Chicago -
By Roger Wallenstein
If your ball diamond thirst remained unquenched after both the White Sox and Cubs bowed out of post-season play, the Yankees-Rays’ division series last week served as a primer for today’s state of the game along with giving fans a fascinating baseball fix.
Similar to many stories, this one also begins with the money.
Posted on October 12, 2020
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
Enter Metallica.
Plus: Crow.
And: Go Blue!
Posted on October 9, 2020
By NHRA
NHRA officials announced Wednesday a 22-race 2021 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series schedule. Details on Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying days as well as special exhibitions and specialty series that compete at national events will be announced in coming weeks.
NHRA enters 2021 with a new sponsor on its premier professional series – Camping World, the nation’s largest retailer of recreational vehicles (RVs), RV accessories, and RV-related services – and an extended partnership with FOX Sports including amped-up coverage. All 22 events in this extreme sport series will be aired exclusively on FOX Sports with select events on the FOX broadcast network.
Posted on October 9, 2020
By David Rutter
Every city has its own well-tended gestalt garden of sports self-recrimination.
Chicago and its fans focus resentment on Bears quarterbacks for being, well, Bears quarterbacks, which is to say they are comparably not very good.
This is a comic strip we’ve seen somewhere before. Bears fans seem forever to be restaging the annual Swiped Ball Trick from Peanuts: Lucy, Charlie, “and that infernal football.”
We blame them, mock them, harp on their failures and take solace that, however inept we are at our own lives, we are not as fumbling as they are. I know this to be true because I have done it, too.
Posted on October 8, 2020
By Delece Smith-Barrow/The Hechinger Report
The fall semester for most college students won’t look like any semester in the past, and that’s not such a bad thing for Keenan Johnson. He attends one of North Carolina’s historically black colleges and universities, Johnson C. Smith University, which is offering classes remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson isn’t thrilled to be logging into his courses from home, but he is excited for one of the university’s newest student groups – the JCSU Esports Club.
“We’re basically making history at HBCUs,” said Johnson, a 20-year-old junior.
Posted on October 6, 2020
By Jim Coffman
What are we to make of this team, this Bears team that is? It is oftentimes better to sketch out an assessment a few days after a given game, after the worrisome tide of dozens of little outrages has receded just a bit and we can take a bit better look at the bigger picture.
First and foremost overall is still the fact that the great quarterback hope has crashed and burned. And that fact in and of itself should make it far more likely than not that the general manager will be fired at the end of the year. You can’t continue to employ a guy who has no effing clue who has a chance to be a great quarterback and who will be a bust.
Posted on October 6, 2020
By David Rutter
We will ring the altar’s chimes three times today in remembrance. The Bob Gibson Era is over.
In some philosophical ways, my era is over, too. This is awareness with no bitterness and only minor regret because this is the natural progression of life.
The Bob Gibson Era is not Gibson’s alone, of course. Sandy Koufax is 85. Juan Marichal is 83. Gaylord Perry is 82. Ferguson Jenkins is 78. Sam McDowell is 78. Jim Bunning died three years ago; Don Drysdale has been gone for 27 years.
They were the men and mighty they were who forced baseball to lower the pitching mound by five inches, just to give mortals a fighting chance to hit them.
Posted on October 5, 2020
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
Theo can build a team, but he can’t really hold a team. Plus: Rickey Rentamanager’s Lease Will Be Renewed; Central Sucking Time; Nick McCown; Red Stars & Fire.
Posted on October 3, 2020
By Roger Wallenstein
Take the mountains and mountains of data. Celebrate the sabermathematicians all you want. Let your infielders shift on every pitch if that’s your fancy. However, no matter how you manipulate all the bits, bytes and algorithms, there’s one rule in baseball that rises above all else: Throw strikes!
You needn’t look further than Thursday’s painful White Sox elimination game in Oakland under the cloudless California sky for the prime example. For the uninformed, there is no defense when your pitchers walk guys. There is zero possibility of retiring a hitter if four pitches wide of the strike zone are delivered. There are no walks in tee-ball, no doubt giving the 6-year-olds a false sense of security, but once pitchers begin throwing the ball toward the plate, the game becomes a different proposition.
Posted on October 2, 2020
By Steve Rhodes
Geez, if the Bears had named Nick Foles the starter at the beginning of the season, they might be undefeated!
Here’s what the tweeps are saying.
Is it possible that Joe Biden is the Nick Foles of presidential candidates?
— Andrew Falcone (@AndyBOP78) September 29, 2020
Posted on September 29, 2020
