Every Picture Tells a Story 7/7/20

Soon, baseball...soon.

Bear Down

Hockey season is long gone, and baseball season can't end soon enough. Bring on the Monsters of the Midway, even if nobody really expects them to be more than mediocre.

Every Picture Tells a Story 4/17/13

Opening Day 2012

In years past, the first official game of the baseball season--no, I don't count spring training games as real games, nor should you--would fill me with giddy anticipation. It represented hope renewed, lasting until at least the cusp of summer, when it would become clear whether our teams were fading fast or built to last (much more often the former than the latter).

Not so much this year. And maybe that's a good thing.

Both the Cubs and White Sox are in rebuilding phases this year, with new managers and a mix of new faces and old hands on both sides of town. Consequently, not much is expected of either team; most "experts" are picking the Cubs and Sox to finish near the bottoms of their respective divisions.

However, since little good is anticipated from either team, any success they might have--as teams or individual players--will come as a pleasant surprise.

And even if both teams suck it hard (the more likely outcome, truth be told), there are still a couple of tangental feel-good stories to be found.

For one, longtime Cubs third baseman Ron Santo (whose statue outside Wrigley Field is pictured above) was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this past offseason. It was an honor long overdue for Santo, one of the finest players at his position in the history of the sport, and it was (and is) a genuine shame that this honor could not have come long ago, or at least while Santo was still alive (he died in December of 2010).

For another, there is Jamie Moyer, who started his pitching career with the Cubs way back in 1986 and spent 24 seasons starting for a variety of other teams including the Mariners and the Phillies. He hurt his arm in 2010 and had to have surgery after the season, so most assumed that, at the amazing age of 47, his career had finally come to an end.

In this case, most were wrong.

Moyer attended spring training with the Colorado Rockies this year and won a spot in their starting rotation. If he wins even one game this season, he will be the oldest player to do so--at the age of 49.

Maybe hope springs eternal after all.

Game Over

Baseball's regular season ended yesterday. For Chicago sports fans, this is a blessing.

I could have written that second sentence just about any year in this city (with notable--and rare--exceptions), but this past baseball season was, in many ways, more miserable than usual.

Granted, expectations were pretty low on the North Side, where the Cubs made such modest adjustments during their off season (signing Carlos Pena, who hit under .200 last year, to play first base) that most experts anticipated, at best, mediocrity. After a tidal wave of injuries punched significant holes in the outfield and starting rotation, though, the team sank early and never recovered. Throw in a poor early season performance by third baseman Aramis Ramirez (who later tore the cover off the ball--well after the Cubs were out of contention) and the ultimate, final blowup (at least with the Cubs) of Carlos Zambrano and you get a team tied for second-worst in the National League that had little reason to run up the white "W" flag you see above.

On the South Side, the prospects for a good season seemed decidedly brighter. The White Sox had finished second in their division the previous season and had added left-handed slugger Adam Dunn during the off season, so what could go wrong? As it turns out, plenty. Dunn was a massive bust with more than 2 1/2 times as many strikeouts (177) as hits (66). Outfielder Alex Rios and second baseman Gordon Beckham also drastically underachieved at the plate and gave little support to their basically decent starting pitching staff. Consequently, the Sox hovered around .500 much of the season and ultimately finished in third place--well behind the Division-winning Tigers, who mercilessly thrashed the Sox in many of their head-to-head games.

Toward the end, the White Sox seemed to quit on manager Ozzie Guillen, but this was no surprise. Guillen, whose mouth has no off switch and whose brain has never conceived a thought that wasn't ready to come flying out of said mouth, spent much of the last month of the season publicly bitching about his contract status. (True, a reporter asked him about it, but he didn't have to answer--again, that lack of an off switch.) This provided a prominent distraction for a team that wasn't quite out of the race yet and ultimately led to Guillen returning the favor and quitting on his team in the most literal sense: He asked to be released from his contract with two games to go in the season. (Pitching coach Don Cooper managed the Sox for the last two games of the year, going 1-1.)

