No Super Bowl for '19!!! Surprised?

Will Chicago ever forgive him?

I personally will never forget the sight of Staley, the Chicago Bears' mascot, collapsing to the ground at the sight of the missed field goal.

  -30-

Who provides Chicago football fans with their cheap thrills for the season?

Fans of the gridiron are having their share of potential thrills, along with disappointments, now that we’re at the time of year in which the bowl games are being played.

Will the Chicago Bears still be relevant when the Super Bowl comes to Atlanta?

We’ll have to see just how the Chicago Bears fare – with some fans being delusional enough to think this is the year of a Super Bowl championship.

OF COURSE, THIS could just as easily be the year the Bears get knocked out of the playoffs in the first round when they take on the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.

In which case, this could easily turn out to be the season where all of the big-time football teams managed to fall short.

After all, Notre Dame is the team that lost only one game this season and qualified for the Cotton Bowl – which theoretically could have put them in contention for the national title for college football.

But the Fighting Irish managed to get walloped in that game against Clemson – thereby reinforcing the attitude felt amongst many that Notre Dame’s days of being a college football power are all long in the past.

IF THE BEARS manage to get knocked out early in the playoff rounds, the disappointment would be comparable to that of Notre Dame.

Sad sack of Chicago-area football; or can we just write them off as Hoosiers?

Which is where Northwestern University comes in. The suburban Evanston-based school that likes to market itself as “Chicago’s Big 10 Team” fell short of winning the Big 10 conference title – losing to Ohio State, which on Tuesday won the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. But they did get one of the lesser bowl games, and managed to win.

A 31-20 victory over Utah in the Holiday Bowl – which means the Wildcats got a trip to San Diego. While we got soggy wet on New Year’s Eve, they got California sunshine just as they would have if they had managed to prevail against the Buckeyes in Indianapolis.

Was the one-time Dyche Stadium the place where most interesting football of 2018 was played?

It could turn out to be the highlight of Chicago-area football for the season – unless the Bears truly are capable of going on a winning streak to take them all the way to a Super Bowl victory in Atlanta on Feb. 3 – which could show that the 12-4 record they achieved this year wasn’t a complete fluke and that the only fluke of the year may well have been Notre Dame.

  -30-

Were the White Sox just six some decades ahead of the pack with sirens?

Sept. 22, 1959 is regarded by some sports-minded fans as a day of infamy.

Could anyone outside Soldier Field hear the sirens?

That’s the date the Chicago White Sox managed to clinch an American League championship with a victory over the Indians in Cleveland. Back in Chicago, city Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn acknowledged the achievement by ordering the city’s air raid sirens to blast away.

FOR FIVE MINUTES, the warning sign of some alien attack or coming tornado rang out, scaring much of the populace who either were Cubs fans clueless as to the championship won that day – or else just overly paranoid and willing to believe the worst was coming.

There may even have been some who thought it natural – that the White Sox winning a championship of any sorts was evidence of the End of the World as We Know It.

To this day, Quinn’s reputation takes a knock from people who say he grossly over-reacted. Even though technically, he was merely acting in reaction to a City Council-approved ordinance that said, “there shall be whistles and sirens blowing and there shall be great happiness when the White Sox win the pennant.”

So what should we think of the Chicago Bears; who on Sunday beat the Green Bay Packers and included amongst the revelry at Soldier Field an air raid siren blasting away.

Lost to Indianapolis, of all cities

THE BEARS, AFTER all, are NFC North Division Champions!!!!!! They’re going to the playoffs for the first time in oh so many years. The hard-core of gridiron fandom in Chicago likely is already dreaming of the Super Bowl victory party to be held in Millennium Park.

All the more reason for pandemonium to run amok, and for us to have “whistles and sirens blowing” and “great happiness” even if it is for the Bears – because we honestly don’t have a clue when again the White Sox will give us occasion for such celebration.

Now I’ll admit this was merely a sound effect within the stadium. The rest of Chicago (many of whom likely watched the game on television) didn’t get woken up out of a deep sleep and scared into believing that disaster was impending.

The original siren blarers

And the Chicago Tribune managed to find a few fans who were offended by the ringing out of sirens, although team officials insist the sirens are merely part of the overall effects offered up at modern stadiums to try to get the crowd all excited.

