St. Louis Cardinals are like the Fighting Irish in their local fans amongst us

The Illinois secretary of state’s office has come up with what is, in some ways, just another money-making scheme – license plates allowing baseball fans to show their love of the St. Louis Cardinals.

For the set surviving around Effingham

Meaning one can get an official plate for their automobile that includes the famed “birds on bat” logo that the Cardinals have used for nearly a century. I can envision many residents of Southern Illinois choosing to identify their automobiles with such a plate.

PARTIALLY, IT MAY be a further way of identifying one as not being a part of Chicago.

But considering that the secretary of state’s office has offered specialized license plates identifying with colleges and sports teams for decades, it’s kind of shocking that they didn’t sign up with the Cardinals a long time ago.

For the Gateway Arch that is the prominent symbol of downtown St. Louis is visible for miles around into Illinois. Heck, Illinois includes a piece of the St. Louis metropolitan area amongst its residents – even though I don’t doubt that many Missourians wish they could somehow distance themselves from East St. Louis.

And some do think it bizarre that Illinois government would be willing to recognize a Missouri-based sports team.

BUT IF THE Secretary of State’s office has acknowledged both the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs with official license plates and there is a significant chunk of Illinois where the locals don’t pay much attention to either team, then I suppose it’s only common-sensical to include the Cardinals in the sporting mix.

For sensible baseball fans

For what it’s worth, the state uses the money from the $69 fee charged of motorists who can’t just have a generic number identifying their automobile to support a state fund meant to benefit public schools.

Which almost sounds a bit like the rhetoric we’ve heard for so many years about Illinois Lottery money supporting education. We’ll see someday if there are merits to the rhetoric.

Or is this just an ego-boost to sports fans who want to say “shove it” to the fans of other teams.

NOW I KNOW the state is claiming this is the first sports team from out-of-state they’re acknowledging with their own license plate. Although I’d question the accuracy of such an over-statement.

For Fighting Irish faithful

Because the state also has a series of license plates acknowledging assorted public and private colleges. One of the schools included is none-other-than Hoosier-based University of Notre Dame. Where Fighting Irish football rules, regardless of which side of State Line Road one happens to live upon.

Is it really any more unusual for someone in Illinois to root, root, root for the Cardinals any more than the Irish football?

Besides, I personally will get a bit of a kick out of watching Chicago Cubs baseball fans be forced to acknowledge the fallacy of their biggest myth – that the entirety of the world roots for the Cubbies.

JUST THINK OF when Southern Illinois residents feel compelled to make the drive to Wrigley Field to catch a ballgame, and Cubs fans will see just now many people are present to root against them.

There is, however, one gripe I still have about such license plates – mainly that even though it has been a couple of decades since the collegiate plates were created, they still haven’t gotten around to offering up one in the green-and-white colors of my Illinois Wesleyan University alma mater.

For those who are just determined to be different

One can literally show their support for Milliken University in Decatur or the West Side’s Malcolm X College, And now even for the Cardinals.

Yet I’m still waiting for the day I can proclaim Fighting Titan loyalties while driving my car. Even though, to be truthful, I might well turn out to be too cheap to shell out the $69 fee (charged on top of the regular cost of registering a car) to actually buy the plate!

  -30-

U.S. evolves at differing rates

So what should we think of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and the fact that racist imagery – including that of the Ku Klux Klan – turns up in his college yearbook?

The Washington Post made this obscure yearbook page public knowledge. Personally, I'm more offended by Northam's quote than the photo

Personally, I’m not totally shocked.

I REMEMBER back when I was in college (mid-1980s) and looking through the old yearbooks from Illinois Wesleyan University – my alma mater – seeing graphics of Klan nightriders and hooded people being used as illustrations.

Entirely on those pages devoted to the fraternities that existed on campus.

But there is one fact that should be pointed out – these particular yearbooks were from the 1890s. Meaning they already were nearly a century old, and the ideals that may have existed on campus back then had long evolved into something far different from its origins.

I’ve also seen old University of Illinois yearbooks from the early 1900s indicating that the Ku Klux Klan once was regarded as a fully-legitimate fraternity on the Urbana, Ill., campus – although I’ve also seen various accounts indicating the U of I KKK was never an officially-recognized chapter of the Klan.

SO WHAT SHOCKS and appalls me about the Northam situation?

It’s that these Klan-like hooded images were still being considered acceptable as recently as the ‘80s – Northam was a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and it was the 1984 yearbook that included the photo of people in blackface and a Klan hood on a page devoted to Northam himself.