Before Guillen left, he told the Chicago Sun-Times, “I work in this job for money . . . [Bleep] the ring. I don’t even wear my [bleeping] rings,” Now that he's been hired as the manager of the Florida (soon-to-be Miami) Marlins, he says winning is what's most important to him. Which side of Ozzie's constantly running mouth should be believed? Not our problem anymore.

Also not our problem anymore: Cubs manager Mike Quade, who seemed well out of his depth much of the year. Maybe that's unfair. Maybe any manager would have struggled with so much uninspired play and so many injuries. Doesn't matter. General Manager Jim Hendry was fired during the season, and the new General Manager (whoever that poor, nigh-suicidal sucker that winds up being) will almost certainly bring in his own manager and attempt to fill the many holes his predecessor left behind.

The winter will be long, and it will be cold. The grass on the baseball diamonds will go brown under blankets of white.Then, a few months hence, trees will green, ice and snow will melt and melt, and hope will rise again--whether that's justifiable or not.

Here Come the Hawks, the (Not as Mighty as They Were Last Year) Blaaaackhawks!

Last year around this time, Chicago was vastly excited about, of all things, hockey--a sport we'd just about written off in this town, due to the downright negligent owner of our NHL franchise, Bill Wirtz. After Wirtz passed away, though, his son, Rocky, pumped much new, vital blood into the franchise, and not only did the Hawks make the playoffs last year, they wound up going all the way and taking the Stanley Cup.

This year? Is not last year.

The Hawks have struggled all year long. Team chemistry hasn't been the same since many of last year's players had to be traded to get under this year's salary cap, and there have been plenty of injuries along the way.

Still, if they win tonight, they clinch a playoff spot. So...go Hawks!

Opening Day, Part 2

Th White Sox play their home opener this afternoon against the Tampa Bay (Formerly Devil) Rays at U.S. Cellular (Formerly Comiskey Park) Field. They'll get roughly the same weather that the Cubs had last week--damp and chilly, with temps in the 40s and a breeze off Lake Michigan (which, in springtime, is anything but refreshing). The weekend promises better, though, with the mercury possibly rising into the 70s. Such is the way in Chicago in April--30-degree swings from one day to the next are hardly unusual.

Let's just hope the Sox fare a bit better than the Cubs did. They lost their opening day (and two out of three in the opening series) to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who haven't had a winning season since 1992.

Every Picture Tells a Story: 4/1/11

Happy Opening Day, everybody!

Every Picture Tells a Story: 2/28/11

The Least Surprising News Stories of 2010 (So Far)

1. Sarah Palin goes to work for Fox News.

2. Mark McGwire admits that he used steroids.

3. "Jersey Shore" cast member gets in fistfight with (fill in the blank).

4. Mariah Carey says something really, really incoherent.

5. Rod Blagojevich says something really, really stupid.

6. "Jay Leno Show" a colossal flop.

7. Sun rises in east, sets in west.

Game Over

In Chicago, baseball season ended yesterday.

Actually, yesterday was merely a formality. In reality, baseball season was over for this city some time ago.

That's not how it was supposed to be. The Cubs and White Sox were both supposed to contend for their respective division titles. The Cubs were even viewed as World Series contenders by some.

Not by me, though. I knew this year's team chemistry was in trouble when general manager Jim Hendry signed free agent outfielder Milton Bradley to play right field. Granted, Bradley was coming off his best season in the Major Leagues, and the Cubs lineup needed a left-handed bat (Bradley is a switch hitter), but his record of injuries and public blowups, plus the fact that he'd been with seven different teams in his 10-year career, should have screamed "BUYER BEWARE!" at Hendry.

Instead, he signed Bradley anyway, and the predictable mayhem ensued: Bradley underperformed; fans got on him; he argued with manager Lou Pinella and the media; and he blamed damn near everyone but himself for his failings. (He also claimed more than once that fans had hurled racial epithets at his, but refused to go into specifics about who allegedly said what when.) By the time Hendry suspended Bradley for the remainder of the season for his constant bitching, it was too late--the season was well out of hand.

