Mexican “countries” as ridiculous a nativist thought as speaking “Mexican”

I remember once being in a conversation with my peers in school about exactly what people in Mexico spoke. As in did we speak Mexican?

THE controversial moment of nonsense

And didn’t we realize we had no right to question how ridiculous that thought was. Because, after all, only people in Spain spoke Spanish!

NOW BEFORE GOING further, I should point out that I was all of 7 years old when this happened. The “peers” I refer to were my fellow schoolmates and my parents had moved to a heavily-Anglo neighborhood.

In short, I was dealing with kids who didn’t know any better. I can think back to the incident and laugh my culo off. They didn’t know any better, and their ignorance was just downright absurd.

But I find it hard to find anything particularly humorous about what Fox News Channel is trying to defend as just a technical glitch when they made a reference to “three Mexican countries” that their political savior, Donald Trump, was intending to cut off federal funding to.

Actually, what Trump’s trash talk alluded to was a thought that he could cut federal funding provided to El Salvador, Guatamala and Honduras. None of which are in Mexico, except to those nativist nitwits who want to think that everything involving Latin America is “Mexican.”

WHICH BASICALLY MEANS the nitwits are stupid, most definitely weren’t paying attention during grammar school geography and (most importantly) are really bothered by the fact that anybody would feel the need to correct them on the factual error – which was contained within a chyron; the caption that runs on-screen while the news anchors “speak” on-camera.

Nativist nitwits not singling out Spanish

Now I should state that Fox News types quickly caught their error, and one of the co-hosts publicly corrected the notion that there were separate “Mexican” countries.

Of course, Fox News with its desire to play ideological games with everybody who dares to disagree with their own nativist view of the globe would think nothing of publicly trashing a competitor for trying to claim an error was “just a typo.”

Which is why I have no compunction about pointing out just how stupid a mistake this truly was. Just like I'll point out that Mexico is as much a part of the North American continent as Canada or the United States.

IT WAS SOMETHING that could be excused amongst 7-year-olds. But seeing other people try to reduce our intellectual discourse down to the level of second-graders is nothing but contemptible.

If anything, it is what is most reprehensible about this Age of Trump that we’re now in. I accept we have an intellectual half-wit as our president. It’s the fact that an outspoken minority thinks the majority of us are obligated to accept this is what is wrong – and what ought to be our national priority in trying to undo come the 2020 election cycle.

So no, Mexico is a single country – albeit one with 31 states and a Federal District. Actually, it astounds me the notion that some ideologues get upset about that fact – they don’t want to have to acknowledge anything unique about Mexico.

And as for the language spoken, yes there is a certain dialect of Spanish unique to Mexico (similar to how British English isn’t the same as so-called American English, and certainly not as crude as that babble otherwise known as a Southern drawl).

ANYBODY WHO FEELS compelled to defend such moments of ignorance as expressed on Fox News on Sunday is someone who provides the very definition of a pinche puto and un baboso.

And if you’re feeling a bit confused about the shift into Español, I’d say “look it up yourself” to find out just how insulted you ought to feel right about now.

Some of us too willing to live life like a cheap cartoon

Of course, I don’t really expect you to take the time to reach for a Spanish/English language dictionary to do a translation.

In fact, I expect most of you who were watching the Sunday morning broadcast let the chyron slip right past you without noticing what it said – you were probably more obsessed with gawking at the content contained under anchor Jedediah Bila’s short skirt.

  -30-

Is Chicago Cubbie TV really going to be Marquee outfit? Or more TV clutter

We’re going to hear a whole lot of people screeching and screaming about the fact that the days of old, with Chicago Cubs baseball being on television every afternoon (after all, Wrigley Field ain’t got lights) are withering away. 

Broadcast booth; different stations, same programming. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

The Cubs’ management are following the lead of ballclubs like the New York Yankees, whose ballgames are the focal point of the YES Network.

ALL CUBS. ALL the time! A whole separate channel for people who want to indulge themselves with the Cubbie baseball brand.

It has been hinted for some time now that such an action would happen. But the Cubs made the announcement this week that they’re going to partner with the Sinclair Broadcast Group in putting together the cable TV channel that will exist solely for those people who think the Cubs are the extent to which baseball exists.

If you get the sense that I wouldn’t be eagerly waiting for the new channel to begin operations for the 2020 season, you’d be correct. Of course, I currently have a package of television stations – most of which I have to admit I never watch.

So the idea that I can ignore whatever new channel is put out there will be incredibly easy.

IF ANYTHING, I would wonder how many other people will also object and choose to ignore it – because it’s inevitable that any sports-related channel is going to consider itself prime programming for which an extra cost will have to be assessed.

Because the whole point is for the ballclub to take in additional revenue. If it were just the old mindset that viewed the broadcasts as advertising for the team, then there’d be no need to shift Cubs broadcasts from WGN-TV.

After all, the team has been there since the years just after the Second World War. Too many people are used to the notion of Cubs games being the very reason for WGN’s existence.

Field will look the same, regardless of which channel is carrying games

But I’m also aware that modern-day broadcasts are about finding stations willing to pay the teams big bucks. Or in the case of the Cubs, going into the broadcast business so they can add the TV profits to the bottom line of the ball club.

THAT ACTUALLY WAS the difference of the days when Tribune Co. was the ball club’s owner. Which was in the business of publishing and broadcasting – and if anything bought the ballclub back in the early 1980s so as to reduce the cost of broadcasting and covering the ballgames.

