It’s that World Series time of year – which ballclub do we follow in Chi?

I’m amused by the knowledge that Jake Peavy is scheduled to start the second game of the World Series on Wednesday, pitching for the San Francisco Giants as they try to win their third World Series title in the past five years.

For let’s not forget that Peavy also was active this time of year one year ago – he was with that Boston Red Sox ballclub that managed to slip an American League championship in between two last place seasons. He got to pitch in the 2013 World Series.

TWO YEARS IN a row, Peavy is a starting pitcher for ball clubs that have a shot at the top title in professional baseball.

Of course, during the parts of five seasons that Peavy was a starting pitcher for the Chicago White Sox, he was supposed to be the big game pitcher who would lead the Sox to a World Series appearance.

Only it never happened. The White Sox flirted with playoff baseball during his time in Chicago. But it never was fulfilled for the South Side ballclub and its fans.

So what should we think when Peavy pitches on Wednesday. Are we going to secretly be rooting for him? Or wondering why the big bum couldn’t get his act together for Chicago (a 36-win, 29-loss, 4.00 earned run average record was far from what the White Sox expected).

NOW I’M NOT necessarily wishing ill will on Peavy. I’m just pointing out he’s one of the few ballplayers who will be taking the field beginning Tuesday in this year’s World Series matchup between American League champion Kansas City Royals and the National League champ San Francisco Giants that has a Chicago connection.

One of the few for whom we can scream at our television sets “Why couldn’t you do that here!!?!?” while watching him play the summer game in the days leading up to Halloween.

He’s not the only one.

There’s also Jason Frasor, a relief pitcher who’s on the roster of the Kansas City Royals.

SOME MAY REMEMBER he pitched part of a season (the second half of 2011) with the White Sox. It wasn’t all that substantial.

His connection is more home-bound. He was born in Chicago, raised in suburban Oak Forest and played college baseball at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale – before going into the professional ranks that has seen him pitch in Toronto and Arlington, Texas, along with the Royals and the White Sox.

It will be a first World Series appearance for Frasor – in fact, this is the first time he’s ever played for a ballclub that managed to get into the playoffs.

Thank goodness for all those wild cards that now permit lesser ball clubs to have a chance at a league championship and World Series appearance. Otherwise, the Royals would all be sitting at home, on account of the fact that the Detroit Tigers were one game better than they were during the regular season.

BUT WE DO have these expanded playoffs in baseball, and some people like the idea of these almost-good enough teams getting a second chance. Which the Royals have take advantage of – having not lost a single ballgame during the playoffs. While also giving us the all-Wild Card World Series for 2014.

Beginning with that wild card qualifier game against the Oakland Athletics – who had the guy who many thought was going to be the Chicago connection to this year’s World Series.

After all, the White Sox’ Adam Dunn was traded to Oakland in early September, giving them a big bat (home runs, plus many strikeouts) to bolster the team in October.

Yet his “Super Whiff” characteristics kept Dunn from even playing in Oakland’s one playoff game – in which Kansas City overcame the rest of the team, got hot at the right time and has given us countless moments on television of watching one-time Royals third baseman George Brett cheer on the boys in baby blue as they try to win their first World Series title since that ball club Kansas City had in 1985.

MUCH HAS BEEN made of the fact that Kansas City hasn’t won anything since the middle of the Reagan Administration. Although those of us who will be watching the World Series on television this week and next will snicker at the idea of 1985 being all that distant.

Particularly for North Side baseball partisans – where despite playoff appearances in recent years, there hasn’t been a World Series victory since the days when the U.S. flag only had 46 stars.

Nor even an appearance since (with apologies to Steve Goodman) “the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.”

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No memories of Medwick, but a World Series pair Cobb could comprehend

I was disappointed a couple of days ago when the Boston Red Sox managed to win the American League championship – I was hoping that the Detroit Tigers would prevail.

Because that would have meant a Tigers-St. Louis Cardinals matchup in the World Series beginning Wednesday. Considering that part of a World Series coverage includes a historical review of all the other times the two teams have played each other, we invariably would have been able to review 1934.