As for Northam saying in response that the questionable photograph is not of himself, but that he once remembers dressing up in blackface as part of a Michael Jackson impersonation, I’d think that is something that falls into the category of something stupid he once did that is now embarrassing.

NORTHAM: Same person now as he was in '84?

Largely because it makes many of us question his musical tastes in general. It’s something more silly than offensive. Or offensive in the sense that he could ever have been so ridiculous.

BUT THE REALITY is that this kind of imagery that had long withered away in Illinois was still considered acceptable in Virginia. Just as some people are still willing to fight for Confederate imagery in the form of flags and statues that still linger in parts of the nation.

Personally, I don’t have trouble believing that Northam himself had long forgotten about this imagery attached to his name, and he may well have moved far beyond this type of thought in his own life.

The smart-aleck in me thinks that if Northam still felt such thoughts in his daily existence, he’d be a Republican. Which probably would put him more in line with the bulk of the southern region from which he comes.

He’d probably be doing whatever he could to tie his imagery to that of President Donald Trump and going around wearing one of those red “Make America Great Again” caps – which some openly say is the 21^st Century’s version of wearing a white hood.

SO WHEN REPUBLICAN ideologues go about claiming that Northam is evidence of hypocrisy amongst those of the Democratic Party when it comes to racial issues, I see it more as evidence of trying to distract attention from their own racial hang-ups.

My point is that I’m not quickly jumping on board with those people who are demanding Northam’s resignation on grounds that he’s an embarrassment to his home state. Although I’m also wondering if the pressure is going to rise to such levels that he’ll have no choice BUT to resign!

Are the same people calling for Northam's resignation the same individuals who defend the continued existence of Confederate memorials?

I almost feel like the only people who’d win by denouncing Northam as an unreformed bigot are the unreformed bigots themselves – as though they’d try to claim this as justification for their own ignorant ways of thought.

While also expressing some thoughts indicating that they think we’d be better off going back to the past – such as an era where no one would give a second thought to anything being strange and hostile about the imagery stirred up by Northam’s college yearbook.

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What’s Loyola legacy for ’18 basketball team in Chicago sports history?

When I think of college basketball locally, the school that pops into my mind is DePaul University. But that fact may not be true for much longer.

 

Aguirre (right) went on to NBA glory

I was a high schooler back when the Blue Demons (still playing in the old Alumni Hall gymnasium) had that string of competitive teams in the early 1980s to go with that team that managed to make it to the Final Four of the 1979 NCAA men’s basketball tourney.

WITH LONG-TIME coach Ray Meyer at the head and star Mark Aguirre leading the team, there was a time when DePaul was one of the big deals of Chicago sports – certainly more significant than the pre-Michael Jordan era Chicago Bulls ever were.

They may not have made it to the championship game (that was Michigan State/Indiana State that gave us a national preview of future NBA stars Magic Johnson and Larry Bird). But there is a generation that will never forget that era of our local sports scene (particularly since the only other championship team of that time period was the 1981 Chicago Sting soccer team).

But is DePaul’s long-time local rival, Loyola University, about to knock the Blue Demons’ squad of nearly four decades ago off their perch.

 

Better known than any Loyola players

For the Ramblers who managed to gain themselves a spot in this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tourney have managed to far exceed what they should have achieved.

THEY’RE IN THE ‘Elite Eight’ of teams (65 started out the tourney a couple of weeks ago), and their victories were all by single points.

Loyola University has given us some gut-wrenching games to follow, ones that weren’t settled until the final seconds. I’m sure there will be many people watching Saturday night when the Ramblers take on Kansas State University.

CBS Sports is calling the game “the most unpredictable Elite Eight game in NCAA Tournament history.” Who’s to say if Loyola is capable of another victory – which would officially mean the Ramblers of ’18 will have matched the Blue Demons of ’79 in terms of athletic achievement.

 

The 'old days' of Blue Demon basketball

Which I’m sure would make Loyola alumni and Ramblers fans happy, since even though the school likes to boast that they’re the only Chicago entity to ever win the NCAA tourney outright (back in 1963), that one seems so long ago and some basketball fans I’ve heard dismiss it on the grounds that the game itself has changed so much.

NOW I’LL ADMIT to being a band-wagon type fan in all of this. My own alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan, plays Division III basketball, and yes, the Fighting Titans this year qualified for the NCAA tourney, but wound up losing in the first round to the Wooster Scots (they’re in Ohio).

