A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): How many parades do we need?

Better in pictures, than in person?

Call it the controversy amongst Chicago’s Puerto Rican community that is likely to spill over toward all of us – activists are fighting about the Puerto Rican Day parades, which it seems this year will be a singular parade.

For officials reached a decision last week by which the funds that go toward a Puerto Rican parade along Columbus Drive near downtown will instead be put toward supporting a parade in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

PERSONALLY, I THINK this is a smart move, because I have always thought those downtown parades lost something significant in character when they were moved from Dearborn Street (in the actual downtown area) off to the drive where it felt like they were cut off from the city proper.

I’d be for taking all the ethnic-oriented parades that are held in Chicago and converting them into events held out in the neighborhoods – particularly if there is an ethnic character to the specific neighborhood.

Everybody these days knows that the St. Patrick’s Day Parade along Columbus Drive is generic, compared to the South Side Irish Parade along Western Avenue. If the Puerto Rican activists in Humboldt Park can’t put on a worthy event, then that is to their own discredit.

The same goes for just about any event. Mexican-oriented parades in the Little Village and South Chicago neighborhoods always manage to top the generic feel to a Mexican Independence Day march along Columbus Drive – to name the ethnic events that I would have any personal interest in.

NOW I REALIZE some are going to criticize me for being naïve, or clueless. Although I should say I appreciate the political considerations involved here. For many of the people who want a downtown parade are more opposed to cooperation with the activist-types who put together the neighborhood parade.

A lot of it does tie into the fact that there isn’t a consensus amongst Puerto Ricans as to whether their Caribbean island homeland ought to be the 51^st U.S. state, an independent nation or just keep its commonwealth status.

I’ve actually heard the phrase “Communist” tossed out by the downtown parade proponents to describe the neighborhood activists – which may well be an overstatement to try to lambast anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

What else is of interest as some people contemplate a Puerto Rican pride parade held a few miles further away from the shores of Lake Michigan come June?

 

I doubt any paper I wrote for will give me this sendoff

WORKING TO THE VERY END:  I never actually met Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, but he’s been around for so long that it felt like he was invincible.

Of course, no one is. Ebert himself succumbed last week to cancer – the same condition that took his voice several years ago, but didn’t stop him from being a heck of a communicator in his final years. Funeral services are scheduled for Monday at Holy Name Cathedral.

 

Much of the remembrance we’ve read in recent days tells tales of all those interviews with film business moguls throughout the years and how much influence he and Siskel actually had in terms of whether a film would achieve any commercial success, I must admit that I’m more impressed with his recent years. That, and his animated appearance on The Critic.

But the real significance of the Ebert life story is in the way in which he kept up the quality work, when many people would have decided it was time to pack it in. I’d like to think I could handle myself in a similar manner if I were confronted with his circumstances – although another part of me is honest enough to admit that I (and most of us) probably couldn’t even come close!



How would Lord Jeff of Amherst do...

MICHIGAN/LOUISVILLE WHO??!?:  Amherst College’s Lord Jeffs men’s basketball team beat Mary Hardin-Baylor 87-70 on Sunday, giving the Massachusetts-based college the national title for Division III this year – and their first since they pulled off titles in 2007 and ‘08.



... against Tommy Titan of IWU?

Watching those academically-inclined (but in many cases physically-challenged -- few 7-footers play Division III basketball) student/ballplayers out there on the same court that the Atlanta Hawks play on (and where the nationally-televised Division I game will be played Monday) convinced me all the more that small-school ball isn’t as inferior as some would want to believe.

A part of me was wondering how much nicer it would have been if my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, were playing instead. Amherst got to the final by beating North Central College of Naperville, who were the ones that knocked the Titans out in the Sweet Sixteen round of the DIII tournament. Oh well, maybe next year -- which we've been saying every season since 1997!

But it was still an enjoyable experience to watch Sunday’s game (even at the point when the game had to be halted for a bit because some of the arena’s lights went out). I got more of a kick than the masses will get from watching Michigan take on Louisville.

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EXTRA: Chicago-area’s true best team?

Suburban Naperville-based North Central College lost out Saturday on its chance to win a national title in men’s basketball, losing 52-44 to Amherst University – which now plays for the national title April 7 in Atlanta against Mary-Hardin Baylor College from Texas alongside the Division I tourney that will get all the public attention.

Although it should be noted that the Cardinals’ defense on Saturday managed to hold the Amherst defense to about 50 points – just one day after the Lord Jeffs managed to score 101 points in their victory over Cabrini College in Pennsylvania.