THAT WAS THE World Series between St. Louis and Detroit in which Tigers fans – outraged at the way Cardinals star Joe Medwick was kicking their behind on the field – started pelting him with fruit and vegetables and pop bottles, then turned to hot dogs and newspapers when they ran out.

The situation became so bad that then-baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Landis ordered Medwick removed from the game – which the Cardinals won anyway.

I still think Medwick’s after-game response was one of the funniest (and honest) things I have ever heard from a ballplayer’s mouth – he said he understood why Tigers fans were upset, but couldn’t comprehend why they had brought all those fruits and vegetables to the ballpark in the first place. It would have been fun to relive.

But we’re not going to get those reminisces. Instead, we have 1946 (Enos Slaughter’s unbelievable game-winning run scored from first base), 1967 (when pitcher Bob Gibson “owned” the Red Sox) or 2004 (when the momentum of defeating the New York Yankees in the American League playoffs enabled Boston to defeat a superior Cardinals ballclub in the World Series).

NOT AS FUNNY as Medwick’s moment. But I have to admit to not being offended by a Boston-St. Louis matchup, particularly because it means that the ball clubs with the best regular-season records in the American and National leagues respectively actually went on to win their league championships.

It really will be the two top ball clubs playing for the championship of U.S. baseball (what would constitute a real “World” Series is a subject best written about for another day).

There is a part of me who doesn’t mind when a pair of traditional ball clubs makes it to the World Series. An Atlanta-Tampa Bay matchup in the World Series (which could have happened) just doesn’t have the same “aura” about it! What would a reincarnated Ty Cobb think?!?

Besides, it doesn’t directly involve Chicago – the World Series rarely does.

THIS COULD BE the year that Chicago Cubs fans wind up rooting for Boston, because there’s no way that they’d think of rooting for their arch-rival in St. Louis to win yet another championship.

Meanwhile, Chicago White Sox fans will be watching the performance of Red Sox pitcher Jake Peavy, and will likely tear their hair out of their heads if he winds up being spectacular. A Cy Young Award winner for the San Diego Padres and potential World Series star for the Red Sox who got paid big bucks by the White Sox for injury-prone seasons on the Sout’ Side.

Would Sox fans prefer it if the Cardinals knocked Peavy on his keister for a game or two?

Or will this World Series follow the trend of other World Series played in recent years – nobody outside the home cities of the two teams involved cares much?

Nobody attending Wednesday night's World Series game is getting into the ballpark for $1.20

 

IF SO, IT would be a shame. Because this still is for a championship, and the next week to 10 days could wind up creating moments that will be remembered forevermore.

At least during those times in the future when there is a rain delay and somebody thinks that past highlights shown on the stadium video boards will help pass the time.

Although somehow, I doubt it if anyone in Boston or St. Louis brings fruit and vegetables to pelt their least-favorite player on the opposition. Medwick’s memory will likely remain unique!

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Illinois’ Ebbets Field not in Brooklyn?

What with the Dodgers playing in St. Louis on Friday and Saturday to start off the final round of the National League playoffs, I was amused by a television report about the Ebbets Field that exists in one of the Illinois municipalities that is part of suburban St. Louis.

For it seems that an upscale residential subdivision in Edwardsville (otherwise known as the home of the urban campus of Southern Illinois University) was named after the one-time stadium where the Dodgers played back in the days when they were from the borough of Brooklyn.

THE DEVELOPER, ACCORDING to KSDK-TV in St. Louis, was such a Dodgers baseball fan that the streets in the subdivision were named after such ball club big-names as Steve Garvey, Tommy Lasorda and Duke Snider.

Of course, most of the baseball fans who actually live there root for the Cardinals and aren’t the least bit sympathetic toward the Dodgers – who haven’t appeared in a World Series since 1988 (the year Kirk Gibson did that funky arm-pumping thing when he hit that game-winning home run off future Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley).

Although I have to confess to having a knee-jerk reaction to the report. It’s too bad that an “Ebbets Field Estates” (the formal name of the subdivision) couldn’t have been built in Brooklyn, rather than Edwardsville.

