Life is Unexpectedly Awesome

A couple of weeks after this year’s Rose Bowl, I wrote a long post lamenting the state of the teams that I root for, stating that “none of my teams are going to be playing any games of real meaning from now until the Illinois football team suits up to play Missouri on Labor Day weekend.” I also said this about the Bulls: “[A]s a Bulls fan, do I want this team to stretch to grab the seventh or eight seed in the Eastern Conference so that it can be shellacked by Boston or Detroit in the playoffs, or would I rather roll the dice and see if we can get O.J. Mayo or Derrick Rose in the United Center on a full-time basis next season? Call me crazy, but the latter option is more appealing to me at this point.”

Well, for for the second straight weekend, the White Sox are playing the Cubs with both teams being in first place. Granted, the sweep of the Sox by the Cubs last weekend emphasized the fact that the North Siders, I’ll admit begrudgingly, have the most consistent top-to-bottom team in baseball this season. The White Sox are just an all-or-nothing team - they’ll either bash in double digit runs powered by multiple home runs or have a complete power outage. Fortunately, the pitching staff (both the starting rotation and the bullpen) has kept the team in pretty much every game, but for narcissistic Sox fan base, it’s disheartening to watch a 6 1/2 game lead over Minnesota dissipate in the span of a few days. (I don’t hate the Twins in the same manner as the Packers, Pistons, or Hoosiers, but they might be the most annoying team that I could think of, if you know what I mean. The Twins don’t actually have David Eckstein on their team, yet it’s as if though they’re marching out nine clones of him every evening. As great as they are to fawning analysts, I always get a perverse delight when they’re squashed like a group of gnats later in the year.) Nevertheless, the White Sox are performing about a million times better than I could have ever expected by this point in the season, all the while Ozzie Guillen continues to spout off about the rats at Wrigley Field. With the teams on both sides of town performing so well (I just had suck it up and buy a few tickets to a Cubs game from a broker for a friend coming into town that wanted to see Wrigley - let’s just say that ticket resellers can tell me how my ass tastes), I’ve been steadily stocking up my basement with non-perishable goods, supplies of water and transistor radios just in case the previously unthinkable event that once occurred in 1906 comes to fruition.

Meanwhile, the Bulls have been the biggest winners of them all as they have officially taken Derrick Rose with the number one pick in this year’s NBA Draft. As I’ve said before, I think he’s got the goods to be even better in the end than both Chris Paul and Deron Williams (and this is coming from someone who has a picture of Deron shooting the game-tying three from the 2005 NCAA Chicago Regional Final permanently ingrained as his laptop background), which translates to the Bulls finally having a legitimate superstar once again. I hate using too many superlatives, but I believe that we’re going to look at footage a decade from now of the Bulls winning the lottery last month and Derrick Rose heading up to the podium tonight and point to this time as one of the most important moments in Chicago sports history. The impact of superstars in the NBA can’t be underestimated, which the Bulls know better than anyone since they once had the biggest megastar of them all, and by all indications Rose is going to get to that level.

So, when this Labor Day weekend comes around, I’ll still be blanketed in orange when the Illini take on Mizzou in what will be the most important non-conference football game that Illinois has played since I went to school there. However, I have hopes that I’m also following a baseball pennant race on both sides of town along with anticipating the opening of Bulls training camp. As for the Bears… I’ll just stop pushing my luck right now.

(Images from Chicago Tribune and ESPN.com)

1, 2, 3, 4… What the Hell am I Cheering For?

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my pretty good fortune as a sports fan over the past few years, with my various favorite teams winning a World Series and getting to the Super Bowl, Final Four and Rose Bowl in a relatively short period of time.  Well, folks, that run has officially come to an end.  The Illini basketball team wouldn’t be able to win tickets from a pop-a-shot game at Chuck E. Cheese, much less garner an NCAA Tournament berth this season.  At the same time, the Bulls are using the rules from ‘Survivor’ to figure out who they are going to play every night.  The Bears head into the offseason with the strong likelihood of losing a Pro Bowler in Lance Briggs while not gaining, you know, an NFL-level quarterback.  Finally, the White Sox technically have a chance to get to the playoffs in the same manner that Dennis Kucinich technically has a chance to win the Democratic nomination.  Essentially, none of my teams are going to be playing any games of real meaning from now until the Illinois football team suits up to play Missouri on Labor Day weekend.  So, what’s a sports fan supposed to do with nearly 9 months to go without having anything significant to cheer for?  Well, here’s a guide of how I’m coping with this period of sports oblivion:

(1) Your Archrivals Are Still Evil - The only good thing about the Packers being in the playoffs is that I have a vested interest in seeing them get spanked.  Believe me, I would rather hear two weeks of hype about the supposedly greatest football team ever in the history of the universe going for perfection (even though they would have never been able to hang with these guys) than deal with another instance of the media fellating Brett Favre’s “rekindled passion for the game”.  At the same time, as long as Satan’s Spawn is still wearing blue shirts at the helm of the Indiana basketball program, the rest of the Big Ten has found a friend in me when they’re playing the Hoosiers.

