St. Louis Cardinals are like the Fighting Irish in their local fans amongst us

The Illinois secretary of state’s office has come up with what is, in some ways, just another money-making scheme – license plates allowing baseball fans to show their love of the St. Louis Cardinals.

For the set surviving around Effingham

Meaning one can get an official plate for their automobile that includes the famed “birds on bat” logo that the Cardinals have used for nearly a century. I can envision many residents of Southern Illinois choosing to identify their automobiles with such a plate.

PARTIALLY, IT MAY be a further way of identifying one as not being a part of Chicago.

But considering that the secretary of state’s office has offered specialized license plates identifying with colleges and sports teams for decades, it’s kind of shocking that they didn’t sign up with the Cardinals a long time ago.

For the Gateway Arch that is the prominent symbol of downtown St. Louis is visible for miles around into Illinois. Heck, Illinois includes a piece of the St. Louis metropolitan area amongst its residents – even though I don’t doubt that many Missourians wish they could somehow distance themselves from East St. Louis.

And some do think it bizarre that Illinois government would be willing to recognize a Missouri-based sports team.

BUT IF THE Secretary of State’s office has acknowledged both the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs with official license plates and there is a significant chunk of Illinois where the locals don’t pay much attention to either team, then I suppose it’s only common-sensical to include the Cardinals in the sporting mix.

For sensible baseball fans

For what it’s worth, the state uses the money from the $69 fee charged of motorists who can’t just have a generic number identifying their automobile to support a state fund meant to benefit public schools.

Which almost sounds a bit like the rhetoric we’ve heard for so many years about Illinois Lottery money supporting education. We’ll see someday if there are merits to the rhetoric.

Or is this just an ego-boost to sports fans who want to say “shove it” to the fans of other teams.

NOW I KNOW the state is claiming this is the first sports team from out-of-state they’re acknowledging with their own license plate. Although I’d question the accuracy of such an over-statement.

For Fighting Irish faithful

Because the state also has a series of license plates acknowledging assorted public and private colleges. One of the schools included is none-other-than Hoosier-based University of Notre Dame. Where Fighting Irish football rules, regardless of which side of State Line Road one happens to live upon.

Is it really any more unusual for someone in Illinois to root, root, root for the Cardinals any more than the Irish football?

Besides, I personally will get a bit of a kick out of watching Chicago Cubs baseball fans be forced to acknowledge the fallacy of their biggest myth – that the entirety of the world roots for the Cubbies.

JUST THINK OF when Southern Illinois residents feel compelled to make the drive to Wrigley Field to catch a ballgame, and Cubs fans will see just now many people are present to root against them.

There is, however, one gripe I still have about such license plates – mainly that even though it has been a couple of decades since the collegiate plates were created, they still haven’t gotten around to offering up one in the green-and-white colors of my Illinois Wesleyan University alma mater.

For those who are just determined to be different

One can literally show their support for Milliken University in Decatur or the West Side’s Malcolm X College, And now even for the Cardinals.

Yet I’m still waiting for the day I can proclaim Fighting Titan loyalties while driving my car. Even though, to be truthful, I might well turn out to be too cheap to shell out the $69 fee (charged on top of the regular cost of registering a car) to actually buy the plate!

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Chicago out-conned by Rio de Janeiro?

For all the rhetoric we hear about how venal and corrupt the inherent character of Chicago truly is, I couldn’t help but wonder if the real problem is that our city is run by a batch of goo-goos.

The 'games' that never were

It was the thought that popped into my head when I read reports about the bribery and corruption that is being alleged, tied to the decision more than a decade ago to stage the 2016 Summer Olympic games in Rio de Janiero.

THE OFFICIAL RHETORIC was that the International Olympic Committee decided it was FINALLY time to stage an Olympics in a city south of the equator.

But now, we have a former governor of Rio saying he paid the U.S. equivalent of over $2 million to committee members in order to ensure they voted for Rio over any of the other cities around the world that were competing for those games.

In short, bribes were paid. The process was rigged.