By that, I’m referring to the Illinois municipality that is part of the St. Louis metropolitan area – not the borough of some 2.5 million people that is the former New York home of the Dodgers. It’s right on the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, but doesn’t get the straight-ahead view of downtown and the Arch like East St. Louis does.

EBBETS FIELD IN Brooklyn. Even if all in Illinois, it has a ring to it that would draw national attention – even though the municipality has barely 600 residents, almost all of whom are African-American (it’s the oldest town incorporated BY black people anywhere in the United States).

Where the name originates

 

I’m sure the Brooklyn officials would have gone along, although I suspect the developers probably wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with the idea.

Brooklyn, as in Illinois, has so little in the way of business that the Wikipedia page for the municipality uses a photograph of the village’s “adult entertainment strip” to illustrate the community.

An entrance to Ill.'s Brooklyn

Ouch!

AND YES, I should confess that the only reason I personally am aware of Brooklyn, Ill.’s existence is that I happened to notice it once while driving by on my way to St. Louis proper. It’s small enough that I guess many people don’t see it if they don’t specifically know to look for it.

All the more reason for an Ebbets Field in Edwardsville – a municipality that claims three one-time major league ballplayers (Lee Wheat, Jason Isringhausen and Mark Little) among its residents throughout the years.

So why I am getting all this worked up over an amusing bit of trivia that has nothing to do with the world of Chicago baseball?

Largely because this is October, and Chicago is so irrelevant to this time of the season when it comes to baseball. The 2005 and 2008 seasons were such aberrations in Chicago baseball history – although seeing both ballclubs blow it in the first round in that latter season seemed predictable).

IF NOT FOR this, we’d have to be obsessing over how delusional those Chicago Cubs fans were who thought seriously that Joe Girardi would ever give up a New York Yankees managerial post to be a part of the Wrigley Field scene!

Will cause disputes for years to come

While also having to be concerned about those Chicago White Sox fans who will get all upset over the sight of Jake Peavy pitching for the Boston Red Sox in their round of playoffs beginning Saturday against the Detroit Tigers – wondering why he could never have stayed healthy enough to pitch like his one-time Cy Young Award-self back when he was with the White Sox.

 

Even if outfielder Avisail Garcia (acquired for Peavy in this season’s big trade) goes on to become a big star for the Sox, it will never fully erase the frustration of Peavy’s performance – which was a large part of why the White Sox’ Ozzie Guillen era ended merely with a winning record, instead of a repeat performance in the World Series.

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I was kidding, Quinn apparently isn’t

I was joking about the other day when I hinted that Chicagoans might pretend that White Sox pitcher Jake Peavy was JFK and stuff the ballot box – so to speak – in favor of getting him on the American League All-Star team.

But it seems that some people took such an idea seriously.

BECAUSE AMONG THE stunts being employed on the Internet this week to get more people to pick Peavy to be the final member of the team is a video message from none other than Gov. Pat Quinn.

Who apparently has seen how both President Barack Obama and the Daley family has been able to bolster their public credentials by rooting for the Sout’ Side team.

His video message proclaims himself to be a “die-hard” fan of the White Sox and of Peavy – which in-and-of itself shows you that something is off. Since the hard-core of White Sox fandom have been so appalled by Peavy in recent years that we’re still wondering if his performance this season is a fluke.

Will we seriously see a significant number of people picking Peavy, just because Pat Quinn tells us to?

THIS IS THE man whose approval ratings are so low that we have to wonder how he ever got elected in the first place (a mediocre opponent who repulsed Chicagoans is how, but that’s a topic for another day).

It just strikes me as laughable that anybody’s attempt to stuff a ballot box would include the image of Quinn. I’m wondering how many people will be so bored that they will disregard it.

Or will hear what Quinn has to say, and decide to pick somebody else just out of spite?

We’ll see for sure how all this turns out come Thursday, since this is the day that the “final all-star” is supposed to be announced. All those people being able to cast multiple votes on the Internet will not be able to do so after today.