Meaning there wasn’t much to root for on that front. Which made it possible to follow along with Loyola and also wonder about those individuals scattered around the country who have taken to using the name and image of “Sister Jean” in vain.

Mostly fans of the schools that have managed to lose by one point apiece during the three games Loyola has played this month. Should we expect those fans to have to go to confession for besmirching the image of the 98-year-old nun who has made herself the most visible Ramblers fan?

Although what can be said of the fact that for many people watching the games, they probably know of Loyola as Sister Jean and a batch of players they never paid much attention to before.

UNLIKE THE DEPAUL squads of those past decades where Aguirre was the “big name” that was destined to play a dozen years professionally in the NBA with Dallas and Detroit.

The only (oft-forgotten) Chicago team to win an NCAA tourney -- '63 Loyola

Although I suspect if you toss out the “Aguirre” moniker to a modern-day Chicago fan, his Blue Demons stint is more memorable than anything he did for those Pistons teams that won NBA championships just prior to the Bulls’ own string of six champs during the 1990s.

So what’s likely to happen Saturday. Will the Sporting News turn out to be correct in their prediction of a Loyola victory and a trip to the Final Four, being held this year in San Antonio, Texas?

Or will DePaul fans and alumni be able to breathe a sigh of relief that this year’s Ramblers’ squad didn’t go so far as their own team’s historic run of ’79?

  -30-

How about a stalk of corn or a soybean as the new Fighting Illini mascot?

I’m writing this commentary on behalf of my late brother Christopher, who was a student down in Champaign, Ill., during the late 1980s and often had his own thoughts about the concept of Chief Illiniwek.

Could a new symbol be found in any of these historic university images?

For those not in the know, Illiniwek was the student (often a white kid) who dressed up as a native American in full Indian headdress who would do a half-time dance at the football and basketball games of the University of Illinois.

PROPONENTS OF THE Chief (and I actually once knew a guy who included being “the chief” as among his collegiate accomplishments) always claimed the costume he wore and the dance he did were authentic to the tribes of the Illiniwek Confederation – the people who were native to what is now Illinois before the French and English came.

They always claimed it to be a symbol of significance, and something much more dignified than Bucky Badger – the mascot of the arch-rival University of Wisconsin.

Of course, some people saw the notion of a white kid dancing about pretending to be an Indian chief as bordering on racism – almost as offensive as someone wearing blackface claiming to pay tribute to African-American people.

When the NCAA in 2005 threatened to penalize the university by taking away their ability to host post-season play (which would have been an economic loss), Illinois gave in and Illiniwek became history.

THERE ARE THOSE students with an ideological agenda who go out of their way to keep alive the image of Illiniwek (the kind of young, conservative-minded people that ideologue radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh is depending upon to replenish his aging listeners). His very image has become a political statement.

For what it’s worth, my brother used to think Illiniwek was far from the “honored symbol” that his proponents claimed him to be. And yes, “honored symbol” is the phrase they insist MUST be used to refer to Illiniwek. My brother thought his fans were people in serious need of a date or two.

Although he also thought the people eager to oppose Illiniwek also had way too much free time on their hands. Either that, or they were using time that ought to e devoted to studying for their classes to fight a cause.

He’d wonder how they’d explain “C’s” and “D’s” on report cards that wound up in their tuition-paying parents’ hands. “I was fighting the Chief,” is perhaps what they’d say, while their parents groaned, looked skyward and questioned the point of that tuition check they had written out.

SO IT WILL be interesting to see what happens at the university, now that officials say they’re going to replace Illiniwek with the first official mascot ever of the University of Illinois.

No word on when they’ll have an image picked, or what it will be. Let’s only hope it doesn’t turn out to be something ridiculous like the tree that represents Stanford University.

Seriously, I could easily see the mascot being a giant corn stalk – for all the corn fields that comprise a significant segment of central Illinois farms. Either that, or soybeans. Who knows, maybe a giant soybean could be the Illinois mascot, with a giant container of soy milk as its companion?

This whole search for a mascot has the potential to be quite silly – particularly since Fighting Illini athletics have managed to make it through the past decade without Illiniwek or any official mascot to replace it.

IT’S NOT LIKE the presence of a costumed character will in any way enhance the quality of play on the field or court. It would take a program much more aggressive at recruiting athletes of quality from outside of rural Illinois in order to gain public attention – the reason many Chicagoans pay much more attention to their alma mater schools than the state university.