Now how truthful should we think all of this is? Well there’s the fact that former Governor Sergio Cabral already is convicted of criminal acts and is serving a lengthy prison term – at 200 years, it is one he may never be free from.

SO WHAT REASON would Cabral have to lie? It seems he has nothing to gain, or lose, by coming forth now with the testimony he offered in court last week. Or it could be the ultimate reason – political revenge.

There are other officials who will have trials coming up soon – and this could be a desire on his part to take down those officials to make them suffer the same fate that he is now enduring.

Daley's soul supposedly too black, but … 

Attorneys for those officials, by the way, claim it’s all trash-talk on Cabral’s part. He’s got no proof! Or so they say.

Now how is any of this the least bit relevant – or interesting – to those of us in Chicago? It’s because those 2016 Olympic Games were the ones that then-Mayor Richard M. Daley was determined to bring to the Second City. Remember the plans for a stadium to be temporarily erected in Washington Park?

REMEMBER THE GLOBAL battles between Tokyo, Madrid, Rio and Chicago? Remember the sentiment that this was a fight for Chicago to win so as to show our global dominance?

… was Hizzoner really too honest to prevail?

Remember the thousands of people gathered in Daley Plaza on that date in 2009 when the Olympic site was chosen – with fanatics chanting “We’re Number Four” (Chicago’s place on the four-city ballot) only to be suddenly silenced when it was learned that Chicago’s bid was the first to be knocked out of the running.

We really were number four – in terms of actually getting those games. The visions of Barack Obama presiding over an Olympics held in his home city turned out to be fantasy.

Mayor Daley was so disgusted by the city’s failure to win the Olympic games that the city has pretty much given up on attracting the International sports scene. It’s a large part of the reason why the 2026 World Cup tourney for soccer will be played partially in the United States – yet none of the matches will be held in Chicago.

EVEN RAHM EMANUEL had enough of the bad aftertaste to not want to bother with the international sports scene.

But now, we hear the whole thing may well have been rigged. We may well have lost that political fight to Rio de Janeiro because we weren’t corrupt enough. As in maybe we would have attracted the Olympic games and all the international attention that Daley wanted to bring to Chicago if only we were as corrupt as some of the political ideologues would want to insist we are.

The 'facility' that never became!

Not that I’m claiming we in Chicago should have loosened up our wallets and come up with more cash than the International Olympic Committee demanded from the Brazilians.

But it makes me wonder how much those ideologues are choking on their rhetoric at the notion that Chicago was out-corrupted by somebody else. And that it may well have been a Daley who got out-hard-balled politically for being too honest.

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Will packed ballpark become a more common site on Sout' Side?

It was a cloudy, overcast, all-around-crummy Saturday in Chicago. Most definitely not the stereotypical image of a beautiful day for a ballgame.

No crummy attendance jokes on Sout' Side -- not Saturday, at least. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

Yet the stands at Guaranteed Rate Field were packed.

I WENT TO that particular ballgame, where the Chicago White Sox managed to get beat up upon by the New York Yankees. Yet the ballpark was packed with people -- officially just over 36,000 people bought tickets.

And even accounting for people who got discouraged from showing up because of the rain (who wants to get drenched, or have to wear a crude poncho to try to keep dry), there were still 30,000 plus people actually in attendance.

Which is significant because Chicago Cubbies fanatics would have us think that the White Sox are the ball club nobody cares about and nobody ever goes to see -- because EVERYBODY feels the need to go out to Beautiful Wrigley Field instead!

Because everybody loves the Cubs. It's only natural. Or so they'd have us think.

PERSONALLY, I'VE ALWAYS felt that the Cubs were the ballclub that managed to draw a solid number of tourists -- thereby inflating their overall attendance figures. If you take actual interest in the two teams, I'd say they come out about even.

A loaded parking lot made me thankful I took the 'el'

Except to the Cubbie fanatics, who want to believe they're the only ones who count. Almost like how Donald Trump's political backers explain away their guy's constant decline in poll ratings. Their people are the only ones who matter, and who should be paid attention to.

