Does it boost City Hall's ego too much to order about the Chicago Cubs?

Reading the reports Wednesday about how the Chicago City Council spent significant amounts of time throughout the day debating the merits of the Chicago Cubs’ scheduling practices really makes me wonder why our aldermen feel like they have nothing better to do with their time.

Do the people of this downtown building gain too much ...

Seriously, you’d think that council members would be too busy to spend the amount of time they did contemplating exactly when the Cubs should play their ballgame Friday against the Milwaukee Brewers.

BUT THAT WAS the situation on Wednesday, when the council’s license committee discussed the issue, in advance of the full council taking up the issue for a final vote later in the day.

But then again, I’m sure there are some aldermen who get an emotional kick out of being able to dictate scheduling policy to the Cubs – whereas if any other alderman tried to do such a thing with their local ballclub (or even if the Chicago aldermen tried to tell the White Sox what to do), the response would be the ball club telling the politicos up what orifice they could shove their concerns.

At stake is the Cubs/Brewers weekend series that is scheduled to begin with a 1:20 p.m. ballgame on Friday. But the Cubs, seeing they’re in a pennant race with particular interest in fans in attending this particular ballgame, want it rescheduled as a night game.

As in starting time 7:05 p.m. People work for the day, and there probably could be an even bigger crowd for a Friday night game.

 

.... pleasure by telling these people what they can do?

THE PROBLEM IS that city ordinances that were crafted back when the Cubs gave up their “day game only” tradition at home back in the 1980s strictly limit how many night games can be played at Wrigley Field.

Not only that, the restrictions were put together to make the concept of Friday night and Saturday night ballgames at Clark and Addison streets a non-starter. Alderman Tom Tunney told the Chicago Tribune that the restriction is about giving non-Cub-related business in the Lake View neighborhood (all the bars) a chance to operate on weekend evenings without having to compete with the Cubbie fan crowds that otherwise take over the area 81 game days per year.

Some still seem to think Wrigley Field is lacking in light towers

Now I can appreciate how the Lake View residents living near the century-old ballpark can feel like the Cubs crowds are an annoyance that must have restrictions placed on them to prevent them from becoming the reason the neighborhood gets flushed down the societal toilet.

But I also get that if these people enjoy it as a perk that they live in close proximity to a stadium used by a major league ball club, they also have to accept some inconvenience.

THE REALITY IS that sporting events are scheduled mostly during the evening hours because that is when most people are capable of devoting time to actually attend them.

I don’t doubt other teams are wondering why city officials have any say in when a ballgame is scheduled, or whether it is played in sunshine or by moonlight.

This is one of those occasions when our aldermen get to order around Major League Baseball – as opposed to the times when baseball gets to push around the local government officials in the form of figuring out how to pay for building and maintaining the stadia that are used by these ball clubs.

Of course, the alternative for the Cubs to avoid such political nuisance would be to find a new site to build the stadium with full amenities that they could use to max out the revenues they take in from their fan base.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE even the Cubs realize that a significant part of their popularity is tied to playing their ballgames in the one-time home of the Federal League’s Chicago Whales and even the excess of day ballgames they play.

They’re baseball’s aberration, caused mostly by our aldermen acting in ways I’m sure they’ll claim are meant to benefit their constituents but also have the heavy hand of feeding their own political egos.

This Hall of Famer will be highlight for some

So the Wrigley Field faithful will turn out Friday night for their game against the Brewers, who still have their own chances to overcome the Cubs in the division title standings and could also gain a Wild Card slot into the National League playoffs.

Or, other baseball fans in the city may choose to see the last place-in-their-division Chicago White Sox take on the even-worse-in-their-division San Francisco Giants in a weekend series at Guaranteed Rate Field. For them, the Tim Raines bobblehead figurine being given away Saturday night may be the ultimate attraction.

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BRADY & CALLAHAN: Blasts from political past, or our present loss?

The Illinois political scene lost a pair of individuals who provided a sense of institutional memory in the form of officials who went on to be significant in federal government, while never forgetting just where they came from.


The death of James Brady, the one-time Reagan-era White House press secretary turned into an avid gun control activist after being shot in that 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan himself, came the same day as the death of Gene Callahan.


FOR THOSE WHOSE memories aren’t quite as deep, he was a one-time advisor to Paul Simon when he was Illinois lieutenant governor, then became an advisor to the recently-departed Alan Dixon when he served in the U.S. Senate.