Lovie Smith as the Fighting Illini football coach is a more important move than a new mascot. Although if it turns out that Lovie brings winning ways to Champaign, then perhaps he will become the symbol of success the college is looking for.

Although I suspect many students feel there are more important things to worry about than this issue. And the ones who do find it a priority? I suspect they’re the ones having to explain the mediocre-to-low grades to their parents every semester.

Personally, I remember my own college days at Illinois Wesleyan University where we had Tommy Titan. He’s now an elaborately costumed character, although when I was a student, he was merely a chubby kid clad in a cheap gladiator-like costume. We IWU students didn’t feel any more or less enthusiasm as a result.

  -30-

Who do we call the “home” team this time of college basketball season?

We’re at the point of the year where much public attention will be spewed upon the NCAA men’s basketball tourney for Division I, yet we here in the Land of Lincoln don’t have an obvious team to root for.

Now I’m sure there are many Chicagoans who went to college at various places across the country who can turn to their alma maters that were worth anything this past season to root for.

YET FOR THOSE of us looking for a local team, there isn’t much of anything. No Illinois school was able to get a bid to partake in the tourney.

Admittedly, Valparaiso University in Indiana is on the outermost southeast fringe of what could be called the Chicago area, although I’m sure people living north of 95^th Street would prefer think of it as alien turf. And some people like to think of Notre Dame as an area college, while just as many detest the very concept.

But the Hoosiers definitely got more on us this time of year – Indiana U. and Purdue also made it while the west side of State Line Road got nothing.

Those of us whose sporting attention isn’t totally dominated by spring training baseball and fantasies of that all-Chicago World Series taking place this year will have to look to the so-called lesser college basketball tournaments.

WITHIN THE CHICAGO area, there is Loyola University which got an invitation to the College Basketball Invitational. Where they will play their first (and potentially only) game Tuesday night against Rider College, and we likely will hear many repeats of how the Ramblers won the whole thing back in 1963!

There also will be Tuesday night basketball for the University of Illinois in Urbana, which got selected to participate in the National Invitational Tournament – which once was a big deal but now comes across as the ultimate consolation prize for failing to make it to the NCAA Division I tourney.

But they get to play the University of Alabama, which is noteworthy because they recently fired their basketball coach. Just BEFORE getting selected for the NIT.

I’m sure on a certain level, it would be a more intriguing story if Alabama were able to achieve some success under these circumstances. Could this mean the sporting nation would view a Fighting Illini victory as the ultimate bummer – completely ruining the story line?

I ALSO CAN’T see much enthusiasm for the other Illinois-based school that made it to the NIT – Illinois State University in Normal, which on Wednesday will have its first tournament game against the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Will anyone (outside of alumni with fond memories of Garcia’s pizza) get worked up rooting for a team whose own NCAA tourney dreams came crashing down with a loss in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament to the University of Northern Iowa (which did get the NCAA bid)?

Perhaps if we pretend to ourselves that the team from Green Bay is the Packers, then we could get Chicagoans to care. Otherwise, I just don’t see it happening.

We may wind up finding a better tale if we drop down to the NCAA Division III level, where their national tourney began a couple of weeks ago. They already are down to their “final four” schools (out of 64) playing for a national title.

AND THERE, WE find an Illinois-based school with a serious shot at winning a championship – the Rock Island-based Augustana University, which will play Babson College Friday and possibly the winner of Virginia Wesleyan/University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for the championship on Saturday.

Those of us with an Illinois rooting interest may have to look to the banks of the Mississippi River to find a local team to cheer for, although I’ll have to confess to feeling some confusion about this prospect.

The Illinois Wesleyan University alum in me knows of Augustana because the two schools both play in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (and the Vikings beat IWU in the conference tournament last month), while the Titans’ own national title dreams fell short last weekend with a loss to Stevens Point.

If those two schools make it to the title game Saturday in Salem, Va., it really would become a choice of which one’s victory would annoy me the least. It also could have me looking forward to the coming of a new baseball season all the more.

  -30-

Illinois schools did make NCAA tourneys; you’re looking at wrong ones

I have read several commentaries by sports-types all decrying the fact that no Illinois-based university qualified for the NCAA basketball tourney now underway.

We in Chicago or the rest of the state have no rooting interest – unless we happened to acquire a higher education at an out-of-state university.

EXCEPT THAT IT’S really not true. Unless you’re one of those people who are misguided into believing that “March Madness” is nothing more than the Division 1 tourney. That attitude actually bothers me more than the fact that the tournament itself won’t end until early April.

