Women’s and men’s national soccer matches didn’t attract the same fans

It was quite a day for those of us who consider ourselves fanaticos de futbol, but for very different reasons.

Women's win topped men's loss locally

For this Sunday saw the women’s national team play for the World Cup – and WIN!!! Team U.S.A. beat the Netherlands 2-0 in a championship match played in France, which also was quite the feat because this is the second consecutive World Cup the U.S. women have won.

IT REINFORCES THE very notion that when it comes to women’s soccer, the U.S.A. rules. Our women are better than the women of any of the other 200 or so nations of the world that play soccer.

But later in the day, the men’s national team had their own championship to play for – as in the Gold Cup, the every-other-year tourney for bragging rights across North America and the Caribbean.

Our men took to the pitch, and right here in Chicago. As the Gold Cup championship match this time around was scheduled for Soldier Field. Where the other Team U.S.A. tried to win bragging rights – only to lose 1-0 to Los Tricolores of Mexico.

Which feeds off of one of the most intense rivalries in the world of soccer, as much of the political tension that exists between the neighboring nations spills over onto the pitch.

In L.A, Mexico tops all

DON’T DOUBT THAT for the sizable Mexican-American population of Chicago, they were on hand to see the Mexican nationals issue a symbolic whomp over every nitwit who tries to use the red, and blue as some sort of evidence of their natural inferiority. One-time soccer star Landon Donovan pointed out during the broadcast of the match that the crowd in Chicago seemed to be leaning toward Equipo Mexico.

While a lot of the people chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” every chance they got were hoping for a men’s team victory as further evidence of superiority – and perhaps evidence that Donald Trump isn’t a total whack job every time he shoots his mouth off.

Which is a totally different vibe than one got from people whose interest was in watching the women’s team take on the World.

For the women's team, it really is!

I was at a “watch party” where people gathered to see the Women’s World Cup final who were eager to see a U.S. victory as further evidence that Trump is the ultimate whack job for all his rhetorical nonsense.

FOR TRUMP HAS engaged in his own comments being critical of the women’s national team, because he thinks some of its players don’t conform to his ideal of what an “American woman” ought to be.

Especially forward Megan Rapinoe, who has taken her own pot shots at Trump and even got quoted in the New York Post as saying her presence on the team is an “F You” to our president.

Which the Post tried to write up as evidence of those whacky, soccer-playing broads, only to find many people followed the World Cup specifically because they liked the idea of someone standing up to Trump.

Of course, this whole Soccer day must be miserable for those of us who actually take anything Donald Trump says seriously.

Donald Trump's nightmare front page?

BECAUSE NOT ONLY did the women win (and one of the players managed to drop a U.S. flag on the ground), the men lost – AND to Mexico!!!

Which was actually a happening I enjoyed seeing – the goal in the 73^rd minute by Jonathan dos Santos must have been as agonizing to the ideologues as that of Rapinoe being the hero of the game. And winner of the Golden Boot!

I don’t doubt those people are going to go into overtime with the rhetoric about how soccer is an abomination and how it really doesn’t matter. They weren’t watching anyway. Which means they missed a heck of a show – particularly the portion that occurred at Soldier Field and saw people paying hundreds of dollars per ticket for the right to watch (I had to view on television).

Or perhaps many were like one woman I encountered at a watch party, who while viewing the women’s team going for the glory on behalf of the United States could only generate a great big raspberry for the evening’s activity by the men.

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

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

Could anyone outside Soldier Field hear the sirens?

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

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

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

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

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

Lost to Indianapolis, of all cities

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

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

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

The original siren blarers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ultimate deities of Chicago sporting scene

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

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

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

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Rolling Stones; older than I am, yet still rockin’ away after all these years

Perhaps this is a tacky joke, but I have to wonder what the fine print says for anybody buying tickets to the Rolling Stones’ upcoming U.S. tour – the one that has them traveling the country come spring and summer, with a Soldier Field stop on June 21.

