By Thomas Chambers

Show me another sport where champions are determined the way they are in horse racing: by splitting the players into ages, gender, specialties and playing surfaces, and then having a motley collection of three organizations, only one of which actually counts horsemen as members, vote to see who’s best.
Then gather those voters in a cheesy Florida or California hotel ballroom, where they can drink moderately expensive Champagne and, nearly all of them, with no athletic expenditure of their own, distribute trophies among themselves and take lots of credit. I say, well done, Squire!

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Posted on June 4, 2015

By Jim Coffman

Others will provide you with the position-by-position match-ups, the careful calibrations of which team has which advantages heading into Hawks versus Lightning and finally a prediction of what will happen.
Hold on a second, I can certainly do the prediction part. Here it is: Hawks in 6. But I then have to admit, that is my prediction because that is what I want to happen.
But beware of those delightful analysts who go on and on about what is going to happen, get it wrong and then without fail come back and do it again the next week.

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Posted on June 3, 2015

By Dan O’Shea

Cubs fans may feel they have the market cornered on rookie fantasy studs, what with Kris Bryant and Addison Russell in the same lineup, and Bryant already a top 40 fantasy value and Russell a near must-start at a shallow position.
However, 2015 is quickly becoming the Year of the Rookie. Fantasy team owners in recent years have become more aggressive scouting and picking up top prospects before they see much MLB playing time – often before they see any. But, this year in particular, those early birds are getting . . . lots of worms. (Sorry, trying not to break my metaphor.)

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Posted on June 2, 2015

By Marty Gangler

This week seemed like a test. And not one of those standardized tests that you can opt out of or are unfair for quite a few of the test takers. It was a test to see if this 2015 Cubs team is for real real. Sure, you can look at the standings and see that they are in the mix, but what do your eyes say when they play the division-leading Nationals and the World Series runners-up Royals? Can the Cubs truly hang? And the verdict has to be, yeah, I guess so, maybe. This truly is the Cubs’ Year of Maybe. There’s just no other way of answering questions like:

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Posted on June 2, 2015

By Roger Wallenstein

Now that Memorial Day has passed and summer theoretically is here, it’s time for a road trip.
Our White Sox jumped the gun a bit, departing a week ago on the four-city, 11-game jaunt that more than a few pessimists predicted would seal the team’s sorry fate before returning home this Friday. Seeing as the South Siders had dropped 12 of 19 road contests prior to this trip, those sentiments weren’t so far-fetched.

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Posted on June 1, 2015