March “Madness” my duff!

Personally, I’m more intrigued by the tourney for Division III, where my own alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, has managed to make it all the way to the “Final Four.”

Sure enough, on Friday, the IWU Titans will be playing the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Remember them. Many years ago, the Chicago Bears held their pre-season training camp on that campus.

IF THE BLOOMINGTON-based college prevails, THE championship game will be Saturday against the winner of Williams/Amherst – the latter of which was last year’s national champion. I’m sure they’d like to have two titles in a row – compared to the last IWU national title in 1997.

Now I know there are bound to be some nitwits who will retort that I’m bringing up a tourney involving institutions of higher learning that nobody’s ever heard of.

Although I’d argue none of them are any more obscure than Wolford College – which would consider it a miracle if it were to manage to beat the University of Michigan on Thursday. That’s a real-live Division I match!

So for those of you who are complaining that there’s nobody local to root for in college basketball, I’d argue you’re not looking deeply enough.

ALTHOUGH THE FACT that the other NCAA basketball tournaments get less attention also mean they breeze right past us. Why else would the Division III tourney be nearly done just as the Division I tourney is starting.

Now if by chance you don’t want to join me in rooting for the Titans (you’re probably one of those deluded fans of Millikin University in Decatur), there were other local schools that managed to get into post-season play.

You have to look to the women’s basketball programs to find them. But they’re there.

At the Division II level, Lewis University in Romeoville and Quincy University both managed to qualify – even though neither made it past the first round of their tournament.

AND FOR THE Division I level for women, DePaul University is actually worth something. They’ll play their first match Saturday against Oklahoma.

That could give Chicago basketball fans something to root for. And it shouldn’t be looked down up. I’m sure the Blue Demons’ men’s program would give anything to still be playing ball this season.

Or any of Illinois’ Division I men’s programs. A part of me thinks they are fantasizing these days that they could be in Illinois Wesleyan’s position. Just one game away from playing for THE championship for the year.

A game that the men likely would remember for the rest of their lives.

ALSO ONE THAT I’m sure the men and women who are playing these past few weeks will take with them as they advance their way through life.

Now for those of you who are just absolutely determined to root for a large-enrollment school, I suppose you can follow the Fighting Illini men’s team as they work their way through the NIT (the ultimate in athletic consolation prizes).

Although by the time you read this, their season may be over as well – they played Boston University on Thursday, with that winner going up against Clemson on Saturday.

I suspect the Illini will be back in Champaign for good following this weekend. Then again, so will the Titans – hopefully with some athletic hardware showing them as winners!

  -30-

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Admit it. You're thankful I didn't write anything political for Thursday.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): How many parades do we need?

Better in pictures, than in person?

Call it the controversy amongst Chicago’s Puerto Rican community that is likely to spill over toward all of us – activists are fighting about the Puerto Rican Day parades, which it seems this year will be a singular parade.

For officials reached a decision last week by which the funds that go toward a Puerto Rican parade along Columbus Drive near downtown will instead be put toward supporting a parade in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

PERSONALLY, I THINK this is a smart move, because I have always thought those downtown parades lost something significant in character when they were moved from Dearborn Street (in the actual downtown area) off to the drive where it felt like they were cut off from the city proper.

I’d be for taking all the ethnic-oriented parades that are held in Chicago and converting them into events held out in the neighborhoods – particularly if there is an ethnic character to the specific neighborhood.

Everybody these days knows that the St. Patrick’s Day Parade along Columbus Drive is generic, compared to the South Side Irish Parade along Western Avenue. If the Puerto Rican activists in Humboldt Park can’t put on a worthy event, then that is to their own discredit.

The same goes for just about any event. Mexican-oriented parades in the Little Village and South Chicago neighborhoods always manage to top the generic feel to a Mexican Independence Day march along Columbus Drive – to name the ethnic events that I would have any personal interest in.

NOW I REALIZE some are going to criticize me for being naïve, or clueless. Although I should say I appreciate the political considerations involved here. For many of the people who want a downtown parade are more opposed to cooperation with the activist-types who put together the neighborhood parade.

A lot of it does tie into the fact that there isn’t a consensus amongst Puerto Ricans as to whether their Caribbean island homeland ought to be the 51^st U.S. state, an independent nation or just keep its commonwealth status.

I’ve actually heard the phrase “Communist” tossed out by the downtown parade proponents to describe the neighborhood activists – which may well be an overstatement to try to lambast anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

What else is of interest as some people contemplate a Puerto Rican pride parade held a few miles further away from the shores of Lake Michigan come June?

