Something new for people to rant about; put “the Hawk” in Hall of Fame?

As if people in Chicago didn’t have enough to rant about these days – not only is the Willis Tower no longer the United States’ tallest building, there are those people who think that Chicago White Sox broadcaster Ken “the Hawk” Harrelson belongs in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

The Hawk will never be a Hall of Fame GM

In fact, I think the latter concept will upset certain people more than the demise of Willis Tower as the officially-recognized tallest building on any level.

HARRELSON FIRST BEGAN his association with the White Sox in 1982. He had a few years away from the team in the late 1980s, but then came back and has been in place in the broadcast booth for the more than two decades since.

Yes, he’s a homer – as in he actually makes it clear he wants the White Sox to win.

Which ticks off that element of Chicagodom that roots for the Cubs and thinks that the White Sox aren’t entitled to have anyone root for them.

He has his share of sayings and clichés that he has developed throughout the years, but it also more than capable of going silent for batters at a time when the White Sox play so badly on the field that he seems to follow the old saying, “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.”

HARRELSON IS NOT someone that people are neutral over. The people who can’t stand him really feel strongly about it.

So the idea that Harrelson is among 10 finalists for the Ford Frick Award – given each year by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to honor a baseball broadcaster for the entirety of his (or her) career – is something that will get them all worked up.

Your view if the Hawk is a fashion palate

“How dare anyone say that baseball’s absolute worst broadcaster ever be worthy of being allowed anywhere near the Hall of Fame?!?,” they will scream from the top of their voices.

Some of them are going to make the oft-used argument that getting the Frick Award is NOT the equivalent of being elected to the Hall of Fame. Harrelson isn’t a Hall of Famer, no matter what he claims!

EXCEPT THAT THE Frick Award has become a significant career achievement for those involved in broadcasting baseball. Past recipients include our city’s radio and television legends such as Bob Elson, Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray.

Does Harrelson deserve to be compared to them?

Personally, I view the fact that Harrelson is up for this honor and has had such a lengthy career as the evidence of how baseball broadcasting has changed.

We don’t have professional broadcasters any longer. Now, the broadcasters are the former ballplayers whom the ball clubs don’t view as worthy of a managerial or coaching post.

HARRELSON IS A 1960’s era ballplayer who will forevermore live off the glory of the 1967 American League champion Boston Red Sox (remember the team that won, in part, because the White Sox totally collapsed against the last-place Kansas City Athletics in the final weekend of the season)?

Just like the Cubs currently are looking at a batch of former ballplayers to replace Keith Moreland in their local broadcasts. Moreland, of course, being of the Cubs team that blew it in the playoffs in 1984.

Personally, my own attitude about Harrelson’s ability is that he may well be one of the best broadcasters in the game today – because the quality is so low. Like Mike Royko used to say that calling him the best newspaper columnist didn’t amount to much because it compared to being the “tallest midget in the circus.”

There are a lot of broadcasters doing baseball today because they were once capable of hitting .260 or fielding ground balls without bobbling too many of them.

IT’S NOT A great field of talent, so naturally Harrelson’s enthusiasm stands out.

And most important, the reality of the Ford Frick Award is that once a broadcaster gets nominated as a finalist, he tends to remain a finalist in future years until the powers-that-be determine that it’s eventually his turn to get the big prize.

It may not happen this year (which is Harrelson’s second time on the ballot), but it is likely to come someday that “Yessssssssssssss!,” the Hawk will be in the Hall. It certainly won’t be for his brief stint as a baseball general manager.

He’ll probably give one heck of an entertaining acceptance speech. And the masses who think everybody ought to be a Cubs fan will gag in disgust – probably even more so than they did eight years ago when the Sox took the World Series, long before they could ever dream of doing so.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Ken Harrelson even has his own theme music. The Val Perry Trio gave us “Don’t Walk the Hawk” back at the peak of his ’67 Red Sox popularity. And yes, it definitely is a period piece, as cheesy as anything the 1910 Fruitgum Company ever did.

