By George Ofman

The lynch mob was ready.
Upon hosting my first 10th Inning post-game show on WGN Radio on Sunday, I had to consider where the diehards would be coming from.
The Cubs had lost to the Reds 3-1 and did so in galling fashion. Would they rip the bullpen which, once again, coughed up another game a starter had masterfully crafted?
Some callers did.
Would they take their shots at the middle of the lineup that gave a first-timer a reprieve, and more than once?
Some callers did.
But most of the agitated if not downright furious fans saved their wrath for the $136 million dollar man.
Fonzi got his, and then some.
And he deserved every angry word.

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Posted on April 12, 2010

By Marty Gangler

It feels like the 2009 season never ended.
The Cubs have picked up right where they left off.
Sure, there are some lousy new faces where the old lousy faces were before, but it sure feels like the same team.
It’s kind of like when you are a kid and you finish 4th grade for the summer and you feel glad that it’s over because well, fourth grade just sucked for you. And you tell yourself all summer that fifth grade is going to be different. In fifth grade I’m going to run faster than Bobby Sanders and Becky Richards is going to notice me and totally want to sit by me at lunch. But then you are three days into 5th grade and Bobby Sanders totally smoked you in gym class and Becky Richards shot you a “what the F are you doing” look when you just paused for a second near her table. And fifth grade is exactly like you remembered fourth grade being. So then you fake a stomachache, go to the school nurse’s office and talk to her about how you are feeling. She tells you that it’s only three days into the new year and things will get better – except you don’t believe her because she told you the same thing at the beginning of last year and you feel exactly the same way as you always felt.
So yeah, it’s technically been a week but it feels like forever.

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Posted on April 12, 2010

By Andrew Reilly

Losing four of your first six games isn’t really that big a deal, so long as a team isn’t doing it:
A) in a park in which they should dominate.
B) against teams they really, really need to beat.
C) in a fashion that suggests the team’s vulnerabilities are even greater than previously imagined, including an alarming number of strikeouts by the batters, an offense so hilariously one-sided it’s launched seven home runs yet plated only 21 runners, not to mention the reliance on players performing amazing feats of glovework that, in all likelihood, will never be repeated ever, as long as any of them wear a White Sox uniform, and this nagging idea that yes, this season is going to be one long series of gems tossed by the starting staff ultimately squandered by a shaky bullpen and a lumber company that simply cannot deliver.

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Posted on April 12, 2010

Fifth in an occasional series.

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Posted on April 7, 2010

By Jim Coffman

What an amazing night of basketball on Saturday . . . after Butler edged Michigan State to continue its Cinderella story. Then again, at least sitting through the second half of the first national semifinal and the long stretches of offensive ineptitude therein (lowlighted by the Bulldogs going almost 11 befuddled minutes without a field goal) enabled me to avoid watching the Bulls’ early fourth quarter follies. Those were especially special considering they included numerous big plays from former locals turned Bobcats such as Larry Hughes and Tyrus Thomas. By the time I really focused on the local professional franchise during the break between national semifinals, the team, which had led by double-digits for much of the second and third quarters, had reached its nadir. It was down six with about five minutes remaining.

Opening Day The White Sox Report rocks it.

Then, just like that, the Bulls flipped the switch back on. The rest of the game looked like a long highlight reel. When Derrick Rose wasn’t making like a machete on his way through the Charlotte defense time and again in the final minutes, he was passing to a red-hot Kirk Hinrich, who hit the three that gave the Bulls the lead for good and was 9-for-12 from the field on the night, or Joakim Noah. It was Noah’s dunk through Thomas’ outstretched hand that seemed to convince the Bulls once and for all that they could turn this game around one final time and record the victory, one that improved their record to 37-39.
It is still a long shot that the Bulls will pull ahead of Toronto, which beat the bad 76ers in overtime earlier Saturday to improve to 38-37, for the eighth and final playoff seed in the Eastern Conference. The home team has six games remaining, the Torontonians have seven. But the Bulls’ first victory over a playoff team in more than a month was simply a thriller.
Then it was Duke and Northbrook’s Jon Scheyer (a game-high 23 points) playing their best game of the season against West Virginia. My wife Julie noted during the Butler game that she wondered if the Bulldog and Spartan shooting was suffering from the lack of depth perception that comes with holding basketball games in football stadiums containing acres of relatively flat spectator space behind the glass backboards. That clearly was not a problem for the Blue Devils and it would seem to bode well for them in tonight’s final.

