Who provides Chicago football fans with their cheap thrills for the season?

Fans of the gridiron are having their share of potential thrills, along with disappointments, now that we’re at the time of year in which the bowl games are being played.

Will the Chicago Bears still be relevant when the Super Bowl comes to Atlanta?

We’ll have to see just how the Chicago Bears fare – with some fans being delusional enough to think this is the year of a Super Bowl championship.

OF COURSE, THIS could just as easily be the year the Bears get knocked out of the playoffs in the first round when they take on the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.

In which case, this could easily turn out to be the season where all of the big-time football teams managed to fall short.

After all, Notre Dame is the team that lost only one game this season and qualified for the Cotton Bowl – which theoretically could have put them in contention for the national title for college football.

But the Fighting Irish managed to get walloped in that game against Clemson – thereby reinforcing the attitude felt amongst many that Notre Dame’s days of being a college football power are all long in the past.

IF THE BEARS manage to get knocked out early in the playoff rounds, the disappointment would be comparable to that of Notre Dame.

Sad sack of Chicago-area football; or can we just write them off as Hoosiers?

Which is where Northwestern University comes in. The suburban Evanston-based school that likes to market itself as “Chicago’s Big 10 Team” fell short of winning the Big 10 conference title – losing to Ohio State, which on Tuesday won the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. But they did get one of the lesser bowl games, and managed to win.

A 31-20 victory over Utah in the Holiday Bowl – which means the Wildcats got a trip to San Diego. While we got soggy wet on New Year’s Eve, they got California sunshine just as they would have if they had managed to prevail against the Buckeyes in Indianapolis.

Was the one-time Dyche Stadium the place where most interesting football of 2018 was played?

It could turn out to be the highlight of Chicago-area football for the season – unless the Bears truly are capable of going on a winning streak to take them all the way to a Super Bowl victory in Atlanta on Feb. 3 – which could show that the 12-4 record they achieved this year wasn’t a complete fluke and that the only fluke of the year may well have been Notre Dame.

  -30-

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?

  -30-

What should we think of rebuild; does All Star Abreu have future in Chicago?

Chicago White Sox fans are likely to get the highlight of 2018 come next week in Washington, D.C., when first baseman Jose Abreu starts for the American League in the baseball All Star game scheduled for next Tuesday.

Could Jose become a White Sox immortal someday?

Abreu, it seems, got so many fan votes that he is the top player at first base for the league. Which is an accomplishment, since first base is usually a position so overloaded with top hitters that many a talented ballplayer throughout the years has been crowded out of the All Star game because that was their position.

SO IT WOULD have been understandable if the best ballplayer the White Sox employ these days would not have made it onto the league’s All Star team.

But he did. White Sox fans will be able to enjoy that bit of glory that at least one of the players on their dreadfully mediocre team of 2018 is worth having around. He’ll be the bragging rights that Sout’ Side-oriented fans will be able to chat about next week.

And it could wind up being the bit of a boost for the White Sox, who are trying to justify their lack of concern over the 30-win, 60-loss (as of Monday) team the White Sox are putting forth this year.

We’re supposed to be in a rebuilding mode, which means the potential for young talent that will someday surround the veteran Abreu with equal talent – to the point where in just a couple of years, it will seem odd that the White Sox could ever have delved to the lows that we’ve seen last year and this.

Payton played for weak Bears teams before '86

THEN AGAIN, CONSIDER that things can change quickly in baseball.

It was just three years ago that the Kansas City Royals were a World Series-winning ball club. Now, they’re a team with only 25 wins this year – and the reason the White Sox can claim to not even be the worst ball club in their American League division; let alone all of baseball.

Of course, there are some people out there who are convinced that what the White Sox ought to be doing with their best current (and one of their best ever) ball players is – repeat after me – “TRADE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Could Abreu top Minnie for top Cuban Sox

The theory being that some other team wishing to have Jose’s big bat (12 home runs and 59 runs batted in, as of this week) to help them win THIS YEAR might be capable of giving up some young “kid” who might be capable of being a star come 2020 or 2021.

