EXTRA: Chicago a city of conventions, but also of sanctuary as well

Chicago likes to boast that we’re some sort of ultimate destination for places looking to hold a convention.

'Ground Zero' of the immigration protest movement this week

We have all these hotels, along with facilities capable of staging such events. When combined with all the other attractions of the city that people can stop by and visit while doing business here, we’d like to think there just isn’t any legitimate reason for people to want to do a convention elsewhere.

OF COURSE, THERE are those who’d rather have their events in Las Vegas – figuring that out-of-towners would feel more comfortable with gambling away their money rather than taking the time to study our city.

But nonetheless, we like to think we’re a major convention center. To the point that it becomes a big deal when Chicago actively tries to chase away a group that wanted to hold its professional gathering here.

But that’s just the case with the convention that began Tuesday at the Marriott Marquis Hotel – located just a block away from the McCormick Place convention hall.

For it seems the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency put together a program for all the businesses they work with in the course of their work. It would be a gathering of a who’s who of the federal immigration enforcement world. A chance for them to talk shop about their industry.

WHICH INCLUDES THE ways and means by which people are deported from the United States. Which, since we’re a sanctuary city that officially does not cooperate with the federal government in terms of enforcing immigration laws means we don’t even want their business.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot went so far as to try to get the hotel chain to kick the federals out, get them to find some other city to hold their gathering. It didn’t work. They’re still here in Chicago, and it means we’ll get to see people picketing the hotel to express their disgust with what it is these people do for a living.

It does seem that the hotel has agreed to prohibit immigration officials from trying to detain any guest of the hotel whose citizenship status is not quite clear. But that’s as far as they’re willing to go. They don’t want to lose any business.

So the gathering took place, with acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan being the key speaker Tuesday. And this will be one event that many Chicagoans will be more than glad to see finish its business and move on by week’s end.

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Political apologies rarely work, still wind up taking ‘hit’ for trash-talk

There’s something about any attempt by a political official to apologize for saying something stupid that always manages to come off as insincere – it winds up sounding like the only thing you’re “sorry” for is getting caught!

Somewhere, a political operative thinks this is clever

That certainly is the case for the Illinois Republican County Chairman’s Association – which how has on its Facebook page a prominent post apologizing for the fact that they let a lame gag get put on their site to begin with – one that attempted to trash the four members of Congress whom President Donald Trump has engaged in trash-talk against.

IT SEEMS THAT Republican-leaning political operatives created a graphic labelling the four as “the Jihad Squad” and implying just how subversive we ought to consider them to be.

“If you don’t agree with their socialist ideology, you’re racist,” is what we’re told. Implying that Donald Trump is totally justified in all of his trash talk against the women – whom the one thing they have in common is that they’re not white.

The graphic, which actually is a parody of sorts of the advertising posters for the “Charlie’s Angels” films (the more recent movies, not the ‘70’s era television show), is labeled as being put together by the national Republican County Chairman’s Association, which then had it put on the sites of their various affiliated organizations.

The original motivating image?

Which led to the Illinois chapter early Monday publicly removing the post, with chapter President Mark Shaw saying the post was “unauthorized” and, “I am sorry if anyone who saw the image was offended by the contents.”

NOW FOR ALL I know, Shaw may well be sincere in his apology. He may well be shuddering at the thought that he’s affiliated politically with the kind of people who’d think this ad parody is somehow clever. Even Illinois Republican Chairman Timothy Schneider was embarrassed, saying he thinks the graphic, “does not reflect … the Republican Party’s values.”

But I don’t doubt there are people who consider themselves good and loyal Republicans who have absolutely no problem with this kind of image being spewed and who will now think the “problem” is that the GOP has people who can’t get on board with their initiative.

Would Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate be offended?

As for the parody, I think it’s tacky depicting Rep, Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., wielding a shotgun, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., packing a pistol, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., looking like an angry be-yotch and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, bursting into flames.

But even more so, I think it comes across as downright lame. It’s almost the kind of image I’d expect that 12-year-olds would find amusing. But then again, there are times I wonder if the mentality of our political people has delved down to the level of pre-teens who think fart jokes are funny.

WHICH MEANS I can almost sympathize with the Republican operatives who now have to address this image and try to explain away how anyone could seriously have thought it would possibly attract anyone to the political cause.

I don’t doubt it will keep the hard-core ideologues aligned. But then again, that may well be the political strategy for the 2020 election cycle.