Callahan, who was 80, had just as active a post-government payroll life. For a time, he was the Washington-based lobbyist for Major League baseball. His political spirit will live on in a sense through Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who in addition to being the member of Congress from the Quad Cities is also his daughter.


I remember encountering both Brady and Callahan during my 1990s stint as a reporter-type person at the Statehouse in Springfield when they would return to the capital city to promote their causes and/or keep up their contacts.


What was always clear about both was that although their lives had taken them far from the rural Illinois communities where they were raised (Brady from Centralia, Callahan from Milford), neither had forgotten where they came from and how they got their starts here.


CALLAHAN WAS A columnist with what is now the Springfield-based Journal-Register newspaper when he became a political operative with Simon back when he was our local guy rather than any national figure.


Brady, who was73, had a whole laundry list of political officials he worked for prior to becoming part of the Nixon and Ford administrations in the White House. But the first of them was Everett McKinley Dirksen of Pekin.




While Brady was a life-long Republican and Callahan tended to work for Democrats, what I remember hearing from both of them was the need for a bipartisan cooperation.


I haven’t heard from either man in years, but somehow I suspect they were among the dismayed officials who couldn’t help but wonder where we went wrong in electing officials to government posts who were more determined to create stalemates as their lasting legacy.


NOTHING GETS ACCOMPLISHED. Whoopee!!!!


Heck, Brady eventually was able to persuade Reagan himself to accept the idea that some legal restrictions on firearms was not a national surrender to the “Commies” – the way some ideologues want to perceive it.


It’s really a shame that both men are now gone. Because I wonder if what our political culture really needs these days is a good healthy dose of more people just like them.


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EXTRA: Barry Bonds w/ White Sox; while Robin Ventura became Cubs star?

Major League Baseball will have its annual summer draft in a few days, by which teams divide up all the college and high school ball players to see who gets to play for which professional team.

You can go ahead and give all the analysis to try to figure out who the best amateur ballplayer is out there – one who could actually be good enough to make the Chicago Cubs worthwhile someday.

BUT THE REALITY of the draft process is that it is a crapshoot. An educated guess. Some ballplayers with all the tools and credentials never make it through the minor leagues.

Would Cubs fans have forgetten Santo?

Which is why I found amusing a recent Sporting News story that gave the biggest draft-day screw-up for each major league team. As in a case where a team picked one player who never amounted to much, while a future star got picked later by somebody else.

Such as 1985 when the Chicago White Sox could have had a chance at Barry Bonds, the son of 1970s-era outfielder Bobby Bonds who went on to hit all those home runs – and tick off so many people with his surly personality.

Instead, the White Sox went with Kurt Brown, a catcher, who never made it beyond the minor leagues.

I FIND THE Cubs’ draft gaffe to be more amusing. It was 1989, and the Cubs actually won a division title that season while picking Ty Griffin, an infielder from Georgia Tech who also had played for the U.S. Olympic Baseball Team just the year before.

Griffin was supposed to be the guy who could have kept the Cubs competitive for years to come. Except that he never made it to the major leagues.

While the White Sox was able to get Robin Ventura, an Oklahoma State University star who became a White Sox star and is now their manager, because the Cubs took a pass on him.

Although the Sporting News’ study found that other teams’ worst picks wound up to the benefit of the Chicago baseball scene.

FOR BOTH THE Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals, their gaffe was in 1989 when they could have had Frank Thomas – but took Jeff Jackson and Paul Coleman respectively.

10-1 w/ Toronto this season

Then, there was 2010 when the Arizona Diamondbacks could have had pitcher Chris Sale, but instead picked pitcher Barret Loux.

Sale, of course, has become the White Sox’ top pitcher, and had quite a game last week in his comeback from injury.

As for Loux? He never signed with Arizona, but has played some minor league ball, and is now on the roster of the Iowa Cubs – albeit on their disabled list.

THEN AGAIN, THE reality of the draft is that some of the most interesting picks can come in the lower rounds from players who are presumed to be roster-filler, but wind up amounting to something significant.

Take the 1998 draft when the White Sox used the 38th round pick to take a pitcher from a junior college in Missouri. A year-and-a-half later, he was in Chicago to stay, and this year has a 10-1 record with a 2.10 earned run average.

Who'd have thought then that Mark Buehrle would amount to anything lasting in baseball?

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