Which I’m sure is regarded as a very quaint, naïve approach to baseball in the 21^st Century. Keeping down the cost of the fees paid to the teams WAS the point. Now, the teams are looking to get every penny possible.

So anybody who thinks there’s going to be a sympathetic audience for their rants about how the Cubs “belong!!!” on Channel 9, I’d have to say, “Get a clue!”

The teams think they have a right to expect you, the viewer, to pay up, big time! And if it’s really important to you to be able to see the Cubs play in this upcoming era where the team is likely to be on the decline and returning to their natural state of existence as a garbage ballclub that occasionally reaches levels of mediocrity, then pay the fee so you can keep watching the games.

PERSONALLY, I'D SAY there are other ball clubs worth watching – whose games might be easier to have access to.

Baseball DOES exist outside of Wrigley

And I’m not talking purely about the White Sox. Although I’m sure there is room within the environs of Guaranteed Rate Field for those people who have been deluded enough to spend their lives thus far wearing Cubbie-blue.

At least assuming they can lose some of their more ridiculous habits they’ve developed while sitting in the Wrigley Field combines.

Such as, the first Cubbie exile who throws a home run ball back onto the playing field is going to find themselves being flung onto the field by heckling fans.

  -30-

Watching TV while at work? Why not!

Call it one of the perks of being a reporter-type person who has worked in newsroom-type environments – nobody thinks it odd to have the television or radio tuned in to a broadcast of some news-worthy event.

Allowing workplace to be informed about Kavanaugh

I recall back in 1989, when I was a reporter based at the Thompson Center state government building for the now-defunct City News Bureau, I had a radio tuned in (to WBBM-AM, I believe) for the entirety of the confirmation hearings to determine whether Clarence Thomas was fit to serve a life-time appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States.

MEANING I HEARD the live broadcast that included all the tidbits that got written up and caused many of us to snicker – although not enough of us so as to thwart Thomas from getting the post.

I thought back to this when I learned there is a Chicago company that is not only willing to let employees listen to the hearings taking place now for whether Brett Kavanaugh is worthy of being Thomas’ colleague on the Supreme Court, they’re willing to make their employees comfortable.

Avant, an online lender, opened the board room of its downtown headquarters to the company’s workers. The Chicago Tribune reported they organized a current event-type discussion, giving workers the chance to express their thoughts on the issue.

To accommodate such a desire, they arranged for a video stream of the broadcast into the board room so their workers could watch the happenings in real-time.

THAT IS, IF the workers don’t want to be holed up at their desks, watching the same video stream on their work computers.

Now I’m sure there are some people reading this who are about to engage in a rant telling me I’m an idiot – those workers ought to be doing their jobs. Nobody pays them to watch the news.

Although I have to admit to thinking there’s something incredibly honest about a company willing to concede that many of their workers are going to be focusing their attention on their computers to learn the latest about Kavanaugh’s chances of actually getting the Supreme Court appointment that is part of President Donald Trump’s desire to remake the high court in his own image.

Work got done despite Thomas hearings

Either that, or they figure they’d rather have their employees using the computers to watch the livestream of the Kavanaugh hearings, instead of playing video poker or whatever other type of time-wasting event they’d be engaged in.

NOW IT’S ALWAYS possible that some people are going to be tuning in out of some desire to hear titillating details. The Kavanaugh case has devolved into one of a man who back when he was a teenager and a college kid couldn’t exactly keep his hormones under control.

Which will turn into an ongoing argument amongst us over exactly what constitutes attempted rape. What is appropriate behavior between the genders?

It might be a very worthwhile use of time for many of us to engage in such a discussion. Perhaps we’d be better off if more entities were to permit such activity so as to encourage such frank talk.

Although I’m sure there will be those who will merely be amused by the more absurd things that got said. Just as the reason I will never forget the Thomas “pubic hair” line was because it was so overly ridiculous to think anyone could seriously believe that – or would be absurd enough to think such a line would be humorous.

BESIDES, IT IS possible for people to train themselves to focus on more than one thing at a time. I know in my case, I can write copy and listen to conversations simultaneously. Which is means that I can listen to a TV broadcast and write.

I may not see the images, but I can get the substance.

Managed to write college paper while watching Super Bowl

Which actually is how, back when I was in college, I managed to write a paper of great significance (it was the totality of my grade for a course I took) while listening to the Super Bowl broadcast from the lone year the Chicago Bears ever won that sporting event.

And as for spending days listening to Anita Hill try to take down Clarence Thomas, I managed to get my work done as well.

  -30-

Sandy Koufax double-header, of sorts, against Chicago – sted of Super Bowl

For those of you who (like me) can’t even pretend to care about New England vs. Atlanta, or the Super Bowl in general, I’m sharing a couple of bits off a web site I have discovered that puts out old baseball radio broadcasts on YouTube for listening.

A football “championship” that means nothing to our local sports scene (because all it does is reminds us that the Chicago Bears are nowhere near talented enough to be in contention) needs an alternative. Unless you’re really watching just so you can see a Budweiser commercial that some are trying to claim has deep sociological meaning and is a political statement on the issue of immigration.

INSTEAD, HOW ABOUT a White Sox/Los Angeles Dodgers matchup, as in from the year 1959. Specifically, Game 5, where the White Sox facing elimination managed to stay alive in what was one of the strangest games ever – a 1-0 White Sox winner in which the only run was scored on a double play.