Make sure the ideologues turn out in force to back the re-election of Donald Trump and anybody whose presence would not conflict with ‘the Donald,’ and scare off anybody who’d be inclined to want to raise the elevation of political discourse these days.

Political spots certainly have changed

But then again, I also don’t doubt there are some who are ideologically-inclined to want to sink the level of discourse to this level – it’s much easier to understand. Four crazy broads! All of them with big mouths!  And most importantly, none of them white!

NOT EXACTLY AN issues-based campaign theme. Not something that would bring out the intellect in would-be voters.

More like something simple that would reduce the election cycle down to something we can either laugh at – or lambast those who don’t think it’s funny as being mere “snowflakes.”

Which in-and-of-itself is a political label that gets used far too often.

Although I think one anonymous Internet commenter may have stated it best – this “Jihad Squad” graphic is just too stupid for anyone thinking about voting to take seriously. Although we’ll have to see if it’s too stupid that it winds up costing anybody a vote come Election Day.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Some Republicans are tossing out their own response, trying to claim Democrats are no better. They're citing a blurb posted on the website of the Kankakee County Democratic Party that equates those "Make America Great Again: caps with the pointy hoods of the Ku Klux Klan -- if only those hoods were an obnoxious bright-red. Crain's Chicago Business is reporting that Democrats are in a similar circumstance for their Internet attempt at humor. Although I can't help but wonder who is really offended by the gag.

'80s-Style Chicago baseball celebrated by Hall of Fame this weekend

I’m sure there are some baseball fans who think I’m totally crocked – the induction ceremonies for the Baseball Hall of Fame held Sunday were focused on New York Yankees relief pitcher Mariano Rivera and one-time Toronto Blue Jay turned Philadelphia Phillie Roy Halladay.

1977 No. 1 draft pick now a Hall of Famer

But for those of us who remember back a few decades to the 1980s and were following the Chicago baseball scene back then, the Hall of Fame induction moment was more about recognizing the special moments we saw first-hand for ourselves.

FOR AMONGST THE ballplayers who were inducted (and now will forevermore have their visages immortalized in bronze) are one-time White Sox outfielder Harold Baines AND one-time Cubs relief pitcher Lee Smith.

Both were amongst the players whose memories were celebrated this weekend, and both gave induction speeches heavy on praising the memories of family who supported them.

With Baines literally saying his wife, Marla, deserved the praise more than he.

“You are the true Hall of Famer of our family,” said the man who used to be one of two Chicagoans capable of getting thousands of people to chant “Harold, Harold” in unison (the other was Harold Washington). “The game has given us a lot of shared moments, memories like today. Your presence here today makes my journey complete.”

Once the best relief pitcher ever

NOW I KNOW there are many fans who are getting all bent out of shape over the notion that Harold Baines is now regarded as one of the best ballplayers ever.

But perhaps it’s because I remember back to the ‘80s – before Baines suffered the knee injuries that turned him from a star outfielder into a designated hitter. In short, I remember what he was when he WAS a complete ballplayer.

And I regard the existence of the designated hitter in baseball as the reason why Baines was able to keep playing for so many ball clubs (including three stints each with the White Sox Baltimore Orioles) as the reason why he lasted in baseball into the 21^st Century – instead of being a washout back around 1986.

Perhaps it’s because that 1983 White Sox team (the first Chicago ballclub ever to make it to baseball playoffs) now has three Hall of Famers amongst its ranks – along with catcher Carlton Fisk and manager Tony LaRussa (who admittedly used his baseball clout to get Baines the vote sufficient for Hall of Fame admission).

Superceding his saves total doesn't diminish Lee Smith

OF COURSE, THE ’83 White Sox were followed up in 1984 by the first Chicago Cubs team to ever make it to baseball playoffs – and Lee Smith was a key part of that team in that he provided the relief pitching that helped prevent many Cubs teams that season from blowing late leads.

In fact, even for the many other ball clubs he pitched for through 1997, he racked up 478 saves – which once was the most-ever for a relief pitcher. Rivera now has that record – with 652. A factoid that some have said diminishes Smith’s achievement.

Or maybe it’s like those who don’t want to consider Baines’ 2,866 base hits – and the fact that the labor disputes of that decade very likely cost him the chance to play in a few more games that would have given him the 3,000-hit statistic AND semi-automatic Hall of Fame induction.

Maybe it’s the fact that Smith became the second-consecutive star relief pitcher whom the Cubs gave up on (Bruce Sutter was the first) who has went on to a Hall of Fame career.