An ugly scene from the companies we rely on for significant information

It’s not a pretty scene these days when it comes to the companies that we rely upon (even if we try to ignore that reality) for the information we have about our society.

How many people are going to think that shirt is worth more than the information contained in the news boxes? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

The Tribune Co. issued financial reports about the 240 jobs it cut companywide during the summer quarter of 2013 (a fact that the Chicago Sun-Times felt compelled to tell us), while Tribune corporate-types admit there will be more cuts early in 2014.

THOSE ARE GOING to hit the Chicago Tribune itself, including the editorial staff – which can only claim to be the largest newspaper staff in the Midwestern U.S. because everybody else has also cut themselves in cost-saving measures.

Not that the Sun-Times (which usually is the best source for information about Tribune Co. that they don’t want told) ought to gloat.

There have been hints that the Sun-Times will engage in similar cuts to its editorial staff early next year – hints taken seriously enough by the Chicago Newspaper Guild that they have already threatened to file a lawsuit against the company on the grounds that the staff has already been whittled down to the bone marrow.

Then, there was the report this week from Robert Feder (the one-time Sun-Times media writer who now operates his own weblog loosely affiliated with the Tribune).

A chance to rebuild itself?

THE SUN-TIMES IS so anxious to come up with cash to help prop up the overall company that they’re considering selling off at least some of the suburban newspapers that they purchased in recent decades to strengthen the company. 

 

According to Feder, the Herald-News of Joliet is likely to be the first put on the auction block. Which might be for the best in Will County (the part of suburbia that is growing faster than any other part of the metro area).

Soon to be No. 1 again (even if it already was)

If they could get an ownership willing to invest in the publication and its website and other potential information distribution forums that we can’t even dream about yet, the Herald-News could again become a significant means of getting quality information about Joliet and its surrounding communities.

 

Because now, the Herald-News produces a few stories that also appear in the Sun-Times and its other suburban papers. Which is why it’s not totally ridiculous to think of the publications as one multiple-edition newspaper – the basis of all the claims in recent years that the Sun-Times actually has a larger daily circulation than the Tribune.

ACTUALLY, IT MUST be bad for the Sun-Times these days. Because if they’re willing to give up the claim to the Herald-News circulation as being part of their own, it means that their collective circulation is likely to drop behind that of the Tribune.

They won’t be able to make the “We’re Number One!” claim that anybody with sense knew was ridiculous. They’ll go back to being Number Two.

Although considering how scrawny the Sun-Times has become despite having all these other publications on hand to prop it up, it probably doesn’t matter.

This whole situation could turn out to be beneficial to Joliet, if it means they get a better news source. Although I wonder if the whole Sun-Times experience has scraped them dry of any assets that could be used to bolster themselves.

ALL IN ALL, not a pleasant business situation – one in which some people take a little too much pleasure. Such as the Illinois Review – an ideologically-based website that seemed Tuesday to take a little too much pleasure in these facts.

Personally, it reinforces my belief that most people aren’t going to appreciate what is being lost until it’s gone and cannot be recovered.

I know too many people who claim they NEVER read the Chicago papers anymore. Then, when they show me the websites that they say have “replaced” the papers, they’re loaded up with stories that originated in the Sun-Times and Tribune.

I’m skeptical the Illinois Review could come up with stories of its own if it didn’t have other peoples’ work to feed off of. There’s only so much that one can get without a real-live full-time reporter doing their work – especially if you’re of the type whose objections to “liberal media” (a concept that really is a myth) are that they’re not spinning everything to your limited viewpoint!

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EXTRA: Let the 'height' loonies loose. We’re no longer No. 1 in U.S.A.!!!

Does anything really change because of the height ruling

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has made the decision that’s going to anger a lot of already irate people to the point where they’re going to pollute our space with their rhetoric.

They decided Tuesday that the proposed new World Trade Center IS taller than the Willis Tower. Without its decorative spire, the structure scheduled to open next year is 1,368 feet tall – less than the one-time Sears Tower’s 1,450 feet.