For those of you who absolutely can’t handle the thought of watching the Sox, I also dredged up a broadcast of an old Cubs game – one from 1957 in which the North Siders were in the borough of Brooklyn to take on the Dodgers at Ebbets Field.

That was the Dodgers’ last season out east, before they made the cross-country jump that led to them playing the first World Series ever in Los Angeles (and drawing a 92,706 crowd for that Game 5 – which, by the way, is still a record attendance).

For what it’s worth, Sandy Koufax was the starting Dodgers pitcher in both ballgames – going up against Bob Shaw for the White Sox and Dick Drott for the Cubs.

OF COURSE, BACK then, Koufax wasn’t the superstar he became in the mid-1960s. That World Series game was the first such game the Dodgers ever trusted him with, and he wound up on the losing end – although his Dodgers team ultimately won the World Series two days later in a game played at Comiskey Park. In '57, he was just the "bonus baby" everybody thought belonged in the minor leagues rather than Brooklyn.

As for the Cubs, I’m not going to spoil the outcome of the game. You can listen for yourself.

Although anyone with any sense realizes that because it’s the Cubs, of course they’re going to lose. But you will get to hear a moment when future Hall of Famer Ernie Banks manages to get a home run off future Hall of Famer Koufax!

Which I suspect will be sufficient to satisfy the hard-core of Cubbie faithful who decide to tune in.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Personally, I’ll be checking out the Caribbean Series matchup Sunday night between the Granma Alazanes of the Cuban League and Mexicali Aguilas of Mexico’s Pacific League. The Caribbean Series is in its fifth day in Culiacan, Mexico, and will end

Tuesday with the championship game for bragging rights of Latin American baseball, which likely will be a better ballgame than anything the Patriots or Falcons do on the gridiron in Houston.

Chicagoans would rather watch playoff baseball than crummy football

I happened to eat dinner Thursday night at a Mexican restaurant that had two televisions set up at opposite ends of the dining hall.
 

Will these be legitimate next week, or just good for a laugh?

One tuned to the National League playoff game in which the Chicago Cubs ultimately beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, placing themselves one win away from their first league championship in 71 years.

THE OTHER SET was tuned to Thursday Night Football – whose broadcast this week was the usual Chicago sporting favorite, the Bears, takin on their arch-rivals, the Green Bay Packers.

Usually, that’s a game that gets sports-oriented people in Chicago to wet their drawers with glee and excitement. It stirs up a lot of rhetoric, regardless of how either team is playing.

Simply put, the fact that the Bears have won only one game this season shouldn’t have put a damper on the event. But it did.

The television ratings that came in for Thursday night showed the Cubs broadcast in Chicago getting a 24.1 share, which translates roughly to 1 million people in the metropolitan area actually watching the ballgame.

BY COMPARISON, THE Bears only got a 12.8 share, or just over half of what the Cubs managed to attract.

So much for the notion that Chicago is primarily a football town and that it is the Bears who are the team that manages to bring the city together as a whole in spirit.

'85 Bears still the big gun of Chicago sports memories?

Although I have always thought that Chicago is primarily a baseball town and that a local fan’s baseball preference is always stronger than what he feels for the Bears. Only with the baseball fandom split between two ball clubs, it means the Bears can claim a larger audience than either team. Which makes me wonder what things would be like if the Cardinals had never left town and remained a charter member of the NFL on the South Side?

Former Bears coach Mike Ditka, who has made his efforts to stay in the public eye by latching onto Cubs attention and publicly rooting for the team to make it to the World Series next week, has said he thinks a Cubs World Series title would be bigger than the ’85 Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl victory.

Did '05 Sox top Bears in some minds?

IT WOULD BE to that segment of Chicago sporting society that cares about the Cubs. Just keep in mind that to White Sox fans, their ’05 World Series win already has topped the Bears in importance, and there’s no way a stinkin’ Cubs pennant would ever top the memories of Paul Konerko, Mark Buehrle and manager Ozzie Guillen signaling for the big, tall and fat relief pitcher to come in to save the game.

Not that any of this detracts from what the Bears accomplished 31 years ago by becoming the first Chicago team in decades to win a thing.

If anything, what with the Bears, the Bulls, the Blackhawks and White Sox all having won championships within our lifetimes, it probably is about time that the Cubs get off their duffs and win something – just so we can quit thinking there’s anything particularly special about them.

It’s about time that the Cubs win something so we can put a rest to those out-of-town types who denigrate the Chicago sporting experience – largely by claiming there can’t be anything special about a city that takes a team with the Cubs’ losing ways at all seriously.

Still a 21st Century 1st for Chicago

ALTHOUGH ONE CAN argue that the new Cubs management has already succeeded in that they have put together a ball club that will likely be a legitimate contender for the rest of this decade. Even if the Dodgers manage to prevail this weekend, the Cubs probably will be in the running for a championship come 2017.

There’s also the fact that even if the Cubs were to win a thing (and I don’t doubt there are many Chicagoans who dread the very concept), all it would really mean is that the Cubs will finally have matched the White Sox in championships achieved during this century.

One!

  -30-

How many got confused trying to find Cubs Friday night on television?

A part of me felt sorry for my step-grandmother, who had her plans to park herself in front of a television set Friday night and watch for herself if the Chicago Cubs were capable of actually winning a playoff ballgame.
 

