Bob Verdi was a hero of mine among sportswriters when he was penning pearls for the Chicago Tribune. He had many famous lines as a Tribune wordsmith and another you were sure to hear when covering the same event.
Call it an off day at a World Series, media access at the ballpark, and then a confab in the hotel bar. Someone would ask, “Are you going to dinner with us, Bob?” and the scenario rarely changed.
Verdi would dismiss the idea with a shake of the head and say: “I have to make a few calls.”
This could be a stretch, but when baseball holds its annual December gathering called the winter meetings, the reports on the Twins’ activities consistently remind me of Verdi leaving a hotel bar:
The Twins are always assuring reporters on the scene, “We’re going to make some calls.”
The latest instance of this involves Roki Sasaki, 23, a right-handed pitcher from Japan and believed to have phenom potential. Derek Falvey, the baseball boss and soon-to-be team president, said the Twins had made calls and were planning to meet with Sasaki’s negotiators.
The Dodgers are also interested in Sasaki. They are World Series champions and have invested more than a billion dollars in two stars from Japan: three-time MVP Shohei Ohtani and pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.