Since it's an off day, so let's get a couple of things out there:
For The Athletic, I wrote about the idea of Eloy Jimenez's "checkboxes," and the enjoyment of watching fans and media use Rick Hahn's penchant for clichés against him.
Hahn has referred to the checklist concept before. This time, however, when he was asked for details, he wouldn’t reveal one.
“They know what’s on the list,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you the things players can’t do.”
A pause followed. It was an uncharacteristically terse answer, and also somewhat hollow, considering Hahn spent March through May remarking on Kopech’s development of a reliable changeup, or lack thereof.
After a couple of beats, Hahn emphasized the recency of their excellence – Kopech’s last three starts, Jiménez’s 10 games since returning from the disabled list – and concluded with, “a little bit longer resumé of consistency there will certainly bode well.”
If that delayed elaboration was Hahn trying to head off the headlines and tweets, it didn’t work. Instead, Chicago writers and fans christened the new cliché for him. Jokes and barbs about checklists and their boxes flowed as Jiménez tore up the Pawtucket Red Sox over the weekend. Jiménez is now 19-for-38 over his last 10 games, and nobody can cry “selective end points” because that stretch started with an 0-for-4 night. Expect more box-related jokes if Jiménez lights up the Norfolk Tides on Monday while the Sox are off. Expect them even if he doesn’t.
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Back in 2008, I went to Cooperstown to cover Jim Thome dropping off his 500th home run ball with his father, Chuck. Jim kept using the word "magical" to describe the day, and Chuck shed tears over the idea of Thome getting inducted into the Hall of Fame one day.
Sure enough, Chuck had a hard time looking up as Jim thanked him during his induction speech, and he wasn't the only subject of gratitude that had tears in their eyes.
Thome kept it together, though, perhaps because it was incredibly well-rehearsed. No, seriously:
Every single day, for weeks, for months, Thome would go to the backyard of his home. There are hedges back there that he would use those as a lectern. He put down his Hall of Fame speech. And he would practice it in the Chicago wind.
"He would tell me, 'I need to do it outside because I'm going to give the speech outside,'" his wife Andrea said. "He would say, 'I want to be prepared to hear what it's like outside, you know. Your voice sounds different outside."
He did this everyday?
"Oh yeah," she says. "Sometimes he would do it twice a day."
You can watch the entirety of speech below.