IT ALSO DOESN’T take away from the fact that North Central made it to the “Final Four” of the NCAA Division III tournament – which likely will make them the best-achieving college basketball program from Illinois for 2012-13.

I really doubt the Fighting Illini will make it much farther than their game Sunday against the University of Miami Hurricanes.

When was the last time any Chicago-area college did so well in a basketball tourney? There’s always that DePaul squad from 1979 that made it to the Final Four.

Or those North Park University basketball teams that between 1978 and 1987 won five national titles – including three in a row between 1978, 1979 and 1980. Which as far as I’m concerned is all the more reason to pay attention to the Division III athletic scene when considering college-level sports.

FOR THOSE OF you who are thinking I’m getting too worked up over small-college sports, think of it this way.

Would you really rather I get worked up over the thought of whether or not we should take Todd Stroger’s desires to serve as a commissioner on the Cook County Board that seriously?

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Ought to be more to sports fandom than guessing when doing basketball brackets

I’ll be the first to admit that much of the appeal of filling out brackets for the NCAA Division I tournament for men’s basketball is lost on me.

The baseball fan in me thinks it’s ridiculous that college basketball now drags well into the baseball season (which begins April 1, compared to the April 8 date on which we’ll finally be done with what is supposed to be “March” Madness).

THEN, THERE’S THE fact that I attended a college that played Division III athletics. Which means as far as I’m concerned, the men’s basketball tourney began weeks ago.

Friday wasn’t the day that many schools (including the University of Illinois, the closest to a local rooting interest unless you count Valparaiso University in Indiana – which already has lost) began play. It was actually the day that we got to see which schools made it to the Final Four.

Including the prospects of Naperville-based North Central College, which Friday night took on Vermont-based Middlebury College. A part of me thinks we ought to be paying just as much attention to the Cardinals’ basketball program which, we must admit, is likely to advance farther in the Division III tourney than the Fighting Illini will make it at the Division I level.

Realize how painful it was for me to write that last sentence. Because I’m an alumnus of Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, whose team got beat a week ago by those same Cardinals 83-73.

I’M STILL SHUDDERING in disgust at the beating my alma mater’s team took in the first half, putting them too far behind to catch up in the second half (although they did come close at times). A “Sweet Sixteen” appearance sounds nice. But an “Elite Eight” one would have been more soothing. Nothing that happens in the Division I tourney is going to mean as much to me.

Now for those people who are about to start sending me all kinds of e-mail messages telling me that the Division I programs are just so much superior and involve schools that people have actually heard of, I’d say that’s nonsense.

I really doubt that most of the people now so eagerly filling out tournament brackets had any clue who the Iona Gaels were – prior to their taking on Ohio State University Friday night.

Heck, I’ll even go so far as to say I’ll root for Iona College based in New Rochelle, N.Y. (a community many people probably only think of as the home of the fictional Petrie family – remember the Dick Van Dyke show?). Solidarity amongst small schools.

BUT SOMEHOW, I suspect that Harvard University’s victory over New Mexico earlier this week was the major upset for this first round. A Buckeyes loss would truly be the evidence that life as we know it is over.

Not that I’m all that interested.

Like I already wrote, MY school is already out of the running. And I just don’t get people who pretend to be interested in college athletics when they don’t have any rooting interest for the particular school – either by having attending it or living in a nearby community.

I look at the brackets that say James Madison is playing Indiana, and some people get worked up over the possibility that the Hoosiers are potentially the best in the nation. I just see nothing, whether the Hoosiers whomp on the Dukes of Harrisonburg, Va., or not leaves me cold.

LIKE I WROTE before, maybe I’m just a bit too eager for baseball to begin.

I got a kick out of learning that we’re far enough into spring that the Mexican League season actually began Friday with the Tabasco Olmecas playing the Red Eagles of Veracruz – with the rest of the league’s seasons opening Saturday.

Not that I’m all that intrigued by Mexican League baseball. But it means we’re moving closer and closer to that date when those Arizona and Florida training camps shutter themselves for the year, and the regular season gets underway.

April 1, with the Kansas City Royals in Chicago and the Cubs taking a trip to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates – it sounds more intriguing to me than a tourney involving out-of-state schools that will still be a week away from completion.

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EXTRA: “Aw, nuts!”

I'm now rooting to be "Number 3." Graphic provided by Illinois Wesleyan University.

World War II-era General Tony McAuliffe expressed my sentiments exactly as I watched the Illinois Wesleyan University Titans’ women’s basketball team get beat Friday 87-77 by St. Louis-based Washington University.



