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By The Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SBGI) reported Friday that Hulu has decided to drop Sinclair’s 21 regional sports network brands (RSN), YES Network and Marquee, depriving its subscribers of the excitement of watching their favorite local sports teams.
While Sinclair attempted to come to an amicable and fair agreement, Hulu was not willing to provide the RSNs reasonable compensation for their valuable local sports content.
Posted on October 23, 2020
By Tony Naar and Murray Phillips/The Conversation
In sport, timing can be everything. The 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games, which started 20 years ago this week, came at a time when the Paralympic movement was growing and becoming more visible.
And the Sydney Games left a legacy that has forever changed the way the games are run and how Paralympic athletes train and prepare.
Posted on October 22, 2020
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
If his title was offensive coordinator, that’s exactly what everyone would be saying right now. Plus: Stop Lying, Rick Hahn; A Just World Series; Sick Saad World; and Chicago Fire Locking It Down!
Posted on October 19, 2020
By Roger Wallenstein
The news that the White Sox are considering Tony La Russa for their vacant manager’s position resulted in near panic last week from some Sox fans and writers. You’d have thought that the ballclub was doing something as dangerous as holding a public rally at The Grate so kids could run the bases sans masks or social distancing.
The responses came quickly. “He’s too old. He hasn’t managed since 2011. He wouldn’t be able to relate to the players. He couldn’t work well with the front office. I repeat, he’s too old.”
These are challenging times for all of us, but especially for folks who were born in the 1940s, of which La Russa and this writer are guilty. People who know about deadly viruses have warned us for months that we are most susceptible to COVID-19. Much about our lives has changed. Like our vocabulary. Words such as “morbidity” have entered into daily conversation right alongside launch angle and exit velocity.
Suggestions are not uncommon that our perceived frail condition dictates that we are expendable. A few particularly uncaring, heartless and ignorant individuals have reasoned that older folks, being closer to our demise than the general population, should not prohibit others from pursuing their regular routines.
If you’re thinking that I’m sensitive to the ageism slur, then we’re on the same page. Substitute “Black” or “Brown” or “gay” rather than “old” into the equation and you’d rightfully be confronted with anger and outrage along with a tidy lawsuit.
Posted on October 19, 2020
By Chris Lamb/The Conversation
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America recently announced that it would remove former Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s name from the plaques awarded to the American and National League MVPs.
The decision came after a number of former MVPs, including Black award winners Barry Larkin and Terry Pendleton, voiced their displeasure with their plaques being named for Landis, who kept the game segregated during the 24 years he served as commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944. The Brooklyn Dodgers ended the color line when they signed Jackie Robinson to a contract in October 1945, less than a year after Landis’s death.
Posted on October 16, 2020
By Thomas Chambers
It’s amazing how different the television-watching experience is for various sports.
I will theorize that Bears coach Matt Nagy should actually take into account the nature of television coverage in the course of a game. What a pioneer he would be! Yeah, right.
In major team sports, NHL hockey is the best. I believe the game is stopped only about twice per period and the intermissions are great. You can’t stop the game when the Patrick Kane line has one leg over the boards for a shift change.
I’ve always enjoyed watching professional bowling. These guys miss pins too, and they show whole games at a time. The current juggernaut is the Australian Jason Belmonte, a right-hander who doesn’t use the finger holes. The five-time bowler of the year is clutch. Different from the days of Chris Schenkel and Nelson Burton Jr., Earl Anthony and Johnny Petraglia when the gallery behind them was as quiet as a funeral, now they have a few dozen fans on the side of the left lane who constantly scream and never shut up. If Tiger Woods were a bowler, he’d stick his head in the ball return and wait for the next one up the chute to put him out of his misery. If the bowlers don’t mind those fans, neither do I, but the pandemic has thankfully removed them.
Posted on October 15, 2020
Chicago #WhiteSox plan to reach out to Tony La Russa to determine his interest in becoming their next manager https://t.co/yL9D8Uv2Vo
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) October 12, 2020
1. Me.
2. Tamale Guy.
3. The real Chairman of the Board.
4. Dead Bob Rohrman.
5. That dude and his dad.
Posted on October 14, 2020
By Jim Coffman
When Jerry Reinsdorf fired Doug Collins as the Bulls’ head coach July 1989, the first thing he didn’t do was make the ludicrous assertion that the decision was mutual. It obviously wasn’t, just like it was obvious that Rickey Renteria didn’t decide not to manage the potential World Series co-favorite White Sox in 2021.
Posted on October 14, 2020
By Roger Wallenstein
Let’s face it: “Agree” had nothing to do with it.
Like his boys, Rickey Renteria does not quit. He was fired. By Rick Hahn. Don’t let the screen door hit you in your analytics-adverse ass on the way out.
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) October 12, 2020
Posted on October 13, 2020
By David Rutter
It’s a joke. Don’t you get it? Humor. Droll satire by a prankster?
Let me make this as clear as I can. St. Louis pitcher and new Fox TV baseball analyst Adam Wainwright complained on air last Tuesday that he had spent 2020 trying to fight shortstop and teammate Paul DeJong’s ignorance.
But it was a joke. Must have been.
Wainwright is a known provocateur and humorist with a straight face. We laugh. Ha!
According to Wainwright, DeJong and “Half the Cardinals are flat-Earthers” and also “There was no moonlanding” conspiracists. Flat-Earthers think the planet is a flat disc with massive walls of invisible ice, or cream cheese, around the edges. And the ringleader, he strongly implied, was DeJong whose playing performance metrics are not dissimilar to Cubs budding icon-in-training Javier Báez.
Multiple St. Louis sports bloggers were dubious of any DeJong involvement in what they generously though inaccurately called “pseudoscience.”
DeJong’s agent and business partner suggested it did not seem likely because DeJong is an Illinois State University graduate in biochemistry with a 3.74 GPA, and planned to attend medical school if baseball didn’t work out.
Posted on October 12, 2020
