepool released a dandy autobiography late last year — “The Last Miracle: My 18-year Journey with the Amazin’ New York Mets” (Triumph, $30; paperback due out in February). It’s a bright, breezy read in which he brings a lot of an old Insouciant’s baseball cards back to life.
The Bronx native is eminently conversational about the ’69 Mets. They were the mythic “ballclub from nowhere” that exploded the championship expectations of Leo Durocher and a loaded Cubs team.
“The Cubs that season were the best team in baseball, period, the eight best day-to-day players and some great pitching,” Kranepool said. “But Gil Hodges was the best manager in baseball that year. Durocher played the same eight starters day after day in that hot Wrigley (Field) sun.
“And when he needed the backups to step it up later in the season, they’d sat too long. They had been allowed to rust away. And there we were, with great young arms like (Tom) Seaver and (Jerry) Koosman and (Gary) Gentry and all the momentum and luck in the world.
“Most people don’t remember that Whitey Herzog, then an unknown, was our director of player development. And young Nolan Ryan, with the best arm on the staff, didn’t contribute consistently because of ongoing problems with blisters on his fingers.
“But it was our time.”
In other words, the complete opposite of what’s happening now with Jerry Reinsdorf‘s 2024 White Sox — a movable civic blight.
STREET-BEATIN’:
HBO’s “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Chicago Bears” is now officially one concluding episode away from being the most boring in the extended history of the series. The dulling thumbprints of George McCaskey and Kevin Warren have been all over the finished products. A euphoric sight for the “HK” captains and crew Thursday had to be turf-toxic Halas Hall in the rearview mirror. …
Danny Parkins is the sports talk grinder who’s gone from being budget-friendly at WSCR-AM (670) to now being budget-friendly at FS1’s morning wasteland in New York. (After the vapid run of Skip Bayless, things can’t get much more insipid in Fox’s NYC.) Jay Mariotti — a veteran of more than 1,700 editions of “Around The Horn” on ESPN — says Parkins will be “back in Chicago within a year.” …
Dick Quagliano – the perennial Daily Herald prep sports All-Pro – is beaming a little more broadly these days. Son Anthony – St. Viator High, Class of 2010 – is now Dr. Anthony Quagliano. He’s a surgical resident with the Florida branch of Mayo Clinic. …
With NBCSCH about to lose the Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox to Stadium on Oct. 1, P.R. ace Jeff Nuich reports that the web’s inaugural show in 2004 was “Chicago Tribune Live!” Dan Jiggetts hosted. Nuich has been masterful in recent years finding a Charminesque flea-flicker dabbling in sports media downtown and milking him like an overnight jewel thief inside of Woodfield. …
And Jimmy Dobbins, on soft-shell Deion Sanders and his Colorado footballers barely squeaking by North Dakota State on Thursday night: “Why is it so easy to root against a cloddish media bully?”
Jim O’Donnell’s Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publications.