(2) The Young Guys Are the Future… Right? - As someone that is a whole-hearted believer in the teachings of Adam Smith, I completely understand that coaches have an incentive to play veterans as long as possible since they supposedly give their teams the best chances to win on a nightly basis, which means those coaches are more likely to keep their jobs.  However, there’s a certain point when bad teams need to face the facts that they aren’t going anywhere and start checking out the young guys on the squad.  The Bears mercifully started doing that by the last few weeks of this season, which resulted in the world’s greatest neckbearded alcoholic leading the team to a couple of victories.  I thought that the drafting of Joakim Noah by the Bulls was ridiculous last summer considering that they are already a team full of offensively-challenged frontcourt players, but now that he’s here and the team is going nowhere, he should be getting more playing time instead of being voted out by his lackluster teammates (and for that matter, get Tyrus Thomas some more minutes, too).  It appears as though Bruce Weber has finally realized that the Illinois basketball team is going to benefit a lot more from starting freshman Demetri McCamey at point guard as opposed to Chester Frazier (I think Illini Nation has been a bit harsh on Frazier with the booing at Assembly Hall - he should have always been a sixth man for defensive help off of the bench, but was thrust into a starting role as a result of Eric Gordon aligning himself with Satan’s Spawn).  As for the White Sox… well, they traded their entire farm system to Oakland for Nick Swisher.  Anyway, at least the others are giving us some hope that there might be something better in a year or two.

(3) The Drafts and National Signing Days! - Any yahoo can watch some regular season games and the postseason - you know, actual competition on the field of play.  If you’re a committed sports dork like me, though, the dates of the NFL Draft, NBA Draft, and the college football and basketball National Signing Days are up there with the Super Bowl and Selection Sunday in terms of importance.  The one saving grace of cheering for a bad professional sports team is that draft day beckons as a beacon of opportunity.  Sometimes, it’s a choice that alters the course of history in a spectacular way (Portland taking Sam Bowie in 1984, leaving the Bulls to pick a young pup named Michael Jordan) or, alternatively, crashes and burns to set back a franchise for years (Cade McNown, Curtis Enis, Rashaan Salaam, Cedric Benson… OK, I’ll stop now), but it’s almost always important, especially if you’re picking high.  (I haven’t included the Major League Baseball Draft in this discussion since the correlation between high draft choices and eventual long-term success is relatively low compared to the NBA and NFL.)  So, as a Bulls fan, do I want this team to stretch to grab the seventh or eight seed in the Eastern Conference so that it can be shellacked by Boston or Detroit in the playoffs, or would I rather roll the dice and see if we can get O.J. Mayo or Derrick Rose in the United Center on a full-time basis next season?  Call me crazy, but the latter option is more appealing to me at this point.  (As a sidenote, WTF do I do if Eric Gordon ends up in Bulls uniform next year, which is a real possibility the way things are going?  I’ve always taken the opinion that I will let bygones be bygones when it comes to college players that I couldn’t stand - such as Anthony Thomas on the Bears - ending up on my favorite pro teams, but Gordon would be at an entirely different level.  On the one hand, he, in conjunction with Satan’s Spawn, has done more damage to the Illini basketball program than anyone else in my lifetime.   On the other hand, he’s such a phenomenal basketball player that he would be that superstar that I’ve been begging the Bulls to get for pretty much the entire time that I’ve been blogging.  Let’s move on before my head explodes.)

The NCAA National Signing Days are the equivalents of draft days for college football and basketball programs, although unlike the pros where the bad teams get the first crack at the best players, usually the rich get richer when it comes to the college level.  You can count on USC, Ohio State, Texas and Florida to be getting the 5-star recruiting ratings every year on the football side, while UNC and Duke are always pulling their weight in basketball.  That being said, it’s when college sports fans can start getting excited again - the turnaround of the Illinois football program was based on Ron Zook’s ability to seal the deal on National Signing Day months before spring practices would start.  Fortunately, both Illini football and basketball look to be getting very good (if not quite stellar) additions to their teams next season, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

(4) No Clouded Judgment on Fantasy Sports Teams - This really isn’t much different from how I approach fantasy sports normally, but a lot of people have certains biases for or against certain players or real-life teams in terms of picking their fantasy sports teams.  I love those types of people in my leagues since I’m normally able to count on crushing them down the road.  That being said, I don’t feel quite as dirty picking a baseball team full of Red Sox and Yankees players when the White Sox aren’t very good.

(5) No Clouded Judgment on Wagering - This is where I have a little more of a problem as opposed to fantasy sports.  I’m able to compartmentalize my biases with respect to fantasy sports very easily, but it’s not quite as simple in terms of betting.  For instance, if I had done a BCS bowl picks blog post this year, I would have certainly taken Illinois +14 in the Rose Bowl against USC, not necessarily because I really thought that they were going to win, but I believed that they would have at least covered.  Fortunately, my flight to L.A. did not include a layover in Las Vegas or else the bank would be foreclosing on my house this week.  Unless you’re cheering for one of those pantheon teams such as the ‘85 Bears or the ‘96 Bulls (or maybe this year’s Patriots team), you probably have a bit of an inflated view of how good your team is if they’ve been playing well, so you’re not very accurate in your wagering.  If you’re team is not very good, on the other hand, you tend to look at the lines more objectively - there were only a couple of weeks where I was on the wrong end in picking a Bears game against the spread this season in a friend’s NFL pool, but I was awful at choosing Bears games during their Super Bowl run last year.

