Network Invests In Ultimate Frisbee

“A Chicago-based ultimate Frisbee league with ambitious growth goals has snagged a contract with ESPN to show its games on the network’s primary digital channel,” Danny Ecker reports for Crain’s.
“The three-year-old American Ultimate Disc League will showcase 14 ‘games of the week’ during its current season via online network ESPN3.com as well as select playoff games and its championship in July.

“It’s a big deal for us,” said AUDL Commissioner Steve Gordon, who also owns the Chicago Wildfire franchise. “I’m not even sure how to measure it.”

Here’s a report on the Wildfire made by The Red Line Project last June:

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Posted on April 17, 2014

By Dan O’Shea

I’m in three fantasy baseball leagues, each with some differences between their scoring schemes, yet the same player currently is ranked No. 1 in all three leagues: Alexei Ramirez.
The Cuban Missile has rocketed up the fantasy charts on the strength of a .420 BA, three HRs, 12 RBI, three SBs, a 1.142 OPS and 11 runs scored for the team that shockingly leads all of MLB in runs scored through the first 2.5 weeks of the season.

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Posted on April 16, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“Stanley J. Sliwa, age 85, of Dunkirk, NY passed away peacefully Sunday (April 13, 2014) surrounded by his loving family,” the Dunkirk Observer reports.
“He was born June 18, 1928 in Niles, Illinois, the son of the late Stanislaus and Stephania Sliwa. Growing up in the Chicago area, he was an avid Chicago Cubs fan who enjoyed watching his team. Mr. Sliwa was a retired bricklayer.”
Theo Epstein’s last words to Sliwa were “Be patient.”

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Posted on April 15, 2014

By Roger Wallenstein

Some people just like to go first.
There’s usually the zany kid who has to be the first one to run into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan on a day like Saturday, the first balmy day of spring. Or how about the joker who inhales a jalapeño martini while friends stand back and wait for the reaction. Then there’s the skydivers and bungee-jumpers who thrive on being the first out of the plane or off the bridge.
Apparently Adam Eaton relishes being first, and luckily for the White Sox, he’s a ballplayer.

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Posted on April 14, 2014

Backs Northwestern Football Players’ Bid To Unionize In Funniest, Smartest Way Possible

Take that, Davids Haugh and Kaplan, and the rest of Chicago’s dumb-jock commentariot.
Suck it, Pat Fitzgerald.
Feed the damn kids.

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Posted on April 12, 2014

Way Better Than Theirs

“And now, from the man who blew up the Bartman Ball, roped the FBI into the investigation of a missing Stanley Cup puck and X-rayed baseballs to see if a decades-old World Series was rigged: Grant DePorter, CEO of Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group, brings you the Chicago Sports Museum,” the Sun-Times reports.
Yada yada yada.
Planning for The Beachwood Sports Museum of Chicago is now underway. Exhibits and items to include:
* The Wrigley Field rooftop contract under glass.
* Our own private label wine sealed with cork from Sammy Sosa’s bats.
* Dunk Ditka: The dunk tank to end all dunk tanks.

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Posted on April 10, 2014

By Dan O’Shea

ESPN’s Matthew Berry has been saying it for years: Never pay for saves.
This season has quickly offered confirmation of that maxim.
Several closers already have been injured this year (Aroldis Chapman, Bobby Parnell, David Robertson) and several others are off to very poor starts that could jeopardize their jobs.
If you’re stuck with a couple of closers who are lame or ineffective or both, you can always choose to forfeit that category altogether in your weekly head-to-head match-ups by deploying hurlers with SP/RP eligibility in the RP slot, or even RPs who have found their way into starting rotations as fifth starters.

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Posted on April 9, 2014

By Jim Coffman

What can they see from up there? And if fans are willing to buy those seats, what won’t they buy?
Those were my primary questions as UConn held off Kentucky for the national championship 60-54 Monday night.
Sure, I also wondered whether the gritty, gutty young Wildcats could find a way to rally yet again. Or whether the Huskies and their ultra-talented and experienced guards, including pride-of-Aurora Ryan Boatright (Co-Mr. Basketball of Illinois 2011), would prove the old maxim right yet again.
That would be the one that states that, eventually, the best guards prevail. Boatright, a junior, and senior Shabazz Napier (a game-high 27 points) certainly qualified as that, despite Aaron Harrison’s amazingly clutch long-range shooting for Kentucky late in the rounds leading up to the championship.
But first I wanted to know why on God’s green earth do people buy tickets for the third deck at the top of a gargantuan arena (capacity 100,000-plus) somewhere in “North Texas?”

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Posted on April 8, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

Contrary to what many sports pundits continue to insist, Dale Sveum was never hired to simply be a caretaker manager who would be replaced by a “real” manager once the Cubs were ready to win. That makes no sense on several levels – the first being that Sveum’s bosses were counting on him to develop the team’s prospects while instilling a new culture into a locker room whose managers have notoriously allowed the asylum to be run by the inmates.
If Sveum fulfilled that mission, tossing him aside just as the team was on the brink would have been madness.
No, hiring Sveum was part and parcel of The Plan. That’s why the team made such a public spectacle of the hiring process. (The confusing failure of Sveum only goes to show how fragile The Plan really is.)
The hiring of Ricky Renteria, on the other hand, has caretaker written all over it. His chief attribute – as touted by his own bosses – is his relentless optimism (along with an ability to speak Spanish).
His lack of managerial acumen is way down the list. And in his first week at the helm, he didn’t disappoint. This guy is going to be a disaster – in a very Cubs-like way.

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Posted on April 8, 2014

By Roger Wallenstein

There is one baseball record that never, ever will be broken.
It’s conceivable that some iron man can break Cal Ripken’s consecutive-game mark of 2,632 or an ageless singles hitter can amass more than Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits. The Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton hit 117 home runs in his first four seasons, 33 more than all-time leader Barry Bonds had at the same stage of his career. Stanton is just 24. Keep an eye on him.
Mike Trout is the best young hitter in baseball. Could he break Joe DiMaggio’s mark of hitting safely in 56 straight games? Not likely, but if anyone can do it, Trout can.
No, the magic number is 161, not a recognizable milestone in baseball. However, with the advent of replay review where a manager can challenge umpires’ decisions, Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox’s all-time record of getting tossed out of 161 games is forever secure.

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Posted on April 6, 2014