WHICH, THE WHITE Sox marketing people will claim, is the time about when it might be possible to expect the ball club to “not suck” quite so bad as they do now.

Abreu being the ballplayer who’s already 31 years old (meaning he’s on the tail end of his physical prime as a ballplayer), and it might be helpful long-term to let go of him now, rather than thinking he’d still be of use at ages 33 and 34 (which is what he’d be if still a part of the White Sox) in ’20 and ’21.

Of course, if the Chicago Bears had followed the same line of logic, they would have let their immortal star Walter Payton leave just before that Super Bowl-winning year of 1986 and those contending teams of the late 1980s.

We’d probably have Bears fans now ranting about how the team gave up on “Sweetness” and didn’t include him in the chance for athletic glory at the team’s peak.

SO IS THIS just a matter of sports fans who can feel malcontent regardless of what their favorite team actually does?

Is the "L" flag destined to return to Wrigley?

Keep Abreu, and they’re being shortsighted. Get rid of him, and the White Sox will regret it if he and his big bat are the missing piece of a contending team the White Sox hope/wish/dream they’ll have around 2021.

Because personally, I could see how that future White Sox contending team could be one built around Abreu – who will wind up being the leader of a core of Cuban and other Latino ballplayers who play in the mold of past White Sox stars like Minnie Miñoso and Luis Aparicio.

Besides, it could also be that many of the people who want Abreu dealt away from Chicago are nothing more than Cubs fans realizing that 2016 is history, their own “winning” ways aren’t forever and it’s just a matter of time before the “L” flag becomes the symbol flown atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard on a regular basis.

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Now that the World Series is over, it seems we need a new ‘sport’ to follow - Madigan/Rauner isn’t fun any longer

If one views the ongoing spats between Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, as pure gamesmanship, rather than a serious effort to settle the state’s finances, things make sense.
 

Do Madigan/Rauner think winner gets trophy?

Maybe the two figure that since we no longer have the World Series taking place, we now need two new teams to challenge each other while we cheer them on, and heckle mercilessly the one whose presence we cannot stand.

THE SAD THING is that this isn’t a game. Come Jan. 1, we revert back to the budgetless status that we in Illinois endured for the entirety of Fiscal ’16.

Which caused its own level of chaos and uncertainty whose harm to the state is still being felt. Now, we will wind up enduring more because these two men seem to want to show the rest of us they have “bigger hands” than Donald Trump.

Seriously, that is the level of nonsense we have reached. We, the people of Illinois, will be the ones who suffer when our government is no longer able to live up to its obligations (although I realize for some ideologues, that in itself would be considered a good thing).

It is with this attitude that I perceive the latest round of inaction that occurred Tuesday morning – the day that Madigan actually showed his face at meetings between the governor and the legislative leaders.

ALTHOUGH IT SHOULD be noted that state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, didn’t bother to say much. This really isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican or a Chicago vs. rural Illinois fight – although both Rauner and Madigan will try to make us perceive it as such to give them a moral high ground to cling to.

This is the same ol’ nonsense between two over-bloated egos. It’s not even really a fight concerning organized labor and whether or not it has too much influence over state government.

 

Maybe the key to resolving budget ...

It has come down to two men who are determined to say they “won” the political battle, and “crushed” the opposition.

For what it’s worth, the sides met on Tuesday at the Statehouse (totally appropriate since the Legislature is in session to consider gubernatorial vetoes) and Madigan said he would appoint state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, to represent his interests on a budget negotiating team.

THE ONLY PROBLEM is that none of the Republican interests realized that anyone was considering a budget negotiating team. They seem to want to deal with this one-on-one, Rauner vs. Madigan. May the best “man” win.

 

... is to take both egos out of equation

Even though it could be argued that if one really is putting together a budget for the remaining six months of Fiscal year ’17 (which began July 1), putting the financial experts in charge of talks rather than the political egos makes all the sense in the world.