HENCE, WE’RE LIKELY going to keep getting the sirens blared at future games as the Bears try to work their way through the various rounds of the playoffs toward a Super Bowl.

If anything, that’s the reason I can’t get quite too excited about the Bears phenomenon of 2018.

Literally half of the National Football League manages to qualify for a playoff spot each season. The real issue at stake isn’t whether the Bears are good enough to win the whole deal this year.

It’s really one more of how could they have been so god-awful pathetic that they couldn’t even qualify for a playoff spot in recent years. Not even one of those one game and done early in January.

AS FOR USE of a blaring siren, I can’t help but think it’s become a cliché, similar to shooting off fireworks in the sky to celebrate a sporting something.

Ultimate deities of Chicago sporting scene

What was considered outlandish some 59 years ago is now routine. An air raid siren ringing out to the skies to let people know something extraordinary has just happened.

Just as those ’59 White Sox ultimately lost the World Series that year, I wonder what it will feel like if the Bears can’t quite make it to the big game (to be played Feb. 3 in Atlanta)?

Will the air raid gesture seem like overkill? Instead of a victory party, will Bears fandom wind up holding the equivalent of a funeral procession for the team? And will the ’85 Bears (the ones who beat New England in the Super Bowl) be elevated even further in the pantheon of Chicago sporting history?

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SPORTING NUZ; Chicago-style: Who's bigger – Bears, or Wildcats?

I’m not much of a football fan. Yet even I can appreciate just how unique this season is for those of us Chicago-area people who take to the gridiron.

Maybe we could have a fantasy championship at Wrigley between the Bears and the Wildcats?

The Chicago Bears don’t actually suck, for a change. They’re in first place in their division, and it would take a collapse of historic proportions for them to fail to at least make it to the playoffs.

WE’RE GOING TO have people in coming weeks getting all worked up at the thought of a Super Bowl involving a Chicago team. The delusional thoughts will run rampant. They’re not going to dump the ’85 Bears (whose coach, Mike Ditka, these days is recovering from a heart attack) in Chicago’s sporting mentality. But they’ll come close.

Yet let’s be honest. They might turn out to be the second-most interesting local football tale of the year.

For we have the Wildcats of Northwestern University playing absurdly well. They are the top team in the Big Ten’s western division.

And after seeing Ohio State whomp all over Michigan, there will be those eager to see if Northwestern can actually win the conference – which would most definitely put them in line for a significant bowl game.

Wildcats to get better bowl venue than Yankee Stadium

CERTAINLY SOMETHING MORE prominent than the Pinstripe Bowl, to be played Dec. 27 at Yankee Stadium. Can the Wildcats actually manage to steal the thunder away from Da Bears? It’s possible, since a successful Bears season would be not getting totally humiliated in the playoffs, Whereas the Wildcats could actually wind up winning a bowl game.

Even though I’m sure the SEC-types who want to think the world doesn’t extend beyond Dixie will want to believe Alabama is the supreme football power – regardless of how anyone else actually plays.

Although it occurs to me there’s one way that this season tops the ’85 Bears – what if the Wildcats were to win a major bowl game, while the Bears also got into their third Super Bowl appearance ever. More likely than not, it won’t happen – but it’s something for some of us to fantasize about.

What else is notable on our city’s sporting scene these days?

Remembering their '05 victories?

HALL OF FAME FANTASIES: We’re at that time of year where the Baseball Hall of Fame is contemplating which former ballplayers deserve to be inducted amongst its newest members come 2019.

Two of the players getting their first – and most likely only – chance at induction are former Chicago White Sox pitchers Jon Garland and Freddy Garcia. Both of whom were a part of that outstanding starting rotation that enabled the Sox to win a World Series back in 2005.

The ’05 Sox technically already have one of their members in the Hall of Fame in the form of Frank Thomas (the slugger turned Nugenix pitchman), although Thomas actually spent most of that season injured and didn’t play a single game in the World Series.

Or have many forgotten by now?

Personally, I thought it an intriguing sporting happening when, in the final round of the American League playoffs that year, the White Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels – with the four Sox victories being complete game victories and Garland and Garcia ringing up two of them. They’ll most likely have to settle for the memories, rather than a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y.