So, I’ve at least got a few things to look forward to over the coming months.  It could be worse - I don’t quite feel like this Cowboys fan.  As for quality play from my favorite teams, I’ll see you in September.

(Image from Cincinnati.com)

Rextasy Island and Land-o-Links for 9/26/2007

Well, it looks as if though Rex Grossman is heading into the overflowing dustbin of Bears quarterback history alongside a long list of illustrious names such as Moses Moreno, Cade McNown, Peter Tom Willis, Jonathan Quinn… oh man, just shoot me now.  Let’s face it: this isn’t looking to be a very good season for the Bears and it’s not just about the QB position.  Cedric Benson has gone back to sucking.  The defense is decimated with injuries.  Devin Hester followed up a brilliant performance against the Chiefs to dropping pretty much every ball kicked to him by the Cowboys.  Maybe we can still get into the playoffs since the weakness of the NFC North can never be underestimated, but with the way the so-far undefeated Packers (ugh) have spurred the latest round of the media fellating Brett Favre, the Lions have finally put their 25 first-round draft pick wide receivers to use with some gaudy offensive numbers, and the Vikings having who I believe will be one of the next major stars of the NFL in Adrian Peterson (can we switch ours for theirs?), this certainly will not be a guarantee.  As for the QB situation specifically, I’ve long tried to at least provide a counterpoint to the constant calls for the Bears to bench Rex, but at this point, he’s become the football equivalent of Steve Sax.  A year ago at this time, Rex Grossman was in the driver’s seat to being the NFL MVP and we were contemplating the possibility of the Bears going undefeated since there was finally an explosive offense to go along with a stifling defense.  Now, we’ve got slews of calls to Chicago sports radio shows arguing that Kyle Orton, much less Brian Griese needs to be put in at quarterback as opposed to being the team sideline keg master.  Oh, how things change on a dime in the NFL.

Anyway, here are some links:

(1) The Sex Cannon is Dead; Long Live the Sex Cannon (Kissing Suzy Kolber)  - I’m not sure what the KSK guys are going to do with Rex not playing.  With Brian Griese now at the helm, the Bears officially have the two most blogged about backup quarterbacks in the history of the interweb in Rextasy and Orton.

(2) The Dissenter (New York Times) - A fascinating in-depth interview with Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (also a Chicago native).

(3) In China, a Moon Cake Makeover (Washington Post) - It’s the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival) and the traditional moon cakes are getting some new types of fillings.

(4) Fixing ‘Nowhere’ (Chicago Tribune) - Prior to Mayor Daley’s ridiculous playing of the race card in the fight over the plans to move the Chicago Children’s Museum to the northeast end of Grant Park (and I’m actually someone that has usually supported Hizzoner, despite his occasional tantrums or tearing up of airfields in the middle of the night without telling anyone), Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin put together a nice piece on what the Children’s Museum would need to do in order to be deserving of what would be a high profile location, while also essentially acknowledging that something needs to be done with what is now Daley Bicentennial Plaza.  I’ve always that that this part of Grant Park is one of the most embarrassing parts of downtown Chicago with a leaky Cold War-era fieldhouse and an oversupply of old cracked unused tennis courts.  This might suffice for a so-called neighborhood park, but when this is the space that people get to the end of Frank Gehry’s winding bridge from the magnificent Millennium Park, it’s time for some action.  Kamin is right to make sure that the city shouldn’t put a building in that space just because “something is better than nothing”, but I truly hope a solid plan is put into place quickly.  (The other embarrassing place in a high profile location, which thankfully is finally getting fixed: the Roosevelt Road Metra station.  The bridge is from the Temple of Doom and the station itself is a shack straight out of Deliverance.  I’m not exaggerating.  You would have thought the city would have pushed Metra to put something up a little bit nicer much sooner for the gateway to the Museum Campus and Soldier Field.)

On a related note, I have absolutely no sympathy for the residents in that area complaining about the potential additional traffic that the museum might bring nearby.  The residents have seen their property values skyrocket as a result of the opening of Millennium Park and, for Pete’s sake, they live in DOWNTOWN CHICAGO, the most high traffic area in the United States outside of Manhattan.  Museum or no museum, what the hell do these people expect when they choose to live in DOWNTOWN CHICAGO???  This is like people that live in Wrigleyville complaining about the crowds as if they didn’t realize a 40,000-seat ballpark that sells out all of the time is right down the block.  If you don’t want to deal with traffic and crowds, then it would be wise to not live in a place that, you know, has a lot of traffic and crowds.

And finally…

(5) Bear Down: There’s Only One Answer To The Bears’ QB Problem (Deadspin) - I think that you could probably guess who Deadspin is voting for to replace Rex - let’s just say that it involves a uncontrollable neckbeard and a bottle of Jack.