If anything, we’d probably have a better chance of getting a budget proposal approved if we’d take the political egos out of the equation altogether.

Then again, what would be the point of politics if partisanship and egos didn’t somehow manage to gum up the whole works?

IT WILL BE interesting to see what happens on Wednesday. For Madigan gave the impression that the negotiations could begin seriously on that day. While Republicans are giving the impression that nothing of significance can happen on that day.

We need a budget long before groundhog hides from shadow

Except for the comments made previously by Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, that the General Assembly ought to deal solely with budget issues and not even consider vetoes. Which is quite a switch, since the usual conservative ideologue position is that the fall veto session should be NOTHING BUT veto considerations – and that bringing up any other issue is inappropriate!

Everybody’s looking for blame to place come Jan. 1, which may be the meaning of Durkin’s remark Tuesday about how Madigan is trying to “run out the clock” to force budget negotiations to proceed.

Which may mean my World Series analogy is off. Perhaps Madigan and Rauner think they’re performing their very own Super Bowl? All I know is that if Feb. 5 really comes around and we still haven’t resolved this issue, Illinois will be in a serious bind.

  -30-

‘Super’ ball game didn’t take place in California stadium named for Levi’s

I’m enough of a baseball fan that I follow the winter leagues in Latin America – and always manage to find the Caribbean Series to be an event worthy of a level of hype that we waste on that other allegedly major sporting event.

A highlight never achieved in U.S.

The one that many people felt compelled to watch on Sunday so they could see the so-called significant television commercials that air during the broadcast.

YES, I’LL CONFESS to not planning to watch the Super Bowl – because I’m all sported-out from having watched the Caribbean Series’ championship game. The one in which the Mazatlan Deer of Mexico’s Pacific League beat the Aragua Tigers of the Venezuelan League to allow them, and Mexico in general, to have bragging rights for this year as the champions of Latin American baseball.

I must admit to seeing Jorge Vazquez hit that 9^th inning game-winning home run off Renee Cortez to turn a 4-4 tie into a 5-4 Mexico victory was a jolt that now has me all-the-more worked up over the coming of spring training in just under a couple of weeks.

That’s quite a highlight for Vazquez, whose career in U.S. baseball was little more than a couple of seasons playing for New York Yankees minor league affiliates.

It is a shame, however, that Freddy Garcia didn’t wind up getting the victory for his Venezuela team – since he had already said he is now retired following two decades of playing baseball professionally.

INCLUDING THOSE YEARS with the Chicago White Sox when he was one of the top pitchers on teams worthy of respect and national attention.

A decade after World Series highlight, he's retired

For those curious, it was also humorous (as usual) to listen to former White Sox star shortstop and manager Ozzie Guillen do the color commentary on the Spanish-language broadcast – which is all that ESPN gave to the Caribbean Series this year.

Ozzie’s humor, and ego, manage to come across regardless of the language translation. Although I wonder how Venezuela fanaticos de beisbol will react to Guillen -- a Venezuela native -- saying that the best team (Mexico) won the game.

As for Garcia, I’m sure he would have liked to have ended his career with a victory for his national team.

Ozzie's come a long way!

OH WELL. I guess he’ll just have to settle for a career highlight of being the winning pitcher in Game 4 of the 2005 World Series.

That’s the one where the White Sox beat the Houston Astros 1-0 to give Chicago what remains – no matter what the Chicago Cubs might try to claim – the city’s ONLY World Series title in the past 99 years.

And all of this, I’m sure, will wind up being much more spectacular than anything that happens later Sunday in the allegedly ‘Super’ Bowl.

  -30-

Do I owe my “A” to the Super Bowl?

I have to make a confession – one that I’m sure will shock the standards of many people who think they know what a true Chicagoan is.

Are we really on 'L' already?

Back 30 years ago Tuesday when the Chicago Bears reached the pinnacle of winning a Super Bowl – beating the New England Patriots 46-10, I didn’t actually watch the game on television.