MOST MEMORABLE?: Of course, one of the reasons that the two pitchers won’t get their moment of immortality is because of the way some people are determined to think that the Chicago Cubs championship of 2016 is all so significant.

Is this really Illinois history?

I couldn’t help but wretch at the thought of the recently-released results of a survey about Illinois history – asking people to pick the most-significant moments in our state’s 200-year history.

Perhaps it’s a plus that Moment No. 1 was Abraham Lincoln’s funeral proceedings – including the funeral train that took Honest Abe’s body from Washington to Springfield, Ill., while stopping in Chicago and passing through northern Illinois.

But the Cubs’ World Series title ranked No. 2 – as in we have people deluded enough to think that nothing else that has happened in the state other than the moment when the Cubs crushed the hopes of Cleveland Indians fans, who came oh so close to winning their own “first World Series” in 70-something years if only they could have held a lead in the final game.

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What should we think of rebuild; does All Star Abreu have future in Chicago?

Chicago White Sox fans are likely to get the highlight of 2018 come next week in Washington, D.C., when first baseman Jose Abreu starts for the American League in the baseball All Star game scheduled for next Tuesday.

Could Jose become a White Sox immortal someday?

Abreu, it seems, got so many fan votes that he is the top player at first base for the league. Which is an accomplishment, since first base is usually a position so overloaded with top hitters that many a talented ballplayer throughout the years has been crowded out of the All Star game because that was their position.

SO IT WOULD have been understandable if the best ballplayer the White Sox employ these days would not have made it onto the league’s All Star team.

But he did. White Sox fans will be able to enjoy that bit of glory that at least one of the players on their dreadfully mediocre team of 2018 is worth having around. He’ll be the bragging rights that Sout’ Side-oriented fans will be able to chat about next week.

And it could wind up being the bit of a boost for the White Sox, who are trying to justify their lack of concern over the 30-win, 60-loss (as of Monday) team the White Sox are putting forth this year.

We’re supposed to be in a rebuilding mode, which means the potential for young talent that will someday surround the veteran Abreu with equal talent – to the point where in just a couple of years, it will seem odd that the White Sox could ever have delved to the lows that we’ve seen last year and this.

Payton played for weak Bears teams before '86

THEN AGAIN, CONSIDER that things can change quickly in baseball.

It was just three years ago that the Kansas City Royals were a World Series-winning ball club. Now, they’re a team with only 25 wins this year – and the reason the White Sox can claim to not even be the worst ball club in their American League division; let alone all of baseball.

Of course, there are some people out there who are convinced that what the White Sox ought to be doing with their best current (and one of their best ever) ball players is – repeat after me – “TRADE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Could Abreu top Minnie for top Cuban Sox

The theory being that some other team wishing to have Jose’s big bat (12 home runs and 59 runs batted in, as of this week) to help them win THIS YEAR might be capable of giving up some young “kid” who might be capable of being a star come 2020 or 2021.

WHICH, THE WHITE Sox marketing people will claim, is the time about when it might be possible to expect the ball club to “not suck” quite so bad as they do now.

Abreu being the ballplayer who’s already 31 years old (meaning he’s on the tail end of his physical prime as a ballplayer), and it might be helpful long-term to let go of him now, rather than thinking he’d still be of use at ages 33 and 34 (which is what he’d be if still a part of the White Sox) in ’20 and ’21.

Of course, if the Chicago Bears had followed the same line of logic, they would have let their immortal star Walter Payton leave just before that Super Bowl-winning year of 1986 and those contending teams of the late 1980s.

We’d probably have Bears fans now ranting about how the team gave up on “Sweetness” and didn’t include him in the chance for athletic glory at the team’s peak.

SO IS THIS just a matter of sports fans who can feel malcontent regardless of what their favorite team actually does?

Is the "L" flag destined to return to Wrigley?

Keep Abreu, and they’re being shortsighted. Get rid of him, and the White Sox will regret it if he and his big bat are the missing piece of a contending team the White Sox hope/wish/dream they’ll have around 2021.

Because personally, I could see how that future White Sox contending team could be one built around Abreu – who will wind up being the leader of a core of Cuban and other Latino ballplayers who play in the mold of past White Sox stars like Minnie Miñoso and Luis Aparicio.

