Peloteros w/ Chicago ties trying to bolster careers in Caribbean Series

We’re in the midst of an intriguing sporting event this weekend – and no, I don’t mean that overbloated excuse for a football game being played on Sunday in Indianapolis.

I’m referring to the Caribbean Series, the baseball tourney involving the champions of the winter leagues in Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

THEY BEGAN PLAYING Thursday and will run through Tuesday – with the winner of the six-game tourney getting the bragging rights of beisbol champions of Latin America.

Yet one of the things that intrigues me about the Latin American leagues in general, and this tourney in particular, is the way in which professional baseball people in this country use the leagues as a chance to bolster their on-field experience.

Which means that we even have Chicago-affiliated ballplayers taking part in the tourney – hoping that maybe a particularly outstanding week this week could bolster their chances of making a higher-level minor league ballclub.

If not the major league team itself.

FOR THE RECORD, two ballplayers with Chicago Cubs ties (pitcher Oswaldo Martinez and infielder Alfredo Amezaga) are playing for the Obregon Yaquis – champions of Mexico’s Pacific League for this season.

Meanwhile, catcher Hector Gimenez of the Venezuela ballclub and Ryan Kuusmaal, a pitcher for the Puerto Rico representative, are the members of the Chicago White Sox organization who are playing baseball this week – just a few weeks before they report to Glendale, Ariz., to start the workouts that will determine where they will play baseball this coming summer.

Admittedly, none of these guys is likely to be the star of their respective team this week – unless they pull off an unexpected star play that makes them a hero-for-life in their respective Latin American nation (where this tourney is taken seriously – perhaps moreso than many people here these days take the World Series itself).

Then again, there is the manager of the Aragua Tigers who are representing Venezuela. Buddy Bailey may be a Pennsylvania native whose U.S. baseball career has been in the minor leagues (1,500-plus career victories as a manager).

BUT HE ALSO has included his stints in the winter managing in Venezuela – and he will be the guy trying to win a championship for the fans who will enjoy it as a diversion from the impact of Hugo Chavez on their daily lives.

And when it is over after next week, he will return to prepare for a 2012 season managing the Tennessee Smokies (the Knoxville-based ballclub that provides a AA Southern League affiliate for the Chicago Cubs).

I can only hope for his sake that his Chicago Cubs ties do not overcome his minor league winning ways. Because Chavez strikes me as being goofy enough to behave like one-time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo used to many decades ago – incarcerating ballplayers who failed on the playing field.

Then again, a part of me wonders if such a tactic would be appropriate on the Chicago playing fields – because there have been times throughout the seasons when I have seen miscues where someone deserves to be locked away for taunting us with their ineptitude.

SO THIS COMING weekend, I’ll be the guy using my laptop computer to see the baseball activity being played in the Dominican Republic (which is hosting the tourney this year).

It just strikes me as being more interesting than anything that could possibly happen on that football gridiron some 185 miles southeast of Chicago.

You know, the so-called sports spectacular where most people will be paying more attention to the television commercials than they will be on the game itself!

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This is why “Burge” is wrong

I hate the idea that a man now serving prison time for his involvement in the gang rape and torture of a young woman may well be able to start thinking of himself as the “victim.”

Because as I understand it, even by this own man’s admission, he held an iron to the thighs of the young woman to burn her (he claims only his friends forced themselves sexually upon her).

BUT WE MAY have to start thinking of Stanley Wrice – who went on trial in 1983 and received a 100-year prison sentence for the 1982 attack on the woman at Wrice’s South Side home – as the wronged-one.

Because when he was arrested, he came under the control of the detectives working at the then-Pullman Area police headquarters (down on 111^th Street) who were supervised by police Commander Jon Burge.

We have heard so many stories throughout the years of the degree to which Burge and his crew used force to extract confessions from those who they thought were guilty of crimes – even though there is substantial evidence that many of them were merely guilty of “being black.”

The likelihood that Wrice underwent treatment possibly worse than what was done to the girl (who ultimately was abandoned on a side street, where she walked to a local gas station to call police) was used (rightfully so) by the Supreme Court of Illinois on Thursday to justify new hearings.

A JUDGE IS going to have to decide how much of the incriminating testimony Wrice made against himself was coerced by Burge violence. If the outcome is severe enough, it could result in a new trial.

At the very least, it could wind up with a new sentencing – one that would end his prison term much earlier than the 2041 release date he now faces.

