No strike for Chicago school teachers! No pennant (not yet) for the Cubs

Believe it or not, something positive was happening in the early hours of Tuesday – even though I’m sure that segment of our city’s society determined to root for the Chicago Cubs thinks it was a miserable time.
 

LEWIS: Reached a late-night deal w/ schools

The Chicago Teachers Union was actually reaching an agreement with the Chicago Public Schools toward a new contract for public school faculty.

TUESDAY HAD BEEN the strike date previously set, meaning there was a good chance that this would have been the day in which we’d have to endure the sight of teachers walking the picket line, union President Karen Lewis taking the name of Rahm Emanuel in vain, and parents trying to figure out what to do with their kids while they go to work.

Which I’m sure would have added to the sense of depression that the Cubs-fan segment of our city would have felt; after seeing the would-be heroics of Jake Arietta and Kris Bryant erased in what became a 6-5 loss to the San Francisco Giants that meant the Cubs would have to wait a day or two before seeing if they advance in the National League playoffs.

It really was a surprise moment – the teachers deciding not to take to the picket lines, that is. I had braced myself for the thought of outraged labor rhetoric to be spewed in coming days as long-lasting tensions would come pouring out.

Heck, it was around 10 p.m. that Lewis was making public statements saying we should expect the worst to happen. Only for the decision to be made about Midnight that the sides were close enough that there would be no need for picket lines – or a strike.

OF COURSE, UNION officials made it be known that the agreement was merely a “tentative” one, meaning that things could still fall apart.

“A tentative agreement is not a final contract,” union officials said in a midnight statement. “Every active member of the Chicago Teachers Union will have an opportunity to review and vote on the agreement before a contract is ratified.”

 

EMANUEL: Mayor spared aggravation

It wasn’t sure when the union’s House of Delegates, then the full union, would take the votes that would formally approve a contract on their part.

But it ought to give us a sigh of relief that we’re not going to have to endure the rigors of a teachers’ strike in Chicago – which would have caused so many frayed tempers and I’m sure would have given pleasure to no one.

EXCEPT MAYBE DONALD Trump, who would have gleefully used it as a rhetorical excuse to bash us about some more. Heck, it’s not like anyone here was going to vote for the goober. What does he have to lose?

For the record, the agreement is for a four-year contract, meaning that Emanuel will be able to get through the rest of his current mayoral term without having labor strife from the teachers’ union. He can focus on all the other entities that want to demean him for their own various reasons.

The offer includes cost-of-living increases of 2 percent and 2.5 percent in the two final years of the deal, and does not require teachers to pay a larger share to cover the cost of their eventual pensions. Although people hired to teach in the Chicago Public Schools in the future will have to pay a larger share of their pensions. Which I’m sure they view as a problem to deal with in the future, so long as the current faculty are protected.

Money to cover the cost of the slight pay raise and pension expenses will come from tax increment finance district funds made available by the city, which Cook County Clerk David Orr said was "a short-term fix" and that, "City Hall continues to dodge a fundamental problem with TIFs."

FOR HIS PART, Emanuel acted pleased, particularly by the fact he won’t have all those p-o’ed parents to deal with. “Students across Chicago will be in school this morning and on the path to a stronger and brighter future,” the mayor told reporter-types Tuesday morning at City Hall.

 

The source of Wrigleyville's aggravation Tuesday

That part about “stronger and brighter” might be a touch of exaggeration. But I don’t doubt the sincerity of pleasure at not having the Chicago schools in the national attention because of a teachers’ strike.

Who knows? It may even turn out that not having to deal with a strike will help some of those Cubs fan-types of people deal with the fact their favorite ball club didn’t clinch its spot Monday in the next round of the National League playoffs – even though they jumped out to an early lead with that Arietta home run.

And now, the schoolchildren of Chicago will be able to discuss Monday night’s victory in the schoolyards of the city – that is, if they were even capable of staying up that late on a school night, just to watch a ball game.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Hopefully, by now you've figured out where to find Channel FS1. Otherwise known as Fox Sports on your cable television lineup. And if you haven't keep in mind that maybe you're being spared much anguish watching ballgames like the one Monday night.

Do we get all-Chi World Series in ’16?

Perhaps I’m just too much of a cynic, or most definitely not the idealist dreamer that comprises Chicago Cubs fans. But I’m certainly not amongst the ranks of people already making late October plans for a World Series to be played entirely within the city limits of the nation’s greatest city.

Who'd have won if Chicago had got ...

Yes, I already hear some people speculating about the notion of the American and National league champions being the two Chicago ball clubs, which would make for the first all-Chicago World Series in 110 years.

AFTER ALL, THE two teams currently with the best records in their respective leagues are the Chicago White Sox and those ragamuffins who typically stink out the joint at Clark and Addison – but this season haven’t been quite as awful as they usually are.

I just can’t get into the baseball fantasies yet, because there’s still plenty more time. We haven’t even hit the Memorial Day holiday, which is the one-third point of the baseball season.

That’s usually the point at which we can look at the standings and decide if a team or two got off to a good start. Any sooner is just ridiculously premature.

Of course, two first place teams on the day we pay tribute to those who gave their lives to fight for this nation’s principles (including the idea that baseball itself is the national pastime) isn’t any guarantee. There’d still be time for a collapse.

IT’S JUST THAT I can see all the ways in which this could fall short and plenty of time to do so. I read a recent commentary figuring out the many millions of seconds during which Donald Trump could right his campaign fortunes and wind up the winner.

That would also mean nearly as many millions of seconds in which either, if not both, of our city’s ball clubs could figure out a way to blow it big time!