In fact, Chicago will actually be the final stop on the tour – which creates the potential of a band operating on pure adrenaline. They’re going to have to be outright exhausted by that point in time.

CONSIDERING THAT THE key members of the band that has operated for more than a half-century are aged – rock stars Mick Jagger and Keith Richards both are now 75 years old.

Yet carrying on as though they think they’re still in their early 20s, playing music for the masses and carrying on the image of the late, great bluesman Muddy Waters – whose hit song “Rolling Stone” gave the band their very name.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that at age 53, I’m not capable of the kind of stamina one would need to do such a tour. It kind of astounds me that Richards, of all people, would be capable.

But then again, if someone were willing to pay me the kind of money the Rolling Stones will be getting for these shows, I’d figure a way to get myself up and running so as to do it.

A favorite, particularly the cover

BUT THEN AGAIN, the Rolling Stones seem to be a unique institution, performing those concerts that still draw the kinds of crowds to pack stadiums such as Soldier Field.

Whereas most other rock ‘n’ roll bands of the 1960s who still insist on performing live are reduced to events such as the Ribfest held every summer in suburban Naperville.

Or, like the Buckinghams – the one-time Chicago native band named for the fountain – playing venues such as the Paramount Theater of Asbury Park, N.J. (they really played there back on June 21 of this year).

Although the same purpose was served – allowing aging fans to be able to close their eyes and pretend they’re still youthful. And that with the opening guitar riff of “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction),” they can pretend it’s still 1964 and that by listening to “the Stones,” they’re making a statement about how much “the Beatles suck!”

TO BE HONEST, though, watching those old video snippets of when the Beatles came to White Sox Park for a pair of concerts back in August of 1965 (just a few days before I was born) makes me think that event was far more significant than any of the Stones’ concerts – since my own quickie research finds they have played here so many times throughout the decades.

The only way the 2019 concert becomes memorable is if, by chance, there is a fatality in the band and the event becomes an informal memorial tribute. A morbid thought that I'm sure no one is rooting for.

But I’m sure the kind of people paying hundreds of dollars to sit in the outer reaches of the Soldier Field seating bowl aren’t going to let anyone deprive them of a musical experience.

And they’re not about to let some snot-nosed 19-year-old punk make rude comments about the Rolling Stones being a batch of geezers. They’re going to enjoy their money.

NOT THAT I have any intention of showing up – mostly because I think it’s impossible to truly capture the essence of what made the Rolling Stones so incredibly unique in musical annals. Time passes us all by, and what we have left are lasting memories.

So that may be the real essence – listening to those Rolling Stones records I have amongst my collection (yes, I did buy the “Blue & Lonesome” compact disc of a couple of years ago). My memories get triggered every time I play a record or disc.

And as far as I’m concerned, I have a personal favorite recording – although not one that would come to many fans’ minds. It’s “2120 S. Michigan Ave.,” the instrumental number on one of their first records meant to be a tribute to the old Chess Records label (which was located at that address).

Which is meant to remind us of the great blues music that once came from that address. Now if Muddy Waters, or any of the great old bluesmen, were to be capable of giving us a concert, THAT might be the concert event worthy of much of the hype the Rolling Stones will try to arouse in coming months.

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World Cup won’t come to Chicago in ’26; truly is our city's sporting loss

International soccer fans will get excited for the next month beginning Thursday, what with the World Cup tourney (played every four years) beginning with host nation Russia taking on the national team of Saudi Arabia.

We won't get a 2026 sequel … 

Considering that the U.S. national team didn’t play well enough in qualifying rounds to get a spot in this year’s World Cup, I expect that many U.S. fans will try to downplay the significance of the event and will focus their attention on 2026 – when the tourney will be played on the North American continent.

SOCCER FANS OF this nation will be able to see World Cup matches without having to make international trips – except those of us from Chicago.