How many Cubs fans nearly soiled themselves?

For she literally got caught up in the confusion of trying to figure out which of those high-numbered television stations she never pays attention to was the Fox Sports channel that was actually carrying the ballgame.

I’M NOT SURE if she ever managed to figure out the channel number (where I was based, it was channel 652). Although I wonder if the pitchers’ duel would have been so stressful that she was better off not seeing it.

For the record, the Cubs managed to get a 1-0 victory. Two more wins against the San Francisco Giants, and the Cubs will manage to advance to the next round of the playoffs – which would mean they would have accomplished as much as they did last year.

Now I’ve made it clear before I’m not rooting for the Cubs to win a thing. I’m an American League fan, and my interest is in seeing which ball club there manages to win the league championship – then go on to the World Series to beat up on the National League chump.

If it’s the Cubs, that’s cute. If it’s not, it won’t matter much.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to admit to feeling a bit of compassion for Cubs fan-types who I’m sure felt a second of agony; what with the way Buster Posey came oh so close to hitting a game-tying home run for the Giants with two out in the ninth inning.

Valparaiso, Ind. native to pitch against Cubs on Sat.

You have to admit it would be so Chicago Cub-ish for the baby blue bears to lead their fans so close to victory, only to have it pulled away.

But the Cubs managed to win, giving them a jump toward trying to win their first National League championship in 71 years.

Which ought to be the target the team focuses on at this point. Win the league championship, then worry about which American League powerhouse you’d have to face come the World Series.

I’LL BE HONEST. A part of me thinks the multiple rounds of playoffs we now have is so excessive – and not just because it results in ballgames being broadcast on obscure channels that most of us never knew we had access to.

I long for the days when the regular season’s best ball clubs went straight to the World Series. Heck, even Cubs fans ought to wish that was the way things remained today.

For if they were, the World Series would be a facedown between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago Cubs – which would contain a certain amount of irony considering that when the Chicago White Sox back in 2005 made the first World Series appearance by a Chicago team in 46 seasons, they played against the Houston Astros.

Another Chicagoan vs. Texan matchup would be intriguing. Although considering that the Rangers managed to lose a second playoff game Friday to the Toronto Blue Jays. One more loss – which could come as soon as Sunday – and the “best team” in the American League will be outta dere!

AND AS FOR those people who are fantasizing about the all-decrepit ballpark World Series between the Cubs and the Boston Red Sox? I’m sure New Englanders are hoping that Fenway Park creates some sense of magic, or else they’re only one more loss away from letting the Cleveland Indians advance.

 

"Big Hurt" giving us his baseball insights on FS1

What happens if this becomes the year that Cleveland wins its first World Series in nearly 60 years, or if the Washington Nationals wind up bringing capital city baseball fans their first World Series victory since 1924?

Cubs fans may want to believe they hold a monopoly on losing. But what happens if nobody manages to break a losing streak this year?

It would be the cruelest possible cosmic joke if the Giants manage to rebound and go all the way to win the World Series – adding to their victories of 2010, ’12 and ’14. Which would mean we’d all be better if we can’t find the games on television, even though it means we’d miss seeing one-time Chicago White Sox star Frank Thomas offering his baseball analysis to the broadcast; such as telling us that Cubs fans will become so unbearable if the Cubs actually win that he'll have to spend his winter at his Las Vegas home.

  -30-

Baseball coming back, even if it's not quite in the same form as we’d like

The Caribbean Series stoked the fire in my belly for baseball, and the fact that workouts are taking place now is keeping the flame a smoulderin’ to the point where I can say I can’t wait for April to come about.

I can't wait to see the scoreboard again live, even if its fireworks and lights display isn't anywhere near as intimidating as the old ballpark's scoreboard was. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Forget “March Madness.” I want to get out to the ballpark this season to see live baseball being played professionally.

AND I’M NOT up to waiting ‘til July or August (the latter of which is when the New York Yankees will make their annual visit to Chicago). A part of me wants to sit in the chill of April and see a ballgame. People who live in the south or west don’t know what their unnatural weather cycles are depriving them of.

All of this has me scouring any information source I can find for any tidbits of information about what 2013 and beyond will be like.

Which is how I happened on Monday to stumble on a pair of stories that make me realize just how much times change, even if certain elements remain in some form.

Coasters may be completely obsolete next year

Take the Chicago Cubs, who in the minds of so many Chicagoans are aligned with WGN, both television and radio, to the point that whenever a Chicago White Sox game airs on Channel 9, I know of some people who rant and rage that the Sox should go find their own station and stay off the Cubs’ station.

SO HOW ARE those people going to react come next season, IF it turns out that the Chicago Tribune got it right on Monday when they reported there’s a chance that the Cubs will not renew a contract that goes back to 1948. You’ll probably have to have some form of pay television in order to see the Cubs bumble their way through another season.

I wouldn’t pay good money for it, but I know many people who would.

The Tribune report indicates that Cubs ownership is being vague and refusing to say much of anything, other than hints about how they’d like to have their own station to broadcast their games and market their product and bleed dry for as much money as they could get.

Heck, when Tribune Co. owned the Cubs, they turned them into the big programming source that they made so much money off of – no matter how bad the ball club played.

NOW WE’RE LIKELY to get a Chicago Cubs’ channel, similar to the Yankees and their YES Network that gives people all the baseball-related programming they could ever dream of.