WITH THE SPIRE, World Trade will be 1,776 feet tall.

Like I wrote previously, I think the people who are getting worked up over this are being irrational. Both those New Yorkers who think their structure MUST be the nation’s tallest because it is a tribute to those who died at the site on Sept. 11, 2001, and those Chicagoans who think our city’s superiority is somehow put at risk by this move. What does New York have that Chicago would really want (other than a ball club with the history of the Yankees?).

Once the new World Trade opens, the Willis Tower becomes 10^th tallest in the world. Although it should be noted that the Petronas Towers in Malaysia that has been world’s tallest since it opened in 1996 was designed by the same Chicago-based architectural firm that gave us Willis (nee, Sears).
 

Kuala Lampur's Chicago connection

Perhaps that is our city’s claim to fame when it comes to ridiculously-tall buildings. That, and our being the home city of the board that made this official decision to begin with; one that really doesn't alter anything about the character of our home city that makes it a remarkable place to live on Planet Earth.

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When will we start hearing demands for a new stadium on the South Side?

Perhaps it’s just because I’m desperate to ignore the first snowfall that hit Chicago on Monday – more than a month before the official start of winter.

Already obsolete?

 

But I couldn’t help but be shaken up by wire service reports emanating from Atlanta; where the Braves plan to move their ball club from their city-based stadium to one based in the suburbs in just a couple of years.

THE EXISTING BALLPARK – Turner Field – came about in the wake of the 1996 Olympic Games staged in that southern city, then reconstructed into a modern ballpark beginning with the 1997 season.

Turner Field might not be among the stadia that gets people’s hearts all atwitter (like the ballparks in Baltimore and Pittsburgh). But it is among the modern round of construction – sports teams that saw themselves get new buildings in the 1990s and early 2000s that were meant to be more than just a place to sit while a ballgame is played in front of you.

There’s nothing structurally wrong with the current Braves’ building. It’s just that the officials in suburban Cobb County are willing to give more amenities to the ball club, if they can steal away some baseball business for themselves.

Now why should I care about this southern politicking taking place? It’s because these stadiums always seem to get built in groups. Which means that now that the current set-up of stadia can start to be thought of as obsolete, it makes me wonder how many more ball clubs are going to start screaming for new facilities from their home communities.

How soon will calls for "the Cell's" replacement start?

 

EVEN IF, IN some cases, those current facilities aren’t fully paid for yet.

And if that happens, how long will it be until our own city’s ball clubs start screaming.

Renovate Wrigley? This action by the Braves may convince the Cubs they’d be better off at a location in suburban Rosemont (since the Cubs could claim the same line of logic that the Braves are using to justify their move – it puts them closer to the geographic center of their fan base).

In need of replacement before it's rebuilt?

 

Or what about the White Sox? The building now known as U.S. Cellular Field cropped up in 1991. Making it possibly the oldest of these new-style ballparks.

BY THE BRAVES’ line of logic (Turner Field’s stint as a major league stadium will last exactly 20 years), the White Sox ballpark is an antique.

It’s also an antique that has never gotten much love from amateur architectural aficionados.

Will the White Sox get it into their heads that it’s time for them to get a building that will gain admiration – instead of mere functionality – from outsiders?

Now I realize the political reality locally is that the process leading to the construction of U.S. Cellular Field ate up a lot of political goodwill. There are people who are still bitter that the building was ever constructed and that they were unable to kill the bill that back in 1988 ensured that the 2005 World Series was played on the South Side – and NOT in St. Petersburg, Fla.!

BUT THE BUILDING is now part of an era that is being replaced. It’s just a matter of time before officials want to start talking up the replacement of “the Cell.”

I recently read an essay written by someone trying to have some fun – speculating about what professional baseball would be like in the year 2114. He guessed that the White Sox would have a new stadium by then – perhaps built across the street on the site of the old Comiskey Park – because the new building would last the same 80-year stint as the old.