For the North American host effort (which will have opening matches in Mexico and Canada along with quarterfinals matches in other cities and the championship game possibly in the New York metropolitan area) is bypassing the Second City.

Not that this is a surprise. Back in March, city officials said they didn’t want to cooperate with the demands of FIFA (the international association that governs soccer around the world) in order to be considered as a host city. They also have memories of U.S. Soccer Federation officials being less-than-respectful to bids to include Chicago in U.S. World Cup presentations for other years past.

Of course, anybody who pays attention to the world of international soccer knows that FIFA is the kind of organization that expects everybody to cater to it (to kiss its fat behind with a symbolic big, wet sloppy smooch). Chicago didn’t want to do so – so we’re out.

THOSE OF US from Chicago will have to settle for the play of the Chicago Fire (and possibly that new team to be created to play in a stadium to be built somewhere on the city’s North Side). Either that, or travel to places like Kansas City, Cincinnati or Nashville – the places under consideration for matches that are closest to Chicago.

Either that, or we’ll have to relive the memories of 1994 – which was the only other time the World Cup tourney was played in the United States.

… to the 1994 World Cup opening ceremonies, which were held at Soldier Field

That year, the championship game was in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, with semi-final games in Washington, D.C. and New York. But the opening ceremonies of the month-long event, along with the initial matches, were played right in Soldier Field.

As in the aging stadium on the lakefront that had significant historic character; not the current structure with the spaceship-like structure built within its outer walls.

BUT THIS TIME around, we won’t be a part of the international spectacle – which likely is the lasting aftermath of the 2016 Olympic affair.

Remember how then-Mayor Richard M. Daley was all anxious to have the Summer Olympic Games for that year held in Chicago, only to have the International Olympic Committee prefer the thought of Brazil and Rio de Janeiro. And the thought of Chicago finishing fourth out of the four finalist cities?

Our political people felt burned by the world of international sports, and it seems Rahm Emanuel had no desire for a repeat. Which means we won’t be a part of the spectacle, while places like Edmonton (in Alberta, Canada) and Orlando (the home of Mickey Mouse) will be.

The other three times ...

We’ll most likely have to settle for watching the spectacle on television, just as we’ll be doing for the next month.

AND WITHOUT THE U.S. national team’s involvement, I’m sure the level of xenophobic nonsense from NASCAR fans trying to claim that Southerners driving cars around an asphalt track is a significant sporting event will rise to all-time highs in coming weeks.

… the World Cup came ...

If anything, that aspect if part of what intrigues me about international soccer – a significant athletic spectacle (you try running up and down a pitch for 90-plus minutes at a time) that manages to infuriate some so significantly.

… to the North American continent

It was nice (sort of) to see President Donald Trump use one of his less-noxious Tweets to say a continental World Cup was a wonderful spectacle.

Although I also have to admit a more pleasing notion is that Trump’s presidency will be long over by the time the 2026 World Cup is actually staged – all the more reason our society should look forward to the event.

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Soccer returns to Soldier Field?

It would be intriguing if the Chicago Fire could take over Soldier Field for a few days next summer.

Soldier Field has had varied uses throughout its existence

And no, I don’t mean I want to burn the stadium down. It may look hideous and freakish from the outside. But it still is a 60,000-plus arena that has housed many sporting and other historic events during its nearly century of existence.

I’M REFERRING TO the Chicago Fire professional soccer team that plays in Major League Soccer. That league has an all-star game every year, and Crain’s Chicago Business reported Monday how officials are negotiating with Chicago for use of the stadium. City officials have put a hold on Daley Plaza and Millennium Park’s Wrigley Square and Harris rooftop for the end of July – which is when the all-star game is scheduled for.

Even though the Fire themselves play in a stadium they had built for themselves about a decade ago out in suburban Bridgeview. For the all-star game (which likely would pit U.S. stars against a foreign team that would view the event as a chance for a U.S. vacation trip for its players), they want the vastness of an outdoor stadium with the massive capacity of a Soldier Field.