Not intimidated by Yanks -- this year, at least

To which I give the giant raspberry. As in ptbthhhhhb!

Or should we call it the Bronx cheer? Which might actually be appropriate because of the way the White Sox this weekend managed to produce what might well be the highlight of 2019 by beating up on the Yankees.

THE BRONX BOMBERS are the ball club who are in first place in their division, despite the injuries to so many key ballplayers, although on Saturday shortstop (and star) Didi Gregorius was back in the lineup.

Real 'South Side Hit Men'

But the White Sox have managed to hold their own, wining two of three games the teams played back in April, then managing to win a majority of games they played this week.

Technically, the White Sox won their "series" this year against the Yanks. Not bad, considering the team started out this season awful -- and it has taken this massive stretch of winning ways (including against the Yankees) just to get back to a .500 (half) winning record.

Is this going to be the beginning of the so-called rebuild White Sox management keeps insisting will turn the South Side Hit Men into a championship calibre ballclub by about 2021 or 2022?

WAS THE WELL-PACKED ballpark on Saturday (all of last week actually) a sign of what we're likely to see in coming years.

Can Sox keep winning Tue. and Wed. at Wrigley?

Or was this just a fluke and likely the highlight of the upcoming decade we're likely to get out of the Guaranteed Rate Field crew.

I did notice one significant change from recent years -- the number of people arriving at the ballpark wearing No. 7 jerseys (for Mickey Mantle) or No. 2 (for Derek Jeter) were on the decline. In fact, the most popular bit of garb Saturday night was worn by the fans who got the freebie promotional Hawaiian shirt -- covered with White Sox logos instead of tropical floral patterns.

And I have to admit to one plus brought about by being forced to buy a seat in the outer reaches of the upper deck -- my seat was sheltered by the upper deck roof. Meaning I remained dry all the way through the Saturday night rainfall that caused a rain delay.

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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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SPORTING NUZ; Chicago-style: Who's bigger – Bears, or Wildcats?

I’m not much of a football fan. Yet even I can appreciate just how unique this season is for those of us Chicago-area people who take to the gridiron.

Maybe we could have a fantasy championship at Wrigley between the Bears and the Wildcats?

The Chicago Bears don’t actually suck, for a change. They’re in first place in their division, and it would take a collapse of historic proportions for them to fail to at least make it to the playoffs.

WE’RE GOING TO have people in coming weeks getting all worked up at the thought of a Super Bowl involving a Chicago team. The delusional thoughts will run rampant. They’re not going to dump the ’85 Bears (whose coach, Mike Ditka, these days is recovering from a heart attack) in Chicago’s sporting mentality. But they’ll come close.

Yet let’s be honest. They might turn out to be the second-most interesting local football tale of the year.

For we have the Wildcats of Northwestern University playing absurdly well. They are the top team in the Big Ten’s western division.

And after seeing Ohio State whomp all over Michigan, there will be those eager to see if Northwestern can actually win the conference – which would most definitely put them in line for a significant bowl game.

Wildcats to get better bowl venue than Yankee Stadium

CERTAINLY SOMETHING MORE prominent than the Pinstripe Bowl, to be played Dec. 27 at Yankee Stadium. Can the Wildcats actually manage to steal the thunder away from Da Bears? It’s possible, since a successful Bears season would be not getting totally humiliated in the playoffs, Whereas the Wildcats could actually wind up winning a bowl game.

Even though I’m sure the SEC-types who want to think the world doesn’t extend beyond Dixie will want to believe Alabama is the supreme football power – regardless of how anyone else actually plays.

Although it occurs to me there’s one way that this season tops the ’85 Bears – what if the Wildcats were to win a major bowl game, while the Bears also got into their third Super Bowl appearance ever. More likely than not, it won’t happen – but it’s something for some of us to fantasize about.

What else is notable on our city’s sporting scene these days?

Remembering their '05 victories?