So no more bothering with Channel 9, which may well revert back to what it once was – a place where you could watch all those “Andy Griffith Show” reruns – except that in the modern era of television programming, there are many channels broadcasting Don Knotts’ “Barney Fife” character carrying his lone bullet.

Not that this is the only change. It seems some fans don’t have a clue that being at a ballgame can be a risky adventure.

For the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper reported Monday about an Indiana Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the Gary Southshore Railcats (the ball club owned by the family of one-time Republican politico Al Salvi) – who were being sued by a fan who on Opening Day in 2009 was hit in the face by a foul ball that went into the stands.

MOST FANS I have ever known are aware of that tiny print on the ticket that says you should be wary of foul balls – which are rarely softly arching pop ups that you can catch barehanded.

While I sympathize with the fan who had several bones in her face fractured and also suffered some vision loss, I’m not surprised to learn that the Hoosier court rejected the lawsuit, saying that baseball fans ought to know enough about the game to protect themselves.

Although it has me wondering if the day will come eventually when some ballclub is going to feel compelled to extend the backstop screen from just behind home plate to all the way around the foul lines.

I was once in a minor league ballpark in Peoria (not their current stadium, but the old one) where there was such a screen, and it gave me the sense that the fans were somehow being caged in away from the playing field.

CERTAINLY NOT THE ideal for someone who has shelled out good money (and significant amounts, if it is a major league ballgame) for the live experience.

Perhaps the people who want such an environment are the ones who ought to stay home and watch the ballgames on television. Although they’d probably wind up filing a lawsuit claiming they can’t find the new Cubs’ television channel amongst the hundreds of channels that already are out there.

  -30-

Bears vs. Packers? Eh!

They say it wasn't, but was 'Chicaco' intentional?

All around me, I have seen the signs of excitement this past week as people get all worked up over the thought of the Chicago Bears playing the Green Bay Packers for the right to play  in the Super Bowl come Feb. 6.

Yet I have to make a confession – one that may cause the more rabid among us to suggest that I can’t be a true Chicagoan. I could care less.

I’M NOT GOING to be among the people anxiously parked in front of a television set on Sunday so that I can see the game that some people are trying to claim is the biggest event in the history of Chicago sports. I’m definitely not going to be among the people who will feel it to be a significant blow to the Chicago psyche if that dinky town in Wisconsin manages to play for this year’s NFL championship against the winner of Pittsburgh Steelers/New York Jets.

Now it’s not that I have some problem with the Chicago Bears. I realize they are a long-standing, tradition-rich professional football franchise. I also appreciate that this conference championship game involves two long-standing teams with a real rivalry, and the fact that the Packers are a holdover from the days when pro football had teams in places like Canton, Ohio, and Decatur, Ill.

In short, I get why some people want to think this is the biggest Chicago sports event ever, although I personally think it’s not even the biggest Chicago sports happening of the weekend. The White Sox declaring that Ozzie Guillen will return as manager in 2012, instead of leaving him twisting in uncertainty, is more significant.

My thing is that I personally have never thought much of the game of football (the fact that I consider “soccer” to be the REAL football is a separate issue). I have twice been to games at Soldier Field. Maybe it was because I had crummy seats, but I wasn’t awed by the experience. The constant start-stop of action during a game leaves me cold.

IN FACT MY lasting memory of my first Bears game (’79 preseason against the Jets) wasn’t the score. It was the sight of the Honey Bears on the sidelines, being very appealing to my then-14-year-old warped sensibilities (along with my modern-day, 45-year-old mind).

We don’t even have the Honey Bears in Chicago any longer. So I definitely can’t see the point of paying thousands of dollars per sear to see the game (don’t even bring up the winter weather conditions that spectators will have to cope with).



Even the Chicago Sun-Times felt the need all week to get itself into "Bears-mode."



Insofar as football on television is concerned, I have a hard time concentrating on any sports broadcast – even a game in which I have a legitimate interest. Constant commercial interruptions distract me too much (I really don't understand those people who say they watch the Super Bowl for the commercials), along with all the repetitive crowd shots and close-ups meant to show us the facial pores of every single athlete on the playing field.



So I’m not eager to spend an afternoon watching television. Even if I were, I’d want to watch something more interesting than a football game that could wind up being a badly-played one.

IN FACT, I’D have to say my biggest problem is the fact that all the hype is being put on this game. The idea that this is the biggest sports event ever for a Chicago team is nonsense. We won’t know how the game ranks (or if it even comes close to qualifying) until after the game is over.

Some people are too determined to hype Sunday’s happenings, which is why I fully expect someone to get their butt whomped and the game to turn out to be a complete disappointment (I’m not saying who will be disappointed).

In fact, if there was a sports event I would have liked to have seen this weekend, it would have been my alma mater’s basketball teams from Illinois Wesleyan University, who were in Chicago Saturday night to play North Park University, that school at Foster and Kedzie avenues that a couple of decades ago was among the elite of small college basketball (three straight national championships back in 1978-80, along with two more back in ’85 and ’87 when I was a student in Bloomington).

But freelance writing commitments (a.k.a., paying work) kept me from seeing the IWU 65-57 loss to the Vikings (although the women's team beat North Park 74-54), which in my mind is much more intriguing than any overhyped NFL television broadcast.