Considering that Bridgeview’s Toyota Park barely seats over 20,000 people, it’s quite a difference.

It was always part of the reason why I thought it a mistake that the Chicago Fire left the city for a suburban location back in 2006. I know the argument the team makes – that their crowds fit perfectly in their new stadium, but would get lost in the vastness of a Soldier Field.

YET A PART of me has always thought that the team ought to be striving for the level of success that they could pack ‘em in at a Soldier Field – rather than settling for the smallness of Toyota Park; which I’ll admit is a nice little stadium that I’m sure many second-rate teams would love to have as a home facility.

Soldier Field, when configured for 'futbol'

Perhaps having an all-star game at Soldier Field could be a first step toward moving at least a part of the Chicago Fire schedule back to the near South stadium, thereby creating the potential for Fire officials to start thinking of ways to attract the kind of crowds that would fill Soldier Field to an intimidating presence.

That will be when soccer can truly claim to have “arrived” in this country – when they can draw the kinds of crowds that the New York Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League used to draw (77.691 for a match on Aug. 15, 1977 against the now-defunct Fort Lauderdale Strikers) on occasion.

Or perhaps something like the 61,308 that the Fire themselves drew to Soldier Field for a July 23, 2011 match against Manchester United – an English team!

NOT THAT THE idea of soccer (real football, as opposed to that phony kind the Chicago Bears play ever so badly these days on the Soldier Field turf) ought to be considered alien.

'94 World Cup ceremonies at a jam-packed Soldier Field

I still recall when the World Cup international soccer tourney was played for 1994 with the United States as its host – and how Soldier Field was used as the site for the opening ceremonies and for several first-round games.

Germany and Spain fans, in particular, got to see their teams each win a match, then play each other to a 1-1 tie.

There also was the Copa America tourney, which in the past was for a championship of the South American continent but this year was expanded to include North American national teams.

HOSTED THIS YEAR by the United States, some of the matches were played at Soldier Field, with both Chile and Argentina both managing early round wins on the path to the championship game (fans in East Rutherford, N.J., got to see the championship game between the two, with Chile winning ultimately on penalty kicks).

A nice-enough stadium, but it ain't Soldier Field by any means

Heck, there even was a U.S. matchup against Costa Rica at Soldier Field, with a 4-0 victory for the Stars & Stripes on Soldier Field turf.

If you want to be honest, hosting a Major League Soccer all-star game would be a lesser event than those. Yet it still would be nice to see something involving “the beautiful game” taking place within the Soldier Field bowl.

At the very least, it would be a relief for Chicago sports fans who have come to associate Soldier Field with the weekly dose of agony every autumn as we watch “da Bears” lose, yet again!

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Let’s hope we don’t have to endure ’95-like summer any time in near future

Sunday was a summer-like day in Chicago – temperatures that got up into the high-70s Fahrenheit and enough humidity in the air that one wanted to wear as little clothing as possible while outside.

The big picture of what happened 20 years ago this week. Image provided by Pic2Fly.com

Yet aside from putting on the fan that sits near where I tend to write, my thoughts were going back to that time 20 years ago.

BECAUSE IT HAS been exactly two full decades since that five-day stretch of time in mid-July 1995 when temperatures got so intense and people were caught so off-guard that the number of heat-related deaths skyrocketed.

Some 485 people officially died in Chicago due to the hot weather, although the city Health Department has acknowledged that as many as 739 people wound up dying because of heat as a contributing factor.

Consider that we the public got all worked up that about a dozen people were killed during the Independence Day holiday weekend due to gunfire.

I’m not diminishing the severity of that many homicides in the city. But we have to be honest – that was one incredibly hot time-span. It’s not something any of us wants to relive.

HOT AS HELL? We’d have to ask a deceased politician’s soul to find out precisely how hot the afterlife is for those of us who misbehaved during life on Earth.