 

I doubt any paper I wrote for will give me this sendoff

WORKING TO THE VERY END:  I never actually met Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, but he’s been around for so long that it felt like he was invincible.

Of course, no one is. Ebert himself succumbed last week to cancer – the same condition that took his voice several years ago, but didn’t stop him from being a heck of a communicator in his final years. Funeral services are scheduled for Monday at Holy Name Cathedral.

 

Much of the remembrance we’ve read in recent days tells tales of all those interviews with film business moguls throughout the years and how much influence he and Siskel actually had in terms of whether a film would achieve any commercial success, I must admit that I’m more impressed with his recent years. That, and his animated appearance on The Critic.

But the real significance of the Ebert life story is in the way in which he kept up the quality work, when many people would have decided it was time to pack it in. I’d like to think I could handle myself in a similar manner if I were confronted with his circumstances – although another part of me is honest enough to admit that I (and most of us) probably couldn’t even come close!



How would Lord Jeff of Amherst do...

MICHIGAN/LOUISVILLE WHO??!?:  Amherst College’s Lord Jeffs men’s basketball team beat Mary Hardin-Baylor 87-70 on Sunday, giving the Massachusetts-based college the national title for Division III this year – and their first since they pulled off titles in 2007 and ‘08.



... against Tommy Titan of IWU?

Watching those academically-inclined (but in many cases physically-challenged -- few 7-footers play Division III basketball) student/ballplayers out there on the same court that the Atlanta Hawks play on (and where the nationally-televised Division I game will be played Monday) convinced me all the more that small-school ball isn’t as inferior as some would want to believe.

A part of me was wondering how much nicer it would have been if my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, were playing instead. Amherst got to the final by beating North Central College of Naperville, who were the ones that knocked the Titans out in the Sweet Sixteen round of the DIII tournament. Oh well, maybe next year -- which we've been saying every season since 1997!

But it was still an enjoyable experience to watch Sunday’s game (even at the point when the game had to be halted for a bit because some of the arena’s lights went out). I got more of a kick than the masses will get from watching Michigan take on Louisville.

  -30-

No Game Today

To my mindset, one of the saddest moments I encounter each year is in those couple of hours after the World Series comes to an end.

As the Hawk would say, the 2011 season is "ovah."



For it is then that I realize that the baseball season is “ovah,” and that Saturday is the beginning of a slightly-longer than three-month countdown until spring training starts for 2012, and nearly four months until anything resembling a ballgame is played.

REGARDLESS OF WHO actually wins the World Series title and gets bragging rights for U.S. baseball, there is that moment that makes me feel empty inside. Because there literally is “No Game Today” – the sign that used to hang on stadiums to inform fans passing by that there was no reason to stop off on that day.

We’re just a couple of days away from Halloween, which means the meat of the year is complete. Now, we’re in the home stretch – Frank Sinatra’s record album “September of my Years” comes to mind, even though we’re approaching November.

I am a fan of professional baseball, and the idea that there isn’t a game on that I can watch for an athletic fix is one that can be depressing if I linger on it for too long.

Yes, it is true that the professional leagues in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, along with the Liga del Pacifico in Mexico are up and running (their seasons began about two weeks ago).

SO I CAN always scour up a box score of a ballgame somewhere. Will Mexicali manage to keep the early lead in the standings they jumped out to in the Mexican Pacific League?

Is there some potential prospect playing this winter who will manage to make an impact on a major league club similar to what White Sox outfielder Alejandro de Aza did this season after playing last winter in the Dominican Republic?

Such speculation is intriguing. And on those rare occasions when a winter league ballgame gets broadcast, I likely will make an effort to try to watch it – regardless of which league it is or which teams are playing.

But it’s not the same. I can’t just jump on a flight to Caracas at a moment’s notice or see a game by the La Guaira Sharks (los Tiburones are Ozzie Guillen’s preferred Venezuelan ballclub).

ALTHOUGH PERHAPS I should point out that one of my ideas of a fantasy vacation would be to visit either Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic or Venezuela during the first week in February when one of those places is hosting the Caribbean Series – which is the championship for, and bragging rights of, Latin American baseball. I’d like to see the spectacle at least once in my lifetime.

But it still falls short of having the option of watching the game on my home turf.