I’m off to Champaign this weekend to watch Rashard Mendenhall run over JoePa and company.  Until then, Go Illini and Go Bears (and if you’re the type of person that likes the Cubs, don’t choke).

(Image from Chicago Tribune)

The Sports Census Maps

If you’re one of the three regular readers of this blog, it’s probably readily apparent that I’m a big sports fan.  What you probably don’t know, however, is that I’ve also always been a dork about maps (when my family took road trips when I was younger, I used to collect maps from as many states and cities as possible) and census data (for whatever reason, population and socioeconomic demographic statistics have always fascinated me - I could pore over that stuff for hours on end).

So, when I ended up finding the CommonCensus Sports Map Project, which has put together maps of the geographic distribution of sports fans of teams in Major League Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, NHL Hockey, and college football, I was predictably sucked in.  Granted, the data is based upon those who vote in the accompanying poll, so it’s not scientific, but it looks as if though the sample size is getting large enough where there is a pretty accurate view of who cheers for what sports teams across the country.  (Note: be sure to also check out the separate “United Countries of Baseball” map discussed on Strange Maps and Deadspin.)

Here are some observations from a look at the different CommonCensus Sports Maps:

(1) The teams that I like are pretty popular in general in terms of total votes.  The Bulls are the #1 NBA team, the Bears are the #3 NFL team (after the Patriots and Cowboys), Illinois is #9 out of all NCAA Division 1-A football teams, and the Blackhawks are the #4 NHL team (maybe there is hope for hockey in Chicago when Bill Wirtz finally relinquishes his throne).  Not surprisingly, my White Sox are the exception as the #15 MLB team out of 30.  If I were a “Cox” fan, I might be enthralled with the Cubs’ #2 MLB ranking (after only the Red Sox), but since I’m not, I just have to shake my head at how the severe the nation’s lemming epidemic is today.

(2) The baseball map is the most fascinating since it really shows the regional rivalry lines.  Growing up as a Sox fan on the South Side, I honestly had no clue how seriously people in Downstate Illinois take the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry until I went to college in Champaign.  I think that most Cubs fans that grow up in the Chicago area look at the White Sox the way, by comparison, Yankees fans look at the Red Sox (just complete and utter disdain for the other team and their fans) while the Cardinals are more like the Yankees’ view of the Mets (really strong dislike).  There are some individual exceptions to this (i.e. the Cubs fans that always love to claim that “they just don’t pay attention to the Sox at all” or the contingent that merely uses Wrigley Field as a happy hour spot before hitting the other bars in Wrigleyville) , but that seems to be the general rule in Chicagoland.  That changes when you get towards the center of the State of Illinois, where I could see clearly that the feelings between Cubs and Cardinals fans are a lot more intense, showing that proximity breeds contempt.  As you can tell by the baseball map and drilling down into the statistical breakouts, the state pretty much splits between the Cubs and Cardinals just south of the U of I campus, with the Cubs also taking most of Iowa and Indiana.  White Sox Nation is relegated to the space bounded by Madison Street, I-80, I-294, and Michigan City (we like to keep our club nice and exclusive).

(3) For college football, the Chicago area is not surprisingly dominated by Illinois, Notre Dame, and Northwestern, followed by other Big Ten teams plus Northern Illinois.  Most of the figures pass the smell test with the exception of the SEC schools along with ACC counterpart Florida State, who seem to be severely underrepresented in terms of votes at this point in time.  I would make a joke that the Confederacy is just moving on from 8-track players, but Arkansas State and East Carolina actually have significantly more votes than Tennessee, Alabama, LSU, and Florida State.  Any sports fan with any semblance of the college football world would know those figures must be inaccurate.  The CommonCensus project coordinators ought to take a look at this because those numbers from the South are completely out of whack with all of the other regions of the country.

(4) In terms of the NFL, the Bears take most of Illinois as expected, although I thought that I’d see a bit more Bears dominance in the northern part of Indiana since there’s a lot more entrenched history there compared to the Colts (much like the baseball Cardinals were the favorite team for generations of southerners prior to the Braves moving to Atlanta).  Still, the Bears appear to be one of the few teams that has a substantive fan presence in nearly every major market (with the exception of Green Bay, Wisconsin, of course).

Anyway, I find all of the data and corresponding maps extremely fascinating.  I recommend for everyone to take the time to vote in the poll so that the quality of the results can continue to be improved.

Big Ten Expansion Talk and Land-o-Links for 7/31/2007

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney caused a stir last week by mentioning that conference expansion might be on the table for a school other than the usual suspect of Notre Dame. Last year, I argued for Syracuse as being the best choice other than the Fighting Irish for a 12th team and I still stand by that. Rutgers has a great location near New York City, but it’s going to take a whole lot more than one good football season to make them a viable candidate. The always entertaining mgoblog, even though it supports the enemy, had an intriguing comprehensive write-up on the potential additions. That being said, I disagree with his analysis. If the Big Ten goes in a direction other than Notre Dame, I believe that it’s got to be toward the East Coast as opposed to adding onto the fringes of the Midwest. We need to look to expand our boundaries instead of looking inward. Anyway, here are some links:

(1) Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public Universities (New York Times) - A number of public universities, including the University of Illinois, are starting to charge more for engineering and business programs compared to the rest of school. I’m glad I got in and out when there was still flat pricing.

