Chicago a state; who dumps whom?

It is one of those periodic measures that gets introduced before the Illinois General Assembly – one that calls for the rest of Illinois to break away into its own state, or one that calls for Chicago to be separated from Illinois.

EMANUEL: Mayor gets a chuckle over splitting state

Regardless of the details of anyone’s specific proposal, those measures always manage to make me snicker. Largely because the people who are trying to express frustration with Chicago don’t want to admit how much the sentiment is mutual.

HOW ELSE TO interpret the comments Mayor Rahm Emanuel made this week during a meeting with the Chicago Community Trust. Although it should be realized that Emanuel, himself, was joking around.

For the record, the mayor was talking about Supreme Court decisions of recent days that were blatantly politically partisan in ways that go against the city’s interests, when he said, “Right now, after the last 48 hours, I’d like to pull out of this one nation and one state.”

When asked if he was talking about Chicago breaking off into its own independent city-state (a la the Vatican City that many people might mistakenly think is part of Rome), Emanuel quipped, “I’m going with Toronto.”

Which is Canada’s largest city, and one that is just slightly larger than Chicago.

Would these flags … 

OBVIOUSLY, NO ONE is going to seriously try to move forward with an independence drive. The real solution is that we all have to learn to work together, and to realize that each and every faction that comprises our society at-large offers some benefit.

That goes for just about every place in this nation of ours. We already had our “war” over secession in this country, and they lost!

I have similar thoughts when I hear there are officials in California who seriously think “the Golden State” ought to be broken up into three – the northern part of the state that would have San Francisco as its primary city, a southern part that would focus on San Diego and a third being the Los Angeles metro area.

… be at the heart someday … 

As though there are people who can’t appreciate having the nation’s second-largest city as part of their own political boundary.

SOUNDS SIMILAR TO those rural Illinois residents who think the whole world is focused on farms – even though most farms these days are corporate entities and trying to cling to the vision of a family-run farm is a large part of the reason those rural communities are so isolated from the mainstream of our society.

So are we ever going to get a state of Chicago that is separate from Illinois? Not likely, unless our society gets a whole lot more stupid than it already is tumbling down to in this Age of Trump that we’re now in.

Seriously, I think if anybody tried to split the state of Illinois up, they’d have one heck of a time figuring out where the boundary ought to be. Because it sure couldn’t be as simple as the city limits. Are we prepared to fight a “war” over who gets Naperville or Joliet?

I think people eager to think in terms of kicking Chicago “out” would be amazed to realize how much of Illinois would throw its lot in with the city. All those suburbs (more than 100 in Cook County alone, and those in the surrounding collar counties bring the tally to 250-plus) account for about two-thirds of Illinois’ population, and many of those residents merely think of “downstate” as the place where they, or a relative, went to college before coming back to “Sweet home, Chicago.”

THE REST OF Illinois’ population would be about 4 million people – placing the state at about No. 27 – just between Kentucky and Oregon (although bigger than Iowa’s 3.05 million), rather than the state’s current population rank of No. 6.

… of a 'battle' for the right to claim Joliet?

Anyway, this is all fantasy – which is why Emanuel can make jokes about the idea of “Oh Canada” becoming the new national anthem in these parts. Although it would be interesting if a new baseball rivalry were to develop between the White Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays.

The reality is that we are one, and that is our greatest national (and regional) strength. It is why I always have mocked people who try to tout the concept of “state’s rights,” because it seems to think we’re better off separate, and if it were really true, why not “city’s rights” being preeminent in which we work from the bottom up?

The truth is there’s a contribution to be made by everybody, and the only people who think of breaking apart as a serious concept are ones who deserve the label of “knuckleheads.”

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Where’s John Scott?

I kind of felt sorry on Sunday for John Scott.

He was an outfielder in professional baseball who, in a sense, made it to the top of his profession. He has three lines of type in Baseball Encyclopedias indicating he played parts of two seasons with the San Diego Padres and one year with the Toronto Blue Jays back in the team’s first year of existence in 1977.

HE WILL FOREVER be able to say he was a major league baseball player, and I realize there are many people who would desperately have liked to have made that claim – but cannot.

Yet on Sunday, when Andre Dawson was giving his acceptance speech upon becoming a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., Scott was, well, who knows? He hasn’t done much that has attracted public attention (which can be positive in that he hasn’t seriously screwed anything up) since leaving baseball (where he is a career .222 hitter who managed all of two home runs in his career).

What ties the two men together is that staple of memorabilia – baseball cards. The set issued by Topps Chewing Gum for 1977 includes card number 473, which depicts four rookies all of whom have that fresh-faced look of a full life of baseball glory ahead of them.

One of them is Dawson, who is the reason this card has a book value of $20 (compared to the perhaps $0.50 it would command if it didn’t have a Hall of Fame player on it). Another is Scott.

WHAT IT AMOUNTS to is that the highlight of Scott’s baseball career could literally become that he once had his picture put on the same piece of cardboard as the man who went on to become the Hawk to a generation of North Siders (Sout’ Siders know who “The Hawk” really is).

While Dawson went on to play baseball into the 1990s and is beloved to certain Cubs fans, how many Blue Jays fans except for the most hard-core remember the man who was a part of their team’s original ballclub?

While Dawson managed to get himself immortalized, Scott’s career ended at age 26 in 1978, when his attempt to stick in baseball with the Springfield Redbirds of the old American Association produced a .281 batting average, 50 stolen bases – and no interest by the parent club St. Louis Cardinals in promoting him back to the major league roster.

His claim to fame in Blue Jays history? He was the lead-off Blue Jays batter in their first game ever, on April 7, 1977 against the Chicago White Sox (the game that was played even though it snowed heavily throughout). He was struck out by pitcher Ken Brett.

BOTH DAWSON AND Scott were equals, in a sense, back in the spring of ’77, as they had hopes of lengthy careers playing baseball in Canada. Dawson made the trip players dream about that ends in Cooperstown. Scott took the trip that occurs much more often, struggling (and failing) to stay in baseball while playing in Springfield, Ill., the very next season.

I wonder if he has any memories of the capital city, or of eating a “horseshoe?”

For his sake, I hope his life has turned out well, post-baseball. At the very least, the value of his baseball card just shot up significantly – all due to Dawson.

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