I know, I know. The University of Illinois men’s basketball program is our state’s lone representative in the Division I NCAA tourney, taking on the University of Nevada-Las Vegas at a game being played Friday in Tulsa, Okla.

HERE IN CHICAGO, the Division I tourney staged a few games at the United Center – with Notre Dame managing to win their Friday game by a 69-56 score over the University of Akron and Purdue University whomping on St. Peter’s 65-43.

But for my college basketball fix, I was following the Titans (who back when I was a student in Bloomington, Ill., still referred to their women’s athletic teams as the “Lady Titans”), using what turned out to be a very reliable internet connection to watch the game at www.ncaa.com.

It’s my alma mater (I don't "get" people who follow college sports without a personal connection, unless they're degenerate gamblers), and I felt the curiosity to see if Illinois Wesleyan could pull off a national title, albeit one at the Division III level. It certainly wasn’t going to happen by the men’s program, who qualified for the men’s tourney and managed to win one game, before being knocked out of play a couple of weeks ago.

This is the element that catches my attention the most. The Division I tourney (the alleged “March Madness,” even though anyone with sense knows that phrase originated with high school basketball in Illinois) is just now beginning, and will drag out into the early days of April, because of officials who want to milk it for all the television money they can get.

THERE IS NO such money at the Division III level, although some of the programs at that level are as competitive and fierce-spirited as anything one sees at Division I – particularly the lesser programs at that level. No one is going to convince me that the basketball at a place like Eastern Illinois or Chicago State universities is any more interesting than the elite Division III programs.

The end result is that, not only did I watch my game Friday night on my laptop computer, that tourney is on the verge of being over. Illinois Wesleyan made it to the Final Four – and Washington’s victory puts them in line to defend their national title from 2010 when they play Amhurst University.

And as for the Titans? I’m not sure if I have the temperament to watch Saturday’s consolation game against Christopher Newport without swearing at my computer screen.

Perhaps I’ll watch something lower-key and less significant. Perhaps Morehead State versus Richmond?

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Someone far more knowledgeable than I offers a decent explanation of the difference between college basketball at the Division I and Division III levels – aside from the school enrollments.

Despite weather, it is baseball season. So why is basketball still being played?

There are times I get the impression I’m one of the few people who are disgusted that the NCAA college basketball tourney always manages to muck up what ought to be one of the highlights of the professional baseball season – Opening Day.

The 2009 baseball season officially kicked off last night in Philadelphia, and all the other teams are scheduled to begin Monday – except for the Chicago White Sox, who start their season Tuesday with a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals at U.S. Cellular Field. Cubs fans will have to wait a week to see their team in person (they’re in Houston, after getting pasted twice by the New York Yankees in exhibition games that opened the New Yankee Stadium).

YET TONIGHT IS also the night that Michigan State and North Carolina play against each other – with bragging rights for the national championship in men’s basketball riding on the outcome.

I can’t help but think that “March Madness” stretching into the month of April is even more absurd as the World Series wrapping up around Halloween (or, as in 2001, stretching into November). Is there any logical reason that college basketball is still being played, other than television types trying to wring every last penny they can from the spectacle?

By all rights, today’s sporting spectacle ought to be baseball – with this being the single day that every team (even the Washington Nationals) can be as delusional as the Chicago Cubs always are in thinking that this IS next year.

Instead, we’re going to get a college basketball game soaking up attention, and at least one nitwit of a pundit will claim that it is baseball that is wrongly impinging on a time of year that ought to go to basketball.

AT THIS POINT, I must make one confession.

A large part of the problem I have with the absurdity of modern-day college basketball and the tournament is that I went to a college whose athletic programs were in Division III – we’re talking the small schools that do not award athletic scholarships and where students actually have to make the grades in order to play.

The NCAA made it through the Division III tourney by mid-March (just like they do every year). As far as I’m concerned, “March Madness” (which those of us in the know realize is a term that truly applies to Illinois high school basketball) has been over for a couple of weeks.

Belated congratulations to Washington University in St. Louis, and to George Fox University located near Portland. Their men’s and women’s teams respectively won the Division III tourneys. In the case of George Fox’s women’s team, they beat the Washington U. women’s team in the championship game.

ST. LOUIS CAME very close to being able to claim single-season national titles in both men’s and women’s basketball – just like the University of Connecticut did a few years ago to much national attention.

But while the Division III tourneys are spectacles that no one other than the loyal alumni pay attention to (and to which ESPN will usually devote a single feature story), television has turned the Division I tourney into an absurd spectacle that seemingly never ends.