BURGE: Still causing problems



Considering how long he has been in prison, he may well get sentenced to a term that he has already served. Which would leave this man in a position where he could claim to have been incarcerated for too long a time period – which would put the state in a position of having to compensate him for the damage done to his life.

Which is disgusting, because there is strong reason to believe that he did commit the particular offense. Prosecutors had hoped the state Supreme Court would leave the matter alone – instead of determining that coercion by police is severe enough to taint any legal outcome.

“IT IS NEVER harmless error,” the high court wrote, in their ruling this week.

That is the real harm caused by the Burge behavior of the late 1970s into the ‘80s. It has police acting like little more than thugs – perhaps more criminal than the individuals they were arresting.

We needed protection more from the police than the muggers and rapists of the police districts that patrolled the Far South Side of Chicago. Which is a sad commentary on our society.

The fact that the Burge conduct is now resulting in a situation where a potential wrongdoer gets more respect than he ought to deserve is despicable. As far as I’m concerned, it is the reason I can’t feel the least bit of sympathy for Burge – who ultimately got picked up by federal prosecutors for a perjury charge for which he is now serving a 4 ½-year prison term in North Carolina (which is even more lame than Al Capone getting prison time for tax evasion).

BURGE IS NOW far, far away from our streets of Southside Chicago. But not far enough!

Because some people are still deluded enough to think he’s the victim – a dutiful police officer protecting us from the scum of our society. Nonsense!

Burge brought his own fate upon himself by giving in to the aura of violence that he was supposed to be protecting the people from.

And in doing so, he gave many people whose behavior was appalling a legal leg upon which to stand as they will continue to have their lawsuits seeking damages for the aspersions he “put” onto their “moral character” (or lack thereof).

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EXTRA: “Phil’s” brethren gave headache I still remember years later

It has been more than two full decades, but I still remember a bit of Groundhog Day aggravation that popped into my life.

It was back in my days with the now-defunct City News Bureau, and I was working a shift on rewrite duty – which meant I got to sit in the office downtown and grind out copy based on notes provided by reporter-types in the field.

BECAUSE THIS WAS a February 2, one of those reporter-types had to make the trip to Brookfield Zoo – where the local officials coordinated an event meant to give us our very own local groundhog to predict our weather, a counterpart to Punxsutawney Phil.

The reporter-type went out there, spoke to some people, observed the stunt, then called in with the story that I proceeded to pound out with "bulletin-like" speed.

As I recall it, the groundhog came out of the hole, ran around this maze that had been built for him, then went back into the hole.

The wire service’s copy reflected that fact – it went back into the hole. With mock seriousness, we reported that the local groundhog went back inside, meaning “six more weeks” of wintry weather. I honestly don’t remember how much longer dismal weather lasted that year.

BUT WHAT I do remember was that officials from the zoo called the wire service about an hour after the City News story was transmitted to clients. They were upset, and not with any mock seriousness like our story was written.

They were peeved.

For they wanted the events interpreted that the groundhog came out of the hole and ran around in the maze. Winter’s over!!!!!!! Yea!

I don’t remember exactly what got written up and transmitted by the editors to account for this “discrepancy.” But the idea that anyone took any of this nonsense seriously still amazes me.

IT WAS NEARLY as obnoxious as the sniping that hospitals can engage in on New Year’s Day as they quibble over which one gave birth to the first baby of the year. It was bad enough that, to this day, I have never been able to sit through the film “Groundhog Day.”

It is one of those reporter memories that has lodged itself in my mind and will not go away – which makes me wonder what significant piece of information will I never be able to remember because this trivial memory is permanently lodged there – taking up precious brain space.

And for the record, that groundhog DID go back into that hole – so I’d still say that the initial report was as accurate as anything can be for a stunt like this.

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We’re not there, yet

Government bodies of all types have their moments when they dwell on things that the general public could care less about.

SUFFREDIN: Speaks a rare truth



Take the Cook County Board, which on Wednesday met for a few hours and spent quite a bit of time reviewing resolutions meant to pay tribute to a new brigadier general from Chicago and a former staffer with the assessor’s office who recently died.

THEY EVEN HAVE their humorous moments – such as when county board President Toni Preckwinkle had a slip of the tongue and inadvertently referred to Commissioner John Daley from the South Side as “Mayor Daley.”

Not that I’m saying Wednesday’s meeting was anything exceptional. If anything, it was a typical gathering of government officials trying to do “the people’s business.” You have to be an insider to care about 90 percent of it.

Which is what makes it all the more special when a government official manages to say or do something that hits upon an essential truth. It becomes a little gem amidst the blather that occupies too much of the time of most government business.