WE’LL ALSO HAVE to see just how it works out to see that White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals fans are ganging up – with Sox fans being asked to pick Peavy and David Freese (the World Series hero last year) of the Cardinals to be the last member of the National League All-Star team.

All those Missouri and Southern Illinois baseball fans are being asked to reciprocate with a vote for Peavy.

Nonetheless, I’m not sure if that truly is enough to win something as superficial as this (which usually are the things we take the most seriously, sadly enough).

For even though Quinn tells us that Peavy has the most complete games in the American League and has held hitters to a .215 batting average this season, I wonder how many of those fans in Japan want to see their national sensation, Yu Darvish, pitch in the game.

DARVISH OF THE Texas Rangers (not the lawmen of old) also is among the ballplayers in line for the final spot on the American League roster – which will (hopefully) slap the National League all-stars silly when they play come Tuesday in Kansas City.

He will get that nationalistic vote. And his appearance on the team would boost Major League Baseball’s desires to gain more international fans. Peavy might well be standing in the way of progress!

Although as we prepare to find out just who gets to be on the All-Star Team, I must admit to having one question.

If we have the image of Peavy as John Kennedy – winning an election due to (ideologues desperately want to believe) stuffed ballot boxes from Chicago – then what does that make the Chicago Cubs?

ARE THEY THE equivalent of an unshaven Richard Nixon, looking deathly ill on national television?

That would certainly explain a lot about the quality of play they have shown this season!

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): NATO 3 hearing Monday all for show

The three young men who face criminal charges for what prosecutors want us to  believe was their subversive attempt to bring down our society during the NATO Summit held in Chicago back in May had a court date Monday that was about nothing but putting on a show.



The stars of Monday's show. Photographs provided by Chicago Police Department



The three men, who face charges such as conspiracy to commit terrorism and possession of explosives, were at the Criminal Courts building for arraignment – which is the point at which a defendant enters his (or her) plea to the charges they face.

BUT IT ISN’T anything uncertain. Because the defendant pleads “not guilty,” gets assigned to a trial judge, THEN the attorneys and prosecutors can seriously start negotiating toward a plea, or work toward having a trial.

It’s not like there was a chance that any of the three were going to plead “guilty” on Monday, even though some people in our society seem to think that every defendant ought to enter a guilty plea to spare the county the cost of conducting a trial.

So the proceedings were a formality.

Although I couldn’t help but notice the news accounts of the court hearing, which pointed out the specially-colored outfits the defendants were wearing – which indicate that all three are being held at the Cook County Jail in protective custody.

EVEN THE COURT spectators (many of whom are inclined to believe the three defendants in this case are making a political statement with their incarceration) played the part – holding clenched fists in the air to show their solidarity with the men as they made their brief appearance before Judge Thaddeus Wilson.

About the only thing that can really be said about Monday’s proceedings is that it means yet another step in the legal procedure is complete. Maybe now this case can take on a lower profile for some time – and attorneys can work on trying to resolve it in some sensible manner.

And maybe we’ll someday get a legitimate answer to the “big” question about this case – were these men arrested for plotting to blow up police stations and squad cars, or did they get busted for possessing beer-making equipment?

What other items are worthy of noting as we resident of the southwest corner of Lake Michigan prepare for the mid-week Independence Day holiday?

DID MIGHTY QUINN FEEL AT HOME?:  It amuses me the lengths government officials will go to in order to provide a scenic background for an event.

QUINN: Maybe he's used to sharks



Take Gov. Pat Quinn, who on Sunday signed into law a measure that prohibits the sale, trade or distribution of shark fins. The governor says such a ban will help global efforts to save the shark population worldwide. The fins have some value in Asian cuisines, and the fin-less sharks often get dumped back into the sea.

Quinn signed the bill into law during  a ceremony held at the Shedd Aquarium, with a tank filled with sharks in the background.

Seeing all those sharks swimming around behind Quinn’s head, looking as though they were ready to pounce on the governor? It really didn’t seem too different from the Legislature and its leadership, preparing to devour Quinn’s desires whenever it suits their needs.