We have to go through regular seasons, then conference tournaments to see who gets the automatic bids to get into the 64-plus-one school field for the Division I tourney. Then, we have to get the endless rounds (which I’ll admit lose all appeal to me once the Big Name schools lose in upsets) that stretch the whole process out to the point where it is now impinging on baseball.

The sports fans of Detroit ought to be pondering whether the Tigers are somehow being sacrilegious in having their Opening Day Friday afternoon (a.k.a., Good Friday). Instead, too many are focusing on whether their physical presence at Ford Field in Detroit can push Michigan State over heavily favored North Carolina.

NOW I WILL be the first to admit that in many of the northeastern and Midwestern cities where baseball is a spectacle with history and great interest, the weather on Monday will stink.

Right here in Chicago, the forecast is for temperatures barely above freezing (an anticipated high of 36 degrees and several inches of snow. Some people will think that baseball ought to be the last thing on our minds. Even the White Sox felt that way, deciding Sunday to reschedule the Monday season opener by one day.

As one who remembers the 2002 White Sox opener where the teams played despite heavy rains, I realize conditions in the stands will be miserable and the field could be drenched to the point where an actual game played this week will be unintentionally sloppy.

Even on Opening Days when the sun comes out, the event in Chicago is chilly enough to warrant the heavy coats of winter being worn one more time in order to go to the ballgame.

BUT THERE IS something about the beauty of baseball and its pacing of the game. No other sport has any position player as remotely interesting as a baseball pitcher.

Plus the “deep” meaning that Opening Day’s arrival means the crummy weather we’re experiencing today will not be with us much longer. It is anticipation that finer days are forthcoming that make the coming of the baseball season something worthwhile.

Spring Training (and the playing this year, and again in 2013 of the World Baseball Classic) gives us a little taste of that, if we can spare the time (and expense) of a trip to Arizona or Florida.

But part of the appeal of baseball is that we can literally pick from among the 81 home games scheduled for our favorite team during the next six months. The trip to the ballpark – even if it has become pricey enough that one can only afford it once or twice this year – ought to be a practical treat for those of us sporting fans.

AND FOR THOSE of us in Chicago, it is the resurrection of our eternal character split. After spending some cold winter months thinking of ourselves as one while rooting for the Bears or Blackhawks, we can now go back to supporting our side.

Those of us with delusions can go back to again thinking for the next six months this will be THE year for the Chicago Cubs. And those of us with a little more sense, we will be delusional for a day in thinking that the World Series will return to the South Side for the first time in four years.

No matter how much some of us want to think the whole Sox/Cubs split is juvenile, one must admit that it is more than a century old, and has become a part of the character of being a Chicagoan – just as much as making snide comments to the twit sitting next to you at the ballgame who slathers ketchup all over his hot dog.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Chicago White Sox already have achieved a “first’ for 2009 – first game postponed due to inclement weather. In fanspeak, Monday’s White Sox opener (http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090405&content_id=4132786&vkey=news_cws&fext=.jsp&c_id=cws) was “snowed out.”

It IS possible to complete (http://www.d3hoops.com/) a national collegiate basketball tournament in the month of March.

Division III gives Chicago basketball fans their only Illinois-based rooting interest in '08

For those of us from Chicago who root for an Illinois-based team come NCAA college basketball tournament time, this year has to be downright depressing. Not one of the universities that play men’s basketball at the Division I level managed to qualify.

While Illinois State and Southern Illinois universities both managed to qualify for the NIT, the second-rate nature of that tourney will keep all but the most hard-core alums from caring whether the Redbirds and Salukis manage to win.

I WOULD ARGUE that for Illinois residents, the superior fan experience this year belongs to a school at the Division III level – and chances are good you missed the story.

For while the NCAA Division I tournament is just getting under way beginning Thursday, the Division III tournament has been underway for weeks already, and one Illinois-based school’s team managed to make it to the Elite Eight.

So in the interest of fairness, we all ought to take a look at what was accomplished by the Wheaton Thunder, the DuPage County-based college that likes to brag it is the alma mater of evangelist Billy Graham and former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Thunder fan (although I’ve seen enough Wheaton College games going far enough back to when the school’s teams were called the Crusaders). I am an alumnus of Illinois Wesleyan University, which plays in the very same College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin as Wheaton

SO WHEN THE Division III tourney began March 7-8, there were two Illinois-based schools playing for a national title – Wheaton and Augustana University, which was the conference champion.

Augustana got knocked off early in the tourney, but Wheaton managed to survive until Saturday, when they lost to Hope College, playing in Hope’s home arena in Holland, Mich.

