By Thomas Chambers

“Hey Lefty, how’s the ol’ ham hock today?”
“Doin’ good Skip. Ready to go.”
After two batters, Lefty starts windmilling his shoulder and shaking his arm, and the Skipper begins to think maybe Lefty was lying to him. But, hey, he’s a competitor!
But Bolt d’Oro, or any other horse for that matter, can’t talk, so trainer Mick Ruis did his yakkin’ for him. Bolt’ will never be called on to testify.
Repeating the mantra he threw out between the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in November and Saturday’s San Felipe Stakes (Grade II, 8.5 furlongs, dirt, $400,000), Ruis said Bolt’ (1-1) wasn’t 100 percent for the prep for the Santa Anita Derby.
“Eighty percent, I’d say. Yeah, I’ll say he was about 80 percent,” Ruis said after the winner’s circle photo snap.
If you believe that, and no good horseplayers will, that means he’s a monster. Add the 20 percent and he’ll be invincible, right?
The son of Medaglia d’Oro and the A.P. Indy mare Globe Trot got the 50 Kentucky Derby qualifying points that goes to the winner, but he didn’t win the race. Another top Derby contender, Bob Baffert’s McKinzie (3-2), won but was disqualified to second after a magnificent battle from the turn to the wire. Then his rider, Hall of Famer Mike Smith, took another bashing Monday.

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Posted on March 12, 2018

By Jim Coffman

When I was in my 20s, my buddies and I would head to the old Hi-Tops almost kitty-corner to the southeast entrance at Wrigley (Addison and Sheffield) for the first round of the NCAA tournament. This was in the early ’90s.
The games would begin around noon and we would hang in for about five hours of basketball before we would come stumbling out into the early evening setting sun with a decent idea of whether we had a shot at winning our pool that year.

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Posted on March 12, 2018

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Repping Chicago. Plus: Embarrables; Qbit; Schweinsteiger!; Kyle Fuller Is Transitionally It; The White Sox’ $26 Million Man; The Happster; and a Cubs Web Special.

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Posted on March 9, 2018

Another Beachwood Special Report

“After hiring a new coach to turn around the team’s fortunes, the Chicago Bears are making a move of a different kind, announcing plans to move offices from Soldier Field to Wacker Drive,” the Tribune reports.
“The NFL franchise has leased almost 11,000 square feet at 123 N. Wacker Drive, where it plans to move about 30 workers currently based at Soldier Field, the team said. The office is expected to open this summer.
“The deal in the 30-story tower, located in one of the most prestigious pockets of Chicago’s office market, will not affect the football franchise’s Halas Hall headquarters in suburban Lake Forest, where the team has about 185 employees.”
The Beachwood’s I Team has the deets:

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Posted on March 7, 2018

By Larry M. Silverberg/The Conversation

Some 20 years ago, my colleague Dr. Chau Tran and I developed a way to simulate the trajectories of millions of basketballs on the computer.
We went to the coaches and assistant coaches at North Carolina State University, where we are based, and told them we had this uncommon ability to study basketball shots very carefully.
Their first question was simple: “What’s the best free throw?”
Should the shooter aim towards the front of the hoop or the back? Does it depend on whether the shooter is short or tall?

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Posted on March 6, 2018

By Jim Coffman

Loyola did it!
And so did Lipscomb, Radford and Murray State. On Sunday they all advanced to the Dance, otherwise of course known as the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball tournament that begins in a week-and-a-half. The underdogs are set.

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Posted on March 5, 2018

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Pace of play pablum. Plus: Flaming Fastballs & Exploding Bats; Spring Cubs; The Ex-Cub Factor; The White Sox Are Also Participating In Spring Training; The Bulls Are The New White Sox Who Are The New Cubs; Blackhawks Even Sadder This Week Than Last Week; The Bears’ Deja Rebuild; and Arch Madness!

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Posted on March 2, 2018

By Thomas Chambers

I don’t know that the four of us could have been called whizzes in arithmetic – we were there when they came up with New Math, although the penguins appropriated the name but just kept teaching numbers – but we’ve gotten by nicely.
Before any formal gazintas or cipherin’, my two brothers had batting averages, on-base percentages and earned run averages down cold. My sister spent a long time in the consumer banking sector, where just one of her many duties was to tell people that if debit overtakes credit, kind of like a pace meltdown, they will be overdrawn. She then had to tell them by how much and which particular ATM hit took them out of the money. It was all right there in the numbers.
I squeaked through high school algebra, but then had to take it twice in college to fulfill the requirement. I was pretty good at geometry, although it was well before I fully grasped that eight furlongs is a mile and once around at Arlington. And if you called it Obround Park or Discorectangle Race Course, you wouldn’t be wrong. Or that getting a mile at Belmont includes a long beginning tangent (the chute) with only one pure curve, if the horse could stay in its lane, like Secretariat did. It came in handy when I realized the old Nad al Sheba in Dubai was something of a scalene triangle with complex radii on the turns, although Cigar aced it without a 60-cent protractor, just a saddle on his back and Jerry Bailey checking his work.
Don’t know if any of it helped, but it didn’t hurt, as now I know how to read the Racing Form. There’s not really a lot of math involved, except maybe adding up win or loss streaks and the money, of course. And M(aiden) = 0(wins).
It’s more about tendencies, such as the consistency of workout times, pace trends, position at the calls, willingness to close or not. The data is really just there, stated. Jockey and trainer percentages, together and separately. Leparoux up, it’s a Show horse. Velazquez up, he’s a Win horse. But that’s not math, just a hunch.
When it comes to the Triple Crown, more acutely this year than ever, I’m not sure any of this vast acquired knowledge will be worth a bent horseshoe. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a lot better than a B.A. in Public Hygiene from the Dean Smith Center for Infinitely Broad Studies, but I’m just itching to put to good use everything I learned from professors Bennie, Red, Anita, Tall Gregg, Paki and The Teach. It’s just getting tougher and tougher to do.

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Posted on March 1, 2018