Sports

Monday, May 21, 2012

Hyping the humble: Sports Illustrated's Jabari Parker profile

Posted by Ted Cox on 05.21.12 at 12:17 PM

Simeons Jabari Parker confronts the Sports Illustrated cover jinx.
  • Simeon's Jabari Parker confronts the Sports Illustrated cover jinx
Sports Illustrated proclaims Simeon junior Jabari Parker "the best high school basketball player since LeBron James" on the cover of its current issue.

That's typical glossy-magazine hype, especially in an era when Time puts a breastfeeding woman on its cover, and Newsweek's labels Barack Obama "the first gay president."

Even so, it does set off the BS detector, as I seem to recall a certain pretty good player, also at Simeon, named Derrick Rose in between Parker and James.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012

Splitsville: White Sox win, Wood walks off

Posted by Ted Cox on 05.19.12 at 11:30 AM

click to enlarge Kerry Wood discusses his retirement with the media after Friday's game. - Ted Cox
  • Ted Cox
  • Kerry Wood discusses his retirement with the media after Friday's game.

I went to what turned out to be a hotly contested rivalry game between the White Sox and the Cubs, and a retirement party broke out.

The game, a 3-2 Sox victory Friday in the first of a three-game set this weekend at Wrigley Field, was overshadowed by Kerry Wood's final appearance. Wood had already informed the Cubs brass that he wanted to retire, that his body no longer was able to recover quickly enough to make him an effective reliever on a day-to-day basis, but that he didn't want to go out on his last appearance, which ended with him disgustedly tossing his hat and glove into the stands behind the Cubs' dugout. So manager Dale Sveum decided to "give him his day in the sun, so to speak," even though as it turned out Sveum wasn't there for it, as he had been ejected for arguing an umpire's call when the moment came in the eighth inning.

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Friday, May 18, 2012

It's a beautiful day for a ball game indeed

Posted by Ted Cox on 05.18.12 at 01:11 PM

Robin Ventura: The skipper tests his flipper.
  • Ted Cox
  • Robin Ventura: The skipper tests his flipper
It was such a beautiful day for baseball when the Cubs and White Sox renewed their rivalry today at Wrigley Field that nobody seemed to be able to get into a bad or competitive mood, at least before the game.

Fraternization reigned supreme. With the wind wafting out during batting practice, the Cubs' light-hitting Reed Johnson clubbed one to the last row of the left-field bleachers.

"Ah, Reed, do it!" called out Sox outfielder Alex Rios, a former teammate of Johnson's on the Toronto Blue Jays.

"That's my game, baby," Johnson called back as he began trotting around the bases after his turn in the batting cage.

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Thursday, May 17, 2012

The family Ricketts, Obama, and the Cubs

Posted by Michael Miner on 05.17.12 at 12:07 PM

Joe Ricketts
  • Joe Ricketts
Cubs fans should take heart. The Ricketts family that owns the Cubs apparently has what it takes to think outside the box about ways to make the Cubs champions and Wrigley Field a garden of baseball Eden. Billionaire patriarch Joe Ricketts is right at this very moment thinking outside the box about ways to end the presidency of Barack Obama.

Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, "is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics," the New York Times reports Thursday. The Times offers a detailed description of a 54-page, $10 million plan called "The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good."

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Prescription for White Sox success: win in your damn division

Posted by Ted Cox on 05.16.12 at 02:47 PM

Adam Dunn: Theres nothing to smile about until you start beating your division rivals consistently.
  • Paul Boucher
  • Adam Dunn: There's nothing to smile about until you start beating your division rivals consistently.
If the White Sox are looking for a cure to what ails them, they shouldn't wait for a return to form from Adam Dunn, Alex Rios, Gordon Beckham, and Jake Peavy. No, it's much simpler than that:

Win games against your goddamn division rivals.

It couldn't be more plain. In years when the Sox excelled, such as 2005 and 2008, they beat up on their division rivals. Last season, by contrast, they were 32-40 against the American League Central. They were 5-13 against the eventual division champs in Detroit, but a woeful 7-11 against sub-.500 Kansas City. They played the Twinkies even at 9-9, and dominated only basement-dwelling Cleveland at 11-7.