A CHICAGO-STYLE TURNOUT FOR ALL-STAR VOTE: The American and National league All-Star teams have largely been chosen, with five Chicago ballplayers being picked to play in the game to be held next week in Kansas City.

But in a gimmick created in recent years, fans will get to pick one more member of each team – creating the chance that White Sox pitcher Jake Peavy could still get chosen.

Yet he has to be considered a long-shot to win the Internet-based election that runs through Thursday. Texas Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish is going to get a strong vote from people in Japan who’d like to see one of their countrymen on the team. There’s also the chance that Royals fans would like to see their pitcher, Jonathan Broxton, get a chance to be on the team that plays in their city’s ballpark.

That is, unless fans of the Sout’ Side’s ballclub can get behind their pitcher. Perhaps they should pretend he’s JFK, then turn out to vote en masse.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): What makes place historic? Helps if old

It seems Chicago has a new site on the National Register of Historic Places – although my guess is that it won’t be one that comes to most peoples’ minds.

The National Park Service has created the Cermak Road Bridge Historic District fto help influence future development of the blocks around the bridge that crosses over the South branch of the Chicago River.

I DON’T KNOW of anybody who lives in that district, or of any businesses in that area that I patronize on a regular basis. In fact, when I think of the area, all I envision are some warehouses.

Yet that is what federal and state officials (the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency helps administer the historic sites program) are hoping to pay tribute to. Because it seems that all of the buildings within the district date back to the first few years of the 20^th Century, and the bridge also was constructed back in the same time period.

In short, it is a place that has changed very little despite the passage of time. It still looks much the same. So it gets the historic designation – even though any events that actually occurred in that area during the past century likely wouldn’t trigger any memories in the minds of the average person.

The desire to preserve the “feel” of Chicago from those old days is what will be behind the historic designation. I’m just wondering how long will it be before some developer tries to come up with ideas for “revitalizing” the area that he complains are being interfered with by these “history zealots” the way that some people rant and rage about environmentalists somehow interfering with business?

YES, I HAVE to admit to getting a kick out of this newest historic site designation. Because I realize that our society has to keep some sense of where we’ve been, if we’re to fully appreciate what direction we ought to be heading in.

It would be easy for one new development to crop up to something of significance and ruin the effect. To me, the best example of that is the National Park that was created out of the blocks immediately surrounding the Abraham Lincoln home in Springfield, Ill.

Federal officials try to make the neighborhood look like it did when the Lincoln family actually lived there in the 1850s. But because officials didn’t get control of all the property in the area until the 1940s, some of the neighborhood houses have advanced beyond the desired time period. It can have a jarring effect.

What else is notable these days about life along the shores of the southwestern portions of Lake Michigan?

NOW WE KNOW WHAT HE WON’T DO:  I got my chuckles from listening to soon-to-be former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who told us he won’t run for political office and won’t become a criminal defense attorney.

He claims not to know what he’s going to do with his life once his “summer break” is complete. It seems he did make a recommendation to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., as to who he thinks should succeed him. But it seems that Durbin is honoring Fitzgerald’s desire not to publicly name that person at this point.

So we really don’t know at this point what’s going to become of the man, except for one thing.

He’s not planning to go back to his native New York City; he’s come to love living in Chicago. He says he’s staying. Which means on some level, he has some sense!

YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN:  Author Thomas Wolfe could have written the headline for the reports this week about the disappointment felt by Barack Obama for the couple of days he was in town during the NATO Summit held at McCormick Place.

The president publicly said that he couldn’t be at Wrigley Field to watch his fan favorite White Sox beat up on the Cubs because he’s not allowed to have much fun built into his working schedule.

But on a more serious note, he wasn’t even allowed to stop by the family residence in the Hyde Park neighborhood for a quickie visit. Which was something he had hoped to do.

Security was so tight that the roads leading up to his home were shut down for the duration. Even the president got inconvenienced by the NATO-related security.

SOMETHING FOR SOX FANS TO LOOK FORWARD TO?:  Could the big story of Chicago baseball in 2012 turn out to be a battle for who gets to be Comeback Player of the Year?