HALL OF FAME FANTASIES: We’re at that time of year where the Baseball Hall of Fame is contemplating which former ballplayers deserve to be inducted amongst its newest members come 2019.

Two of the players getting their first – and most likely only – chance at induction are former Chicago White Sox pitchers Jon Garland and Freddy Garcia. Both of whom were a part of that outstanding starting rotation that enabled the Sox to win a World Series back in 2005.

The ’05 Sox technically already have one of their members in the Hall of Fame in the form of Frank Thomas (the slugger turned Nugenix pitchman), although Thomas actually spent most of that season injured and didn’t play a single game in the World Series.

Or have many forgotten by now?

Personally, I thought it an intriguing sporting happening when, in the final round of the American League playoffs that year, the White Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels – with the four Sox victories being complete game victories and Garland and Garcia ringing up two of them. They’ll most likely have to settle for the memories, rather than a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y.

MOST MEMORABLE?: Of course, one of the reasons that the two pitchers won’t get their moment of immortality is because of the way some people are determined to think that the Chicago Cubs championship of 2016 is all so significant.

Is this really Illinois history?

I couldn’t help but wretch at the thought of the recently-released results of a survey about Illinois history – asking people to pick the most-significant moments in our state’s 200-year history.

Perhaps it’s a plus that Moment No. 1 was Abraham Lincoln’s funeral proceedings – including the funeral train that took Honest Abe’s body from Washington to Springfield, Ill., while stopping in Chicago and passing through northern Illinois.

But the Cubs’ World Series title ranked No. 2 – as in we have people deluded enough to think that nothing else that has happened in the state other than the moment when the Cubs crushed the hopes of Cleveland Indians fans, who came oh so close to winning their own “first World Series” in 70-something years if only they could have held a lead in the final game.

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Baseball has found a way to make the Chicago ‘city series’ feel lame

Remember back a decade or more ago when Chicago White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski wound up getting popped in the jaw by Cubs catcher Michael Barrett when the former went sliding hard into home plate to try to knock the ball free and score a run?

Remember how after being ejected from the game, Pierzynski tried getting fans at then-U.S. Cellular Field all riled up against the Cubs?

THAT MAY HAVE been a high-point in the intensity level for the so-called Crosstown Classic that has been played every year since the mid-1990s between Chicago’s two major league ball clubs.

But there’s one thing I can say definitively – we’ve hit the low point now.

Major League Baseball may be trying to shake up the way it does things, create a little controversy and maybe even rile up the fans. But the way the White

Sox/Cubs matchup this year was handled practically guaranteed it would come off as irrelevant.

This year, the two teams played a three-game weekend series back in May at Wrigley Field. Which means there need to be additional games between the two teams at Guaranteed Rate Field.

THOSE GAMES HAVE finally come upon us now – in the third weekend of September when many people already have written off baseball for the season.

Seriously, after this weekend, the White Sox have three more games to play in Chicago (against the Cleveland Indians), before finishing the 2018 season outright in Minneapolis against the Twins.

I know some people have tried to stir up interest from the White Sox perspective by pointing out that wins against the Cubs could become the ones that ensure the ’18 Sox don’t lose 100 ball games this season.

There also are those who take a bit of joy out of the idea that the White Sox could “pour it on” hard and sweep a series – and quite possibly could be the ball club that screws up the Cubs’ chances of taking a playoff spot, thereby ensuring that there won’t be a chance at a World Series in Chicago this year.

AS MUCH AS I personally have little use for the Cubs, or anything connected with the National League, I can’t quite get all worked up over this match-up so late in the season.

This is the time that many sports fans in the Second City get all absorbed with football and the Chicago Bears and fantasies that “da Bearz” could win a Super Bowl for the first time in 32 years.

Has it really been nearly a third of a century since the days of “Sweetness,” “Danimal” and “the Fridge?”

To derive any excitement from baseball this weekend, one is literally going to have to look back nearly as long ago for the days when Bridgeport vs. Lake View seemed like a grudge match.