The most serious explanation I ever heard of what caused the intense heat was an inadvertent shift in this planet’s weather patterns. For a couple of weeks in July of ’95, Chicago became hit by the kind of heat that usually hits Saudi Arabia. Just like our recent winters reached such record cold levels due to Arctic-like blasts swooping down through Canada and hitting large swaths of the United States.

The estimate turned out to be too low

In the Middle East, the locals have learned either how to tolerate the heat, or how to make themselves more comfortable. We in Chicago were caught off guard.

Particularly those amongst us who, for whatever reason, were inclined to live shut-in lifestyles and to think of air conditioning as some sort of stupid luxury for mental weaklings.

MANY OF THOSE amongst the hundreds who died fell into that category.

Which is why many of Chicago’s efforts to make “cooling centers” easily available to the public date back to the mid-1990s; just like that winter storm we always say took down Michael Bilandic as mayor and made future officials wary of the idea of letting the streets get too sloppy from snow and ice.

We don’t want a repeat of so many people being found dead in their apartments – so many people that the Cook County medical examiner’s office gave us the image of freezer trucks having to be parked outside their West Side offices to accommodate all the bodies that had to be processed.

Now I have to admit; I don’t have first-hand memories. Because back in that decade, I was living and working in Springfield, Ill. I usually joke about how I’m a native Chicago soccer fan who missed the sight of the World Cup in ’94 and the opening ceremonies being held at Soldier Field.

YET I FEEL fortunate that this was something I merely heard about on news reports while enduring a more reasonable summer sweat while working at the Statehouse.

Although I still remember talking to my own mother, who told me how my brother took her out to movie theaters just about every single day during that heat peak so they could enjoy the air conditioning.

She felt comfortable, even though she later joked about the agony of having to endure the sight of a lot of crummy films.

Which I’m sure is the kind of story we’d like to be hearing from those hundreds of people who did die because they didn’t have a place to go to help them cope with the hundred degree-plus temperatures that we got 20 years ago this week.

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Will parade route alteration be a blessing in disguise for Hawks fans?

We’re likely to get more crummy weather on Thursday, which is what provoked city officials into altering the official celebration of the Chicago Blackhawks’ winning of a Stanley Cup championship – the team’s third in six years and only their sixth in their 89 years of existence.

Yours for only $105.29!!!

The fact that the celebration is now confined to the roughly 60,000 people who can fit into Soldier Field rather than the 2 million or so who could fit into Grant Park and turn it into a muddy mess could leave many millions miffed at their inability to be a part of the celebration.

THAT IS WHAT caused city officials to decide to have a parade from the West Side leading to Michigan Avenue, before it then heads to the Near South Side and the Park District-owned stadium that the Chicago Bears treat as their own.

Specifically, the parade will start at Washington Street and Racine Avenue – about 10 blocks further west than originally intended.

It is meant to create more space for people to line up along a parade route and feel like they’re a part of the happenings because they’re not going to be able to get the “free” tickets to Soldier Field that are now being scalped for several hundred dollars apiece.

I actually wish it could have been extended further. Literally to that “Madhouse on Madison” we call the United Center, where the Blackhawks call home.

IT COULD HAVE created more of a feeling that the team is a part of Chicago, rather than just for people who can afford the pricey tickets (several hundred dollars apiece if you don’t want to sit in the upper reaches of the arena) to actually go to a game.

If anything, it would be similar to the celebration the Chicago White Sox had back in 2005 when they finally won a World Series title for the first time in 88 years.

That parade started at U.S. Cellular Field, passed through several South Side neighborhoods, then wound up downtown for the big rally.
 

RAUNER: It's about the Hawks, not the guv

As much as some people might want to think of the downtown conclusion as the big event, I most remember the sight of those open-air buses passing through Chinatown.