The annual award to the player who showed the most improvement compared to the prior year is something that could wind up being won by a White Sox – although whether it would be the “Big Donkey” or the man some fans try to call “Joliet Jake” is arguable.

The “Donkey,” of course, is Adam Dunn, who has wisecracked about how he expects to win the award this year because of how awful his 2011 season was.  Going into Friday, Dunn had hit 14 home runs and had a .568 slugging percentage – although the one category he was leading the American League in was strikeouts (68 in 155 at-bats).

But then there is Jake Peavy – the one-time National League Cy Young Award winner who has been truly mediocre pitching in Chicago. Thus far this year, he has a 5-1 won/loss record with a 2.39 earned run average and has a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5-1 – which is overpowering.

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Are they In? Are they Out? Or are White Sox destined to be an 81-81 ballclub?

It’s days like Sunday that can be maddening for a fan of a professional baseball club.

The Chicago White Sox managed to defeat the Minnesota Twins 7-0, with pitcher Jake Peavy showing why he was once the best pitcher in the National League (Cy Young Award, 2007) and what he could still be for the White Sox.

THAT VICTORY COMPLETED a three-game sweep of the Twins in their own Minneapolis stadium. Typically, beating up on a division rival would be a significant step toward winning their division title for this season.

But this three-game series victory comes right after the White Sox GOT swept in a four-game series by the New York Yankees, which came right after losing two games of a three-game series to the Boston Red Sox.

People were all too ready to write off the White Sox as dead for this season.

Now, some people are going to speculate that perhaps there’s still life in the baseball corpse at 35^th and Shields (although to be honest, the only reason the 55-58 White Sox are in contention is because their American League Central division is weak).

IF THE WHITE Sox do win their division and qualify for the playoffs come October, they will still deserve to be the first team knocked out of post-season play.

If anything, it is the maddening aspect of 2011 that will be remembered – the year in which slugger Adam Dunn (who was supposed to be the big bat that ensured this would be a championship season) is likely to have the worst hitting season ever for a regular, every-day ballplayer (a batting average as of Sunday of .163 with only 11 home runs, rather than about 30).

Just as watching last week when the White Sox won a series against the division-leading Detroit Tigers, then took the first game against the Red Sox. It looked like this was the beginning of the surge that would put them into the lead, and general manager Ken Williams made comments about how there would NOT be any last-minute trades to jettison salary).

Then came the losing.

OR PERHAPS IT was like back in June when beating up on the Cubs put the White Sox at a perfect .500 won-loss record. That, too, was the beginning of a losing streak.

So what do we have to look forward to this season? A perpetual fight to reach .500? Will we literally end 2011 with a final-week winning streak that brings the ballclub to a perfect record of 81-81?

That would be even more maddening than the Chicago Cubs, who after going through two-thirds of the season looking like they wouldn’t have a single three-game winning streak actually managed last week to win seven games in a row.

But at 49-66, the Cubs make the Kansas City Royals look good.

IT ALL HAS me waiting for the winter leagues.

The thought of beisbol being played in November and December in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela sounds appealing, while wondering if White Sox spare outfielder Alejandro de Aza (a .308 batting average with 1 home run and 2 runs batted in during 26 major league at-bats this season) will once again play ball in the Dominican League.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Who gets in the last word on Blagojevich?

Prosecuting attorneys who want to turn former Gov. Rod Blagojevich into another notch of victory on their records formally ended their questioning during his criminal trial. Not that such a move means that Milorod will now sit down and shut up.

BLAGOJEVICH: Will he get last word?



For Tuesday became the day that Blagojevich continued to testify, as his own attorneys now ask him questions that relate to the most embarrassing moments the former governor had during his days of questioning by prosecutors.

IT’S CALLED “REDIRECT,” and it is limited to bringing out the additional details that would be relevant, but that prosecutors didn’t want to hear in response to their own questions. It was meant to give Blagojevich the "final" say, as was Blagojevich's stunt of walking up to Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar after his testimony ended Tuesday and trying to shake his hand.