"Go stifle" to all of Baines', Smith's critics

THEN AGAIN, BAINES is the guy the White Sox traded away the first time back in 1989 to the Texas Rangers for Sammy Sosa. Meaning then-Rangers owner George W. Bush is going to have to quit calling the trade his biggest screw-up. He’ll have to regard certain acts of his U.S. presidency as superseding it.

Just like I suspect too many people forget how talented a player Baines was for the White Sox back in in the 1980s. Do too many people want to believe that ball clubs that had one remarkable season each during the decade couldn’t possibly be worthy of Hall of Fame status players?

I can’t help but think it’s a good thing that both Baines and Smith managed to overcome their baseball detractors and gain the recognition they deserve for their time in baseball.

And particularly with Baines, a part of me wants to tell every single person who’s going around bad-mouthing Sunday’s induction the same thing that Archie Bunker used to tell wife Edith. As in, “Go stifle yourself!”

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Weather extremes; or Dog Days in Chi

Remember the polar vortex?

That period of a few days back in January when the shift in weather traits actually gave in Chicago a taste of what things normally are like around the Arctic Circle!

Rocco (left) and Carmelo back in the winter months. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

IT WAS COLD. Particularly that one day where I got an assignment that actually required me to go outside and walk around the neighborhood in search of some colorful tidbits for a newspaper story.

Which I managed to accomplish in record time. No point in getting frost-bite for the free-lance pay rate I take in these days.

I also remember having to take the dogs outside during those days so they could “do their business,” so to speak. They’re not paper-trained, so their reaction to bathroom-type functions is to want to go outside – no matter what the weather is like.

While Rocco and Carmelo usually manage to linger out in the back yard for a few minutes before doing their “duty,” on those days they managed to run outside, complete their business them come charging back to the house.

LITERALLY CLAWING AWAY at the back door in desperate need of somebody to let them inside. Because it’s cold out here!!!

Anyway, these are the memories popping into my head on Friday as we’re enduring a heat spell that some are saying will be record-setting for the Chicago area.

The National Weather Service issued warnings for northern Illinois and Indiana, along with southern Wisconsin, going from Friday at 10 a.m. and supposed to last until about 7 p.m. Saturday.

It’s going to be hot and humid and people were advised to stay indoors as much as possible during that time period.

Rocco prefers the snow from indoors

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, I took the doggies out for a walk Friday morning and they managed to complete their business. But the walk didn’t last that long – pretty soon the dogs were panting heavily as they were hot.

They couldn’t wait to get back inside, and it was a good move that I refilled their water dishes before the walk. For they immediately went for the water and began gulping it down once we got back to shelter.

Now there have been some reports these days reminiscing back into history and 1919, when the heat of that summer was considered a cause of boosting tensions that ultimately resulted in race riots that left many people dead.

Although I suspect many more people had 1995 come to their minds. Much more recent – although even that is a quarter-of-a-century in the past.

I WAS FORTUNATE enough to not actually be in Chicago that summer – I was living in Springfield, Ill., at the time, although I got to hear the horror stories from my mother and brother of just how ridiculously hot it became and the extremes they had to go through to remain cool.

I recall the reports ultimately said the intense heat was because of a shift that, for a couple of weeks, caused Chicago to become something along the lines of Saudi Arabia.

And while those who actually live in the desert perhaps are capable of coping with such conditions, we managed to get caught off-guard. Causing the hundreds of deaths from that summer due to intense heat.

Carmelo wanted the water!

All I know is that if this is what other parts of the world feel like, it makes me all the more thankful to be a Chicagoan. The rest of the world can keep their weather extremes.

BUT I MUST admit to being uncertain about which extreme is more uanbearable. Polar vortex or Arab desert?

All I know is that I take one look at Rocco and Carmelo in heavy pant and know they were about as miserable as they were back in January when they virtually froze their paws off.

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R.I.P. Broglio and Pumpsie Green

A pair of former ballplayers saw their demise in this realm of existence yet the significance of their stories within the baseball world continue to live on. They’re not to be forgotten anytime soon.

Cubbie blue never agreed w/ Broglio

One of the players was pitcher Ernie Broglio – who during his time with the St. Louis Cardinals won 70 games, including one 20-win season and another where he came close.

THE CHICAGO CUBS acquiring him in 1964 should have been the kind of move that added a potential ace to their pitching staff. Looking particularly good since all the Cubbies gave up for Broglio was an outfielder who barely hit .250 and didn’t even come close to the home run power they always dreamed he had.

