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Welcome To The Regression

By Roger Wallenstein

It’s Sunday morning, and the sun is making a valiant effort to burn through the cloud cover. The thermometer already is registering in the mid-50s as I gaze from my balcony overlooking Lincoln Avenue. Finally spring is beginning to bloom, and the Sox are home to play the young and talented Houston Astros. Sunday parking is $10. Round-trip on the El is less than half. I possess a voucher that the team passed out at last season’s final home game that gets me an upper deck box seat for free.
I’m feeling good. Most other seasons, I’d be out the door. But I’m not going today. Call me a fair weather fan – which, I suppose, is literally true for this grandfather – or someone who is in need of a reminder of his allegiance to the team which I’ve always revered. But the heart of the matter is that I am wary of watching the opposition score four times in the first inning followed by three walks and a grand slam in the top of the second as the local bunch falls behind 8-0 before the first beer can be consumed. We all have choices. This would not top my list. Not even close.

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Posted on April 23, 2018

SportsMonday: The NBA Saves The Day

By Jim Coffman

The playoffs are here! Tra la, tra la. The playoffs are here! Tra la, tra la. I refer, of course, to the NBA playoffs. And they began with quadruple headers on Saturday and Sunday. There is postseason hockey as well, but I think I have established previously that I am always a basketball guy first.
Have I mentioned lately how cool it is to be a sports fan in this day and age? The weekend was a total washout in terms of baseball (although nice comeback on Saturday, Cubs – never has a team made so much of so little production at the plate with nine runs in the eighth on just three hits) but that just cleared things out so we could focus on the winter sports postseasons.

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Posted on April 16, 2018

Cold-Cocked

By Roger Wallenstein

E-mails came from readers in Phoenix and St. Louis. Both wanted to make sure I was aware that the White Sox-Rays’ game last Monday drew exactly 974 patrons. Thanks, guys. Glad to know you’re not so busy that you might miss something as fascinating as White Sox attendance on a wintry day against an opponent with as many challenges as the local ballclub.
Apparently the Tampa Bay Times broke the story. Quite possibly their beat writer had time to actually count the bodies in the stands as he sat through a 5-4 Rays’ victory, which broke the team’s eight-game losing streak. You can be assured that if Sox management went through the same exercise, the silence would be deafening. As it were, the team announced the paid attendance as 10,842.
If nothing else, we might guesstimate that the club has sold a few more than 10,000 season tickets for this rebuilding season. Hip Hip Hooray!
Even if the game had been played in the evening, as originally scheduled, in 60-degree temperatures, there still would have been enough room for a freight train to chug through the ballpark. Two seasons ago a mid-April Tuesday-through-Thursday home series against the Angels saw an average of a little more than 12,000. Last year’s second game at home against Detroit drew 10,842 when it was 48 degrees with a 23 mph wind. Those were paid admissions.

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Posted on April 16, 2018

Meet The First (And Only) African-American Woman To Own A NASCAR Team

Took Her Sons To A Race To Discourage Them; Didn’t Turn Out That Way

“Melissa Harville-Lebron, a 47-year-old single mother raising her three biological children as well as her siblings’ four kids, started her career in the entertainment industry as an intern at Sony Music,” Black Enterprise reports.
“In 2005, she launched her own music label while working for New York City’s Department of Correction office. Nearly a decade later, she suffered from a severe asthma attack that forced her into early retirement and inspired her to take the risk of launching a multifaceted entertainment company, W.M. Stone Enterprises Inc., in 2014.
“She created E2 Northeast Motorsports under the umbrella of W.M. Stone Enterprises, Inc. The E2 Northeast Motorsports team became the first multicultural team to race competitively in NASCAR, with four black and Latino drivers – two in the camping world truck series and two in NASCAR’s Whelen All-American Series. Two of the drivers are brothers and Harville-Lebron’s sons, Eric and Enico.”
Here’s Harville-Lebron on Sway in the Morning this week:

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Posted on April 11, 2018

Cold Truth

By Roger Wallenstein

While Ricky Renteria’s outfit and Sox fans shivered through snowflakes and 30-degree temperatures last week, consider all the thousands of Chicago kids who play baseball and softball on school teams in March and April. You think the Abreus and Moncadas of the world have it tough? None of the local youngsters have the luxury of at least playing away games in Florida, California, Texas, or in heated domed stadiums.
Guys who played baseball in Chicago in the early spring have painful memories of episodes like hitting a fastball off the handle of the bat without the benefit of batting gloves as the wind whistled in their faces while an occasional snow flurry drifted by.
(See The White Sox Report: Cold Predictions.)

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Posted on April 9, 2018

TrackNotes: Pricelining To Churchill Downs

By Thomas Chambers

The Kentucky Derby is America’s biggest race and so typically absurdly American. Yet, it’s our biggest single race, a race that really does bring people together. A chance for every red-blooded male to be an American wiseguy for a day in a room full of decked out dames, and who doesn’t love that?
Saturday was a golden opportunity to get acquainted with many of the Derby players, ammo for the Derby party.
If I run into anyone who prepped their Derby Day experience by watching these, it’ll be a blush wave of happy.
There were no surprises Saturday as Aqueduct, Keeneland and Santa Anita all dodged bad weather and gave us more to go on for horses who are now Pricelining tickets to Churchill Downs.

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Posted on April 9, 2018

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