I DIDN’T PERCH myself in front of a television set that day to see the moment that many people (except for young punk kids who are too young to know better) think of as a glory day for all of Chicago.

Not that I wasn’t aware of the game, or the hype, or the fact that Chicago got extra stupid in the way it worshipped the gridiron back in that autumn of 1985 that led into the Super Bowl XX that came early in 1986.

And yes, all football championships need to have roman numerals attached as though they are battles of the gladiators of old – just as comedian George Carlin once told us that all football matches are played in places with names like Soldier Field or War Memorial Coliseum.

I actually have a vivid memory of that day – which was part of the time in which I was out of Chicago and off at college; Bloomington, Ill., to be exact.

BECAUSE IT WAS an example of me at one of my laziest moments.

I was taking a course that January in which the totality of my grade was a lengthy paper that I had to write detailing what it was I had learned.

Do you still own a turntable to play this on?

There was nothing else to take into account. The paper was it. A bad paper would mean a poor grade. And yes, I had barely started on it that Sunday.

Which is why that particular afternoon, I was holed up in my room banging away at a typewriter producing what turned out to be something close to 40 pages of copy.

FORTUNATELY FOR ME, I actually had a good comprehension of the subject matter. I actually had been paying attention and had learned some things.

So while it was a lengthy paper and quite detailed, it was actually rather easy to write. It flowed well, and by about 6 p.m., I was done.

A Chicago history 'moment'

Of course, back then the Super Bowl was still played in January and wasn’t meant to be a prime time spectacle. The game was played in the afternoon. At the same time that was prime work time for me to deal with this paper!

For me, that meant tuning in my stereo to the AM radio dial. For because it was the Chicago Bears, WGN radio had managed to get the rights to carry a live broadcast of the NFL’s prize program.

MEANING I WAS the guy who spent the afternoon grinding out a college paper while also trying to keep track of how the Bears were doing. Yes, I remember the Patriots scoring first and feeling a moment of “How typical” – as in a Chicago sports team getting all worked up before blowing it in the end.

I say typical because back then, it had been 22 years since the Bears had last won a championship, 24 years since the Blackhawks did so, 26 years since the White Sox had an American League title and 40 years since the Cubs did so in the National League.

While in this pre-Jordan era, the Chicago Bulls had NEVER won anything of note.

But as the Bears began piling on the points and racking up a huge lead (it was 46-3 at one point before New England came up with a token touchdown to save face), perhaps I got a jolt as well. I do remember how well that copy flowed – in a way I have rarely, if ever, felt since.

I REMEMBER MY roommate came back home to Chicago because he wanted to watch the game locally, and I remember the amount of grief he gave me afterward for not perching in front of a television.



Is there a ring for passing a class?

That is, until he found the artistic guys (as in drama majors) who lived down the hall who hadn’t even been aware there was a game that day.

I always wondered to what degree that game being on the radio provided motivation to my writing that day. Because I still remember the grade I received for that cranked-out-in-four-hours college paper I wrote at nearly the last possible minute.

It was an “A.”

  -30-

EXTRA: We’re in a nowhere land when it comes to Chicago sports scene

The Chicago Blackhawks beat Tampa Bay 2-0 on Monday, giving them their third Stanley Cup championship in the past six seasons.

The goal that clinched victory

It has put the Blackhawks in a position where the team of this decade has the potential to become a historically-great hockey team, along with one of the best Chicago sports franchises of all time.

BECAUSE LET’S BE honest. Winning teams is not what Chicago sports is all about. Somebody who can only back a winner would be ever so frustrated if they were forced to root for the professional franchises that come from the Second City.

If anything, the fact about the Blackhawks that makes them a prototypical image for our city isn’t that they won their third Stanley Cup championship in recent years, but that Monday’s victory was the sixth Stanley Cup championship they EVER have won.

Two of them came back in the 1930s, and the third was in 1961.

Which means so many decades of hockey fans are used to coming up short year after year after year.