Hendry also stumbled in his other off-season dealings, like trading popular utility man Mark DeRosa (and then missing him mightily when third baseman Aramis Ramirez went down with a separated shoulder), signing free agent infielder Aaron Miles (who was injured much of the season and his poorly when he wasn't hurt) and trading fifth starter Jason Marquis (who went on to be an All-Star for the Colorado Rockies).

To be fair, it wasn't all Hendry's fault. As mentioned above, Ramirez was injured early and was missing for the middle of the season, and four of the Cubs starters--Ted Lilly, Ryan Dempster, Rich Harden and Carlos Zambrano--spent time on the disabled list. Underachievers Alfonso Soriano, Kosuke Fukadome and Zambrano didn't help matters either.

Under the circumstances, they probably did better than they should have. Given the pre-season expectations, though, they didn't do well enough.

The White Sox weren't expected to win their division, but they were expected to put up more of a fight than they did. Instead, injuries to key players (Carlos Quentin) and underachievement by others (Jermaine Dye had a great first half, but tailed off badly in the second half, and none of the starting pitchers truly excelled, even though Mark Buerhle threw a perfect game in August--and then lost most of his starts thereafter) sank the team well before they were formally eliminated.

So. Baseball season continues in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, as it usually does, and in Detroit, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Anaheim, too. Chicago's baseball fans will go into their usual winter slumber, awaking again next spring with hopes renewed. Fans on the South Side, at least, have the comfort of knowing that they've won a World Series in living memory (2005, to be exact).

For Cubs fans? The best they can hope is that some year soon, "next year" will finally arrive.

"Game Over, Man! Game Over!"

Last night, the Cubs were beaten--no, pounded--by the Washington Nationals, the team with the worst record in the Major Leagues, by a score of 15-6.

The Cubs' season? Over.

Roid Rage

I really hate agreeing with White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen on anything--he's an obnoxious loudmouth who often speaks well before he thinks about what he's saying--but I couldn't help but be struck by his comments on the news, as reported by The New York Times, that former Cubs/sox star (and former Guillen teammate) Sammy Sosa was one of the 104 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs during supposedly anonymous testing in 2003; Alex Rodriguez also tested positive at that time and has had to attempt to explain and apologize for it since the information was revealed earlier this year.

This is what Guillen had to say in today's Chicago Tribune:

We need to get it over with. Get those names out there. Whoever is guilty is guilty, whoever is not is not. Let baseball deal with it once and then move on. Every month we seem to talk about somebody and it's not a good thing. It's not healthy for the game.

Much as I hate to admit it, he's right.

Having a name come out once every several months is indeed bad for the health of baseball, which will have a cloud of suspicion hanging over each and every player--a few of whom are guilty, but most of whom are exactly what they appear to be: extraordinarily, naturally talented athletes. Until we know the names of the guilty, everyone is guilty by association. No, that's not fair, but it's how it is. It would be refreshing to see both the Players' Union and commissioner Bud Selig for once do what's best for the sport and its fans. Come clean. Yank the Band-Aid off. Let the healing begin.

Every Picture Tells a Story: 6/15/09

Marble marker at the site of the original Comiskey Park (demolished 1991), now a parking lot across the street from its replacement, 35th and Shields.

There Go the Hawks, the Mighty Blaaaaackhawks

Hockey season is officially over in Chicago.

Considering, however, that it's been a very long time since hockey season even mattered in Chicago, one must give credit where it is most certainly due. The Blackhawks, a mostly young and inexperienced team, wasn't expected to go this far--all the way to the conference finals for the first time in over a decade--and, with the exception of Game 4, in which the much-despised Detroit Red Wings slapped the snot out of the Hawks 6-1, this was an exciting series to watch, with three of the five games going to overtime, including last night's loss.

(I was at Mom's house for dinner last night, and we watched most of the back half of Game 5, including both goals scored in regulation and the amazing save by Hawks goalie Cristobal Huet, who blocked a Red Wings shot with the blade of his right skate why lying on his "tummy"--yes, the announcer for Versus, presumably an adult talking to adults, actually used the word "tummy" to describe the action.)