THE COMBINATION OF the Sox and the aura of the neighborhoods truly made for a unique celebration – certainly more memorable than the sight of drunken revelers screaming like banshees every time a Blackhawks player says something insipid (which, let’s be honest, is about 98 percent of any sports-related celebration).

Could we get something similar as the fans line up along Washington Street, Des Plaines Avenue and Monroe Street to cheer on their favorite Blackhawks?

Could that be more memorable than anything that winds up happening inside Soldier Field, and that most of us will wind up watching on television screens that officials plan to set up outside of the stadium.

So that we can pretend we were part of the festivities! Although let's hope that Gov. Bruce Rauner, who says he plans to attend, doesn't try to draw too much attention to himself -- or else he'll get such a negative reaction from fans who want nothing but Hawks that it will make the recent event in suburban Oak Forest where organized labor activists gave da Guv the middle finger seem downright pleasant by comparison.

ALTHOUGH IF YOU think about it, is watching the celebration on television all that fake? Most of us have probably never been to a hockey game. The Stanley Cup itself was an event we watched on television.

We matter more as television ratings points (about half of the Chicago television market was tuned to Game Six on Monday) than as attendance figures.

In fact, sports itself is something we view on monitors. I have known some people who consider themselves hard-core fans who admit they rarely, if ever, go to a game.

But Thursday could be an experience for the hard-core fan, unless the rainfall winds up being so intense that it causes an outbreak of illness come Friday from people who didn’t have enough sense to “listen to your mother” and wear a raincoat!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Many people are getting their giggles from the Korea Times headline that proclaims Chicago Bears win Stanley Cup. Did da Bears really start playing hockey at such an elite level as to win its championship? Or is there someone illiterate enough in U.S. sports culture to not know a football team from a hockey team? Personally, I wonder if it would make sense if it were known as the Staley Cup. Then we could claim the Bears won a trophy named for A.E. Staley – the Decatur, Ill., company that founded the team

Quinn determined to have one last political power play while in office

There was some intense politicking taking place Monday in San Diego, where Baseball Hall of Fame officials ultimately decided that none of four former Chicago White Sox ballplayers – Dick Allen, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso and Billy Pierce – were worthy of recognition.

Yet that might not have been as intense as the hard-ball that was played Monday at U.S. Cellular Field, where the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority met and decided to hire a new executive director.

WHICH ISN’T A big deal, except for the fact that the authority’s board is controlled now by people chosen by the Illinois governor, which means it is Pat Quinn who got to decide who got the executive director’s post.

Not Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also has appointees on the authority’s board. And most certainly not Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner, who would have got his chance to get involved with the agency that runs the White Sox’ ballpark and which paid for the renovation of Soldier Field for the Chicago Bears.

It would seem that Quinn, who wasn’t able to get the General Assembly to approve a measure providing for a statewide increase in the minimum wage so he could have a “last hurrah” of sorts signing it into law, will have to claim this appointment as one of his final acts of significance.

As it turns out, he gave the executive director’s post to Lou Bertuca, who was the campaign manager who led Quinn to his 50-46 percent defeat in the November general election for governor.

SO AT LEAST Lou is taken care of, from Quinn’s perspective. He has a job for the next two years, even though Rauner on Monday spewed a bit of cheap rhetoric about how he’d like to undo the appointment.

It’s not going to be a pleasant job, however. For I expect Rauner will replace all of the gubernatorial nominees on the authority’s governing board with people loyal to him.

I also expect that Emanuel’s people on the authority will not look too kindly to their new director. Bertuca could easily wind up having to deal with a governing board openly hostile toward anything he wants to do – along with a pair of chief executives who likely will dig for any dirt they can find for use as grounds to try to remove him!

I don’t know that I’d want to take a job under those circumstances – even if it does pay just over $175,000 per year.

OF COURSE, THIS isn’t the first time Quinn has had controversy related to the executive director’s post of the sports authority.