Besides, it could also be that many of the people who want Abreu dealt away from Chicago are nothing more than Cubs fans realizing that 2016 is history, their own “winning” ways aren’t forever and it’s just a matter of time before the “L” flag becomes the symbol flown atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard on a regular basis.

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EXTRA: Were Chicago Bears ahead of pack in doing away with Honey Bears?

Reading the reports of the Washington Redskins and the stink the team is in with regards to the way they used their cheerleading dance squad almost makes me wonder if Virginia McCaskey, the daughter of Chicago Bears founder George Halas, was on to something.

Has it really been 32 years since the Honey Bears last danced?

McCaskey was the woman whose action right after her Bears actually managed to win a Super Bowl (remember 1986?) was to abolish the Honey Bears.

THAT WAS THE dance team that existed from the mid-1970s until the end of the 1985 season. The Honey Bears’ last performance literally was in New Orleans at the Superdome while the Bears beat up on New England 46-10.

In doing away with the Honey Bears, she made comments about how she found the whole image of hot pants-clad dancers jiggling their curves about to be inappropriate, and how the Bears would never again have such a dance team so long as she remained a part of the team’s management.

Some three decades later, McCaskey remains with us. At 95, who’s to say what will happen.

Now I know some people act as though the lack of an official dance team to entertain the fans (and appease their libido) is somehow a disgrace. I’ve heard some try to claim that the Bears are cursed because of the demise of the Honey Bears – and that (rather than lack of athletic talent) is the reason the Bears are now 32 years, and counting, without another Super Bowl championship.

BUT COULD VIRGINIA have been on to something in thinking that the old-timers like her father who created professional football would never have saw the need for something like the leerleaders (that’s what they really are) whom many teams feel compelled to have?

If anything, it was just a matter of time before someone got caught up in the Redskins’ circumstances.

For those who haven’t paid attention, the New York Times reported about how the Redskins basically used their dance squad in ways that hardly differ from those exotic dancers who work in those seedy nightclubs.

It seems that during a 2013 trip to Costa Rica, the dancers posed topless during a photo shoot for a calendar, and it seems the team offered certain male fans the perk of being present.

THE LADIES ALSO were required to be escorts at a nightclub – serving as “dates” for certain men. An act that bears some similarity to what professional escorts do – and what can get them in trouble with police who consider it one step up from prostitution.

You’d think that Washington would feel some desire to maintain a low profile, what with all the stink they arouse from the fact that they insist on keeping the team nickname “Redskins.”

Now, they’re the team that pimps out its dancers.

Which can’t help but make one wonder if “da Bears” are spared much grief by being one of the few professional football teams (including such other ‘old school’ teams like the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants) to do without the sideline routines.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): In Land of Lincoln, we’re now No. 6

I’ll have to confess to being a little shocked when I learned of the latest U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimates of population. That’s the one that says Illinois, with its 12.802 million people, is now smaller than Pennsylvania’s 12.805 million.

Which means Illinois is now the sixth largest of the 50 U.S. states. We’re no longer in the Top 5!

WHAT IS SURPRISING about that? I have to confess. I thought we already were Number 6. When I first heard of reports saying we were out of the Top 5, my reaction was “What else is new?”

Perhaps it was all those years of political reporting that had me thinking there were five other states with more Electoral College votes than Illinois. Five states with more political influence than ours.

Although we were still amongst the top of the Great Lakes states. In fact, we’re still at the head of those states in population. Although it should be noted that Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota all experienced slight increases in population – according to the latest Census Bureau estimates.

Are we headed for a point some five or six decades from now that Illinois will be just another mass of the states whose lifeblood relies on lakes such as Superior, Erie and Michigan, to name a few?

IT SHOULD BE noted that it was my mistake to take the Electoral College too seriously on this issue. Because the number of electors a state gets doesn’t always coincide with the number of residents. Smaller states get more than they ought to, even the ones that get the bare minimum of three.

Whereas Illinois’ electoral problem has always been a matter of the state’s population not growing enough to warrant more representation. Take the early 1930s when the state peaked at 27 electors, compared to the 19 it now has (and 18 it could be reduced to following the 2020 population count).

Back then, Illinois had 7.63 million people total (with nearly half living within the Chicago city limits). Yet despite having 5.3 million more residents now, we get eight fewer electors. There are entire states that have the same political representation.