And, given the relative youth of the current squad--the team captain is only 21--the Blackhawks should be a force in the NHL for years to come.

Take Me Out to the...No, Don't

Yesterday was opening day for baseball in Chicago.

Or, rather, it was supposed to be, but a late-season snow hit Sunday night, dropping anywhere from half an inch to several inches on the metro area, depending on where you were standing and when.

This is not unprecedented. It snows in April in Chicago--not every April, but often enough for wary natives to keep their winter gear--boots, parkas, mittens, etc.--close at hand through, say, mid-May.

Which is why I'm dumbfounded every year that Major League Baseball schedules opening day for the first week of April in cities where winter doesn't end just because the calendar says it's supposed to.

The Cubs started their season last night in Houston--an eminently sensible place to start, since it's not only a warm-weather city, but the Astros play in a stadium that, should the weather be inclement, can retract its roof. The Cubs will them move on to Milwaukee--a cold-weather city, granted, but one that also boasts a stadium with a retractable roof.

The White Sox, however, got stuck with playing their season opener in Chicago, where we don't have a retractable roof on any of our sports facilities.

Hence, when the weather outside was frightful, opening day was so not delightful--it was, in fact, cancelled and rescheduled for today.

Not that today's forecast is a vast improvement--no snow, but temperatures in the high 30s or low 40s. Weather conducive to hockey or football--not so much for baseball.

I realize that, unless the Sox build a dome over U.S. Cellular Field or the Cubs enclose Wrigley, one or the other of them will either have to open in frigid air or sacrifice their first series to a warm-weather city like Oakland, Anaheim or Tampa Bay.

So be it. Better to make such a sacrifice than to perpetually inconvenience loyal fans or, worse, to get a player hurt--possibly even lost for the year--on an icy field on which he should never have set foot.

23 Names

Mike Tomczak. Jim Harbaugh. Peter Tom Willis. Will Furrer. Erik Kramer. Steve Walsh. Dave Krieg. Rick Mirer. Steve Stenstrom. Moses Moreno. Shane Matthews. Cade McNown. Jim Miller. Chris Chandler. Henry Burris. Kordell Stewart. Rex Grossman. Jonathan Quinn. Craig Krenzel. Chad Hutchinson. Kyle Orton. Jeff Blake. Brian Griese.

Those are the names of all the quarterbacks who've played for the Chicago Bears since Jim McMahon played in the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl for them over 20 years ago.

Thursday, they traded Orton, two first-round draft picks and a fifth-round pick for a 24th name: Denver Broncos Pro Bowl quarterback Jay Cutler, who had become severely disenchanted with that franchise when their new coach tried to trade for then-New England Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel.

That sounds like a lot to give up for any single player, and it is. But the old saying, "Sometimes you have to give a lot to get a lot," has a good deal of truth to it. It's just so rare--shocking, really--to see the Bears make such a bold and risky move.

The loss of two first-round picks could be a blessing in disguise, given the Bears' recent history with first-round picks, most of whom have been negligible at best and outright bombs at worst.

But trading a steady-if-unspectacular quarterback, Orton, who's won 75% of the games he's started, for a potential superstar who could be an overly sensitive headcase? We'll see how that goes.

Now if only Cutler had a decent receiver to throw to...

One Brief, Not-So-Shining Moment

Remember a few days ago, when I briefly mentioned that the Cubs and the White Sox were in the post-season in the same year for the first time since 1906? When I wrote that, I didn't know how much emphasis would be placed on the word "briefly."

The Cubs, despite having the best record in the National League, were swept out of the playoffs by the Dodgers, who had the worst record of any team in the playoffs this year. That doesn't make them bad, obviously--in fact, for the last month of the season, they were the hottest team in either league, and the Cubs had the misfortune of encountering them when they were still tearing the cover off the ball. The Cubs also suffered from a lack of support from players who'd been money all year, like Ryan Dempster, who'd won 17 games and had been downright dominant at Wrigley Field; or Alfonso Soriano, who vanished into vapor for the second post-season in a row; and Aramis Ramirez, who'd driven in key runs all year, only leave his bat at home come October.