Bertuca replaces Kelly Kraft, the former television news broadcaster who got Quinn’s appointment in 2012 despite the belief of many authority board members that she wasn’t qualified.

That was when Quinn orchestrated the appointment by removing one of his appointees on the board who was opposed to Kelly, and replaced him with someone who would vote exactly the way the governor wanted.

It had a backlash, of course. For the person who got removed was Manny Sanchez, a high-profile attorney who wound up signing on early to the Rauner gubernatorial campaign and being one of the “prominent” Democrats who did what he could to undermine Quinn’s chances of re-election.

WHICH MAKES ME perceive this move as being more a gesture of hostility toward the political establishment that is preparing to cast him off in coming weeks.

It might not be as hostile as the one when former-Gov. Rod Blagojevich went out of his way to name Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate despite the desires of many others that he butt out of the matter. But it definitely comes across as a final cry for attention.

It’s not like there’s any activity coming before the sports authority in the near future that an executive director appointment couldn’t wait a couple of months. But it does entertain the political geeks amongst us who always enjoy the mechanizations behind political maneuvers.

Just as much as White Sox fans will spend the next few months complaining about how the Hall of Fame could be so stupid as to exclude (once again) such stars as one-time MVP Allen and the “Cuban Comet” himself in Miñoso.

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Could Lucas museum be Chicago lakefront’s ultimate defilement?

There is a certain generation of Chicagoans who believe the McCormick Place convention center is a monstrosity that permanently defiled the beauty of the city’s portion of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

It’s big. It’s bulky. It got built in so many pieces throughout the years that there isn’t an architectural consistency to the entire complex.

IT CERTAINLY CLASHES with the Burnham plan of the early 20^th Century that was supposed to encourage urban development in Chicago that would not interfere with the natural beauty of being a city right on the Great Lakes.

But it got done, and we have to live with it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m of a generation that thinks in terms of McCormick Place having always just “been there.” It doesn’t make me ill because it just seems hard to envision the site open to anything else.

Which apparently is what those who prepared the preliminary design for that George Lucas museum that may someday be built in Chicago are thinking about.

When I saw the sketches of what that structure will supposedly look like (with the downtown skyline in the distance and the futuristic-like Soldier Field within sight), I couldn’t help but think the structure looks ridiculous.

TOTALLY OUT OF place. As in no way that thing should ever be built on that site, or any site along the lakefront. As in perhaps I’m sympathetic to the lawsuit filed Thursday by the Friends of the Parks organization in U.S. District Court to stop development of the project.

But perhaps future generations will just sort of accept that it’s there, and not give it any thought before they check out the assorted artifacts that will wind up on display in such a museum.

My own thoughts about the sketches I saw was that the structure looked like a giant pile of sand along the lakeshore, with some sort of ring casually placed on top. Giant, as in seven stories high – with that ring being an observation deck where people can check out Chicago from up high, like they already do by traveling up to the 103^rd floor of the Sears Tower (forget that Willis nonsense, I’d sooner call it the “Arnold” building).

Almost as though a giant baby was using our public beach as his personal sandbox and built sand “castles” that were nothing more than the content of a bucket turned upside down.

YOU HUMOR THE youngster for making a nice pile, but it’s not anything permanently lasting. So why should we think this design that would defile the lakefront’s appearance is worth any praise?

Now I know that Lucas has knocked down the public impression that this is a museum devoted to his “Star Wars” films – saying it will be much more about pop culture throughout our society.

Yet it almost looks like somebody’s reject of a Star Wars set – and I’m not alone in thinking that. Both 42^nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly and 2^nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti made similar comments.

With the would-be mayoral dreamer Fioretti saying it looked to him like the Jabba the Hut character’s palace. Does this mean we’ll have a Carrie Fisher lookalike walking around in that skimpy gold-bikini-like outfit worn in “Return of the Jedi?”