For me, it’s something about the battle of wits that takes place every time a pitcher and batter face off against each other. The “head game,” as it was once referred to by longtime sportswriter Roger Kahn – who used the phrase as the title of a book he wrote about pitchers.

No other sport has anything quite like it, which is why I don’t want to hear from any sports fans who will claim that we can now focus our attention on football or college basketball or hockey or any other game.

TO THE DEGREE that I follow ANY sports during the winter, it will be to check out the standings of my own collegiate alma mater’s athletic teams (I may wind up being one of the visiting team basketball fans in the stands when Illinois Wesleyan University visits Hyde Park and the University of Chicago on Dec. 10), along with the box scores emanating from teams like the Caneros de Los Mochis or the Senadores de San Juan.

Because now that the World Series is over, that’s what I have left.

As for the series itself, I must confess to not watching any one of the games in their entirety. I did catch the moment when Albert Pujols hit the second of his three home runs in Game Three (and share the disgust of the sportswriter who dinged the Texas Rangers fan who showed her Chicago Cubbiness tendencies by throwing back the ball that was Home Run number Three).

The only Chicago World Series in my lifetime

And I was amused by all the rhetoric following Game Five that questioned how incompetent St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa could be. At least until Game Six, where all the chatter now claims the only person more worthless than LaRussa is Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington.

ALTHOUGH I’M NOT sure Game Six is as great a sporting moment as some people want to think. I see it as a blown ballgame by the Rangers. Their incompetence, rather than anything great (despite an extra-inning home run by eventual World Series MVP David Freese) by St. Louis.

I suppose I’ll wish well upon those fans of the World Series champion Cardinals. But my overall emotion right now is closer to a funk over the fact that there’s “No Game Today.”

Only124 more days until the beginning of Cactus League play. I’ll be counting each and every one of them down.

  -30-

EXTRA: “Aw, nuts!”

I'm now rooting to be "Number 3." Graphic provided by Illinois Wesleyan University.

World War II-era General Tony McAuliffe expressed my sentiments exactly as I watched the Illinois Wesleyan University Titans’ women’s basketball team get beat Friday 87-77 by St. Louis-based Washington University.



I know, I know. The University of Illinois men’s basketball program is our state’s lone representative in the Division I NCAA tourney, taking on the University of Nevada-Las Vegas at a game being played Friday in Tulsa, Okla.

HERE IN CHICAGO, the Division I tourney staged a few games at the United Center – with Notre Dame managing to win their Friday game by a 69-56 score over the University of Akron and Purdue University whomping on St. Peter’s 65-43.

But for my college basketball fix, I was following the Titans (who back when I was a student in Bloomington, Ill., still referred to their women’s athletic teams as the “Lady Titans”), using what turned out to be a very reliable internet connection to watch the game at www.ncaa.com.

It’s my alma mater (I don't "get" people who follow college sports without a personal connection, unless they're degenerate gamblers), and I felt the curiosity to see if Illinois Wesleyan could pull off a national title, albeit one at the Division III level. It certainly wasn’t going to happen by the men’s program, who qualified for the men’s tourney and managed to win one game, before being knocked out of play a couple of weeks ago.

This is the element that catches my attention the most. The Division I tourney (the alleged “March Madness,” even though anyone with sense knows that phrase originated with high school basketball in Illinois) is just now beginning, and will drag out into the early days of April, because of officials who want to milk it for all the television money they can get.

THERE IS NO such money at the Division III level, although some of the programs at that level are as competitive and fierce-spirited as anything one sees at Division I – particularly the lesser programs at that level. No one is going to convince me that the basketball at a place like Eastern Illinois or Chicago State universities is any more interesting than the elite Division III programs.

The end result is that, not only did I watch my game Friday night on my laptop computer, that tourney is on the verge of being over. Illinois Wesleyan made it to the Final Four – and Washington’s victory puts them in line to defend their national title from 2010 when they play Amhurst University.

And as for the Titans? I’m not sure if I have the temperament to watch Saturday’s consolation game against Christopher Newport without swearing at my computer screen.

Perhaps I’ll watch something lower-key and less significant. Perhaps Morehead State versus Richmond?

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Someone far more knowledgeable than I offers a decent explanation of the difference between college basketball at the Division I and Division III levels – aside from the school enrollments.

EXTRA: Wisconsin-Stevens Pt. 72-IWU 56

Oh well. It was nice to fantasize for the day about a Final Four (http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/illinois-wesleyan/article_a8c9060e-2f1e-11df-b47c-001cc4c002e0.html) college basketball team from Illinois.