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Posted on April 5, 2010

And so, armed with only a staff for the ages and no bats to immortalize it, the White Sox enter 2010 a little wiser and a whole lot older.
Mark Kotsay batting fifth. Alex Rios coming off an absolutely Swisherian season. All the optimism in the world suggesting Andruw Jones will, at best, get on base 30 percent of the time. The oldest player in the American League backing up the most reckless. Mark Teahen replacing Gordon Beckham replacing Chris Getz. Their best players in decline, their eventual best not yet there, and the whole thing just reeking of another season spent envying the competition. But it’s only April, so let’s not yet dwell on things which might not happen.

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Posted on April 5, 2010

By George Ofman

Here’s a prediction you won’t see anywhere else: The Sox will go 135-27 while the Cubs will finish 144-18. This is what happens when you have a rum and OJ followed by a Nyquil chaser.
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Here’s the real prediction: The Cubs will finish 87-75, five games behind the Cardinals. The Sox will wind up 87-75, two games behind the Twins. Hope I’m wrong.

TrackNotes: Roeper Goes To The Dogs.

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Bear down! Alex Brown is gone. What a class act and a solid player. I’m just wondering whether Jerry Angelo could have gone under the radar the way Kenny Williams does and tried to trade Brown rather than release him.
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Is it me or is Julius Peppers getting more ink than Barack Obama?
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I’ve warned you before about these Blackhawks . . . they won’t make it to the conference finals. The goaltending issue is one thing and so is the loss of Brian Campbell, whom fans should miss. His loss is one of the reasons why the Hawks pace has slowed. This is a quick-moving, slick-passing puck control team. Campbell is a quick-moving, slick-passing puck control guy.

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Posted on April 2, 2010

By Thomas Chambers

Seems a lot like CB radio or swing dancing or expensive cigars, this faddish gambling fetish Richard Roeper’s latched on to as fuel for his latest non-fat, pop-culture lite tree killer of a book. Ever the now hipster, Roeper cites Super Size Me as an inspiration for his Bet the House, excerpted in Sunday’s Sun-Times.
Isn’t gambling in a slump and isn’t the Texas Hold ‘Em craze kind of fading? And Super Size Me was six years ago already. RR seems typically late to this one.
And you can kind of smell a rat in Roeper’s theme if you check out the premise of Horseplayers: Life at the Track by Ted McClelland, where McClelland uses a book advance to spend a year as a horseplayer. Horseplayers is a great book and I’ll wager it’s of much more substance than Roeper’s.
Yes, I did read the Roeper excerpt, and you wish Jason Robards was in the newsroom to tell the guy “Come back when you’ve got something.” I understand the automatic hype of the S-T’s featured columnist brands, but as Albert Brooks protested in Real Life, he’s shallow.
And Roeper completely blows his gambling cred in the first installment. Who picked this excerpt?

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Posted on April 2, 2010

By Dan O’Shea

Outfielders are the subject of my final pre-season fantasy baseball post, and while many fantasy drafts are already complete, my tardiness in taking a closer look at outfielders is by design. Though OFs take up three starting spots on your roster, I think your time is much better spent sizing up the best picks at other, much thinner positions.
Sure, multi-tool OFs like Ryan Braun, Matt Kemp and Justin Upton should be top picks in any draft, but after the first couple rounds, you shouldn’t despair if none of these names fell into your lap. Great multi-tool value (meaningful stats in some combination of these categories: HR, RBI, SB, AVG, runs-scored, doubles, triples) can be had in deeper rounds.
So, if you have a last-minute draft this weekend, or just want to be ready for some early waiver wire exchanges, here are a few ideas:

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Posted on March 31, 2010

Fourth in an occasional series.

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Posted on March 29, 2010