NOT THAT FANS of the two teams have any love lost for each other. But it just seems the baseball feud has mellowed out a bit – at least until we get some lasting evidence that the rebuilt White Sox will provide worthy competition and smack the baby blue bears back into a role of submission.

Despite that, I couldn’t help but notice the crowds expected for this weekend’s ballgames.

I contemplated attending one of them (possibly the Saturday night game where Sister Mary Jo Sobieck again does first-pitch duties to try to once again unleash the wrath of God himself upon the Cubs), only to see that Guaranteed Rate Field was offering up standing room-only tickets.

And even those were at a cost of $75 – which to me seems like a ridiculous sum to pay to stand in the outfield concourse behind the outfield seats, as we move yet another year away from 1906; the season that baseball came down to a White Sox/Cubs brawl and one that Cubs fans will never be allowed to live down.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: 10-4 on Friday, and a White Sox Winner! The beginning of a Sox sweep that makes them the Cubbies' spoilers, or a lone victory that will be the highlight of an otherwise dingy 2018 season?

EXTRA: Were Chicago Bears ahead of pack in doing away with Honey Bears?

Reading the reports of the Washington Redskins and the stink the team is in with regards to the way they used their cheerleading dance squad almost makes me wonder if Virginia McCaskey, the daughter of Chicago Bears founder George Halas, was on to something.

Has it really been 32 years since the Honey Bears last danced?

McCaskey was the woman whose action right after her Bears actually managed to win a Super Bowl (remember 1986?) was to abolish the Honey Bears.

THAT WAS THE dance team that existed from the mid-1970s until the end of the 1985 season. The Honey Bears’ last performance literally was in New Orleans at the Superdome while the Bears beat up on New England 46-10.

In doing away with the Honey Bears, she made comments about how she found the whole image of hot pants-clad dancers jiggling their curves about to be inappropriate, and how the Bears would never again have such a dance team so long as she remained a part of the team’s management.

Some three decades later, McCaskey remains with us. At 95, who’s to say what will happen.

Now I know some people act as though the lack of an official dance team to entertain the fans (and appease their libido) is somehow a disgrace. I’ve heard some try to claim that the Bears are cursed because of the demise of the Honey Bears – and that (rather than lack of athletic talent) is the reason the Bears are now 32 years, and counting, without another Super Bowl championship.

BUT COULD VIRGINIA have been on to something in thinking that the old-timers like her father who created professional football would never have saw the need for something like the leerleaders (that’s what they really are) whom many teams feel compelled to have?

If anything, it was just a matter of time before someone got caught up in the Redskins’ circumstances.

For those who haven’t paid attention, the New York Times reported about how the Redskins basically used their dance squad in ways that hardly differ from those exotic dancers who work in those seedy nightclubs.

It seems that during a 2013 trip to Costa Rica, the dancers posed topless during a photo shoot for a calendar, and it seems the team offered certain male fans the perk of being present.

THE LADIES ALSO were required to be escorts at a nightclub – serving as “dates” for certain men. An act that bears some similarity to what professional escorts do – and what can get them in trouble with police who consider it one step up from prostitution.

You’d think that Washington would feel some desire to maintain a low profile, what with all the stink they arouse from the fact that they insist on keeping the team nickname “Redskins.”

Now, they’re the team that pimps out its dancers.

Which can’t help but make one wonder if “da Bears” are spared much grief by being one of the few professional football teams (including such other ‘old school’ teams like the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants) to do without the sideline routines.

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Loyola/Michigan basketball becomes the battle of the deli sandwiches

Just in case anybody had doubts about how significant the Loyola vs. Michigan semi-final game in the NCAA Men’s basketball tourney is to Chicago, we have the latest bit of evidence.

Manny's gets free publicity from latest sporting bet

It’s VERY significant, because the mayors feel compelled to turn it into a sporting bet.

AS IN ONE of those things where the mayor of Chicago feels compelled to defend the honor of the Second City against that of the other city. Which in this case is Ann Arbor, Mich.