Take Commissioner Larry Suffredin of north suburban Evanston, who managed to say something so incredibly honest that it will stand in my mind for a long time – even though it didn’t relate in any way to anything that was likely to get covered in the newspapers or on broadcast news programs.

FOR WHEN THE county board felt the need to pass a resolution praising the idea of February being African-American History Month, Suffredin felt the need to say that passing mere resolutions isn’t enough.

“When we pass these kind of proposals, it is incumbent upon us to reach out and tell people we still have a lot to do,” he said.

How true!

Too many people seem to want to think that “the war’s over” and now we can go back to the way things were. The “war” being the fight for any sense of equality or elimination of laws that are meant to keep certain people in check.

SUFFREDIN HIMSELF CITED the recent study by the Manhattan Institute that found traces of segregation that still remain, and that there are neighborhoods where non-white people remain either under-represented or over-represented.

Although the modern day reality of our society is that there are few lily-white communities that still exist – and the ones that do are usually in places so isolated that one can make the argument that they are cut off from the majority of the population.

DALEY: President, Mayor, or brother?



In short, it takes a lot of effort for someone with segregationist sensibilities to truly cut themselves off. But it doesn’t mean by any means the fight is over – which too many people seem to want to believe.

So to hear something from a public official like Suffredin is encouraging – even though his comments will get overshadowed (the “official” story from the county board on Wednesday was their decision to have their Finance Committee study further the situation at the Cook County morgue – where the bodies have been piling up high in recent weeks). This account here may well be the only recognition of what happened.



JUST AS I’M sure I may also be the only one to acknowledge Preckwinkle’s gaffe – which caused Daley to sigh and everybody else in the county board chambers to laugh vigorously.

For as Daley (the brother of the retired hizzoner) himself said, he often gets people describing him in just the wrong way.

“The other day, I was called both ‘president’ and ‘Bill Daley’,” said John – as though he was the esteemed Barack Obama, or his other political brother (the returned-to-Chicago White House chief of staff).

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Why would New York Yankees want to bring Chicago Cubbie-ness to Bronx?

I used to root for the New York Yankees as a kid (my feelings about the big  ballclub in the Bronx are more neutral these days), and I can appreciate the aura that the team gives off.

That winning attitude (which some people interpret as a sense of entitlement) is about as far removed from the sentiment that one experiences if they root for the Chicago Cubs.

SO EVEN THOUGH I can appreciate the fact that people who work in professional baseball are “baseball people” first (with ties to a particular team coming second), I must admit to being amused whenever there is someone who has ties to the two franchises.

The biggest baseball winners and the loveable losers (except that losing really is never lovable). It’s just too much of a mish-mash.

So I can appreciate the sense of confusion that some people experienced when they learned that the Yankees (who think they are experiencing a long athletic draught because they haven’t won a World Series title since 2009) added a new executive to their front office.

In the form of Jim Hendry – who until a few months ago was the general manager in charge of the Cubs.

IN CUB TERMS, Hendry is successful because he put together teams that won three division titles (although that falls short of the record of Chicago White Sox general manager Kenny Williams – an American League championship/World Series title goes a long way in this city).

 But in real terms, he hasn’t won anything (no National League championship, let alone a World Series appearance).

So why would the Yankees (who didn’t win the league pennant for 2011 even though they had the best regular-season record in the American League) want Hendry?

The key is understanding that he was given a title of “special assignment scout.” Which is a convoluted way of saying that he is a consultant. Which means he doesn’t have real, full-time duties.

HENDRY, WHO IS 56 and devoted 17 years of his working life to the Chicago Cubs organization, managed to get himself a slot within professional baseball that will tide him over for 2012 while he figures out what he wants to do with the rest of his working life.

I only hope that Hendry’s Cubbie-ness doesn’t rub off on his new ballclub. Because the sense I have always picked up on is that Cubbie-ness overcomes Yankee might!

Former Cubs managers Gene Michael and Lou Piniella didn’t have success in Chicago – even though they were hired here on the premise that they would bring their Yankees ways (both played and managed there) to our city’s baseball scene.

It didn’t work.

NOR DID IT seem to help when one-time slugging outfielder Bobby Murcer (who once was thought to be the successor to Mickey Mantle in the Yankees lineup) returned to the Yankees in the late 1970s and finally got to play in a World Series in 1981.

The Yankees lost that year, and some smart-alecks noted that the reacquisition of Murcer from the Chicago Cubs put them over the top, so to speak, in the number of ex-Cubs who played for them – thereby ensuring their defeat.