 

... an all-Chicago World Series some 39 years ago?

Heck, I still remember 1977 (the summer I was 12, which is an age many figure is when most baseball fans get their permanent mindset established about the game).

I remember the Independence Day celebrations including talk of an all-Chicago World Series. I remember the month of July ending with both Chicago teams in first place.

TWO-THIRDS OF the way into the season, and both teams were World Series-bound, in our dreams. Yet by mid-August, both of them were out of it. In fact, I recall the Cubs collapsed badly enough that it took an end-of-season win streak just for the team to finish the season at 81-81.

As for those “South Side Hit Men” White Sox, they’re probably the best third place team ever that only hard-core fans have any memory of; and even then mostly because their two big bats of Richie Zisk and Oscar Gamble both fled the team after a single season.

There also were those years of 2003 and 2008 when both Chicago teams were in first place in September, and the Cubs actually won division titles (for what that’s worth) both seasons. But the Sox fell apart in the final weeks of ’03.

And as for ’08, both teams may have went to the playoffs. But both of them getting knocked out in the first round means that Tampa Bay and Philadelphia got the bragging rights of a World Series appearance that season.

IT’S WAY TOO early to dream with any seriousness of a City Series becoming the World Series. No matter how much people in this city would crave such an act.

Having the Chicago Cubs win their first National League championship since 1945 would be something that team’s fans would crave.

And the resulting World Series defeat at the hands of the White Sox  (with pitcher Chris Sale getting the victory in the final game against Jake Arrieta) would only add to that team’s loser aura – while also creating a South Side victory parade that would put the ’05 celebration to shame.

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Cubbie power elicits little more than a yawn from some of us these days

I might be a Chicago partisan, but I have to confess to caring less as to whether the Chicago Cubs are able to achieve anything in the National League baseball playoffs beginning Wednesday.

A hero, or a goat, by day's end!

It’s possible that by day’s end, they could be defeated by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the whole thing will be over and done with. Or maybe they’ll last to some point later in October. Who knows?

AND AS FAR as I’m concerned, who cares?

Now I must confess to being an American League partisan when it comes to professional baseball. What attention I do pay to professional baseball this October is going to be to that segment of the playoffs. I found last night's New York Yankees 3-0 loss to the Houston Astros much more intriguing.

It’s conceivable that the World Series could come with the Cubs in it, and I’d be rooting against the ball club that represents the North Side of the city.

I’m sure some people are going to try to argue the city ought to unite. I’m also intelligent enough to know that’s not going to happen!

NO MORE SO than back in 2005 when parts of Chicago were all caught up in White Sox fandom as they won two rounds of playoffs, then took four straight games in the World Series.

While other parts could have cared less. I don’t hold it against those people. I would have considered it phony if they had suddenly “converted” to Soxdom and the city’s American League team.

It reminds me of the television crews a decade ago that made the mistake of heading for the bar scene near Wrigley Field to find baseball fans going berserk – only to find a whole lot of apathy.
 

Some will be focused on United Center

They should have headed south to about 103^rd and Western or maybe around 63^rd and Kedzie – if not Halsted Street just west of U.S. Cellular Field.

I EXPECT TO find a whole lot of apathy in those places this week, and in coming weeks. Halsted, up around Addison Street, will be the place to hang out for scenes of baby blue-clad people who feel the need to engage in drunken stupidity to support the ball club.

The fact is that this two-team town IS the character of the Chicago baseball scene, and in fact the character of Chicago as the whole South Side/North Side dichotomy does dictate a lot of the way things are done in the Second City.

It may well be that the crowd of fanatics who decide to spend their Wednesday night following the Chicago Blackhawks’ home opener (it’s being played simultaneous to the Cubs’ playoff game against Pittsburgh) will be the hard-core of Soxdom who can’t bear to pay attention to the Cubs.
 

It's legitimate, even if you don't remember

Personally, I find it amusing in that it’s not the first time that Cubs playoff baseball upstaged another sports team. Remember 1984 when the Cubs’ final playoff game came the same time that the Chicago Sting won an actual championship for the city? Of course you don’t!

NO ONE DOES. Any ceremonies the Blackhawks had planned to celebrate their three-times-in-six-seasons Stanley Cup championship team will go by the wayside just like the Sting’s North American Soccer League title.

There will be those of us who will see the situation logically enough and will go about our lives Wednesday night – seeing the Cubs as something just a little too pointless to pay attention to on a regular basis. Perhaps it ought to be thought of as a virus that we somehow got inoculated against by our Sout’ Side existence.

Now none of this ought to be interpreted as making excuses for the level of mediocrity that came from the White Sox in 2015. It was a disappointing season, perhaps balanced out by the fact that the Cubs performed far better than anyone had a right to expect.

Besides, regardless of what happens Wednesday, we all know that the hard-core of Cubdom are going to forevermore talk of this year as a success – no matter what happens. How many people think of 1969 as some major moment; instead of just being the year they lost a division title to a team that had never finished higher than next-to-last place.
 

Will he garner a companion on goat list?

OR ANY OF those Cubs division title years of the past when the Cubs managed to fall short – just as in 1984 when Leon Durham put his name in the baseball history books and reinforced the idea that Bill Buckner’s ball-between-the-legs gaffe of two seasons later for the Boston Red Sox had little to do with the “Curse of the Bambino.”

It was about the fact that Buckner was an “ex-Cub” and Wednesday could wind up being yet another example of how Cubbiness overcomes common sense in determining who wins and who loses on the playing field.

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