THE IDEA OF a perennial winner on the ice is something we ought to savor while it lasts. Because none of our teams has that New York Yankees-like aura where it is expected that when the team gets old, they will figure out a way to rebuild.

Our teams never get to that level, and are filled with countless players who never managed to live up to their potential.

He gave the Hawks the lead

Perhaps it is because I came of age in the 1970s, when the baseball scene was year after year of seeing which baseball team would stink the joint out worse than the other and where the Chicago Bears would think it a completely successful, potentially even historic, season, if they made it to the first round of the playoffs before getting knocked out of contention.

I still remember that very scenario from 1977 and the way Bears fans got all worked up at the thought of even being in a playoff game.

NOW I KNOW the Bears went on to win that Super Bowl following the 1985 season. Although the fact that quality Bears teams were unable to follow up with another championship is more the norm.

A memorable moment a decade later

Just as the Chicago White Sox are still flying that lone 2005 World Series title banner because they didn’t win another.

But which looks downright outstanding considering how the Chicago Cubs haven’t even accomplished that much!

I’m not a big hockey fan (baseball and soccer in the form of equipo Mexico, along with college basketball of the Illinois Wesleyan Titans of my alma mater are my rooting interests). But I realize how unique it is for one of Chicago’s teams to come up with a “three titles in six years” streak.

IT CERTAINLY SHOWS how incredibly off-the-wall it was for the Chicago Bulls to win two streaks of three straight NBA titles during the 1990s. A taste of Yankee-esque attitude for the city still remembered for having one of its teams getting caught throwing a World Series (even if eight ballplayers were eventually acquitted in court).

The fact that the Bulls have won nothing since, and in some seasons have become such a disgrace to the local sports scene, is more in line with the character of the Chicago sports scene.

Still waiting 3 decades later for another Super Bowl title

So it is with some sense of joy that we should perceive the Blackhawks’ victory (and think that those killjoys from Nashville, Tenn.; Anaheim, Calif.; and Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla., all tried to take down da Hawks and turn them into some sort of bully in need of a beating).

Because it’s just a matter of time not all that far off in the future that the Blackhawks will be back to mediocrity and “2014-15” will be just another banner hanging from the rafters at the United Center that fans manage to ignore while sitting in costly seats and guzzling down overpriced concessions.

  -30-

If this is Linus, how harsh would Lucy be on a 'Super Bowl Sunday?'

I felt fortunate to have a dead Sunday, as in a day in which I had nothing that absolutely had to be done that day.

I was able to get away with staying at home all day without having to cope with Winter Storm Linus – the heavy snowfall that swept through the Midwestern United States this weekend and whacked Chicago with potentially a foot of snow within a day-long period.

LIKE MANY OTHERS, I could not help but remember the old Peanuts cartoon where Linus was one of Charlie Brown’s most loyal friends, unlike older sister Lucy who was amongst Charlie’s biggest antagonists.

If this were Winter Storm Lucy, I’d probably have had some business dealing that absolutely had to get done, and I’d wind up stuck in the snow somewhere!

As it was, my brother tried to make a short drive, and wound up stuck in the snow for a short time – although he eventually was able to get his car out of the snow and parked back in his usual spot where he leaves it.

As a result, he wound up spending the bulk of the day catching up on rest – while also enjoying caldo de pollo (a rather elaborate Mexican-style chicken soup) he had made just the day before.

SUNDAY WOUND UP being the perfect day for leftovers – even though the weather wound up costing him a chance to go to a Super Bowl party.

Which may be the biggest local casualty of this particular storm; how many people had plans to go to one of these parties to see the Seattle Seahawks/New England Patriots football championship matchup only to be unable to make it because of the snowfall? Then again, how many people were unable to see the game because their electricity died (mine was out for about three hours during the afternoon)?