Why is it that I can say I was taking some interest in Wheaton? It is because I know in my heart that the IWU Titans this season were a superior team. Just how Wheaton got an at-large bid to go to the tournament while Wesleyan got to stay at home is something that can still get me outraged.

After all, the Titans beat the Thunder twice during the conference season, and then again in the first round of the CCIW conference tournament.

KNOWING THAT THE “Fighting Titans” are capable of holding their own against a team that managed to survive so long in the Division III tournament this year makes me all the more optimistic that next season, IWU will manage to qualify and perhaps even have a chance to win the whole thing.

Yes, I’m greedy. Four “final four” appearances in the past 11 years (and one Division III title back in 1997) is not enough. Call it the mentality of a Yankees fan, if you will, but I’d like to see my alma mater make another trip to Salem, Va., (the regular site for the Division III tournament, unlike the revolving locations for the Division I tourney).

Watching Wheaton not only gave me an “Illinois” school to root for, it gave me optimism that I’m not delusional in thinking that “my school” can win something again in the near future.

Now some people might ask me why I’m snubbing women’s athletics. They might wonder why I don’t pay attention to any Illinois schools that had women’s teams continue to play.

ACTUALLY, I WAS prepared to. IWU’s women’s team won their conference championship and made it to the women’s Division III tournament, but then got knocked out in the first round.

It makes me wonder about the ideal dream – Fighting Titan men’s and women’s teams managing to win national titles in the same year.

Perhaps my alma mater could become the Illinois-based, Division III equivalent of the University of Connecticut, which pulled off this very trick in 2004, when both of their basketball teams won their respective Division I tourneys.

Some people might wonder if it is ridiculous to see these college sports tournaments so personally. After all, Illinois Wesleyan is a place that hasn’t been a part of my daily life in nearly 21 years and it has been eight years since I last set foot on campus.

YET TO ME, it is a place that helped inspire me to accomplish much of what I have done in life. And having a personal rooting interest is what makes a college sports tournament interesting to begin with.

I can’t see the point of paying any attention to a 64-team tourney where there is nothing that connects me to any of the schools. For those people who just want to view college basketball as the National Basketball Association’s version of minor league baseball, that really defeats the purpose of college sports by trying to change them into a second-rate version of the NBA.

The energy and enthusiasm of player and fan alike at the smaller level schools is what makes their game so appealing, even if you do wind up seeing the talents of players who obviously devoted a significant portion of their life to practicing their skills dribbling and shooting a basketball – but can’t play at the highest levels because life’s cruel irony cut off their growth spurt at 5-foot, 6-inches or so. (Seriously, the major difference between Division I elite programs and Division III is that 7-footers are scarce at the lower level).

At the Division III level, you get the ideal of student/athlete that the Ivy League schools would like to think they still represent.

THERE’S ONE OTHER reason I prefer the Division III tourney – it has not become a television-dominated spectacle. It has already been underway for two weeks, and will come to an end Saturday, with either Amherst, Hope, Ursinius or Washington universities taking home a national title.

By comparison, the Division I tourney is just getting underway (even though the March in “March Madness” is two-thirds of the way over), and will wind up stretching out so long that it will run into baseball season – stealing attention away from the truly significant experience of professional sports – baseball’s Opening Day, when even Chicago Cubs fans can dream about their team winning a pennant.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing St. Louis-based Washington win the Division III tourney, just because I know IWU plays them regularly and is capable of handling themselves against their team. It would be yet more evidence that I may see another national title for my school’s team during my lifetime.

And if you’re really going to insist that I pick somebody from the Division I tournament to root for, then I’m going to have to go with American University.

THE EAGLES MANAGED to win the Patriot League title this year, and I did attend the D.C.-based school for a semester back in the autumn of ’86 (my semester of study in Washington coincided with the breaking of the Iran-Contra scandal). But I won’t be the least bit surprised when Tennessee wallops American in the first round.

Even if AU wins a game or two before going home, it wouldn’t mean as much to me as a Titan title in the future.

So congratulations to the Wheaton Thunder for advancing further in post-season play this year than any other Illinois college team. After all, you’ve given this Titans fan some reason to be optimistic for next year.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently commented on the lower-key (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/columnists.nsf/bryanburwell/story/459287C0FE27A78E8625740E00161A6B?OpenDocument) atmosphere surrounding the Division III tourney.

For those people who want to know more about the Illinois-based college that did the best this year (http://athletics.wheaton.edu/index.asp?path=mbball) in post-season play.

American University of Washington, D.C., is making its first-ever appearance (http://aueagles.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/amer-m-baskbl-body.html) in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Results from Salem, Va., can be found here (http://www.d3hoops.com/) this weekend.