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Monday, May 14, 2012

Why don't they publish scores anymore?

Posted by Michael Miner on 05.14.12 at 10:50 AM

Logos are cool, numbers are boring
  • Logos are cool, numbers are boring
Sports sections take a lot less care with their game stories than they used to, on the assumption that by the time they're published everybody already knows how the game came out.

So in the Monday Tribune thrown up on my doorstep, I didn't expect the account of Sunday's NBA playoff game between Miami and Indiana—a game I had to turn off a few minutes before it ended—to heap on the color and detail. But I did suppose that somewhere in the story, or in the headlines accompanying the story, the Tribune would mention the final score.

Is it just me? Back in tenth grade I turned in a report on a junior varsity basketball game that was heavy on the quips but forgot to mention the score. I was thrown off the school paper. That was traumatic, so don't trust my judgment.

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Saturday, May 12, 2012

Bums' rush: Come back, Big Donkey (and Becks and Rios)

Posted by Ted Cox on 05.12.12 at 01:31 PM

Adam Dunn mashes a first-inning homer Friday night at White Sox Park.
  • Paul Boucher
  • Adam Dunn mashes a first-inning homer Friday night at White Sox Park.
Friday could have been called "I Was a White Sox Bum Night" at Sox Park.

Adam Dunn crushed a first-inning home run to give Gavin Floyd all the runs he'd need to beat the Kansas City Royals. Gordon Beckham followed a two-out Alejandro De Aza single and stolen base in the third with a two-out RBI single up the middle. Dunn followed that with a two-out ground-rule double that, unfortunately, left Becks at third, where he was stranded when Paul Konerko's broken-bat liner to short left was stabbed by a diving Alex Gordon, depriving Paulie of the chance to blow the game open, an opportunity seized instead by the unlikely Alex Rios three innings later with a two-out, two-run triple, scoring Becks, who'd led off with a double, and A.J. Pierzynski, who'd replaced Dunn, who'd walked, on the bases with a fielder's choice.

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Friday, May 11, 2012

Adam Dunn whiffs for the record this weekend

Posted by Steve Bogira on 05.11.12 at 02:47 PM

Whos behind that steady breeze on the south side?
The White Sox have played 32 games this season. How many do you think Adam Dunn has fanned in?

Correct! He hasn't missed at missing once—not for a whole game, anyway. Add to that his last four games of 2011, and the Big Breeze has a 36-game missing streak going. That's one shy of the record, which Dunn will likely tie in the Cell tonight against KC.

The 37-game record is held by Oak Park native Bill Stoneman, a Montreal pitcher drafted by the Cubs in 1966. Stoneman's streak started in April 1971 and ended the following April. But, well, he was a pitcher, with a lifetime batting average of .086.

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Bulls: you gotta bereave

Posted by Ted Cox on 05.11.12 at 10:38 AM

C.J. Watson: shades of the Bears Marion Barber.
A double-edged sword cuts both ways, and so it seems does a bricklaying Turkish center who can't hit free throws.

The saddest thing about the Bulls' opening-round playoff loss to the Philadelphia 76ers—and, mind you, this was a six-game set that included Derrick Rose blowing out his knee and Joakim Noah gruesomely twisting his ankle, removing both from action for the duration—is that it was there to be had in the end.

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Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Sheridan station: The forgotten Cubs CTA stop

Posted by Michael Miner on 05.10.12 at 09:55 AM

The Sheridan station
  • The Sheridan station
Alderman Tom Tunney has laid out his terms for supporting any deal between Chicago and the Cubs to renovate Wrigley Field that involves public money. He's posted his "priorities" on his 44th Ward website, and one of them is this:

—A commitment to restore the CTA Sheridan Red Line El Station

Is Tunney seriously overreaching? You may be asking yourself that. Only the half of the station west of Sheffield Avenue is even in his ward. And whenever the City Council approves the new ward map, it'll all be in the 46th.

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