The outfielder, of course, was Lou Brock, who upon going to the Cardinals suddenly discovered he could steal bases – some 33 in that partial season alone and more than 900 over the course of his two decades as a major leaguer.

The reason why he’s a member of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Immortalized in bronze – even though there are some who like to think Brock is a perfect example of a ballplayer who wasn’t that special.

All he could do, after all, is steal bases – better than anybody else who had played prior to his arrival in baseball. Personally, I always viewed Brock as the perfect example of Cubs’ mismanagement – thinking your leadoff hitter and star base thief was a slugger just because he was one of the few who ever hit a home run into the center field bleachers at New York’s old Polo Grounds – a shot of at least 460 feet.

Cubs misjudged Brock as a ballplayer

AS FOR BROGLIO, the former ace pitcher suddenly “lost” it. In two-and-a-half seasons pitching for the Cubs, he won a total of 7 ballgames.

And now, Broglio popped back into the news briefly – he died from complications due to cancer Tuesday in San Jose, Calif., at age 83. I’m sure Cubs fans are hoping this puts that long-ago trade (that some baseball fans consider the worst ever, aside from maybe Frank Robinson to Baltimore for Milt Pappas to Cincinnati) to bed, once and for all.

But Broglio isn’t the only late ballplayer of significance this week.

For Elijah Green, nicknamed “Pumpsie,” met his maker Wednesday at age 85 at a hospital in San Leandro, Calif. His family said he had been ill for the past five months.

Pappas later redeemed rep after becoming a Cub

GREEN WAS A ballplayer who made his Major League debut as a pinch runner for the Boston Red Sox in a game July 21, 1959 at Comiskey Park. He finished out that game playing shortstop.

Which is significant because he was the first black ballplayer to play for the Red Sox, which made them the final ball club to finally give in to the integration trend started some 12 years earlier when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Considering that Boston’s other ball club, the Braves, had integrated as far back as 1950 and that Chicago’s two ballclubs (the White Sox in 1951 and Cubs in 1953) also had made the move toward integration, it could be said that it took the Red Sox long enough to get with the program of trying to truly put together the best ball clubs possible.

Or we could celebrate the notion that the integration of the game that likes to use “the National Pastime” label to describe itself finally wasn’t a joke. Maybe it finally bore a bit of legitimacy.

AND AS FOR the memories baseball fans will have of both Broglio and Green, one doesn’t have to be of Hall of Fame statistical ability to be an interesting story.

His historic moment occurred at Comiskey

Which is why it is encouraging to learn that Green never viewed himself as some sort of racial pioneer, while Broglio didn’t let his life sink into a quagmire of sorts because the guy he was traded for went on to become a super star – and he didn’t.

Both are amongst the ranks of those who tried to play baseball professionally AND wound up making it up to the game’s highest ranks. They got their lines of type in the Baseball Encyclopedia to confirm it.

And I’m sure both of them went to their graves this week thinking of themselves as Major Leaguers – a label no one could take away from them.

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One-time ‘South Works’ steel mill could remain a ridiculously-large lot

The one-time site of the U.S. Steel plant on the South Side, known as South Works, has sat vacant for decades, and there have been so many bits of speculation that have been made about what could be done with the site.

The old 'South Works' plant

Because as a spot right on Lake Michigan stretching from 79^th to 91^st streets, some make note of the fact it is larger than downtown Chicago.

THERE’S DEFINITELY ENOUGH room to build something of significance. Which may well be why Mayor Lori Lightfoot included the site amongst the five spots in various parts of Chicago that are under consideration for the casino officials want to build so as to help jolt the city’s economy further.

Which might make sense, except for the fact that throughout the years since U.S. Steel gave up on the idea of making steel at the plant there have been so many suggestions for what ought to be done.

A factory for Solo Cup. Development of an entirely new upscale neighborhood in between South Chicago and South Shore. Building a housing development that would incorporate unique building techniques so as to create more affordable housing.

And now, slot machines and roulette wheels galore. People could literally come to the shores of Lake Michigan and lose their shirts big time on the site where the steel that was used to build this country was actually produced.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE this is just another idea destined to become a mere fantasy. It could be that a decade from now, the land along the lakefront in the 8000s could still sit vacant – with only that giant concrete barricade standing.

Tearing down that wall would be tough

A remnant of the old steel mill that remains only because trying to tear it down would be ridiculously costly. Not at all practical.