Or worse, how many people had pizza delivery jobs and wound up having to cope with the mess while trying to deliver a pie or two to someone’s Super Bowl celebration aspirations – which usually are more about eating junk food with friends and getting worked up over over-produced and over-rated commercials than it is about watching anything noteworthy from an athletic perspective! Perhaps Lou Malnati's had the right idea in deciding to close early Sunday -- even though it should have been one of their busiest days of the year!

Personally, I became aware of just how bad the snow was when I woke up Sunday and did my early-morning e-mail check to see that aides to Gov. Bruce Rauner had sent me a message informing me that his public appearance at St. Pius V parish in the Pilsen neighborhood was cancelled.

THE NEW GOVERNOR was supposed to go to Sunday morning mass with Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti – my guess is that he wanted to attend a Latino-oriented church with his Cuban-American running mate to show some sort of Latino solidarity.

For a politician to give up that kind of photo op means it must have been ugly weather. Although Rauner did include the Illinois Department of Transportation advisory that people avoid driving their cars on Sunday, “unless it’s necessary.”

Officially, the National Weather Service reported there were 8.5 inches of snow at O’Hare International Airport by Noon, with snow continuing to fall. Although it seems the farther south one goes, the heavier the pileup becomes.

Looking out my own front window while I write this commentary, I see a nearby “For Rent” sign totally covered in a pile of snow! Although we’re still at a stage where the snowfall looks clean and pretty.

AS PEOPLE TRY to drive through it, the snow will take on that dingy, dirty shade that we all eventually will have to try to shovel away. Although various weather forecasts claim we’re in for sunny skies in future days.

Here’s hoping that this truly melts away rather quickly and that “Linus” becomes just a faint memory a week from now.

Although perhaps having a Super Bowl Sunday with a storm named “Lucy” might have been most appropriate. Because we all remember Charlie Brown’s repeated attempts at a field goal.

Did she ever let Charlie Brown actually kick that ball?

  -30-

EXTRA: Weren’t ’14 Chicago Bears merely typical of local sports scene?

It was everybody’s good laugh this week. Virginia McCaskey, the matriarch of the Chicago Bears (and daughter of team founder George Halas) is “pissed off” (or so says team management) at the Bears’ performance this season – which came to an end Sunday with a 5-11 record and no playoff performance.

Now I’m not any kind of a football fan (I’m eagerly counting down the 90-plus days to the beginning of baseball season, plus the month until the Caribbean Series). But it just doesn’t seem like this season’s awfulness was particularly awful.

PERHAPS IT’S BECAUSE I’m old enough to remember the years of the 1970s following players such as Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers – seasons in which playoff appearances were rare, that 2014 doesn’t strike me as being unusual. In fact, that decade was just truly awful for all the Chicago ball clubs, regardless of what sport they played.

Watching a youthful Walter Payton become the football equivalent of Ernie Banks and Luke Appling (Hall of Fame baseball players who were surrounded by losing Chicago squads back in the 1950s and 1930s, respectively) was what the Bears were usually about.

Let’s be honest. Michael Jordan was the basketball equivalent in the 1980s. Does anyone remember how bad the Bulls were prior to those two streaks of three 1990s championships in a row?

So to learn that McCaskey is displeased with the Bears? You’d think she’d be used to it by now. Because 1985 and that Super Bowl victory over New England was truly a team oxymoron.

I FIND IT interesting that one-time Bears quarterback and San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh finds the prospect of coaching Michigan in the Big 10 to be more intriguing than being with the Bears.

Take into account her other statement from Monday when the firings of the Bears general manager and coach were announced – that she had been alive for eight of the nine NFL championships won by the Bears during their 95 years of existence (including the season they were based in Decatur, Ill.).

But eight of those championships came prior to the creation of the Super Bowl – which itself will be 49 years old. Making them seem about as relevant as the fact that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series back in ’07 and ’08. And I don’t mean 20--!

So what should we make of McCaskey’s feelings? Perhaps she will succeed in finding competent team management that can bring another championship team to Soldier Field in the near future. At the very least, she gave us a chuckle.