And in which case, each of the mayors puts up some food item supposedly significant to the respective city. Somebody supposedly will get to do some good eatin’ depending on who manages to prevail in Saturday’s game that leads up to the NCAA championship game scheduled for Monday.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is willing to buy corned beef and pastrami from Manny’s Deli and send it off to Ann Arbor IF Loyola’s “Cinderella” surprise team finally meets its match to Big 10 powerhouse Michigan.

But if it turns out that Loyola prevails and winds up playing in the championship game against the winner of Kansas/Villanova, then Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor will be sending sandwiches to City Hall from Zingerman’s Deli.

SPECIFICALLY, THE GEORGIA Reuben sandwich – which I’m told is turkey, cheese and cole slaw served on rye bread and slathered with Russian dressing.

It doesn’t sound appetizing to me (something about thick, creamy salad dressings is a turnoff), but I’m told by various University of Michigan alumni that it is a big deal – and something many of them crave when they think back to their collegiate days.

Will Chi win piles of Georgia Reubens?

I’ll have to admit to thinking this particular political bet is a little more intriguing than most. Usually, our public officials manage to put up a generic list of food products that they claim is associated with Chicago.

I remember back in the days of Richard M. Daley as mayor, the bets usually produced something resembling a grocery list that only Chicago-oriented geeks would ever think of buying.

TURNING THE WHOLE spectacle into little more than a marketing ploy – free advertising for Chicago-based companies. Rather than something that anybody with a real sporting interest would have put together.

I’m certainly glad to learn that Chicago isn’t offering to send pizzas to some other city so as to show off the superiority of the local product compared to whatever Little Caesar’s-like product the other city thinks is edible.

Largely because too many Chicagoans can’t agree on what a “real” pizza consists of, or how its slices should be cut (party-style into squares, I argue, and certainly not into triangles that one folds over. That’s playing with one’s food, rather than eating it).

Anything we’d send to another city would create a local conflict over whether we truly sent our best representative of pizza. Unless you’re so convinced that the Chicago-oriented ball club will prevail and we won’t have to send anything!

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of this bet? I like the part where the mayors also say they’ll make a contribution to the charity of the winning city’s choice. Which probably says more than the shipping of sandwiches.

Although to get within the spirit of the event, let’s say that Loyola manages to defeat number 3-seeded Michigan (Loyola’s ranked 11^th) and takes on the Kansas/Villanova winner.

Do we get to see our public officials make another bet? I can’t think of anything edible in either of those places. Particularly from anything in and around Lawrence, Kan.

Is this the ultimate Loyola over Villanova prize?

But if it became a matchup between Loyola and Villanova, would we get an Italian beef vs. Philly cheesesteak brawl? If so, we all know the superiority of a “hot, dipped combo” over any gooey mess that becomes a cheesesteak.

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Posting pictures at United Center entrances -- how else to ban them?

Chicago Blackhawks officials say four fans of the hockey team are now banned from the United Center for life because of their behavior at a weekend game against the Washington Capitals.

You know, the four who insisted on shouting racially-motivated taunts at a black Capitals player during his time in the penalty box!

THE BLACKHAWKS HAVE made all the appropriate statements how they’re appalled that any of their fans could have such horrid thoughts. A lot of people are engaging in verbiage meant to make themselves sound appropriately concerned.

Yet the truth is I don’t have a clue how you can possibly do anything to enforce this; unless you can find a way to put a Scarlet Letter, of sorts, on all the racist knuckleheads of our society.

Many of whom, if you branded them with a “K” (or a “B” for bigot) would probably take it as a badge of honor – that’s how twisted their thought processes are.

I don’t have a clue how the Blackhawks can say they’re banning four individuals from the stadium and their games. Do we literally post their pictures at the stadium entrance – with orders that the quartet be shot on sight if they try to attend a game.

DO WE EXTEND it to all the ticket services that none of the four ever be sold tickets to a Blackhawks game?

Maybe we should ban them from even following hockey games or teams? Although I don’t have a clue how this could be enforced.