(2) Celtics, Wolves Closing in on Deal (ESPN.com) - This was exactly what I was worried about: Kevin Garnett coming to the Eastern Conference to a team other than the Bulls. Even though Ray Allen and Paul Pierce are on the downsides of their careers, adding KG to Boston will catapult that team from the doghouse to the upper echelon of the East. Do I have confidence that the Bulls would be able to shut that team down in a head-to-head playoff series? Nope. Joe Smith is a decent power forward, but it’s not as if though he’s leaps and bounds better than P.J. Brown. Assuming Dwyane Wade are healthy next year, I would put the Heat (don’t read too much into the Bulls’ sweep with Wade at half-strength), Cavs, Celtics, and Pistons ahead of the Bulls next year. I know I’m beating the proverbial dead horse here, but this is what happens when you don’t have a superstar - other teams pass you by pretty quickly (i.e. the Cleveland Cavaliers of the early-90s). This Garnett deal isn’t set in stone yet, so maybe the Bulls can make one last run at him, yet it’s extremely disappointing that they haven’t tried already.

(3) How Do Cats Like Rabbits? Very Much, And Preferably Raw (Wall Street Journal) - In response to the pet foot contamination scare from earlier this year, raw rabbit has all of the sudden become a hot commodity among cat owners. This might be something my cat would go for, but he’s already ridiculously spoiled. I honestly think that he believes my wife and I are his pets, considering that he’s the one that’s fed on demand and gets his poop picked up everyday.

(4) A Dark - But Not So Secret - ‘Knight’ For Sequel (Chicago Tribune) - Since my office is right by some entrances to Lower Wacker Drive, I’ve been seeing props for the new ‘Batman’ movie all over the place, including a Gotham City police car and paddywagon. Other than that, though, the filmmakers seem to be keeping the shooting under tight security.

(5) It’s Official: The Cubs Are Awesome (Goat Riders of the Apocalypse) - Don’t get too cocky, guys. Meanwhile, I’ll just go back to seeing who will be left on the South Side by the end of the day.

(6) Briggs Signs (Da’ Bears Blog) - Despite an offseason of Drew Rosenhaus-fueled acrimony, Lance Briggs will back in Chicago for one more season. Only a month until football season - I’m getting all tingly inside.

And finally…

To my horror when I went out to lunch today, the Chinese chicken place (it was one of those places that just had two neon signs that said “Teriyaki” - despite having little in the way of Japanese food offerings - and “Chicken”, kind of like a roadside restaurant that is identified by only an “Eat” sign or the “Hot” pancake syrup at IHOP) at the Citigroup Center food court in the Loop has been shutdown. If you’ve ever been in that food court, you know exactly what I’m talking about: $6.05 after tax for a heap of fried rice plus two different types of fried MSG of your choice. With the cheapest lunch in the Loop outside of McDonald’s pushing towards $10, the Chinese chicken place was an oasis of full and inexpensive goodness. I have no idea why it has closed since it has always had the longest line in that food court. The obvious thought would be health code violations, but normally there would be notices with respect to that and there none visible. Anyway, this has been such a terrible blow to me (I’m seriously getting the shakes just thinking of the Cashew Chicken/Sesame Chicken combo that I’d always get) that I just had to get it out. R.I.P., Chinese chicken place.

Land-o-Links - 7/25/2007

Some random links to take your mind off of point shaving and dog fighting:

(1) No Objections Here (Washington Post) - Here’s the pecking order at large law firms from someone with first hand knowledge: (1) partners, (2) summer associates, (3) administrative and support staff, and (4) full-time associates.

(2) The Race is on for the ‘God  Particle’ (New York Times) - This could turn out to be Fermilab’s magnum opus.

(3) This Never Would Have Happened at Marshall Field’s (Chicagoist) - I used to eat downstairs at the State Street store formerly known as Marshall Field’s all of the time when I worked on the east end of the Loop back in the day.  This won’t be happening much in the future, though.

(4) New Lion House Space Opens (Chicago Tribune) - No real comment here other than that I’ve always loved the Lincoln Park Zoo and the link has a picture of a red panda.

And finally…

(5) Remembering Harry Caray’s Last Broadcast (Deadspin) - Even as a Sox fan, I miss the voice calling out for Arne to check out the guy in the sombrero.  R.I.P., my man.

Cubs Fans Are the New White Sox Fans

 

Playing off of the argument that White Sox fans are the new Cubs advanced by the Ted Lilly Fan Club a couple of weeks ago, I’ve come to realize the inverse is becoming true as well: Cubs fans are the new White Sox fans.

Up until a couple of years ago, Wrigley Field was a happy-go-lucky haven for former Greeks from Big Ten universities to act as if though they were still Greeks at Big Ten universities.  Beer flowed freely, sunbathers in bikinis vastly outnumbered those keeping score of the ballgame, and above all else, everyone had a great time whether or not the Cubbies won or lost.  The Cubs fans that I knew when I was growing up were the ones that made Wrigley Field into the world’s largest outdoor beer garden where the actual baseball game was secondary to getting blasted and hitting on every female with a pulse.  While this in and of itself might be a perfectably acceptable activity, it also advanced the notion that Cubs fans didn’t care about how bad their team was and that the Tribune Company could run the club into the ground since people would continue to fill up Wrigley Field into perpetuity.