So aside from having fewer people living in Illinois, what else is notable to people living along the southwest shores of Lake Michigan?

DECLARING VICTORY AFTER A LOSS?!?: President Donald Trump is going around claiming he killed off the healthcare reform plan that was a major part of President Barack Obama’s legacy – even though the measure remains in federal law and is likely to never be formally repealed.

TRUMP: Winner; or loser?

It seems the tax overhaul bill (all $1.5 trillion of it) includes provisions that eliminate the penalties people are charged if they do not have health insurance. Which was the provision meant to encourage people to use the Affordable Care Act.

Meaning he’s made it possible for people to ignore the law requiring people to have some sort of health insurance. Of course, Trump has made a mess that complicates the situation for those people who want to get health coverage, but can’t afford to do so without the subsidies that Affordable Care helped provide.

Trump’s victory declaration will appease his own ego, and I’m sure he’ll claim it gives him a legacy of his own. Although most likely, it is nothing more than political spin gone wild.

CHICAGO’S STINK NOW COMES FROM ‘DA BEARS’: It’s a good thing that professional football’s Pro Bowl – the end-of-season all-star game – is one that football fans care less about.

Because for the third straight season, there won’t be any members of the Chicago Bears playing in the game that is supposed to represent the best football has to offer. Then again, a team with a 4-10 record (with two games remaining) surprisingly doesn’t have anybody worthy of all-star status.

So there’s definitely no reason for Bears fans to care about the game to be played Jan. 28, 2018 at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Fla. I can’t even envision the players caring much.

Because at least in the old days, the Pro Bowl’s appeal was that it was played in Honolulu, Hawaii – a locale that added an exotic touch to bring a season of football to an end. Somehow, a corporate-named stadium near Disney World just doesn’t have the same touch.

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A decade later, and Chicago still wonderful; no matter what Trump says

Chicago is a wonderful city – the greatest on the planet, if I may say so myself.

And I say that knowing full well its history of crime, corruption, petty partisan and racial politics and the stench that once emanated from the livestock being slaughtered in the Back of the Yards neighborhood but which now comes from the professional sports teams that dare to represent the image of the Second City.

--An Introduction; December 20, 2007

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Chicago's unofficial marquee

It has been a full decade since the date upon which this weblog was created as part of an effort by myself to tell of the wonders of this great city on the shores of Lake Michigan – one that I honestly believe will always be amongst the highlights of our society.

No matter what nonsense Donald Trump may spew in hopes of gaining political support for himself from those people not fortunate enough to have ever lived here, Chicago is a place with unique attributes.

HECK, I’D ARGUE that Trump let his money speak most loudly when he built that self-monickered monstrosity of his along the Chicago River shores. He must have seen a way to make money for himself in our presence, just as many others have done throughout the decades when they chose to relocate here.

This really is a place where people from across the Midwest, and other parts of the globe to be honest, come if they want to reach greater heights than they could ever achieve in their native communities.

Would Trump have built here if Chicago really that awful?

And for those of us who are native to this place, we don’t really see the need to go elsewhere. Or, if you’re like myself, we move off to places like Springfield, Ill., or the District of Columbia – only to find ourselves become the obnoxious guy who’s constantly telling everybody there how wonderful Chicago is, and we find a reason to ultimately come back.

Now, I rarely venture any further east than Gary, Ind., where I happen to do some work for a local newspaper and I see a community that in some ways resembles the hellhole that Trump-ites would like to think Chicago is.

Holy Name, where mob hit once occurred

BUT EVEN THERE, I see what I sense is an overflow of the Chicago spirit in terms of community officials who would be justified in just packing it all in and heading off for places elsewhere. Yet they haven’t written off their chances of someday rebuilding into something significant.

Which is the spirit I most admire of Chicago – certain people who are always looking forward and how to advance our lot in society.

I’m sure some will say that anything Chicago has, New York has in greater quantities. That may even be true to a degree. Yet I don’t know of many Chicagoans who’d make the move. Or if they do, they always find ways of keeping in touch with their roots.

I’d hope that this spirit of Chicago has come through during the past 10 years, which I’ll admit I never envisioned would occur when I first started writing this weblog.