Now we can all ponder whether or not the University of Illinois will make their NCAA tourney, or have to settle for (http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/ncb/columns/story?columnist=powers_scott&id=4992908) the NIT. Actually, those of us with sense who care about sports will merely move on to baseball – Opening Day is April 5.

-30-

Old copy can now truly live on

If my memory is correct, I once wrote a commentary in a college newspaper that suggested rape could serve as a form of entertainment – for the men, at least.

The commentary had a serious point – that the student body of which I was a part of at Illinois Wesleyan University just over two decades ago had its share of petty gripes about stupid issues and tended to ignore real problems.

I REMEMBER TRYING to point out with the column in question that the overall lifestyle of a student wasn’t all that bad; that there are people who live with far more serious problems than we confronted.

But the piece in question was also intended to be parody. So to ensure that no one could possibly take the column in question literally, I laid the rhetoric on so thick.

I was afraid someone would think I was being literal, so I laid on the absurdities. No one could possibly take on its face value a piece that suggested rape could be acceptable (even though there are people who live in environments where the threat of it is a daily possibility).

I recall that the student body (or at least a few vociferous letter writers) was ticked off at me, and some even called for my dismissal from the student newspaper I wrote for. At least for a week, until some other issue came along to stoke their anger.

THEN, THAT PARTICULAR column receded into the background. For all I know, most copies of that particular edition of the student newspaper (known as The Argus, which inspired the name of this particular website) have long been turned into mulch. I know of a few places that kept bound copies of the newspaper for archival purposes, so maybe somebody who happened to feel a need to thoroughly read copy from 1983-84 would stumble across the piece.

If so, I haven’t heard from them throughout the years.

But now, the wonders of the Internet have me wondering if/when this copy will pop back into my life.

That question came to mind after reading a story published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, about various people who want college newspaper websites to do things to cover up the old copy that might get people ticked off about themselves.

ONE WAS A Marine who thinks his military colleagues would not appreciate his political views from college days, while another is a lawyer who doesn’t like to be reminded that he was once arrested for burglary.

And now, you can add to that category myself, the guy who in theory could be accused of once advocating rape as a form of entertainment.

Despite this, I’m not about to ask anyone at my alma mater to expunge copy from the website that depicts the old issues of The Argus, scanned into the computer so that people can read them in their original form on printed pages.

For one thing, the actual technology doesn’t really remove anything from the Internet. It merely puts up layers that “hides” the old copy, making it less likely that people would stumble onto it.

WHICH MEANS THAT someone who really knows what they are doing (instead of just typing a name or phrase into a Google search engine) is going to be able to find it, no matter what is done.

Besides, the fact is that I wrote that particular piece in question. I ought to have to live with it (along with the follow-up story that ran in a parody of the student newspaper, in which an angry mob forced its way into my dorm room and violated me in every way possible).

That would be my response to anyone who thinks that they’re entitled to have potentially negative copy about themselves removed.

It happened. It was published. Those old archives being transferred to forms on the Internet can only be reliable if we’re assured that we’re reading exactly what was originally published.

OTHERWISE, PUTTING AMENDED versions of old copy on the Internet is a complete waste of time and space.

It also is my basic policy with regards to making changes to commentary published at the Chicago Argus or its sister weblog, The South Chicagoan. I will correct errors, but I will not rewrite the old copy.

That would appear to me to be an attempt to cover up my own mistakes. I ought to have to live with them, just like everybody else ought to have to live with theirs.

Now for those of you who are voyeuristic enough to try to find the old commentary, I must admit I couldn’t find it when I went through the newspaper’s web presence. I have never seen this particular column crop up in connection with a search engine check of my name (which I do periodically to see if anyone is reprinting my copyrighted commentary here without providing me compensation – it happens occasionally).

BUT I ALSO am an Internet amateur. So I’m sure someone more skilled and with much more patience than myself could find it, although I would have to wonder why they don’t have anything better to do with their time than search for a 26-year-old piece of parody.

And when it comes down to the bottom line, I’m not apologizing for writing that column. I still believe that people often get worked up complaining about the stupid trivialities of life, rather than focusing on issues of importance.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: One professional reporter thinks her old college newspaper column about the “hook-up culture” on campus (http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i36/36a00103.htm) detracts from her current reputation.

By and large, I have fond memories of writing for my college’s student newspaper and am willing (http://www.iwu.edu/~theargus/) to stand by just about every word I wrote back then, even if my prose in those days was often too convoluted.