ALTHOUGH I THINK the real outburst will come down from the heavens in the form of Halas’ spirit. He, of course, who once said, “We’ve run out of time outs. Go in there and get hurt.”

Somehow, I feel Bears fans would be in complete agreement these days.

  -30-

EXTRA: Serie del Caribe to get Chicago Sout' Side baseball viewpoint

The ballplayers taking part in the Caribbean Series beginning Saturday were from places scattered all over Latin America, while the umpires came from Mexico and Cuba.

The advertisements around the ballpark were for Polar-brand beer (get it?), while the fans danced to merengue music (rather than the heavy metal or rap music riffs we hear in U.S. ballparks).

AND THE WEATHER or Margarita Island in Venezuela, where this year’s Caribbean Series baseball tourney is being played, was so un-Chicago – sunny skies and 88-degree temperatures on Saturday afternoon.

Which is why I was amused to learn of the broadcast crews that way too many baseball fans will ignore because they’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the Super Bowl somehow matters – or that they’re supposed to care about overpriced commercial spots that will air during the game.

It was as Chicago as one could get.

I found it amusing to tune in to the pre-game show and see that the usual ESPN Deportes broadcasters were joined by one-time White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen – who didn’t give us any verbal whoppers, but tried to make himself appear to be quite the baseball expert.

THEN AGAIN, THE Caribbean Series runs through next Saturday. There will be plenty of opportunities for Ozzie to say something that will manage to tick off somebody, while amusing, entertaining or informing the rest of us.

Although if by chance you didn’t watch the ballgame on television (I don’t know your access to the ESPN Deportes channel – station number 609 on my television set), keep in mind that the ESPN Spanish-language radio broadcasts are using one-time baseball pitcher Orlando "El Duque” Hernandez to give player insight to the broadcasts.

Hernandez might well be remembered most as a New York Yankees pitcher. But let’s not forget his stint with the White Sox team that won the 2005 World Series. His relief pitching stint in the final playoff game that year against the Boston Red Sox (where he pitched three perfect innings, prevented the White Sox from blowing a one-run lead AND made Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez in particular look like a total chump) is one of those memorable moments.

And I’m sure that to the mindset of the Red Sox fan, Hernandez’s White Sox road uniform looked remarkably similar to when he wore Yankees road grays and did his part to repeatedly shut them down.


An improvement over Bud?

GUILLEN AND HERNANDEZ – it’s a shame they won’t be a part of the same broadcast at some point. Perhaps we’d get a reminiscence or two of that special season from nine years ago when a Chicago ball club actually wound up being the best.

 

Before they go back to telling us about this year’s versions of the Licey Tigers (the Dominican Republic’s champions) or the Hermosillo Orange Growers (from Mexico), or the fact that Cuba is once again being included in a tourney that purports to give us the championship of all Latin America.

All in all, it has me hoping that there’s some truth to the speculation that Caribbean Series officials are considering a change in the rotation of host nations so that it will come to the United States (most likely at the Miami Marlins’ ballpark near the "Little Havana" neighborhood that has cropped up along Eighth Street) in future years.

Be honest. It will be a more interesting spectacle than anything likely to happen Sunday when football (not futbol) fans freeze their behinds off in the wintry weather of the Jersey-based suburbs of New York City.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: One little tidbit when watching a Spanish-language baseball broadcast. When you hear the announcer say that the batter was "punched out," it means he was struck out by the pitcher. Not that any kind of brawl was about to take place.
 

Should Tribune join SI cover in jinx?

It sits on newsstands across the Chicago metro area, mocking us.

I’m referring to copies of Sports Illustrated, with Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler and the rest of the Chicago Bears. “BRING ON THE PACKERS” is the screaming headline, along with a subhead about the Bears’ anticipated trip to the Super Bowl.

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of Monday, we know how ludicrous this cover is. The Bears lost. They got beat by “their old rivals,” and the potential we had for a good ol’-fashioned Chicago/New York brawl (Bears versus Jets in the Super Bowl) is gone. The National Football League championship for this season will go to either Pittsburgh, or Green Bay, Wis.