In short, we’re engaged in a serious back-and-forth between the prosecution and defense to see who can have the last word in terms of Blagojevich’s testimony during his own criminal trial – in which closing arguments (hopefully) will begin by week's end.

In his final bit of questioning on Tuesday by prosecutors, the federal government tried to get Blagojevich to say that he wanted to give his appointment of a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois to Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., in exchange for a campaign contribution that would bolster his own future political options.

Anyone who knows anything about the level of pettiness that can occur among Illinois politicos knows (and it has come out during the trial as well) that Blagojevich and Jackson didn’t get along. My guess is that Jackson is the absolute LAST person Blagojevich would have wanted to have the position.

THE IDEA THAT he would try to “shake down” the allies of Barack Obama to let the incoming president have a say in who would replace him in the Senate would be more believable.

Then again, this is a prosecution that started out their questioning of Blagojevich last week by asking him if he really was a “convicted liar” (a reference to the lone conviction that prosecutors got during his first trial).

If one looks at this objectively, that question is so loaded and stupid that it undercuts the credibility of prosecutors. Then again, I doubt many people care these days if Blagojevich’s feelings get hurt.

What else is notable these days along the shores of Lake Michigan – aside from the intense heat (heat index readings of up to 103 degrees) that is causing many of us to spend as much time in air-conditioned facilities as possible?

CHICO: Still a part of political scene



A REWARD FOR A HARD-FOUGHT CAMPAIGN?: So Gery Chico, the one-time Chicago Board of Education president and holder of other education-related posts who ran an aggressive campaign for mayor, gets to move on to his next political position.



It seems that the Chicago attorney has found his niche in positions that allow him to be an apparent expert in public education. For Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday officially named Chico to be head of the Illinois State Board of Education.



Quinn says he liked Chico’s campaign rhetoric about education related issues, and likes the idea of putting public education across Illinois into the hands of someone who once ran the Chicago Public Schools (along with Paul Vallas) and most recently was in charge of the City Colleges of Chicago.

It also means that Chico can continue to have a life in public service outside of the realm of Mayor Rahm Emanuel – who never would have appointed Chico to any post. It will be interesting to see how things play out the first time that Chico and new Chicago schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard wind up in conflict on some point.

SENSE PREVAILS. NO CHARGES: Quinn ordered the Legislature back to Springfield for a special session. But the intriguing “news” from the capital city comes from the state’s attorney for Sangamon County, Ill.

Scene of the "crime?" Not according to the state's attorney for Springfield.



He’s not going to file criminal charges against state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline. We can all now breathe a sigh of relief. Although the sight of a “perp walk” for a sitting senator could have been entertaining.

Jacobs is the senator who touched/ poked/slapped/pushed/punched Senate colleague Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, in the chest following a shouting match over a bill related to Commonwealth Edison (Jacob’s father, former legislator Denny Jacobs, is one of their lobbyists).

McCarter is the guy who has been screaming how he wants “Justice!!!” for the physical assault he had to endure. Now, he’s not going to get it, with State’s Attorney John Milhiser issuing a statement saying the spat is, “best resolved internally by the Senate and not the criminal courts.”

THE QUINTESSENTIAL SOX – PEAVY OR DANKS?: I can’t make up my mind which Chicago White Sox pitcher is more representative of the 2011 season.

Jake Peavy is the one-time National League Cy Young Award winner who hasn’t pitched anywhere near that level of excellence in Chicago, and is now the subject of “day to day” scrutiny of his right groin, which suffered a strain when he pitched Sunday against the Detroit Tigers.

John Danks, of course, has been gaining national attention because he went the first two months of this season without registering a “win.” He took that 0-8 record into Monday night’s game against the Seattle Mariners, who will now be the first team whom Danks actually managed to beat in ’11.

So are the White Sox, who as of Tuesday had won six of their last eight games, turning things around for this season, as symbolized by Danks? Or is the Sout’ Side’s ballclub destined to be remembered this season for a groin pull?

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Will Peavy top Dean in ranks of Chicago baseball? Is he payback for Trout?

