By Jim Coffman

I didn’t tune in in time Sunday to watch the initial drama unfold during Major League Baseball’s Continental Opening Night (as opposed to this season’s actual opening . . . morning . . . in Japan last week . . . with the Red Sox rallying to beat the A’s in a game that started before sunrise back here in the States). Forget Opening Days – baseball seasons now begin with Opening Chronicles.

Beachwood Baseball: The White Sox Report The Cub Factor Santo At Bat Zell Limericks

President Bush had been tapped to toss out the first pitch at brand spankin’ new Nationals Park in D.C. Sunday evening as the home team took on the Atlanta Braves. But it occurred to someone on his staff a couple days ago that Washington’s starting catcher, Paul LoDuca, was identified as a steroid cheat in the Mitchell Report. LoDuca then started the spring by reading one of those vague apologies in which he takes responsibility for nothing in particular but is nevertheless very, very sorry. So who would catch this momentous first pitch?

Read More

Posted on March 31, 2008

By Marty Gangler

As another season is about to begin, the consensus around here seems to be that the Cubs are good enough to win woeful NL Central Division, but mostly because the division is horrendous. So it’s like the Cubs are the fifth-grader on the playground with the third-graders. I guess that’s good. But what will happen when they graduate eighth grade at the end of the season and go into junior high? Will they still be able to hang? Or will they be stuffed into a locker come playoff time? Will the foreign exchange student be rated cool or lame? Will guidance counselor Lou keep them sober, unpregnant and in school? Or will superintendent Hendry cast a shadow so dark that this team just gives up to go smoke pot in the woods everyday? Unfortunately, until we get to the end of September we just aren’t going to know if they will grow up enough to play with the big boys.

Read More

Posted on March 31, 2008

By Ricky O’Donnell

If it’s Opening Day for the White Sox, that can only mean one thing: C.C. Sabathia and Cleveland Indians. For the fourth consecutive season, the Sox and Indians square off in their season openers; for the third consecutive season, Sabathia will be on the mound for the Tribe. His career record versus the Sox is 14-3.
Opening Days are just one game, but they are often revelatory. In 2005, the Sox snuck by Cleveland 1-0, with the immortal Shingo Takatsu – frisbee pitch and all – recording the final out. Few would have guessed that 1-0 would also be the score of the Sox’s final game that season, a win over Houston to secure the World Series.
In 2006, the White Sox pounded Cleveland 10-4. The rest of that season would characterized by their explosive offense, with four players hitting over 30 home runs – even though a 90-win season was only good enough to finish third in the mighty AL Central that year.
And then there was the 12-5 beat-down Cleveland handed the White Sox to open the season last year. The Sox went on to lose 90 games.
So watch the opener closely and we’ll get a good idea if Ozzie Guillen will have to make good on his promise (threat?) to run naked down Michigan Avenue if the Sox win the World Series.

Read More

Posted on March 31, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Sound familiar?
1. “Dusty Baker Hates Hits, Reds Fans.”
2. “Every time the man talks strategy, every time he starts in on his disdain for slow-footed sluggers who ‘clog the bases’ with walks, every time he goes to the bullpen early – heck, every time he fills out a lineup card – he becomes an easy target for stats-crunching critics everywhere.”
3. “I was on the Dodgers’ all-time team as an outfielder. I was on the all-time San Francisco Giants’ team as the manager. I started out great in Chicago and then ended up on the all-nothing team.”

Read More

Posted on March 27, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

The Cubs may win the NL Central again, but they aren’t a World Series team. And it’s a team more vulnerable than many of its fans thought it would be going into spring training. Even Lou Piniella knows something is wrong. And once again, Jim Hendry is to blame.
Hendry’s trademark is putting together rosters that simply don’t fit.
Take the lineup.
In the beginning of the season last year, Lou’s mad scientist ways almost lost the team until he plugged Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot into the lineup about the same time the team emerged with a fighting spirit missing for . . . ever.
Piniella’s mixing and matching turned out to be the only way to coax 85 wins out of the team.
This year, amazingly, the lineup problems persist.