(In the past, I've accused Ramirez of not being a clutch hitter, of being a guy who collected most of his hits and RBI when it didn't matter. This year, I was prepared to eat my words with a touch of salt and a dash of Trappey's Louisiana Hot Sauce--until Ramirez demonstrated that he'd saved up his choking for the worst occasion possible.)

The White Sox, on the other hand, had to scratch and claw to get into the playoffs, overcoming injuries, drama and the general bitchiness of their manager, Ozzie Guillen, to win the last game of the season, forcing them to play and win a makeup game (which is nothing like makeup sex, though oddly satisfying in its own way) with the Tigers, forcing them to play and win a tiebreaker game with the Twins.

After all that, winning in the playoffs would have been gravy. Unfortunately, they ran into the surpise team of the year, the Tampa Bay Rays, who'd never even finished over .500 in their 11-year existence, much less made the playoffs. The Sox didn't go nearly as meekly as the Cubs, winning one game before finally succumbing in the 4th game of the series.

But now a playoff season that had visions of Red Line rivalries dancing in the besotted heads of fans on both the North and South Sides has ended not with a bang, nor even a whimper, but with sullen silence.

Oh well. The Bears are playing now and leading their weak division, and the Blackhawks start their season this coming Saturday night--the game will even be on WGN, marking their first regular-season appearance on local broadcast TV in decades.

It's not much consolation as the baseball playoffs continue without our fine city's participation, but as the chill of fall settles in and the days grow shorter and darker, we'll take whatever consolation we can get.

"You think I'm stupid or something?"

That was Cubs manager Lou Piniella's reply to a reporter's question yesterday at the press conference following a particularly tough 4-3 loss to their divisional and geographical rivals, the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Cubs had gone into the 9th inning leading the Brewers 3-1. Starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano had been dominant (and also contributed to his own cause by hitting a home run), as had the pitcher who relieved him, Carlos Marmol. When it came time to use a pitcher whose first name wasn't Carlos, though--in this case, closer Kerry Wood--the game fell apart.

Wood hit the first batter he faced, never a good way to start an inning. The next batter drove the ball to left field, where Alfonso Soriano, fresh from a stint on the disabled list with a calf injury, couldn't catch up with what turned out to be a double, putting runners on second and third. A ground ball drove in the runner on third base, and the next two batters got on base (via a single and a walk), followed by a double over the head of right fielder Kosuke Fukodome, which drove in two more runs. Game? Over.

In a post-game interview, Soriano said he'd gotten "a good jump" the the ball hit his way, but the replay told a different story: He looked as tentative and awkward in the field as he had looked impatient and unpolished at the plate, looking at a total of seven pitches in his four at-bats and grounding out all four times.

Piniella has stubbornly insisted on sticking with Wood as his closer, even though he's blown three out of his seven save opportunities, and with Soriano as his leadoff hitter, even though he displays little patience when swinging at pitches and has seen his speed decreased by a series of leg injuries. Many fans and sports commentators believe that Marmol would be a more effective closer, and that a number of other hitters in the Cubs lineup (like Fukodome or Reed Johnson) would be a more effective leadoff hitter than Soriano.

It was a question about why Piniella hadn't taken Soriano out of the game for a defensive replacement that prompted Piniella's heated response: "You think I'm stupid or something?"

Doing the same thing over and over again--like sticking with Soriano and Wood in roles that ill suit them--and expecting a different result isn't the popular definition of stupidity, lou.

It's the popular definition of insanity.

Historical Perspective

This morning, the chirpy sportscaster on my radio announced with pride that the Cubs' 14-6 start was "their best since 1975."

Sounds great...except the chirpy sportscaster neglected to mention that in 1975, the Cubs finished 75-87, tied for last in what was then the Eastern Division of the National League with the the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals).

Hi. I'm Johnny Buzzkill. Nice to meet you.