By Andrea Germanos/Common Dreams

News on Monday that the racist Chief Wahoo logo will finally no longer appear on the Cleveland Indians’ uniforms starting next year prompted calls for other sports teams to follow suit, and for the Midwest team to go further if there’s to be a real shift towards justice.
“Over the past year,” Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement, “we encouraged dialogue with the Indians organization about the club’s use of the Chief Wahoo logo. During our constructive conversations, [Cleveland Indians owner] Paul Dolan made clear that there are fans who have a longstanding attachment to the logo and its place in the history of the team. Nonetheless, the club ultimately agreed with my position that the logo is no longer appropriate for on-field use in Major League Baseball, and I appreciate Mr. Dolan’s acknowledgement that removing it from the on-field uniform by the start of the 2019 season is the right course.”
The statement implies that previous decades of use of the caricature were “appropriate for on-field use.”

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Posted on January 30, 2018

By Jim Coffman

I was going to write about the Bulls again this week but now that Kris Dunn’s concussion has kicked the tank back into gear, I’ll take a pass on extended analysis of recent game action and potential roster adjustments. Feel better soon, Kris!
The ultimate football championship happens Sunday, of course, but any assessment of that just reminds me of how much the Bears suck, and we definitely don’t need to explore that again until much closer to the draft.
And the Hawks – lots of positive stories in the past few days about how the team is bouncing back. They won one game! Against the lousy Red Wings! The only thing of note that happened this month with the Blackhawks is that they staked out an extended stay in last place (in the division) with one of the worst homestands in team history. Booooooo.
So we are left with the Cubs and the White Sox.

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Posted on January 29, 2018

By Thomas Chambers

Gun Runner ran a great race in winning the second Pegasus World Championship Invitational on Saturday at Gulfstream Park.
Bad post? Ain’t no thang, as Gun Runner proved he was the best horse in the race and one of the nicest in the world.
As NBC analyst Randy Moss exclaimed, “Gun Runner always gets the great trips because he always makes his own luck.”
I’m not going full-metal superlative on Gun Runner. Only West Coast did any running behind him, and Collected ran half a race for the nine furlongs, continuing a concerning downward trend for him. Some of these horses, the stars at least, hadn’t run since the November 4 Breeders’ Cup.

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Posted on January 28, 2018

By Thomas Chambers

The old saw is that after a spill, the only thing to do is get right back on the horse.
Although when the horse is going 43.4 miles per hour, you have to try a lot harder.
2017 was that kind of year in Thoroughbred horse racing. Dull, chalky, expectations not met. Arrogate rocketed to wins in the Pegasus and World Cup, but fell prey, hard, to The Dubai Curse and was never the same back home, appearing to tell everyone by the end of the year he didn’t want to run anymore. He’s retired to stud now.
The good news is that in my last race of the year, I had Breeders’ Cup cookie-jar dollars wagered on the Classic and hit Win/Place/Show and the Exacta ($6.80/$4.40/$3.20/$34.00) every which way but loose to boost the bankroll quite nicely for the new year.
But last season was so crummy I’ve been in cryotherapy. And let me tell you, at almost half a G, it’s a ripoff. For a lot less money and the same amount of pain, a beer slushie and sharing a pint of Aristocrat brandy, straight, no apricot, with my little brother, we went nearly all four furlongs of a Bears-Packers game in a sub-freezing blizzard decades ago at Lambeau, outlasting all the rest of the family scattered around the bowl, which is all it was back then. Jim Jr. wasn’t close to legal, but dammit, it was cold. You do what you have to do, including a newspaper on the aluminum bleachers so you don’t die from the ass up. After his third hit, he didn’t wince anymore like the drifter in Miss Kitty’s saloon on Gunsmoke. Hmm.

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Posted on January 27, 2018

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Lower prices, more revenue, better food, shorter lines. Plus: The Bears’ Front Office Is Injured; I Am Obsessed With Who Will Be The Cubs’ Backup Catcher; The Blackhawks Have Been Secretly Rebuilding; The Bulls’ Tank Is Over; NFL’s Two Worst Fan Bases To Meet In Super Bowl; Schweinsteiger!; and There Is No White Sox News.

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Posted on January 26, 2018

By Rob Wilson and Dan Plumley/The Conversation

Football clubs in the English Premier League have found this month’s transfer window an expensive experience.
With Liverpool breaking the world record for a defender with the signing of Virgil van Dijk and the sale of Phillipe Coutinho to Barcelona, for a fee rising to £142m – bargains are in short supply. So is it worth spending the money?
Many clubs are finding it a challenge to weigh up their options ahead of the transfer window slamming shut at the end of the month. Should they back their manager and spend? Can they afford it? And, with so much riding on a Premier League place, should they stick with the players they’ve got or twist and buy more?
Here we make sense of the data from recent seasons to work out what can be done and what could work.

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Posted on January 24, 2018

By Jim Coffman

Teaching young, potential stars to play winning basketball is slightly more important than a draft pick, even one in the top five. The Bulls continued to tank the tank last week and they sure as hell should keep it going for as long as possible. They are now 15-8 in the second 23 games of the season after going 3-20 in the first.
The reaction from the local sports commentariat to the Bulls spanking the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday was to point to the Hawks and say, “Now that’s how to tank!” as if the Hawks’ current, crushing season of losing on purpose is the obviously successful way to build a basketball contender.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is, no true NBA contender, let alone champion, has been built through even a one-year tank, let alone the sort of multi-year job that would probably be required to make it work.

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Posted on January 22, 2018

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Shifting narratives all over the landscape. Plus: The Duensing Principle, and Schweinsteiger!

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Posted on January 19, 2018

By AP

“Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney said in a courtroom statement that Michigan State University, the USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee all ignored ‘red flags’ in the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.”

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Posted on January 19, 2018

By Thomas J. Whalen/The Conversation

Almost everybody knows about Jackie Robinson and the historic role he played integrating Major League Baseball. But mention Willie O’Ree and you’ll likely receive a blank look.
That’s a shame because 60 years ago O’Ree did his own part bringing down a racial barrier in a different sport.
On Jan. 18, 1958, O’Ree – a 22-year-old forward from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada – became the first black person to play in a National Hockey League game.

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Posted on January 18, 2018