IF ANYTHING, I figured it was a way of expressing some random thoughts – almost like what I’d do if I were seeing a psychiatrist. Only instead of paying a “shrink” a fee for doctor’s visits, I’m posting for free and subjecting readers to my ramblings.

It helped that this weblog coincided with the Barack Obama years, which put a Chicago spin on many of the nation’s and world’s events. Even more so than what usually exists just because of Chicago’s position within society.

Old Gary post office as decrepit as some think Chicago is

Now, we are the target of political potshots – many from people who I sense are jealous of Chicago’s significance in ways their home communities can never be.

Now I’m not going to deny the city’s flaws. We have our self-serving politicos and certain neighborhoods that the masses are more than willing to ignore in so many ways – which results in the higher poverty levels and Gary-Ind.crime rates that the Trump-ites would like to think are typical of Chicago as a whole.

BUT THOSE OF us who get into the spirit of Chicago being a collection of some 120 neighborhoods and sub-communities know that each and every one of us has a unique version of Chicago in our minds. It’s almost as though there are 2.7 million different takes on Chicago – and that’s a good thing.

That Bear wishes he could become a Packer

This city allows all of us to maintain our sense of individuality without being gobbled up into a mass. Which is something I often have sensed of other communities – which are all too eager to tell certain people they “don’t belong.”

Of course, there are certain things that do manage to unite us. Take the aforementioned sports teams that represent Chicago.

We somehow find a way to continue to care about the Chicago Bears, who haven’t had a winning season in oh so long. And that line in the team’s fight song about the team being the “Pride and Joy of Illinois?” It seems like a fantasy that it ever was true.

  -30-

Ditka tops Guillen in ranks of former Chicago sports guys turned goofs?

There are those people who like to rag on one-time Chicago White Sox shortstop and manager Ozzie Guillen as some sort of irresponsible goof – somebody who despite his significant athletic accomplishments for Chicago ball clubs is just too much of a goof to have around.

How does not seeing racial oppression ...

But after learning of one-time Chicago Bears tight end and head coach Mike Ditka’s latest railing on national television, I can’t help but think that Ozzie is nowhere near as absurd.

FOR THE RECORD, Ditka (who led the Chicago Bears to their only Super Bowl victory ever back in 1986) was on the Westwood One pregame show prior to the Monday Night Football game featuring the Bears against the Minnesota Vikings felt compelled to ignore the questions about the Bears’ ongoing struggles to find a competent quarterback.

Instead, he wanted to rant about the fact that many professional football players feel compelled to SUPPORT the protests taking place in recent weeks during the National Anthem rituals that take place prior to pro football games.

Those protests started last year with one player trying to express his concern about harassment of individuals based on race. When President Donald Trump felt compelled to get involved in this issue with his nonsense talk about “firing” football players, those players started showing solidarity with their colleague.

Ditka made a point of saying he’d “bench” anybody who dared do such things on any team he coaches. But the part that gets the national attention was Ditka’s claim that, “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of,” adding later, “I don’t see all the social injustice that some of these people see.”

... compare to 'respect' for Fidel Castro?

IT’S NOT SURPRISING to learn that a professional athlete lives his life in a cocoon that isolates himself from the daily realities of our existence. I also don’t doubt these guys think their physical skills in playing a ballgame at a high level somehow makes them worthy of living life in such isolation.

He may be the guy who doesn’t read the papers, except for the sports section so he can know which sportswriter to complain about for writing something he chooses not to agree with.

But it would be an exaggeration to say we haven’t had oppression in the past 50 years – although at least now the law is such that the people who try to pull off the most extreme instances can be prosecuted, rather than thinking the law is on their side.

These two youngsters likely never realized ...

Or maybe Ditka is just one of those types who thinks that certain people are supposed to accept the fact that they’re entitled to receive a certain level of harassment from society as a large?

I THINK THIS puts Ditka in a comparable category with Guillen, who led the White Sox to a World Series title back in 2005 – a moment that for some Chicago sports fans is more significant than that Bears Super Bowl title.

Remember all the loudmouth incidents when Ozzie played for, and managed, Chicago. Like Ditka, Guillen later got a one-year stint managing/coaching elsewhere (Miami for Ozzie, New Orleans for Ditka) and now is to the point where his only sporting value is as an occasional commentator for broadcasts.