Today, the beer still flows freely and the bikinis are in force as strong as ever, but what used to be a seeming indifference to the game play on the field at Wrigley has turned into an atmosphere of narcissism and short tempers that are on par with, dare I say, White Sox fans.  For example, in yesterday’s Cubs fans took all of 8 innings to start booing newly acquired Jason Kendall after he dropped a pop fly.  In earlier times, Cubs fans would have been too busy planning out their bar crawl plans through Wrigleyville after the game to even notice that something like that even occurred.

It all started with ire directed at particular players.  I remember being at a Cubs game where the fans were riding Todd Hundley so hard that when he hit a homerun, he actually extended his middle finger to the sky as he rounded third base.  That’s the type of player-fan interaction that everyone strives for.  Also, two words: LaTroy Hawkins.  ‘Nuff said.

Still, it took awhile for Cubs fans to get to the point of such hostility with those players, such as Hundley batting .100 for a couple of seasons or Hawkins blowing a record 183 save chances in a row.  What’s striking today is the new immediacy of the fans’ reactions these culminating in Kendall not even getting a one-game grace period.

Short-tempered, negative, people who throw trash on the field everytime something goes wrong?  That used to be the definition of a pure White Sox fan.  Now it looks like the North Side is catching the fever.  Honestly, I actually respect Cubs fans a little more as a result of it.

As the Calendar Turns: Ranking the Sports Months - Part 1

After the White Sox got pummeled by the Twins for a total of 32 runs over the course of a doubleheader this past Friday (for those of you breathlessly waiting for a diatribe on the state of baseball on the South Side, it will come soon enough), I came to the somber realization that this is a pretty terrible time of year as a sports fan if your baseball team’s play is in that purgatory between the major league level and AAA ball (as the Sox are demonstrating right now). While it isn’t a complete disaster in the City of Chicago overall since the Cubs are in some type of bastardized version of a pennant race with the Brewers right now where 82 wins for the season will likely yield the playoff spot out of the NL Central, as far as the male side of the Frank the Tank household is concerned (the female side was raised far north of Madison Street, so she doesn’t share my current plight), the real baseball season is over until playoff time (although fantasy baseball is still fortunately kicking for me).

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt so down on baseball so early in the year since the White Sox have at least been somewhat in the playoff hunt or at least not completely out of it during the summer on a consistent basis since 1990. The problem is that there’s nothing else out there right now to fill sports void for me right now - it’s still a few weeks from the start of NFL training camp, the NBA draft is already over, and the start of the NFL and college football seasons are two months away. I don’t even have the Mark Buehrle trade watch to think about anymore since the Sox (wisely) just signed a contract extension with the lefty. Simply put, July is a pretty bad sports month if your baseball team is out of it. This got me to thinking about which months of the year are best for sports fans and concurrently which are the worst, which is perfect timing since I haven’t put up a mindless and gimmicky sports ranking in a long time.

My ranking of sports months is based upon what I watch on a regular basis, which are Major League Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, College Football, College Basketball, the major golf tournaments and the occasional Grand Slam tennis match. Thus, you won’t see any references to hockey and NASCAR, even though they might well be worth watching live and in-person. I’m also only taking into account annual events, so I won’t refer to a number of items that I enjoy such as the Olympics, World Cup soccer or the Ryder Cup since they don’t occur every year. Finally, I’m approaching this from the perspective of how much I’d be excited to watch these events regardless of whether my favorite teams or players are involved or playing well. With all of that in mind, here is Part 1 of my ranking of the months of the sports year from worst to first:

(12) JULY

Team Sports in Season: Major League Baseball

Major Events: MLB All-Star Game, Wimbledon finals, British Open, start of NFL training camp, MLB trade deadline

Comments: I remember not too long ago when the MLB All-Star Game and the festivities surrounding it such as the Home Run Derby was the sporting event that I anticipated the most during the summer. With the combination of the steroid scandal plus the abomination of Chris Berman at the announcers’ mike, though, the Home Run Derby has become a complete farce. The baseball All-Star Game itself is still the best of any of the pro sports leagues, but with the advent of interleague play, there is no longer the mystery of what would happen in certain AL-vs.-NL matchups. July is certainly a fantastic time of year if you’re British with Wimbledon and the Open Championship, and while I enjoy taking in those events, this is a pretty bad month on the team sports front if you’re baseball team is out of the pennant race.

(11) AUGUST

Team Sports in Season: Major League Baseball, NFL Football (preseason)

Major Events: PGA Championship, start of U.S. Open (tennis), start of NFL preseason

Comments: Pretty much the only thing that makes August slightly better than July from a sports perspective is that the NFL preseason has started which means we can be preoccupied with whether Rex Grossman should be back starting at quarterback for the Bears. I’ve been on record before as stating that watching NFL preseason games is awful (even though I invariably end up viewing a ton of them to fill the time), but what’s important about August as a sports fan is that September, one of the best sports months of the year, is just around the corner.