Many people have gone out of their way to say the proper things, but I’m not convinced there’s going to be any serious change in attitudes or behavior.

Because a part of me believes that many sports fans are serious believers of Homer J. Simpson when he once said, “This ticket (to a ballgame) doesn’t just give me a seat. It also gives me the right, no the duty, to make a complete ass of myself.”

WHICH THOSE FOUR fans now banned from the hockey arena certainly did on Saturday when they insisted on implying that a black player doesn’t belong in hockey.

What I find almost humorous (but in a pathetic way) is the marketing campaign the National Hockey League has ongoing these days – “Hockey is for Everyone,” which is supposed to make the sport out to be something for all, and not just for white people from Canada.

In fact, the Blackhawks had a promotion based on the theme during their Thursday match against the Anaheim Ducks. It seems the message of a “safe, positive and inclusive environment for players and families regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation and socio-economic status” didn’t take.

Because just two days later, the incident singling out Devante Smith-Pelly occurred. Although the Blackhawks’ lone black player, Anthony Duclair, said those four fans’ bad behavior wasn’t in any way unique, or isolated.

I’M SURE THOSE four fans, along with many others, are prepared to dismiss the whole affair as a lot of ‘politically correct’ trash talk about nothing. There probably isn’t anything that can be done to change such attitudes, or convince them of how big of knuckleheads they truly are.

Now I’ll admit to not being much of a hockey fan (although I appreciate the significance to the Chicago sports scene of a team that has three Stanley Cup championships in this decade). Part of it is that I have never ice-skated – and floor hockey is a second-rate game that filled up some childhood gym class time.

I’m sure that is true for many others – particularly in parts of the country where the existence of ice and snow is considered a myth.

Which means we’re likely to see more continued bad behavior – and most likely the instances of the four banished from the United Center finding a way to sneak into a Blackhawks game; while taking a perverse pride in being able to do so.

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EXTRA: Sox/WGN not radical change

Still the voices, for better or worse ...

For those of you still having fits over this week’s announcement that the Chicago White Sox are shifting their radio broadcasts (for the next three seasons) to WGN-AM, relax.

Yes, that station once spreading the Tribune Co.’s image throughout the nation’s airwaves did develop an unnatural closeness to the Chicago Cubs – helping to bolster their image as a cutesy batch of losers.

... of White Sox baseball

BUT THE REALITY is that in sports broadcasting, it’s really the ball clubs that are in charge. It’s still going to be the voices and personas of one-time White Sox ballplayers Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson who will be doing the games. It’s still former ballplayers whom the White Sox think are best employed in the broadcast booth, and not on the field as a manager or coach!

Besides, WGN has the history of Chicago in its background – even that part of the history that occurred around 35^th Street and Shields Avenue.

It was long-time Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse who actually was the voice we find on the recordings of that September 1959 night when the White Sox actually won the pennant (not that he’s to blame for the city officials who celebrated by sounding Chicago’s air raid alarm system).

Comiskey Park on Brickhouse statue

Maybe it should also be noted that the only time the legendary Chicago broadcaster got to do a World Series was that very same ’59 Go-Go Sox ball club that, sadly enough, lost in six games to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

GOING ALONG WITH the tradition of the times, the World Series paired up the lead broadcasters for both ball clubs – creating a Vin Scully/Jack Brickhouse team that many baseball-minded people would regard as a broadcast fantasy pairing; both recipients of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Frick Award for broadcasters.

Besides, the Cubs have been off WGN radio for a few years now. The tie was already broken.

Nobody liked this image

It’s not like the ghost of Ron Santo is going to return from the Great Beyond to become the Voice of the White Sox, just as he spent the final years of his life adding to the image of Chicago Cubdom by being their radio voice.

Now as someone old enough to remember the sight of an aging Santo trying to play infield for the White Sox, that truly would be a dreadful thought. But it’s going to be the same sounds of Sox baseball – only at a different spot on the radio dial.

