One's Cool, One's Not

The White Sox have announced that they will unretire No. 11, which was HOFer Luis Aparicio’s number, so that Omar Vizquel can wear it in 2010.  Vizquel’s number has traditionally been No. 13, but Ozzie Guillen wears that number and won’t give it up.  Aparicio is cool with the whole deal, because he likes Omar and thinks he’s a good person.  How cool is that?

Aparicio is the first (and at present) the only Venzuelan in the Hall of Fame.  When the time comes, Vizquel will certainly be the second Venezuelan shortstop in the Hall of Fame.  Of course, Ozzie Guillen was also a great Venezuelan shortstop who played (and managed for the White Sox), and, in case you’d forgotten, Aparicio wasn’t even the first great Venezuelan shortstop to play for the ChiSox.  That was Chico Carrasquel, who played short for the Sox from 1950 until 1955 and whose job Aparicio took in 1956.

Great Venezuelan shortstops on the White Sox are a tradition.  How cool is that?

This isn’t the first time the White Sox have unretired a number.  They also unretired Harold Baines’ number when he came back to the team for a third stint as a White Stocking in 2000.  How cool is that?

On the other side of the spectrum is the Brewers’ decision to build a seven foot tall bronze statue of Bud Selig to be placed in front of their stadium.  There he’ll join statues of Hank Aaron and Robin Yount.

That is so lame!  Selig is the definition of a tool.  He’s the first Commissioner to be taken directly from the ranks of ownership, and that’s exactly what the Commissioner of Baseball is: a management stooge, who has a grandiose title in the hopes that the average fan won’t be smart enough to see that an officer paid and selected solely by the owners is nothing but the owners’ stooge and/or mouthpiece.  At least with Selig the public gets to see that there isn’t any daylight between the Commissioner and the owners, but does anyone really think this guy needs to be commemorated with a statue outside a ballpark?

Cecil Cooper, you have to wait!  You too, Paul Molitor!  Ben Oglivie, get to the end of the line!  Gorman Thomas, are you kidding!  We have to build a statue to that all-time great Bud Selig!

Could anything be more asinine? I won’t support building statues for owners until it’s the owners that put cans in the seats.  How many people ever went to a game because George Steinbrenner or Walter O’Malley owned the team?

Can you even name half of the current owners of the thirty major league teams?  I can’t, even though the owners change a lot less than the players do.

In the meantime, the only good that can come of this is if the Giants adopt a new tradition in which the team’s rookies are forced out on a night-time venture from their luxury hotel to paint Selig’s balls orange on the team’s first trip to Milwaukee each season.  Long live General Sheridan and his horse!