  -30-

Perhaps now Kirk will quit whining that his Dem opponent won't debate him

It has been a sight I have seen a few times in recent weeks as the unsolicited campaign press releases come flowing into my e-mail; Republican Senate hopeful Mark Kirk insists on portraying some event he attended as a debate opportunity that his Democratic challenger skipped.

Kirk’s people seem to think they could make this into an issue of Alexi Giannoulias being afraid to confront their guy. Actually, it just means that Kirk’s scheme from earlier this year to have up to seven debates around the state never went anywhere, but Kirk wanted to pretend it did.

LIKE I HAVE written before, one of the unofficial ground rules I use to determine whose campaign is doing well is to say that the first candidate who gripes about how his opponent won’t debate him is a loser who feels desperate for attention.

It always shocked me that Kirk would want to give off that impression of himself.

Which is why I was glad to learn this week that Giannoulias and Kirk have agreed on something resembling a debate – which for all its stilted rhetoric does give us a chance to see the two candidates together operating under similar ground rules. It does matter.

No, we’re not getting anything resembling Kirk’s proposed tribute to the Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858, which means Kirk doesn’t get to assume the role of Honest Abe (who lost that particular election, but is remembered by history as having the moral high ground for his positions).

IN FACT, THE debate is going to be the ever-so-traditional event hosted by the League of Women Voters. On Oct 19, they will conduct their debate in the studios of Chicago’s ABC station, WLS-TV, 190 N. State St.

But instead of a second event to be held in Springfield, or some other non-Chicago-area municipality as a sop to the rural Illinois vote, the two candidates are booked for Oct. 10 to be the guests on the NBC Sunday morning public policy talk show, “Meet the Press.”

I’m not sure if this means both candidates will be in Washington for this broadcast, or if we’re going to get some sort of deal by which show moderator David Gregory talks to a pair of video screens depicting the candidates from somewhere else.

I’d like to think that the two major candidates for U.S. Senate aren’t lame enough to try to resort to that tactic out of an attempt to try to impose some control and give themselves an upper hand. But I know better.

POLITICAL CANDIDATES WITH tactics are like athletes with steroids – they’re dumb enough to try anything if they think it will give them an edge.

So what should we think of the fact that “Meet the Press” is going to be the forum for what the candidates are calling their second debate?

The campaigns are saying they’re doing this because our very own Senate seat is the focus of national media attention. We are a national news story. Isn’t that special?

The problem is that “we” are national largely because “our” officials have behaved in such a butt-headed manner. That includes both of these candidates. So the nation as a whole will get to see just how dense both Kirk and Giannoulias are capable of being.

SOUND LIKE I’M not all that impressed by this particular candidate field? I’m not, and I don’t think many people in this state are. Which is how I explain all those polls that indicate Giannoulias (the alleged Mob banker) with such a slight lead over Kirk (the Liar) that they’re technically tied.

Which means that I believe the people who do bother to watch the broadcasts of these debates (Will you wake up early enough on Sunday, Oct. 10, to see “Meet the Press?”) will be looking more than anything for a gaffe, a flub, any trivial aspect they can use to justify in their minds voting against one candidate and voting (by default) for his opponent.

This year’s debates truly will be the “challenge to avoid saying something stupid” (which is how Saturday Night Live’s Don Pardo once introduced a sketch parodying the 1992 presidential debates).

One other factor from the debate rhetoric caught my attention. Kirk’s people say they still want more debates, while Giannoulias’ people hint they may add more events.

I THINK IT puts Giannoulias in control on this issue, and Kirk winds up looking like a follower, a challenger, and a loser if he doesn’t knock off this type of rhetoric. I’m surprised Kirk would want to view himself this way, no matter how much he wants to spin it that 2010 is a year for challengers).

Nonetheless, I won’t be surprised if one more such event gets added – something physically staged in an Illinois city outside of the Chicago area. Because my mind can already detect the disgust of those downstate voters who are going to see a debate in Chicago and a debate in Washington somehow snubbing their existence.

I don’t think it does, but that is a topic perhaps for a future debate.

-30-

Miami?!??

This is going to be a sacreligious thought for some. But I didn’t care enough about where LeBron James wound up to want to watch ESPN’s hour-long stint of prostitution where they let the now-former Cleveland Cavaliers forward announce which basketball team he was going to bless with his presence for the next few years.

In fact, I’m glad that when the World Cup final is played Sunday, there will be so many alternatives that I can avoid paying attention to the television network that would like to think it is reporting on sports, but is really making athletics all the more trivial.

A PART OF me wants to start boycotting anything having to do with ESPN on account of the way they so willingly gave up their airtime for this nonsense. I’m sure they think they scored a “scoop” and will try to dismiss people like me as merely being bitter that we didn’t get the story first.

Yet treating this self-indulgent trite trash as something ever so significant makes me want to puke – especially since too many people think that ESPN is somehow the significant news media entity, rather than just another infotainment channel among the hundreds that many of us can access on our cable television packages.

Which means the people who might be the most sane are the ones who are willing to put up with the “luddite” label and get their television signals over the airwaves.

Now in a sense, I don’t blame LeBron James. He’s a ballplayer, and he has an ego like many professional athletes. I expect him to pull ego-centric silliness such as he has conducted the past week to turn himself into a presence that must be catered to.

MY PROBLEM IS with people who are too willing to play along with that, instead of doing our best to try to knock down the hype and try to report on whether or not there truly is any benefit to having LeBron James in ones’ line-up.