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War of the honored symbols; or are they really nothing more than mascots?

The baseball fan in me noticed the reports that the Cleveland Indians are removing (finally!) the Chief Wahoo logo that has been a part of the team culture for some 70-plus years. A good thing to see the absurd, cartoonish image no longer linger.

Which of these will have louder, ...

Or maybe it won’t be that simple.

BECAUSE I ALSO noticed the reports about the ongoing dispute over Chief Illiniwek; the alleged honored symbol of the University of Illinois who was formally abolished years ago – only to have certain ideologically-inclined fans of the Fighting Illini act as though they’re engaged in a noble cause by retaining the chief’s memory.

... more obnoxious proponents?

I won’t be surprised to see Indians fans and conservative ideologues go out of their way to snatch up the remaining supply of Wahoo-logo merchandise (the team will drop the symbol come the 2019 season) and wear it as a measure of spite.

Which in a sense would be a good thing – we’d now clearly be able to identify the idiots in our society. They’d be the people wearing Wahoo-emblazoned caps, t-shirts and jerseys.

Just as we can tell the people at the University of Illinois who are determined to live in the past when their silly image of a native chief was regarded as dignified – rather than as the cartoon it truly was. In one sense, no better than that of Wahoo.

Am I only one who sees similar grin?

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Monday about a recent incident where a professor opposed to the chief imagery went into a restroom at what used to be called Assembly Hall, found an alumnus in chief regalia who apparently planned to make an unofficial appearance during a basketball game, and videotaped him.

The professor was arrested for supposedly violating laws against recording someone in a public restroom (a law intended to keep perverts from taking pictures of women during their private moments), but the state’s attorney for Champaign County refused to prosecute.

Of course, the chief backers are trying to portray the professor as some sort of pervert for using his camera in a restroom. Although it could also be argued that people determined to keep the chief image alive aren’t exactly the most rational of human beings.

Spokane Indians baseball figured out way to pay tribune

In short, the fact that the University of Illinois did away with Chief Illiniwek back in 2007 hasn’t brought this particular battle to a close. I expect that people on the Ohio scene will soon have similarly-absurd images to counter with.

PEOPLE DECIDING TO turn up at ballgames with their faces painted red and white to make themselves appear to be Chief Wahoo. An image that was officially commissioned by the ballclub back in 1947 by then-owner Bill Veeck (yes, the very same) who said he wanted something that, “would convey a spirit of pure joy and unbridled enthusiasm.”

Which strikes me as being as ridiculous as those Illinois alumni who argue on behalf of Illiniwek that he was an “honored symbol” who portrayed the people of the Illiniwek Confederation of old with dignity.

Is there really a difference?

He wasn’t a mascot, they’d argue, like Bucky Badger of the University of Wisconsin. You’d never catch the chief dancing with cheerleaders or giving a football quarterback a high-five following a successful touchdown pass.

They’d claim the dance he’d do at half-time of football and basketball games was actually authentic to the peoples who were native to what is now Illinois. I’ve known students who portrayed Illiniwek who claim that such clownish behavior would have got them in trouble.

NOT THAT ANY of that really matters. Throughout the years, it has adapted to being a caricature, one possibly just as ridiculous as that cartoonish Indian face with its ridiculous grin (so reminiscent of the “sambo” images that black people find so offensive) that some Indians fans will want to cling to.

Perhaps they will think this is part of their own ongoing fight to “Make America Great Again.” As though the idea of our society is based on images that kept certain peoples in their place and let them know they really didn’t fully belong.

Is calling this State Farm Center the real offense?

Not that I think there aren’t respectful ways of teams incorporating imagery of native tribes into their marketing. Although I suspect that many of the people who want screaming, screeching savages would consider those images dull and confusing.

Some people will fight for anything, no matter how ridiculous. Personally, if I were a Fighting Illini fan (my brother went to school there, I didn’t), I’d be more offended by the notion that the basketball team let their long-time home ditch the Assembly Hall moniker for State Farm Center. Now that’s something tacky.

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