Sports fans in Miami still haven’t forgiven Ozzie for his saying all those years ago that he actually had a certain level of respect for Fidel Castro – which I’m sure they feel is as absurd as Ditka trying to claim that no one has been oppressed in this nation. Personally, I always thought of Fidel as more of a third-rate, petty tyrant than a true world threat.

Just because many of the individuals who are oppressed belong to groups whom Ditka and people like him would prefer not to have to acknowledge. Which is the truly offensive part of all this cheap talk.

 

... the highs, and lows, they would reach

PERSONALLY, I’M MORE offended by Ditka, merely because his rant is so ridiculously simplistic – as in it’s difficult to believe anybody could think of life as being so basic. I couldn’t help but notice a report that one-time star quarterback Joe Namath responded to Ditka by saying “da coach” ought to look up the meaning of the word “oppression” to realize it has occurred.

It makes me wonder if Ditka is now material for Saturday Night Live – the show where he once was idolized in those “Super Fans” sketches. Would those same fans now ponder whether Ditka has gone goofy in his old age?

Just like some are pondering whether Guillen has lost it in his middle age, to the point where the most recent report I saw about Ozzie was speculating whether he’d be considered for the Detroit Tigers managing job that is now open.

He’s not in line for it, no more than any team would seriously want Ditka hanging around their sidelines during game time. A sad ending for two of the most intriguing ballplayers-turned-coaches to be a part of the Chicago sports scene in our lifetimes.

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: One major Ditka/Guillen difference -- Ditka is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, whereas few people took seriously Guillen for the Baseball Hall of Fame the one year he was actually on the ballot. Which most likely is evidence that the baseball version in Cooperstown, N.Y., deserves more credibility than the football version in Canton, Ohio.

EXTRA: Could Kaepernick have borne down for Chicago Bears in ’17?

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Chicago Bears’ quarterback situation shakes down this season – although after the first preseason game, the delusional parts of Bears fans want to believe that rookie Mitchell Trubisky could just wind up being the team’s salvation.
 

Could he have helped the 'pride and joy of Illinois?'

Although anything would be an improvement following the several seasons of sub-par play from Jay Cutler.

THE POINT IS that the Bears went into this season desperately searching for a quarterback, and they wound up offering some big bucks to free agent Mike Glennon, who is competing with Trubisky for the spot – although none other than Hall of Fame coach Mike Ditka is touting Trubisky for the job these days.

One thing the Bears definitely did NOT do was give any consideration to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who as of now still has no ties to a professional football team.

He was released, and nobody in the National Football League wants anything to do with him.

Kaepernick, of course, is the guy who made a point of refusing to stand at attention with other players during the playing of the National Anthem prior to each game. He didn’t do anything to disrupt the anthem’s being played. He just refused to make the token gesture of support that many ballplayers do as part of the pre-game ritual, in part as a statement on the current state of racial relations in this country.

One of these guys had better work out ...

SAN FRANCISCO GOT tired of the constant coverage of Kaepernick and let him go. The perception out there now is that he’s being ignored despite his athletic talents by football clubs more interested in making conservative political statements of their own.

Now I’m not necessarily arguing that Kaepernick would have been a better Bears option that Glennon, Trubisky or anybody else they could have gotten this year. But they had better hope one of these guys plays well enough that the Bears don’t become the poster child for a sports team more interested in maintaining a certain societal image rather than winning games.

... if the Bears to avoid looking foolish in 2017

The Bears will look foolish if by mid-season they still have significant flaws at quarterback, and the people who are now deriding professional football in general for Kaepernick’s continued unemployment start deciding that “da Bears” in particular were the team that could have benefitted from his presence.

Insofar as Kaepernick’s status is concerned, it wouldn’t shock me if football teams are skittish enough to not want Colin around – with probably a team or two owned by some ideological nitwit who would ignore talent.

IF ANYTHING, IT shows that the situation in athletics hasn’t changed much since the late 1960s when then-pitcher Jim Bouton wrote his baseball season diary, “Ball Four.”

Some things never change, nearly half a century later

In it, he wrote sarcastically that ballplayers were free to say whatever they wanted on high-minded social issues, provided the things they said were of a conservative leaning, because that would mean they were “right” about the issue.

