EXTRA: Payton wound up in Roseland

I find it encouraging that the baseball program from the Near North-based Walter Payton College Prep managed to make it Saturday down to the Roseland neighborhood – where they finally played that game against Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep that was supposed to have taken place two weeks ago.

What Would Sweetness Think?

To listen to the parents of those Payton Prep ballplayers now, they were only upset that the school bus meant to take Payton ballplayers to the Far South Side fell through and that they were being asked to transport their own kids to the game.

ALTHOUGH THAT STILL sounds like the talk of people who don’t want to be called on their nonsense rhetoric from before, and who likely are still peeved that the Payton coach called them out on their cowardice about wanting to travel to a part of Chicago they prefer to ignore.

While I’ll be the first to admit that Roseland (the area around 111^th and State streets) is not the most pleasant place to visit, the usual rules of venturing into unfamiliar neighborhoods apply.

Don’t get stupid. Don’t linger. And don’t try getting all haughty, as though the “locals” ought to feel blessed that you bothered to travel to their neighborhood.

Those are the people who usually bring attention onto themselves that provokes somebody to get stupid and act in inappropriate ways!

SO TO READ the reports and realize that the ballgame was played Saturday without anything resembling an incident, and that the Payton Prep ballplayers made it into and out of the neighborhood without any problems is encouraging.

An adopted Chicagoan

Perhaps there are lessons to be learned among the many groups that comprise modern-day Chicago. At the very least, that Roseland actually has one of the best Little League baseball programs on the South Side.

And in the end, it was Payton 11-Brooks 2. Which ought to be the only part of the ballgame that should matter.

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