Will the "Old Roman's" statue gather pigeon poop at another ballpark?

I doubt it! The cycle of replacement of the current stadia has now begun.

My guess is that U.S. Cellular will see its demise some time around the year 2030. By then, the demands to replace it with something “more modern” will just be too intense.

THE 2033 MAJOR League Baseball All-Star Game (the 100^th anniversary of the original All-Star game played at Comiskey Park) could well be the first moment of glory for a new White Sox stadium somewhere.

The real question is will 2005 be the only World Series championship won in the current building, or will there be a few more before its demise? A part of me thinks that is more likely than a championship at Wrigley any time soon!

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Worrying about ‘tallest building’ status? We’re acting like batch of rubes

Do you want the ultimate evidence that the concept of “New York sophistication” is a myth?

I’d say we’re getting it these days from those New York interests who are arguing so intently to have the status of “tallest building in the United States” placed on the new World Trade Center that is soon to be complete.

OF COURSE, IF that structure (built on the site of the REAL World Trade Center that collapsed in flames from the impact of two aircraft hijacked by religious extremists in the name of Allah) gets the “tallest building” status, it means that the Willis Tower, our very own, will be diminished to second-rate.

There actually was time spent last week by the members of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – which held hearings in our city to hear the arguments so they can reach a verdict in this extremely crucial (sarcasm intended) matter.

We had a lot of people get all worked up, thinking that their civic pride is somehow at stake. A classic Chicago vs. New York battle. Although anybody with sense realizes the ultimate Chicago vs. New York fight would be a World Series involving our cities ball clubs – and we’re behind (a win in 1917, losses in 1932 and 1938) in that department!

But back to buildings. As far as I can tell, it seems that the argument from New York amounts to the concept that the country’s tallest building MUST BE in that city, particularly since it is at the World Trade Center site.

IT WOULD BE evidence of our national supremacy that the tallest building would arise from the ashes of the bad memories of Sept. 11, 2001.

The ultimate Chicago victory over N.Y.

Except that anybody who believes that is just being ridiculous. If anything, I wonder if this nonsense-talk winds up trivializing the memories of what happened that day 12 years ago – perhaps even more than all the trivial nonsense emanating from Boston these days that desperately wants to believe that the Red Sox’ World Series victory this year was something the city was entitled to following the explosion at the Boston Marathon that killed a few and wounded many others.

Boston Strong!, my butt.


You have to admit, it's a bit much

Except that some of the talk coming from Chicago interests is coming across just as silly.
 

THE DEGREE TO which some people seem prepared to fight to ensure that Willis remains on top of the heap.

Personally, I think the greater blow to the building’s image was when it lost its long-time “Sears Tower” name (even though that’s what I still think of it as). “Willis” just brings up to many dinky jokes about the “Diff’rent Strokes” television show.

I still wonder if an “Arnold Tower” (about half the height of Willis) will someday be built a couple of blocks away.

For the record, I’ll concede the simple fact. It’s the decorative ornamentation atop the new World Trade Center that would give it a claim to “tallest” building. The top floor of Willis Center is higher in the sky than the top floor of World Trade.

YET I DON’T think it matters much. And I think the people getting worked up on both sides are being silly. Chicago won't have one less homicide this year, or one more baseball victory, if the "tallest building" status stays here.

Now if we really wanted to respond to this in a true Chicago style, we’d try to one-up the new World Trade Center. We’d find a developer who’d come in and build a new gigantic skyscraper that would put World Trade in its place.

Perhaps it could even top those skyscrapers being built in Arab and Asian nations that have the title of “World’s Tallest” building. THAT was the distinction that should have gotten people all worked up when Chicago lost it.

But I’m realistic enough to know that no one’s going to build anything like that anytime soon in Chicago.

"Tallest building" status won't change what happened here

 

IT JUST WOULDN’T be practical. It would create a heck of a lot more vacant office-space that would wind up going unused.