(10) MAY

Team Sports in Season: Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball (postseason)

Major Events: NBA Playoffs, NBA Draft Lottery, first series for main baseball interleague rivalries, French Open

Comments: NBA Playoffs are in full swing at this time of the year while it’s still early enough in the baseball season that there’s still hope for your team even if it’s off to a bad start. Plus, for those towns with major interleague baseball rivalries such as Chicago, the first of those series is almost always near the end of May.

(9) FEBRUARY

Team Sports in Season: NBA Basketball, College Basketball, NFL Football (postseason)

Major Events: Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Game

Comments: It’s weird to consider the Super Bowl as a February event, but it looks as if though that’s going to be the norm for the foreseeable future. So, with that being the biggest single event on the sports calendar, February is the beneficiary of the NFL’s insistence of putting two weeks of hype after the conference championship games. These are the dog days of the NBA and College Basketball schedules, although the end of the month perks up again as it becomes crunch time for college teams on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament. Historically, February has gotten a bad rap from sports fans since it’s sandwiched between the NFL playoffs and the NCAA Tournament, which are arguably the two best sports events of the year, but when compared to July and August, there’s still a good amount going on from a sports perspective.

( JUNE

Team Sports in Season: Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball (postseason)

Major Events: NBA Finals, NBA Draft, U.S. Open (golf), second series for main baseball interleague rivalries

Comments: The NBA crowns its champion and then gets into tis future a couple of weeks later with its annual draft. We start getting a real sense as to who will be the contenders and pretenders in the baseball world, while the U.S. Open humbles the world’s best golfers. This is the best sports month of the summer.

(7) DECEMBER

Team Sports in Season: NFL Football, NBA Basketball, College Football (postseason), College Basketball

Major Events: NFL playoff races, college football conference championship games and lower tier bowls, ACC-Big Ten Challenge (college basketball)

Comments: Much in the way August sets the table for the buffet of September events, December is the precursor to the spectacular array of events to come in January. The difference is that there’s a lot more importance and excitement in terms of what happens in December (i.e. divisional races in the NFL and conference championships in college football) than the NFL preseason and dog day baseball games in August. Plus, basketball on both the pro and college sides are getting into full swing.

I’ll have another post up with the rest of the rankings in the near future.

Land-o-Links - 6/16/2007

My professional obligations have been keeping me away from blogging for the past couple of weeks, but at least in the sports world, it’s been a pretty pathetic period anyway (from my perspective). The NBA Finals were a complete bomb with the Spurs simply wiping out LeBron and the Cavs while the White Sox are for all intents and purposes done for the season with a June swoon that’s normally reserved for the Cubs. Let’s get so some overdue links:

1) Twins Owner Buys Into Hip-Hop (AllHipHop.com) - The selling radio station owner didn’t think the Twin Cities area had “enough of a black population to support the station’s format”. C’mon, there’s got to be at least five or six black people that live in Minneapolis other than the members of the Timberwolves, Twins and Vikings, right? Anyone? As for Carl Pohlad getting into the hip-hop game, I’ll let Minneapolis Red Sox comment on that one.

2) Your Gripping NBA Champions (Deadspin) - I know that it’s de rigeur to consider the San Antonio Spurs to be boring and bland, but something in the back of my head tells me that if this exact same team were wearing Knicks or Lakers uniforms, the sports world would be gushing right now about a glamorous dynasty a la MJ’s Bulls. It’s like the old Jerry Seinfeld line about how “we’re cheering for laundry” in terms of watching sports.

That being said, this year’s NBA Finals were about as brutal as I’ve ever seen. As much as I fear that the next decade will consist of karmic payback of the LeBron James and the Cavs dominating the Bulls and the East the same way that Michael Jordan made Craig Ehlo his bitch for years, Cleveland simply wasn’t good.  It’s unbelievable that a Cleveland team that was so poorly constructed could get all the way to this point in the first point with essentially just LeBron. Meanwhile, the Spurs have ridden a lucky ping-pong ball bounce in 1997 that yielded the right to draft Tim Duncan all the way to four NBA titles. My general point here, which I will continue to hammer home until the Bulls make the big moves that they need to get to the proverbial next level, is that having a transcendent star with subpar surrounding pieces (i.e. the Cavs and LeBron) still trumps having solid well-balanced teams without that go-to guy (i.e. the Pistons and Bulls) in the world of the NBA. I wish that weren’t true because I’m a huge believer in those fundamental principles of teamwork and chemistry, but this has simply been the state of the NBA for a long time. Meanwhile, the Spurs have shown again that skillful building around a dominant anchor will pretty much guarantee them a legitimate shot at the title year in and year out. Of course, as I alluded to before, the best personnel move that they ever made was getting the right ping-pong balls in ‘97. And you wonder why I was obsessed with this year’s NBA lottery for the last 18 months?