Better to build whatever you want to do around it and leave the barricade in place as some sort of historic remnant to the kind of people who think certain things ought never to change.

Now personally, I have always taken an interest in the site largely out of a sense of family interest. My own parents were born and raised around the South Chicago neighborhood and both my grandfathers were workers in the steel mills.

WITH ONE GRANDFATHER literally working at South Works because his neighborhood home was within walking distance of the old steel mill. My father can tell tales of the past when the steel mill was thriving, and all the grime and pollution it caused were tolerated because the filth was perceived as evidence that people were working.

What will someday fill this space?

Jobs were available. Times were good!

Now as I understand it, much of the difficulty in actually turning this site into something of future use is because of all the environmental contamination the site endured from the steel mill presence.

Anybody who tries to build something of use there is going to get stuck with the cost of environmental cleanup. And it ain’t a gonna’ be cheap to do – to put it mildly.

WHICH COULD BE why that site winds up not being taken too seriously by those people who want to see the big bucks generated by gambling – which they’ll insist on calling “gaming” because they think it has a less-sordid ring to it.

And they’ll go about lambasting anyone who insists on including the “b” even though I’d argue it’s merely being honest about what exactly casinos bring to a community.

So I don’t doubt Chicago city officials eventually will get around to locating a casino somewhere. They’re not going to let other communities have their gambling without getting their share – even though I’m inclined to think that we’re reaching the point of having too many casinos and that they’ll all manage to cannibalize each other.

But it could well be that the filth and grime that my grandfather would have viewed as evidence of ‘progress’ is really the factor that keeps the site from ever becoming a significant boost to the neighborhood, and to Chicago as a whole.

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EXTRA: ¿La segunda guerra civil?

It shouldn’t be a shock – our society’s demographics are changing, and some people are determined to ensure that nothing changes.

Let's hope that rallies such as these don't devolve … 

It’s the most obvious explanation for why a certain segment of our society supports Donald Trump, no matter how moronic his behavior as president is or becomes an embarrassment to all of us.

SO THE RESULTS of a series of polls that came out this week shouldn’t be a surprise.

Yes, the growing Latino population of our nation is grossly offended by Trump, and his behavior threatens to cause harm to the political backing they might otherwise have been expected to provide to Republicans, at-large.

Yet it also seems true there are those people who don’t give a rat’s culo about that. They see their continued support for Trump as a way of fighting back against what they would view as a “takeover” of our society.

Take the Morning Consult poll for the Politico newspaper, which found that 51 percent of those surveyed actually approved of the notion of mass raids in large cities across the country to get “those frickin’ foreigners” out of the country.

YES, ONLY 11 percent of those who call themselves Democrats strongly supported the idea, but some 46 percent of those people who refuse to pick a party label also favored the action – which withered away into a nothingness that did little but scare up a segment of our society.

… to gruesome carnage such as this of a century-and-a-half ago?

But then there were the polls done by Miami-based Latino Decisions, which found 51 percent of Latinos think that racism against the Spanish-speaking enclave of our society is a “major” problem, while another 35 percent think it’s “somewhat” of a problem.

And as for the statement, “I am frustrated with how President Trump and his allies treat immigrants and Latinos, and I worry that it will get worse if Trump is re-elected,” only 11 percent of Latinos surveyed did NOT agree.We definitely don’t see eye to eye – the segments of our society whose ethnic origins lie in Latin America and those who are of Irish/Scottish mix but would insist on use of the “real Americans” label to describe themselves.

We definitely don’t see eye to eye – the segments of our society whose ethnic origins lie in Latin America and those who are of Irish/Scottish mix but would insist on use of the “real Americans” label to describe themselves.

The ultimate Trump legacy?

THE FACT IS that the national outcome ultimately will be a “numbers” game – similar to how the original U.S. Civil War outcome ultimately came down to a matter of the Union North having some 20 million people and the Confederate South having only half as many – with some 4 million of those being the slaves whom the South didn’t want to regard as full-fledged human beings.

Considering that many of the people now determined to revere the memory of that Confederacy of old are the same ones eager to embrace Donald Trump, it would seem that some of us haven’t learned. Or are determined to fight the same ol’ battles.

Still peaceful, for now

Which is the real shame befalling us as a society. I’m optimistic enough to think the day will come when those of us who will be the descendants of Trump-ites will wonder how they could ever have been deluded enough to believe such nonsense.

Or how much of our lives were wasted away by our inability to see past our differences?

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