Read More

Posted on March 25, 2008

By Jim Coffman

Western Kentucky senior Ty Rogers dropped in one of the great shots in NCAA tournament history Friday. But then he choked.
Rogers’ buzzer-beating, Reggie-Miller-esque (some of those treys Miller used to hit for the Pacers, I swear he was no more than a tiny step inside the scorer’s table when he let them fly) three-pointer gave his team a pulsating 101-99 victory over Drake in a Friday afternoon first-rounder. It was the best game of the tournament so far by far. In fact, it was the best first- or second-round game from the last half-dozen tournaments.
And the shot, well, the shot was so good in part because of the distance (26 feet), in part because of the timing (the final horn sounded while it was in the air) and in part because of the stakes. Western Kentucky had squandered a 16-point lead in the second half, regained a small advantage in the final two minutes but then watched as Klay Korver, brother of noted NBA sharpshooter Kyle Korver (now of the Utah Jazz), drained a game-tying trifecta near the end of regulation. The teams went back and forth in overtime but a couple of free throws gave Drake a one-point lead with just over four seconds left.

Read More

Posted on March 24, 2008

By Jim Coffman

The slipper didn’t fit the Illini. Any chance of it fitting disappeared long before Sunday’s decisive loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament final. A basketball program doesn’t quite qualify as Cinderella when it flounders about in complete disarray for more than a year.
The last straw was a quiet announcement made late last month. That was when Brian Carlwell, who starred as the man in the middle for strong Proviso East teams just a few years ago, announced he was leaving the U. of I. Conveniently enough less than two weeks later, Coach Bruce Weber used the newly available scholarship to pick up a commitment from a typical junior college quick fix. Dominique Keller is a 6-7, 235-pound forward who averaged 25 points and 9 rebounds for Lee Community College in Baytown, Texas this season. He promises to add desperately needed toughness to Illinois’ front line next year.
So here’s where Illinois stands now. Potential star shooting guard Jamar Smith, who in February of last year drove drunk through an ice storm despite a specific warning from his coach, trashed his vehicle and Carlwell and then left his teammate in the car to die alone not once but twice before someone else finally called 911 and saved him, will play for the Illini next season. Carlwell will not.

Read More

Posted on March 17, 2008

A tribute in limericks.
*
There once was a man named Sam Zell
Who drove mobile homeowners to hell
Named the Grave Dancer
Wealth grew like a cancer
He made the Cubs play in the Cell
*
There’s a park named Wrigley Field
Whose owners want more profit to yield
First there were lights
Now naming rights
That Sam Zell has the power to steal

Read More

Posted on March 12, 2008

By Jim Coffman

Why is it that so many people who are paid to write about and talk about sports in this town can’t figure out that Jerry Angelo knows what he’s doing?
Angelo took over a franchise that was lost in the wilderness a half-dozen years ago. The Bears had followed the disastrous Dave Wannstedt regime with the Dick Jauron fiasco (Jauron, who was hired before Angelo arrived, lucked into a divisional championship and a first-round playoff bye early in Angelo’s tenure but then his team choked away a home playoff game against the Eagles and went downhill from there). At the end of Jauron’s tenure – marked most ridiculously by the employment of the most out-of-his-element offensive coordinator (John Shoop) in the NFL in the last quarter century – Angelo hired Lovie Smith. Meanwhile, he was bringing in all sorts of talent – particularly impressing with his ability to find great players in the middle of the draft and with his willingness to go get the players he most wanted early in free agency. The Bears returned to the playoffs in 2004-05 and went to the Super Bowl in 2006. They did so without a big-time quarterback.

Read More

Posted on March 10, 2008

By The Beachwood Birding Affairs Desk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 4, 2008
Good Afternoon,
Wrigley Field in Chicago has been battling a pest bird problem in its upper bleachers for years. After trying various products, and fielding many complaints from fans, netting was finally installed to humanely block birds from sitting in the rafters. Now the maintenance department says the bird problem is no more.
From facility managers, to homeowners, many people are unsure of what to do about pest birds. This is because the market is flooded with various products with limited success. In February of 2008 we interviewed the maintenance department at Wrigley Field about the netting, and feel the story offers insight that many could use.

Read More

Posted on March 5, 2008