3) Your 2007 Bile File Recipients (Sweet Home Sports) - One of my pet peeves about baseball standings discussions among the general public: everyone gets lathered up about the division races yet completely neglect the fact that there’s also a wild card spot to get into the playoffs. Thus, I was pooh-poohing all of the doomsdayers a couple of weeks ago that said the White Sox were done by being so many games behind Cleveland in the AL Central division race. My reasoning was that they were only a couple of games behind Detroit in the wild card race at the time and with the way the AL Central is this season, getting to second place in that division will probably get a team into the postseason. Ask the Boston Red Sox, Florida Marlins and Anaheim Angels whether it matters if you get into the playoffs by winning the wild card or the division. Fact: the AL West champ hasn’t won the World Series since the wild card was instituted in 1995 (the Angels were a wild card team the year they won in 2002), while 3 of the 7 World Series this century have been won by a wild card team. Long story short - don’t ever forget about the wild card.

Of course, this no longer matters for the White Sox since they basically haven’t won since the last time I put up a blog post two weeks ago while the Tigers have surged back to be just about even with the Indians. (Is it just me, or do the Tigers score 15 runs every single night?) Thus, the Bile File has returned at Sweet Home Sports, and there is certainly a plethora of candidates in what appears to be a summer of misery on the South Side.

4) Fuzzy Numbers: A TL Statistical Plunge (The Ted Lilly Fan Club) - It’s nice to see what the three members of the Ted Lilly Fan Club think of yours truly.

And finally…

5) One of the Worst The Price is Right Players Ever (YouTube) - One more homage to Bob Barker as he heads off to his retirement party. This clip starts getting really good at the 2 minute mark, so be sure to watch it all the way through.

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

Stuck in the Middle with A.J.

Since the Bulls made a decent run in the NBA Playoffs (I’ll have some thoughts on the Bulls heading into the offseason after Tuesday’s NBA Draft Lottery), I haven’t had the opportunity to focus on baseball too much yet. Fortunately, I didn’t have much time to sulk over the Bulls’ ugly performance last Thursday to be closed off by the Pistons since Chicago’s city baseball series was rekindled on Friday. Needless to say, this past weekend’s crosstown series between the White Sox and Cubs at Wrigley Field was a display of how shaky both of the bullpens in Chicago are at this point. As your resident White Sox fan, witnessing A.J. Pierzynski deal the crushing blow to the Cubs with a grand slam on the one-year anniversary of Michael Barrett’s cheap shot on the South Side catcher was sweet justice. Of course, all of this was in the wake of Ozzie Guillen’s insane and profanity-laced phone call into the Mike North show on Friday in an argument over A.J.’s playing time. Other than Jim McMahon and Dennis Rodman, I can’t think of any other Chicago athlete that’s been involved in as many controversies as Pierzynski - it’s a serious constant here. Some other random thoughts from another wacky city series:

• I was taken aback by the sight of Emperor Palpatine calling the game in the WGN broadcast booth on Sunday, but I then realized that it was Hawk Harrelson in a black hooded sweatshirt.

• In the battle of the pitchers involved in the latest trade between the Sox and Cubs, those being David Aardsma and Neal Cotts, there were no winners but a lot of losers.

• Good sign for White Sox fans: the team is batting an atrocious .223, with Paul Konerko hovering around the Mendoza line, yet this team is still a game over .500. The greatest strength for the Sox coming into the season was supposed to the offense and even though that hasn’t happened so far, Konerko is going to come around, particularly with Jim Thome getting back into the lineup. So, the fact that the Sox are keeping pace in spite of some absolutely horrendous offensive stats is a very good thing.

• Bad sign for Cubs fans: Ted Lilly and Jason Marquis have a combined 9-3 record and ERAs under 2.80, yet the team is still a game under .500. As a consummate fantasy baseball player, I know all about the statistical histories of Lilly and Marquis - eventually, they will both royally suck. Therefore, the fact that the Cubs aren’t over .500 when their two shakiest pitchers have unexpectedly pitched out of this world is a very bad thing.

• I’ll say something nice about Bud Selig for once: his push to start interleague play has been a fantastic development for baseball even though plenty of people criticized it when it was initially implemented.

• Of course, I’ll quickly qualify the preceding statement with the following criticism: the two unchallenged marquee interleague matchups are the White Sox - Cubs and Yankees - Mets (no others come close in terms of intensity and interest), so why do these two series take place at the exact same time every year? The NFL and NBA do everything that they can to schedule their marquee games in a balanced manner so that there’s maximum national exposure for those matchups, yet Major League Baseball always schedules the Chicago and New York intra-city series on the same two weekends every season for no good reason. Maybe it’s just me, but I would think that the nationwide Fox and ESPN audiences would want the opportunity to watch both of these intense rivalries as opposed to only one of them or, say, some “exciting” Giants - Mets or Braves - Padres games (both national telecasts on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball in the next few weeks). This seems as simple as moving Opening Day to the first Sunday in April so that it doesn’t conflict with the NCAA Tournament Championship Game and the average fan can spend the whole day watching games without having to miss work or school, but common sense hasn’t ever been one of Bud Selig’s strongest attributes.

Anyway, this wasn’t the best weekend for Sox fans, yet it at least ended on an uptick. Fortunately, the White Sox get another shot at the Cubs at U.S. Cellular Field in a month.

(Image from Chicago Tribune)