I don’t know that having a former Cubs general manager on staff hurts the Yankees in any way. In real terms, it may not mean much of anything – particularly if they don’t pay his opinions much mind.

Because when it comes right down to it, there’s probably only one baseball person with ties to both the Bronx and Lakeview who had success in both places.

THAT WOULD BE Joe McCarthy (not the crackpot one-time senator from Wisconsin).

He managed the Cubs to a National League championship in 1929, then led the Yankees to American League championships and/or World Series titles in 1932 (a four-game sweep of the Cubs), 1936-39 (’38 was also a four-game Cubbie sweep) and 1941-43.

It’s just that with Jim Hendry, I can’t help but think he’s another Gene Michael, and not the second coming of Joe McCarthy.

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Redistricting always a convoluted mess to try to achieve a (sort-of) noble goal

Andrew Bayley, the student at the Illinois Institute of Technology who turned Chicago into a convoluted puzzle, may have the healthiest attitude when it comes to comprehending the new ward boundaries for the City Council.

Some people now dream of having these wards back



For Bayley is the student who built a puzzle shaped like a map of the city. Each of the 50 pieces of the puzzle is shaped like one of the wards.

AND WITH THE convoluted boundaries that will exist effective the 2015 elections, those pieces, the jagged shapes of the pieces will make for a tough puzzle to put together. He might have well created one of those 1,000-piece puzzles that show nothing but light-blue sky with an occasional cloud.

But the architecture student at least had fun with the whole concept – although he likely could make himself some serious money if he were interested (according to various news reports, he isn't) in mass-producing the puzzle.

Because my guess is that enough people are disgusted by the outcome of drawing new boundaries that they would have dished out a few bucks to have something that physically depicts their dismay. I would.

Personally, my family comes out of the 10^th Ward – which didn’t change drastically. The same neighborhoods at the far Southeast corner of Chicago remain grouped together in one ward – with the only real question being “Will the rising Latino population there make it more difficult for the non-Latino incumbent to keep getting re-elected?”

WHO’S TO SAY!

But the point being that part of the city may be the ONLY segment of Chicago that didn’t get drastically altered with new boundaries – splitting up certain neighborhoods that like to think they’re special enough to be kept united and pairing up certain portions of unrelated neighborhoods to try to create wards unified by certain racial or ethnic considerations.

Because ultimately, that has become the most important consideration when it comes to putting together political boundaries of any kind.

The people who complain about convoluted borders and gerrymandering and who make arguments about how all city wards (and legislative and congressional districts) ought to be perfect squares or rectangles that respect the boundaries that we, as a Chicago society, have created for ourselves often are missing the point.

TRY DRAWING BOUNDARIES according to their restrictions (or letting a computer program do so that would ignore human factors) and you likely would get political boundaries that would wind up being unconstitutional.

We get those goofy-shaped districts in part because we have to take certain factors into consideration – and sometimes have to overcome those boundaries that we have created for ourselves. There’s no way to please everybody – or perhaps anybody.

Although I was amused when I learned the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (which would have liked to have had more Latino representation in the City Council) was complaining that the attempts to maintain African-American political representation despite significant population declines could actually give white people a legitimate reason to complain about under-representation.

I don’t expect them to sue on those grounds. But it wouldn’t shock me if someone tries to make a legal battle out of this issue – counting on the fact that many Chicagoans are disgusted enough with the ward remap outcome that they would support anything that would cause the current map to be scrapped and create a “do-over” of sorts for the process.

THAT WOULD BE more of a headache than it our disgust with the current map is worth.

If it sounds like I don’t get as worked up as some people do about this issue, you’d be correct. Then again, maybe I’d be more outraged if my own family had been more heavily impacted (like I said, my relatives are all 10^th Warders, and have been for many decades).

But it just seems so trivial in cases like the residents of the Beverly neighborhood, which used to be kept largely intact within a ward that had the number 19 attached to it.

Now, the 19^th Ward has little to do with Beverly proper, and the bulk of the neighborhood got split up among so many wards. The people who had those red signs posted in their yards for months were definitely ignored by the powers-that-be who put together this ward map.

AND THEY’RE NOT alone. Although I’m sure the political powers-that-be are betting heavily on the fact that this map won’t really come into play until those elections three years from now, then again in 2019. Meaning, they hope we “get over it” by then.

By the time the next election cycle comes after that, we will have yet another ward boundary map. Who’s to say what kind of boundaries we’ll have by then? For all I know, we may have ward boundaries so different that we’ll reminisce fondly (well, sort-of) about the “old days” of the 2010s?