Saying something more liberal would mean they were “wrong” and should pipe down.

Although the Major League Baseball of that era and sports of today still bear evidence that Bouton was correct when he wrote of the typical ballplayer’s view of his colleague – “He’s a great guy. Wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.”

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Obama stealing presidential perk from Trump w/ Cubs White House visit?

Perhaps it’s only appropriate that the first president with solid Chicago ties (Ronald Reagan’s connection was living here one year when he was about 3) gets to host the White House visit of the first Chicago Cubs baseball team that was able to win anything in a long, long time.

President Barack Obama will pay tribute to the Chicago Cubs' World Series victory, similar to the belated tribute he gave to the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears of 1985. Just wondering if coach Mike Ditka (now known to be a Trump backer, wishes he could take back the jersey. Photographs provided by White House.

Although I’m wondering if there will be political partisans who will claim Barack Obama is stealing away a moment in the public eye from incoming President Donald J. Trump.

SERIOUSLY, THOSE PEOPLE are capable of complaining about anything and everything. I’m sure they’re already looking for excuses to claim they’re being snubbed.

And the fact that the Cubs, who won the World Series back in November, will make their celebratory White House visit on Monday, instead of waiting for the team’s next trip to Washington (June 26-29, to play the Nationals), is just the kind of fluff event that will cause some to get outraged!

It was reported this week by various news organizations (because this kind of fluff is easy to comprehend, unlike budgetary matters or the ongoing fight over how to kill off Obama’s political signature Affordable Care Act) that most of the Cubs players will be on hand at the White House for the event with Obama.

Although I’m wondering if any ballplayers decide to try to make their own political statement – similar to when Obama tried to pay tribute to the 1985 Chicago Bears team that won a Super Bowl, only to have Dan Hampton refuse to show up in protest.

Obama also paid tribute to the Chicago Blackhawks victories in various Stanley Cups.

LET’S NOT FORGET that pitcher Jake Arrieta befouled the celebratory mood of Cubs fans in early November when, on Election Day, he used his own Twitter account on Election Night to make comments interpreted by some as mocking those people who were appalled by Trump’s political victory.

In fact, let’s not forget that amongst Trump’s appointments to cabinet and staff positions was one for Todd Ricketts, the brother of Cubs team chairman Tom Ricketts, to be a deputy secretary in the Department of Commerce.

Does Clinton wish this event were hers?

There may be some people who think the Cubs should have waited until June so that the new president can have the honors. In fact, it has me wondering if Trump would be so petty as to demand his own personal event with the Cubs.

We know he loves positive press and certainly is capable of being petty and childish.

BUT FOR NOW, we’re going to get the Cubs appearing with Obama. His final public appearance in Chicago was Tuesday night, which could make the Cubs his final event with Chicago ties before he departs the White House at noon on Jan. 20.

I’m sure the event will be light-hearted fluff – one that I’m sure the ballplayers will use to make themselves feel all important. Although I suspect back in 2006 when the World Series-winning Chicago White Sox got a White House visit with then-President George W. Bush, they were probably more impressed Hugh Hefner invited the team to visit the Playboy Mansion.

Because after all, they’re ballplayers and the political people, including the president, are just about wetting themselves with glee at the thought of getting to meet them. But “Hef” had girls and booze on hand for his event!

If anything, it might have been worse for the Cubs if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election – because then she’d be citing her lifelong ties to rooting for the team – while also probably trying to have burned and shredded every single photographic image that depicts her wearing a New York Yankees cap.

A MOVE SHE made back when she ran for the U.S. Senate – coming up with the convoluted logic of being a Cubs fan who rooted for the Yankees in the American League. An explanation that no legitimate baseball fan ever took seriously.

Then again, there’s Obama – who because he wound up settling in Hyde Park on the South Side adopted the Chicago White Sox. Whose team web site identifies Obama as their “first fan.”

Yet it was then-President George W. Bush who paid tribute to the last Chicago team to win a World Series -- the White Sox of '05.

Yet Obama on Monday will offer up his bit of public praise for the ball club and moment that made many hard-core White Sox fans nauseous; citing the idea of uniting Chicago into one.

That’s Bull! Then again, it takes basketball and our disappointment with the Bulls to truly unite the Chicago sporting mentality.

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