And harming our own local economy just to prove a point about tall buildings? That would make us look even more absurd than the Noo Yawkers who these days are obsessed about World Trade Center’s status in the nation.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not touching the battle of which city has the better pizza. I don't think that thin crust stuff peddled as New York pizza is anything special, but the whole concept of "deep dish" is a completely different foodstuff that really ought not to be compared to it on any level.

Quinn picking Vallas not really a shock

I’ll confess to being surprised when I heard Friday morning that it was the name “Paul Vallas” that would wind up appearing on the ballot for Democratic lieutenant governor nominee in next year’s state election cycle.

VALLAS: A political comeback?

Not that I should have been. Vallas, the one-time head of the Chicago Public Schools, has always been good for tossing out hints he’d like to be part of the local political system – even though he’s never held electoral office and was the guy who got beat by Rod Blagojevich back in the 2002 Democratic primary for governor.

SO THE IDEA that Vallas would be willing to move back to metro Chicago (he’s a native of suburban Crestwood, and still has family living in the area) isn’t odd.

There’s also the fact that Quinn doesn’t seem capable of getting any conventional choices to run along with him come 2014.

The BIG names that have been tossed about are state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, and city Treasurer Stephanie Neely – both of whom have said they’re not interested. The general theory amongst political observers was that Quinn would want a black person paired up with him to appeal to the city’s and south suburban significant African-American vote.

But it honestly would not surprise me to learn that NOBODY of any significance currently in the city’s political structure wanted to be paired up with Quinn.

NOT SO MUCH because nobody wants their name associated too closely with Quinn. But because the post itself is one with no real duties – other than what Quinn wants done with it.

And it is the post that has a small circle of people who are outspoken in their belief that it should be abolished – just let the state attorney general be promoted to governor in the event that succession is needed!

QUINN: Does mid-90s CPS glory bolster gov?

So Quinn was going to have to come up with a politically oddball choice. Vallas probably is amongst the most conventional oddball he could possibly find.

What should we think?

I’M SURE SOME people are going to try to attack Vallas (and Quinn, by association) on the grounds that he doesn’t live in Illinois any longer. State law does say a candidate for statewide office must have lived in the state at least three years prior to the election in question.

And Vallas has made a national name for himself for the number of public school districts he has tried to reform – including Philadelphia and New Orleans, but most recently Bridgeport, Conn. Although that school board is loaded with people who are looking for excuses to dump him.

Which may mean Vallas is soon unemployed – and in need of a new job. Lieutenant governor, anyone?

The critics in Illinois will bash Vallas’ residency by claiming he doesn’t live here anymore. But it seems he never gave up his voter registration (and he does still have family living in the area).

HE ACTUALLY CAST ballots in the last two election cycles, as he kept a voter registration in suburban Palos Heights. Which won’t be enough to appease the ideologues. It makes me wonder if they’re already trying to hire election law expert Burt Odelson to represent their case in court. Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner is already saying Quinn is “running scared” by picking Paul.

But just as Odelson’s legal battle against Mayor Rahm Emanuel ultimately failed because the election residency laws are not as firm as some want to think, it may turn out to be the same for Vallas.

He gets to stay an Illinois resident for political purposes because he never gave up his registration. Now if someone could show he also was voting in other states’ elections, it would be a different issue. But I haven’t heard anyone make that allegation.

Although the Capitol Fax newsletter reported that Illinois State Board of Elections officials were saying the change in law that makes governors pick a running mate prior to the primary means everything may change. “There’s no way to determine an outcome of a scenario” like that, board Chairman Rupert Borgsmiller told the newsletter.

I DON’T KNOW how much Vallas really helps Quinn – he couldn’t even beat Blagojevich, who supposedly was the candidate in that 11-year-old election cycle who appealed to Democrats who lived outside of Chicago.

Vallas was regarded as “too Chicago” for Illinois to accept. Then again, Quinn gets hit with the same claim. If anything, this may bolster the Quinn/Vallas Chicago support to the point where it overcomes the vote from the rural parts of Illinois that definitely will favor a Republican challenger.