Yeah. And maybe the White Sox (on the rebounding bat of slugger Adam Dunn) will win the American League championship this year. Fat chance!

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’68 or ’96 – Did Chicago learn lesson?

We will get scenes similar to this protest at the G8/NATO summit from 2008. Photograph provided by Muji Tra.

It is with some amusement that I watch city officials get all worked up over the prospect of riots occurring as a result of protests connected to the upcoming G8/NATO summit that will be held in Chicago this spring.

I’ll be the first to concede that this event is going to bring a certain element of people wishing to make a statement in whatever visual manner is necessary, and who have little to no interest in Chicago itself.

THEY WOULDN’T EVEN think of coming here if not for the event being held here.

Yet when I say I’m amused, it means that Rahm Emanuel makes me laugh with the degree to which he seems determined to implement security measures that will give Chicago the feel for a few days of a police state.

To paraphrase the “Tommy DeVito” character played by Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas,” Rahm Emanuel is behaving like a clown, he makes me laugh.

Maybe that means Emanuel’s goons will now single me out for abuse similar to what the DeVito character did to that waiter who had the unmitigated gall to question him about a $7,000 bar tab.

MY SERIOUS POINT is that it just seems like overkill. Considering how one of the seminal events of Chicago history is the Police Department reaction to the anti-war protesters who converged on the city in 1968 when the Democratic National Convention was held here, it makes it seem as though we have learned nothing.

Which is a shame, because 1996 was supposed to be the year that we put that image to rest and showed we had learned from our mistakes. Although I have to admit that, at the time, I was never convinced of the truth of that statement.

I recall the ’96 Democratic National Convention as such an uneventful event. Democrats gathered in our city to make it official that Bill Clinton would be allowed to run for a second term as U.S. president.

It was an over-glorified pep rally for the Democrats – getting them excited about the prospect of beating up on Republican nominee Bob Dole that November. It wasn’t any real “news” made at that event.

IN FACT, MY most vivid memory was the speech given by actor Edward James Olmos. Not because of anything he said, but because he kept making this shrill whistling sound to try to get the attention of the convention delegates – who were ignoring him because many were more concerned about planning which party they were going to that night.

But that event came off without a hitch. The protester-types who insisted on coming to Chicago in 1996 were easily controlled. We didn’t have any riots. We didn’t have any of the mass arrests that would have created broadcast images similar to ’68.

We certainly didn’t have a “Chicago Seven” going on trial in U.S. District Court some time around 1998 for what they did at the Democratic National Convention similar to what happened back in the late 1960s.

Yet it seems like we’re determined to think we’ll have a conspiracy trial of sorts maybe in 2013 to punish the people who are anticipated to engage in a plot to overthrow Chicago.

WHICH IS WHY we’ve gotten the sentiment of overkill – such as the talk of police from across all the suburbs being lent to Chicago during the summit, along with cops from across the country. All we need now is the sight of a Naperville cop swinging his nightstick into someone’s skull, with perhaps a Chicago cop then swinging his club into the camera that would dare to record that image.

It’s overkill that will go a long way toward provoking certain elements to want to start up some trouble that they wouldn’t have been inclined to do had the police presence not been so intense. In short, police states generally create the mood that instigates people to want to use their own overkill in response to the police overkill.

I’m hoping we’re not on the verge of another “police riot” like we had 44 years ago – no matter how much some people will dispute the use of that phrase to describe the activity.

I couldn’t help but notice one other similarity – the concept that ridiculous rumors that are so absurd get believability.

BACK IN ’68, it was the idea that the “radicals” were going to taint the city’s drinking water supply (a.k.a., Lake Michigan) by dumping LSD in it. The whole city would wind up taking an acid trip – despite the fact that a large-enough quantity of the drug needed to really achieve such a goal would be impossible to “sneak” into Chicago.

Here's hoping we don't get an encore



To me, the same absurdity is at stake when people talk of the need to “shut down” Facebook – because all these “radicals” will use it to send secret messages to each other as far as plotting out their “takeover” of the city – as though they are really nothing more than a large-scale flash-mob.

Some aldermen are going so far as to get all outraged at the very thought of a “social media” shutdown. Although I don’t see the point. After all, I thought the whole thing about Facebook was that it was all out in the open and made obsolete the concepts of “privacy” and “secrecy.”

How secretive can a conspiracy be if anybody (including the police themselves) can “read all about it” on Facebook?

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