I’m starting to wonder if Jake Peavy is destined to be the best ballplayer to never accomplish a thing with a Chicago baseball club.

Peavy is the National League’s former Cy Young Award winner (as in the best pitcher in that league in 2007) who hasn’t shown a sign of greatness since joining the Chicago White Sox mid-way through the 2009 season.

I’LL CONCEDE THINGS started out promisingly. He won the three games he started when he first came to the team in 2009. But since then, the Jake Peavy story is one of injuries keeping him from pitching on a regular basis.

During his time with the White Sox, he has 10 wins, 6 losses, an earned run average of 4.11, with 40 walks and 111 strikeouts. Which would be acceptable if it came in a single season and Peavy were nothing more than the number four pitcher in the White Sox’ starting rotation.

But this is the man who supposedly was going to supplant Mark Buehrle as the White Sox’ top pitcher. The man who was going to be the dominant ace from Chicago. The one who would ensure that the White Sox would get another American League championship (if not a World Series title) in our current lifetime.

Now, we’re getting reports that Peavy may have become so anxious to return (and start earning the $16 million he is to be paid for the 2011 season) that he may have hurt his arm a little further, making it likely he will miss even more of this season. He definitely won’t be on hand when the White Sox start their season April 1 in Cleveland against the Indians.

DID THE SAN Diego Padres know what they were doing when they signed him to a big-money contract, then trade him away to Chicago?

I’m not implying some sort of conspiracy (leave that to Toronto Blue Jays fans still bitter over acquiring pitcher Mike Sirotka from the White Sox right as his arm went bad). I’m just wondering if Peavy is destined to be another hard-luck story that is so typical to Chicago baseball.

I’d say Peavy ranks up there with Dizzy Dean in the annals of Chicago baseball.

Dean is the Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher whom everybody remembers for his goofy temperament and his star years with the St. Louis Cardinals (including that peak year of 1934 when he won 30 games and he had a 2.66 earned run average.

BUT DEAN ALSO did four seasons with the Chicago Cubs, and nobody remembers his stint on the North Side – unless they’re looking for more examples of ineptitude by Cubs management throughout the years in acquiring athletic talent. Dean made the Hall of Fame DESPITE being a Chicago Cub.

Dean from 1938-41 won 16 games, while losing 8 with a 3.35 earned run average. That’s over four seasons. Which means if Peavy manages to win six more games during the next two seasons that he is under contract to the White Sox, he will match Dizzy both in victories AND in untapped promise.

There’s even the similarity in that Peavy and Dean were undone by injuries. In Dean’s case, it was sudden. The All-Star Game played in 1937, when Dean got hit on the foot by a line drive. His toe was broken, and he tried to come back before the foot was completely healed.

Which meant he had to alter his pitching motion to avoid putting full weight on that foot, Which cost him all of the movement on the ball that made him so special. That is when the Cardinals chose to let him go, and new Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley insisted on giving him what was big money for the era.

BIG BUCKS SPENT in Chicago to reward him for past athletic success. It applies to Peavy just as much as it did to Dean during the waning years of the Great Depression.

Which makes them the exact opposite of somebody like Steve Trout, the one-time White Sox and Cubs pitcher back in the late 1970s and into the 1980s who was a competent pitcher in Chicago – and was one of the regular starting pitchers for the Cubs the year they won their first division title ever in 1984 (13 wins, 7 losses, a 3.41 earned run average (80 wins, 78 losses with nearly 600 strikeouts during his 10 years in Chicago baseball).

In 1987, he was traded to the New York Yankees, who were counting on Trout to bolster their pitching rotation (the team’s weakness during the 1980s) and were willing to give him the big money contract that would have been his reward for a decade of work.

But four losses, no wins and a 6.60 earned run average in a half-season caused the Yankees to trade him away to the Seattle Mariners, while also paying that team $1 million to take him off their hands. It’s no wonder Trout these days is back in the south suburbs (he played his high school ball for Thornwood High School in South Holland – the same school that produced former Chicago Bulls player Eddy Curry – before signing with the White Sox) having to work for a living like the rest of us.

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