Chicago -
By Jim Coffman
I can’t get over the last five possessions.
What the hell was going on with the Bears’ offense during that time? How could they have put it together so well for two-and-a-quarter drives (Nick Kwiatkowski’s pick gave them a very short field, after all) in the middle of the game and then completely fail to move the ball five freaking times to give the Lions chance after chance to rally down the stretch?
Posted on November 11, 2019
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
Earmuffs, tunnel vision, TVs and The Temptations. Plus: Yolmer Sanchez Changes First Line Of His Obituary; Yu Darvish Is Really Funny When He’s Not Sucking; Blackhawks Also Ball Of Confusion; Bulls Still In It!; and How Cubs Ticket Prices Are Like Crime Rates.
Posted on November 8, 2019
By Mary Cain/New York Times
“Mary Cain’s male coaches were convinced she had to get ‘thinner, and thinner, and thinner.’ Then her body started breaking down,” the New York Times reports.
“At 17, Mary Cain was already a record-breaking phenom: the fastest girl in a generation, and the youngest American runner to turn professional. In 2013, she was signed by the best track team in the world, Nike’s Oregon Project, run by its star coach Alberto Salazar.
“Then everything collapsed.”
Posted on November 8, 2019
By David Rutter
I constantly write myself notes. These notes are just me mumbling to myself. I am measuring what I think as opposed to what everyone else seems to know.
They tend to be radically different.
As opposed to metrics, I always watch body language and hardly ever pay much attention to what somebody says. The body seldom lies.
So I constantly rethink curiosities, filter them through my sensibilities and one of these days I might figure out how to demonstrate that:
1. Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon were both so competent and self-controlled that they overcame their intense, visceral dislike for each other. We’ll have to wait for the inevitable end-of-career memoirs to prove it, but their body language screamed discomfort and tightly controlled dislike.
Posted on November 7, 2019
By Konstantinos Pelechrinis/The Conversation
Never before has the away team won every single game in the World Series, but that’s exactly what happened this year.
When the Washington Nationals won Game 7 in Houston to clinch the series against the Houston Astros, it marked the seventh straight road team win, which begs the question: What ever happened to home field advantage?
Posted on November 6, 2019
By Jim Coffman
Maybe just maybe the majority of local sports commentators is figuring out that Bears General Manager Ryan Pace doesn’t know what he is doing.
Well, he has mastered one thing: He has been remarkably good at convincing the owners of the Bears – Grandma Ginny, son Brian McCaskey and their massive family – that he still deserves to be employed (and he is under contract for two more years after this one so don’t expect a change even after this current debacle of a season). But other than that . . .
Posted on November 4, 2019
By Thomas Chambers
They ran the 35th Breeders’ Cup World Championships on Friday and Saturday, at Santa Anita.
Whether or not it was, it felt lackluster throughout, with the overhanging specter of horse death, projected by most of the muted on-air racing personalities in direct contrast to the perfect blue skies and moving magnificence of the San Gabriel mountains as your frame. It’s a legitimate concern, as we shall see.
Posted on November 3, 2019
By Thomas Chambers
One of the most damaging, saddest, disgusting and ubiquitous attitudes of our well-on-its-way 21st century is stated, as sure as if it spanned the satin sash on Miss America’s chest, is: It Is What It Is.
The slapstick humor amuses me when a Queegish, entitled punk coach is so clearly placekicking paranoid that he never even talks to his thick-legged gnome. And the ball-swatting mousey kicker only tells anyone he’d prefer to start not here, but over there, in the newspaper because, hey, the beat guy was the first one who asked. In the end, it is what it is, nobody’s to blame. No consequence, except that a whole squad and the gullible followers are hanging by their hands on the 100th rim as the swirling blue water unstoppably flushes.
Posted on November 1, 2019
By Roger Wallenstein
When I was a kid, the World Series was played in daytime, usually beginning on a Wednesday after the regular season ended the preceding Sunday.
I faked a sore throat every now and then until my parents got wise and sent me off to school regardless of my health. A school strike back then would have delighted me beyond happiness.
However, I lived close enough to our neighborhood school so that I, along with most of my classmates, went home for lunch. Since the majority of games, formerly known as the Fall Classic, involved the Yankees, Giants, or Dodgers in New York, the contests began at noon central time and were briskly played compared to today’s games. I could catch the first three or four innings without risking tardiness for afternoon classes.
Posted on November 1, 2019
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
The spot-on Bears. Plus: Zooless Cubs Clubhouse Is Broken; They’re Bad, They’re Nationalwide; Who’s Next, Joe, Chris Bosio?; Castellanos vs. Merrifield; Guarded Bulls Optimism Now Unguarded Pessimism; Seabrook’s Ghost; Rehire Lovie Smith Again!; Too Much Courage For Red Stars; and CPS Sports Struck.
Posted on November 1, 2019