Which means Quinn has nothing to lose. And Vallas has everything to gain if the Democratic “top of the ticket” winds up prevailing against whichever candidate the Republicans pick to go for governor – an office they used to “own” (for 26 years, from James R. Thompson through George Ryan) until 2002.

If anything, the fact that Vallas contemplated in 2010 a Cook County Board president run as a Republican might hurt him more. Or at least make him look ridiculous. Although the fact that he never actually ran makes it like more of a tawdry rumor than anything else.

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Political "Pope" now free to be political elder statesman like Rosty, "Fast Eddie"

I kind of wish I had known about the release from prison of one-time political powerbroker William Cellini last week when it happened.

CELLINI: Planning for his future

For it seems that the Springfield resident who for decades has used his fundraising skills and political contacts to benefit political candidates of both major parties (even though he himself was a Republican) is no longer occupying space at the federal correctional center in Terre Haute, Ind.

IN FACT, CELLINI was released from the minimum-security work camp near the maximum-security prison last week on Halloween!

Just think, I could have celebrated the holiday by going as Cellini himself, perhaps wearing an ornate "Pope-like" ring so that other politicos could come and kiss it! Of course, there probably would have been a few confused people who would have wondered why an old fool like myself was going disguised as an even older person whom they probably never paid much attention to during his decades of service in and around government.

Cellini is now doing the halfway house portion of federal rehabilitation, where he theoretically will spend this month at a Salvation Army facility on the West Side – getting himself acclimated to life in proper society.

His 366-day prison sentence that he began serving in January won’t technically end until Dec. 5 – yes, Bill behaved himself in prison and qualified for 47 days off his sentence for good behavior.

FOR THE RECORD, the actions that finally got Cellini put away following a career being associated with government that dates back to the early 1970s involved now-incarcerated former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

VRDOLYAK: Cellini's urban counterpart?

Cellini used his contacts to raise money for the Blagojevich campaign (much of which wound up paying for the legal defense during his two trials), and it was claimed during Cellini’s trial that he approached an investment firm to solicit money with promises that the firm would get to handle state teacher pension funds.

Personally, I think the Blagojevich ties are a miniscule part of the Cellini career – which has mostly consisted of being the guy to whom the government officials turn when they want something done.

After all, he hasn’t held any electoral posts anywhere outside of Springfield – and those were in municipal government back in the 1960s. Within state government, he is a former director of Public Works and Buildings and served two years as the first-ever head of the Illinois Department of Transportation.

ROSTENKOWSKI: Elder statesman?

BUT THE ELECTION of Dan Walker (insert bad joke about Walker’s eventual criminal conviction here) in 1972 as governor brought that to an end.

Although he served as the treasurer of the Sangamon County Republican Party, he really became the corporate type who made himself some money while also indulging himself in politics as a hobby of sorts.

Which means what Cellini really became was the guy who worked with decades worth of government officials, seeing the way things worked. Some argue exposure to all that power throughout the years made him cross the line to criminal behavior.

To me, it makes me wonder if Cellini really ought to be compared to one-time House Ways and Means Chair Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., and former 10^th Ward Alderman and Cook County Democratic Chairman (who converted himself to Republicanism later in life) Ed Vrdolyak.

ROSTENKOWSKI LITERALLY SPENT the rest of his life after completing his prison time in the 1990s being the elder statesman of the Chicago “Machine.”

How many times did we see him pop up on an Election Day until his death in 2010 for instant analysis of what the voter tallies really meant? Or use his positions as a Northwestern University lecturer and Loyola University senior fellow to influence the way future generations of people perceived politics? Is Cellini destined for similar use at the University of Illinois' Springfield campus?

Vrdolyak these days crops up occasionally in a similar role. Is this the ultimate fate for Cellini? Are Vrdolyak/Cellini destined to become the colorfully-tainted political pundits from Chicago/downstate?

We’ll be waiting to see the outcome.

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