It sounds like quite a letdown. Which is pretty much what I’m starting to feel about the election cycle for Chicago mayor, which on Monday gave political observers quite a body block when the mayoral aspirations of Rahm Emanuel got knocked off the ballot.

Unless Emanuel finds the Supreme courts of either Illinois or the United States willing to intervene on his behalf, he’s not going to be a candidate.

The potential of a national political figure with significant clout to the White House becoming Chicago city government’s chief executive (the equivalent of a Chicago versus New York Super Bowl) is wavering – and could soon be something that “never was.”

YES, A PART of me thinks of a purely local mayoral campaign between Carol Moseley-Braun, Gery Chico, Miguel del Valle and Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins as being a political equivalent of that Pittsburgh/Green Bay faceoff for a football championship.

It sounds so dinky by comparison.

There’s even a political equivalent to the Sports Illustrated cover. Because it was just last week Friday that the Chicago Tribune gave us the poll results claiming Emanuel’s campaign has support from 44 percent of would-be voters – with signs indicating that his support among various groups is on the rise.

“Mother Tribune” dared to put in our minds the thought that there wouldn’t be an April 5 runoff election – that Emanuel could actually win the whole thing come Feb. 22.

NOW, ON THE very next day of business, Emanuel is gone. That front page must seem like a taunt to the people who haven’t yet recycled it, similar to how that magazine cover seems like a cruel joke.

The Chicago Bears as Super Bowl champs. Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The former ain’t gonna happen any time soon, and the latter may also be just as dead.

Admittedly, there is still a bit of life in the idea of Emanuel for mayor. The sports analogy may well be to compare Emanuel to the Bears’ performance on Sunday, in that the Bears did put up a serious threat in that fourth quarter.

HAD A COUPLE of things broken just a bit differently, that game would have ended regulation time in a tie. Football fans (of which, in all honesty, I’m not one) will forever ponder as to whether the Bears could have won the game – IF it had gone into overtime.

Which means we’re going to get to see whether or not Emanuel is any more successful in pulling off a late maneuver that restores him to the ballot. Because it is that late in the process – which may well have been the strategy all along of Burt Odelson, the Evergreen Park-based attorney who specializes in election law and has been the lead instigator of the effort to remove Rahm from the mayoral ballot.

I couldn’t help but notice that he told WBBM-AM radio that the appeals court ruling surprised him – he expected it would be the state Supreme Court that would rule in his favor; meaning he’d win at the very end and there just wouldn’t be any time left for Emanuel to put up a serious legal fight to restore himself.

As it is, this next step before the Supreme courts is going to have to be rushed through this week. For the early voting centers start letting people cast ballots next week Monday.

EVEN IF THE Supreme courts put the rush on their proceedings (which they are capable of doing), it creates a situation where ballots are prepared at the very last minute – which means a rush job. Invariably, that causes problems and confusion at the polling places.

So now we have to see how the Supreme courts rule, and whether they will be willing to give any credence to the dissenting opinion of Appellate Justice Bettina E. Lampkin – who was the one judge to rule against booting Emanuel from the ballot.

She says that the burden of proof should have been on Odelson to show that Emanuel made his Washington house his permanent residence, which she says he did not.

“The candidate never voted in Washington, D.C., never changed his driver’s license to Washington, D.C., never registered his car in Washington, D.C., never purchased property in Washington, D.C. (the house was rented), never conducted personal banking in Washington, D.C., and never demonstrated an intent to sell his Chicago home,” she wrote in her dissent.

SO WILL THE Supreme Court of Illinois (which I will predict will hold a Friday morning hearing at the high court in Springfield, with a ruling issued late that afternoon) rule for Rahm (who filed a request Monday night for an emergency hearing), giving him a last-minute victory unlike the Bears?

Or will we forevermore wonder whose defeat (the Bears or Emanuel) was the bigger shock to Chicagoans?

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