By Thomas Chambers

It was the second time I ever went to a race track, the second time I went to Arlington Park.
The pastoral appeal was firmly ingrained by then. The hazy toothpicks of Chicago’s tallest towers sticking up on the horizon, far enough away for race day in the country, suggesting the best of two worlds. The peace of the ovals and fences, including the magnificent turf course, belied the hard, hard work toiled upon them.
In the second race, I was on the rail, a bit up, no closer to the wire than the sixteenth pole. They had entered and straightened into the stretch, and then, right in front of me . . . violence.

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Posted on March 13, 2019

By Roger Wallenstein

It doesn’t take a sledgehammer to change a light bulb, but that is the approach of Major League Baseball when it comes to responding to what it perceives as the problems with today’s game.
Commissioner Rob Manfred certainly recognizes that attendance dipped below 70 million last season for the first time since 2003. Perhaps he tosses and turns at night haunted by visions of millennials scanning Tinder rather than box scores. He’s confronted daily with concerns about the length of games, tanking, Bryce Harper’s contract, and labor strife on the horizon for 2021.
So last week Manfred announced a number of rule changes. Not at the big league level, nor even for minor league teams affiliated with major league clubs. No, Manfred found a willing guinea pig in the independent Atlantic League, an eight-team circuit based primarily in the east with one team in Texas. Rickey Henderson, then in his mid-40s, put it on the map 15 years ago when he played a couple of seasons for the league’s late, great Newark Bears.

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Posted on March 12, 2019

By Jim Coffman

I tuned in to Len (Kasper) and Jim (Deshaies) at some point in the past week when they were commenting on one of the Cubs’ spring training games. They had plenty to say but so much of it boiled down to this: “None of this stuff matters.”
Do not draw any baseball-related conclusions based on pretend game action in Arizona. Wait until the real games start in a couple weeks. In the meantime, a caveat: “None of this stuff matters” pertains to veterans, who will make up the entire Cubs roster.
But young guys, like last year’s first-round pick Nico Hoerner, can make news. And Hoerner, a shortstop who starred for Stanford, has earned a couple headlines saying he has a world of potential. (Potential that should probably be used – in another year or so – in a trade for some young starting pitching but still . . . )

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Posted on March 12, 2019

By Simon Chadwick/The Conversation

Soccer’s top brass are heading to Miami this week as the FIFA Council gets together for one of its regular meetings. Generally, these gatherings are tepid affairs as football’s world governing body works through the minutiae of administering a game that has an official membership of more than 200 countries.
But this meeting will be different, as almost two years of high stakes maneuvering should culminate in a decision that will not only determine what format the 2022 World Cup will take, but may influence the nature of country relations across the Gulf region for years to come. Item 8 on the meeting’s agenda: “Feasibility study on the increase of the number of teams from 32 to 48 in the 2022 World Cup.”

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Posted on March 12, 2019

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Baseball is back in all its dysfunction and glory. Plus: Bears Relatively Needless – Except The One Position They Refuse To Spend More Money On To Fix; Trestman Train At Last Stop; Blackhawks Dream Over; Bulls Fantasy Beginning; and Schweinsteiger!

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Posted on March 8, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

One in an occasional series tracking the movements of former Cubs.
1. Kosuke Fukudome.
Fukudome never quite lived up to the hype of the 4-year, $48 million contract he signed with the Cubs as a free agent in December 2007. That was a lot of money back then, particularly for the Cubs. (That contract would be worth about $57 million in today’s dollars.)

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Posted on March 5, 2019

By Roger Wallenstein

They came to the California desert the month of February from familiar programs such as Stanford, Arizona and Ohio State, along with schools most of us never heard of like Baker (it’s in Kansas) and William Carey (Hattiesburg, Miss.). Rosters were sprinkled with ballplayers from Japan and a few who had been released from major league organizations trying to get just one more shot.
This is the California Winter League in Palm Springs, which closed up shop this week just as spring training games in Florida and Arizona were moving into high gear.
Trying to gain the attention of professional scouts and coaches, approximately 250 aspiring athletes paid $3,000 apiece for the opportunity to play ball beginning in early February.
“You sign up online, put your credit card in,” says Joe Becht, a product of Downers Grove South who graduated from Santa Clara University last spring before signing with the Windy City Thunderbolts last summer. “Honestly, I think they would take just about anyone. It’s not glamorous, but you get to play ball.”

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Posted on March 4, 2019

By Jim Coffman

Any system that determines the Cubs will finish under .500 and last in the division in 2019 is goofy.
There is a great chance there will be more issues for this team than there were last year – veteran pitchers are a year older and they didn’t add a big time arm or two in the bullpen like we thought they would, so more turmoil there is slightly more probable than not.
But this team won 95 games last year. It won 95 with its best hitter missing 60 and struggling with the after-effects of an injured shoulder for half of the rest of them. It won 95 with an absolute ace pitcher sidelined virtually throughout. There might be something I’m missing but I don’t think so.

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Posted on March 4, 2019

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Cubs radicalized their MVP. Plus: The Ricketts’ Very Bad Election Night; Kenny Williams Twists Knife In Back Of White Sox Fans; Blackhawks Blow Pathetic Chance To Make Playoffs; Don’t Let The Upright Hit You In The Ass On The Way Out; and Tank Wank.

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Posted on March 2, 2019

By Roger Wallenstein

Not long before he died about five years ago, Ralph Kiner, the premier power hitter of his time who led the National League in home runs for seven consecutive seasons (1946-52), told an audience at a luncheon that I attended about his negotiation with the legendary Branch Rickey prior to the 1953 season.
Rickey was a few seasons removed from his days in Brooklyn and Jackie Robinson, having moved on to the dismal environs of Pittsburgh where the Pirates were perennial cellar-dwellers. Kiner was hitting baseballs with great regularity over the fences at Forbes Field in front of sparse crowds before the days of television.
Kiner’s opinion of Rickey had nothing to do with breaking baseball’s color line. He pointed out that Rickey was exceedingly frugal, a genuine penny-pincher for the small town franchise that finished no higher than seventh place in the eight-team league from 1950-57.
Kiner’s salary was $90,000 in 1952, a season in which the right-handed slugger hit 37 home runs despite batting .244. Agents were non-existent in those times, so Kiner sat across the desk from Rickey, who informed him that he would receive a $15,000 pay cut for ’53. The two went round and round for about an hour before Rickey finally asked, “Ralph, where did we finish last season?”

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Posted on February 26, 2019