I’M NOT BOTHERED by the idea of some sort of Lucas-inspired museum being in Chicago. I just would like to see a bit more inspiration put into its design. Or else this would literally be nothing more than the gap-filler in a stretch of tackiness started by the current incarnation of Soldier Field stretching down to McCormick Place.

Although perhaps we should feel lucky that one of the most absurd ideas for a lakefront development never got done – that dream of then-Mayor Richard J. Daley in the 1960s for a multi-purpose sports stadium to be built on a man-made island IN Lake Michigan proper.

It may have looked inspired on a drawing board.

But just think of how much frustration Chicago White Sox and Cubs fans, along with Bears fanatics, would have felt trying to navigate to such a structure on game days. Then getting caught in a ridiculous traffic jam after watching our city’s typically pathetic ball clubs lose yet again!

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“Star Wars” and da Bearz?

Perhaps it’s all too appropriate that city officials are contemplating offering up a site for a proposed museum paying tribute to the films and special effects of George Lucas on land that now serves as parking lots for Soldier Field.

Soldier Field's true character -- prior to becoming a 'Death Star' clone

 

There are those who believe the remodeled stadium used primarily by the Chicago Bears looks like some sort of giant spaceship landed within the old structure.

HAVING A MUSEUM nearby honoring the man who gave us “Star Wars” and all those sequels just a few hundred yards away is just too perfect a joke. It couldn’t have been planned better.

It makes me wonder if Luke Skywalker and his X-wing fighter can somehow find the vulnerable spot, fire his shot, and reduce the renovation (which has the character of the Death Star) to rubble – thereby allowing the Chicago Bears to build a new stadium that would actually respect the character and integrity of the stadium that was built as a war memorial (along with Navy Pier) to those who served in our national military.

Of course, there’s also the fact that the parking lots on Bears’ game days now serve as a pit of humanity digging out their barbecue grills to serve up all sorts of concoctions – prior to entering the stadium to see the Bears pretend they’re still the mighty Monsters of the Midway of old.

And not all of those people are the most pristine in appearance.

WANDERING THROUGH THE parking lot on a game day, you will see so many varied characters (some of whom are downright scary, particularly if its prior to a game against the Green Bay Packers) that you’ll feel like you’re in that cantina from the original Star Wars film.

Who's more all-powerful; ...

Only instead of hearing some funky, intergalactic-style jazz band, you’ll hear several semi-drunken serenades of people trying to work their way through, “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.”

All of this is something to be considered as George Lucas figures out where he wants his museum to be built. He’s a San Francisco type and had dreams of a museum built on the waterfront with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

But that city has snubbed his efforts thus far.

CHICAGO GETS TO be in the running because his wife, Mellody Hobson, is a native. And there’s always the chance of a museum on the waterfront. There’s also the likelihood that parking spaces lost by the museum structure’s presence could be replaced with an underground structure.

Da coach, or the Master of 'the force'

It would be a zero-sum game, as those underground spots could be used by Bears fans. Although I can already envision the anger they will feel when they learn tailgating is prohibited.

It will be such a strong sentiment that they can’t cook a weenie or a polish sausage or two that it will feel like an all-powerful force that can overcome anything the fans put their minds to.

It’s also not like there aren’t other comparisons that could be made between Bears’ culture and the whole world of Star Wars.

DARTH VADER REPRESENTED by the Green Bay Packers? Carrie Fisher’s “Princess Leia” character could have taken on the Honey Bears of old all by herself. Harrison Ford’s “Han Solo” more powerful a force than Walter Payton?

And the ultimate – Yoda equals Ditka!

You could also compare the Bears football team to the Ewoks – those cutesy, cuddly creatures from the third film (the one that the Star Wars geeks call number 6) who inspired the sale of many toy dolls and action figures.

Although there are times when I suspect that a pack of Ewoks could take to the gridiron and whomp all over da Bears. They did manage to help beat Imperial storm troopers, after all!

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