With James and the other players the Miami Heat (the stupidest franchise name in professional sports, even moreso than the Utah Jazz or the Tampa Bay Rays) picked up in recent days (including Chicago-area native Dwyane Wade), that team had better win something.

They had better make a clean break from their history of nothingness and start to amount to something as a sports franchise. Or else James is going to find that he’s the biggest bum in all of pro sports (he’s going to make Alex Rodriguez appear to be well-loved).

He dumped on his home town of Cleveland, and managed to string along the franchises of the major cities of this country. He’s going to have a lot of people hoping that his career fizzles into a pile of dog-do.

WHAT CRACKS ME up is that much of the early speculation saw the free agent battle for James’ services as a good ol’ Chicago vs. New York brawl. Some even put Los Angeles into the equation.

But this was supposed to be about what metropolis would turn James into the symbol of their city for the upcoming decade.

Instead, it truly seems that this was nothing more than a Cleveland vs. Miami battle, with the big cities (including our own) strung along to feed his ego.

I’m not shocked that James could ignore all those people who behaved as though they were Chicago Cubs fans (don’t any of these people have jobs?), carrying those black signs reading “home!” and trying to create an almost intimidating presence to keep the one-time Cleveland-area high school prep star with his hometown NBA franchise.

Instead, James gave up the hometown memories for nice weather, which as far as I’m concerned is about the only real difference between Cleveland and Miami (unless one wants to factor in the lack of Cubanos in Cleveland).

SOME WILL CLAIM that it was the chance to create a “super team” with Wade and Chris Bosh that could win something in Miami. Yet I’m wondering if they could produce a lot of teams that fall just short.

Perhaps it is because I have seen too many baseball teams that think they can buy their way to a championship. It is true that a team can usually spend money to get that final remaining part to a team that actually wins something.

But thinking that they can go on a checkbook spree this week to suddenly make Miami an elite NBA franchise? That’s nonsense. They could wind up being the best second-place team in the league, or the one that consistently gets knocked out of the playoffs in the early rounds.

But maybe James will be entranced by the flash of Florida, which depending on the type of person one is can be more appealing than anything coming from the Big Apple or the Second City. Why do I suspect that if the NBA had a team in Las Vegas, that would have been the preference of LeBron, and just about every other ballplayer on the planet today.

BESIDES, I STILL wonder if Chicago sporting luck would have had its way with James and brought down his talent?

In which case, the Chicago sporting scene is better off without the additional disappointment. The Cubs will give us enough of that in coming years.

-30-

The only real change is that we have to quit pretending Oprah’s a Chicagoan

It amuses me to see the way some people have become so worked up over the fact that the Oprah Winfrey Show, as we have known it for the past three decades, will cease to exist.

For it’s not like Oprah is going to disappear from television, or from the public consciousness. In fact, she may very well become even more omnipresent in the future than she has been to date.

IT’S JUST THAT those of us Chicagoans who like to recite a name of internationally-known celebrities from our city have always gotten a kick out of including Winfrey’s name on the list – which also usually includes Michael Jordan (who also has left our fair city).

Heck, even Jim McMahon (the punky QB of ’85 Chicago Bears fame) has left the Chicago area, recently selling the suburban mansion in which he had lived since the days when he really was a star (and not just a former footballer).

Now, who are we going to claim as our city’s big star? Are we literally going to have to hope that Barack Obama makes a few more trips to Chicago to keep his South Side connections alive?

Or are we really going to have to start thinking of Richard M. Daley as our city’s big wig? That would be lame.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think it detracts from Chicago’s positives that Oprah won’t really be a Chicagoan, because in my book, she hasn’t really been a part of the city’s daily routine for so long.

She may live in her condominium high in the sky above the Magnificent Mile during the months when her show is in production (and when commuting from elsewhere would be just too much of a pain in the butt). But she has that L.A.-area home she’d rather think of as her full-time address.

So the rumor mill speculation that she wants to shift herself full-time to living and working elsewhere isn’t that much of a shock.

Oprah, in my mind, was always the woman who was born elsewhere, worked in Baltimore before landing the first Chicago broadcast job, which she parlayed into the talk show that is an international phenomenon.

THE ONLY SHOCK in my mind is why she didn’t shift to a climate with more pleasant weather many years ago.

By now, those of us who care (and even many of us who don’t) know that she has no intention of signing a new syndication deal for her current show, which airs live on Channel 7 and turns up in the afternoon in most other broadcast markets.

I still remember when I lived and worked in Springfield, Ill., and Oprah was the lead-in program to the local newscast on the CBS affiliate based out of Champaign. Oprah was a significant factor in that station being the Number One ranked local newscast in the Champaign/Decatur/Springfield television market.

For the rest of the world, Oprah’s change is no change.

FOR IT WILL give her time to focus on developing a new cable television channel of her own – which means she will have total control over her production (not that she doesn’t pretty much control every facet already).

So for those of us who want to know the bottom line, it means that Oprah will become one of those features that people will be able to watch if they have cable television. Considering how prevalent cable programming is, I doubt that her viewership will become significantly smaller.

It will be a matter of people being able to watch the program whenever they want – either by catching it live or in reruns throughout the day on the cable station, or watching whatever snippets they choose to whenever they feel like going on the website.

As far as Chicagoans are concerned, the only real change will be that they don’t watch her on Channel 7 any longer (at least not after September 2011). Which means the management of WLS-TV may have a legitimate gripe. What are they going to come up with to fill that hour of time?

BUT SHOULD ANYONE get all that worked up just because Channel 7 has a dilemma to confront in just under two years?

If anything, the closest comparison to Winfrey might very well be Eppie Lederer. Remember Ann Landers, who spent some three decades as the advice columnist of the Chicago Sun-Times before deciding in 1987 to shift to the Chicago Tribune?

The rest of the country noticed no change. We in Chicago got used to reading Ann Landers’ advice in a different newspaper.

Now, we in Chicago will eventually get used to watching Winfrey’s broadcast gabbing on a different channel, one that will take advantage of the changes in the way our society watches television programming.

THE DAY LIKELY will come when many of us will barely remember Winfrey’s Channel 7 connection, and will probably think it odd that we could once only see Oprah when it aired at 9 a.m. – instead of whenever we had time for her.

Those of us who find Oprah to be a little overbearing likely will continue to ignore her, to no avail – since her fans seem to outnumber us.

And those people who seriously believe that life as we Chicagoans have known it is scheduled to come to an end in two years, I’d say you and Mayor Daley (who thinks Oprah is inclined to leave Chicago because of a few negative naysayers over her show’s public celebration earlier this year on Michigan Avenue) need to take a valium and relax.

-30-

Ozzie to enhance World Series analysis

In my mind, the World Series this year just got interesting.

We’re going to get a dose of straight-shooting talk for commentary. Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen got hired to work for Fox Sports, where he will provide pre-game and post-game analysis of the on-field activity.

OZZIE, THE MAN whom some White Sox fans claim is too quick to throw his own ballplayers “under the bus” (but whom I often think is the only one willing to just tell the blunt truth), will get to give us his thoughts about the 2009 season’s ending.

We already know how disgusted he is about the fact that the White Sox were unable to even remain in the running ‘til the very end of the regular season in the fight against the Detroit Tigers – who for the second time in four seasons managed to let the Minnesota Twins overcome them on the final day of the season.

While I don’t expect to hear Guillen’s potty-mouth run amok on national television (although I can’t help but wonder if somebody is going to be on-call with their finger over a button to try to blip out any off-color remark that might slip from Ozzie’s lips), there’s always the chance that we could get some South Side insight into the World Series participants.

By South Side, I mean blunt, as in not concerned if somebody’s feelings get hurt by their physical and mental errors being pointed out to the world.

THIS IS THE man who back in the 2005 World Series signaled for his top relief pitcher to come into the game by using his hands to parody Bobby Jenks’ big gut. Ozzie isn’t someone who’s going to be bashful about expressing his opinion if he sees something stupid happen on the playing field.

He sure wasn’t bashful about letting White Sox fans know that the club they rooted for this year blew it, in a year when their American League division was weak enough that they could have won it despite the team’s flaws.

It is that same bluntness that always made Venezuelan Guillen appealing to that South Side sports fan who has no hesitation about calling out their favorite ball clubs if they sense someone isn’t trying their best to win.

At the very least, it gives people outside of the middle portion of the Washington/Boston corridor a reason to pay attention to the World Series broadcasts that have the potential to stretch this year well into November.

OZZIE WILL BE entertaining.

And we will get those many people scratching their heads in confusion trying to comprehend Guillen’s command of the English language, which grammatically isn’t bad. The only real trick is that one has to listen closely when Ozzie speaks, particularly if they’re too used to hearing people speak in drawls in their daily lives.

Of course, the idea of telling people they ought to shut up and pay attention during a ballgame is just a good concept regardless of who’s doing the broadcasting. Too much of what is wrong with sports these days relates to the idea of trying too hard to appeal to people who aren’t truly interested enough in the event to just watch the game.

If Ozzie is let loose, then people will at least watch his portions of the World Series broadcasts. Because the potential matchup of American League versus National League champions this year is going to cause grumbles from provincial types who don’t live on the East Coast.

SOME ARE GOING to complain about the idea of the Philadelphia Phillies defending their championship status by taking on whichever team winds up winning the American League championship – most likely the New York Yankees, but I suppose there could always be a historic comeback by the Los Angeles Angels.

New York versus Philadelphia for the championship of the “mundo del beisbol.” I can already hear the sports pundits whining that nobody outside of those two cities will care about this series.

It sounds like the same rhetoric that came up in 2005 when the World Series gave us the White Sox and Houston, even though that series gave us a nerve-wracking Game 4 (the only run scored near game’s end), an endless Game 3 (all 14 innings, the longest game on the clock ever) and a few other moments of athletic glory worth remembering (even though I personally thought the highlight of that whole “postseason” was the way in which the White Sox beat the Angels for the American League championship with all four of their starting pitchers managing to pitch complete games).

Personally, I would have paid attention to a New York/Philadelphia (or maybe it really will be a Los Angeles/Philadelphia) World Series, even though the only people who are going to get overly emotional about it are those aging Philly fans who still haven’t gotten over the fact that the Yankees swept Philadelphia four straight games back in the 1950 World Series – the only other time the two teams have met in October.

THERE’S ALWAYS THE chance of some unsung athlete making his name by coming through at the most inopportune moment.

In short, who is going to become the 2009 equivalent of 2005’s Geoff Blum?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: For those (http://www.thebaseballcube.com/managers/444.shtml) of you who feel compelled to look at some numbers.

For those of you (http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=93461) who feel compelled to read an Ozzie rant.