EXTRA: Will Sammy draw ‘Cinco’ (as in percent) of Hall of Fame votes?

The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is expected to announce Tuesday whether any of the ballplayers under consideration were capable of reaching the ’75 percent’ level of support required for enshrinement.

We’re also going to learn how many of the nearly three dozen former ball players under consideration received so little voter support (under 5 percent) that they won’t even be eligible for future consideration.

PLAYERS LIKE FORMER White Sox outfielder Jermaine Dye and Chicago-area native Cliff Floyd likely will fall below, while former Cubs relief pitcher Lee Smith and White Sox outfielder Tim Raines will come up again in that perennial baseball time period known as ‘next year.’

Then, we have to consider the fate of Sammy Sosa, the one-time Cubs slugging outfielder who was once the very personification (at least for those nit-wits who couldn’t look beyond Wrigley Field) of what Chicago baseball was all about.

I’m not about to get into a debate about what should happen to Sosa’s legacy as a ballplayer. If you care, I’ve written about it before. But I find it intriguing to wonder whether Sosa’s stint as a Cub will continue to haunt baseball geeks with way too much time on their hands.

He is one of those 1990s-early 2000’s players where there is circumstantial evidence that he used performance-enhancing substances (a.k.a., steroids) to bulk up and improve his abilities.

THAT HAS MANY sportswriters/voters who used to praise Sammy’s persona to now refuse to acknowledge him. Will the opposition grow to the point where he falls off the ballot for future consideration?

The BaseballThinkFactory.org website has developed a running count of Hall of Fame ballots as various sportswriters indicate publicly who they cast votes for. Sammy is literally at the cut-off point (4.5 percent as of Monday afternoon). Could he get a sudden boost from voters who weren’t accounted for to keep this quarrel going on?

Could it turn out that 600-plus home runs just aren’t enough to overcome steroids speculation that, if in a court of law, wouldn’t rise to the level of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ needed to convict?

Then again, baseball always thinks it has its own standards. One-time White Sox outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven teammates were banned from baseball for life, even though a Cook County court jury acquitted them of any criminal responsibility for their actions in the 1919 World Series.

SO FOR SOSA, the relevant statistic is no longer 3 (as in the number of seasons in which he hit 60 or more home runs, which no other ballplayer has ever been able to do).

It’s 5 (as in percent of the sportswriter vote received), so we can continue to debate this issue for years to come. Because a good quarrel is just what any baseball fan wants to do during the winter months when our temperatures dip to below 10 degrees!

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And then police wonder why some people don’t give them their full trust

Officials in New York on Sunday laid to rest police officer Wenjian Liu, an occasion that could have been a moment where the people showed their solidarity and support for the law enforcement types who are supposed to be there for our protection.

Instead, numerous officers in New York felt compelled to turn the funeral services Sunday for the officer shot to death while sitting in his parked squad car last month into a statement that will reinforce the beliefs of some in our society that the police are as much the problem as anybody else.

I HAD HOPED officers would not see the need to make their statement against Mayor Bill deBlasio as they have on several occasions, including the funeral services held last week for Liu’s partner, Rafael Ramos – who also was shot to death by a man who used Facebook to say he was avenging the deaths of black men in New York and Ferguson, Mo., who were killed by police.

Their gesture was to turn their backs to de Blasio – as a way of publicly showing they refuse to acknowledge his presence.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton had said he wanted New York officers to show the mayor professional respect during the funeral service on Sunday. Instead, officers outside the funeral home where a Buddhist service was held turned their back to a video screen while de Blasio spoke – and faced it again once de Blasio sat down.

Although it should be noted the New York Daily News reported that it was not clear that all the officers who “protested” were actually New York cops – some may have been out-of-town officers who showed up to show solidarity amongst law enforcement personnel.

BUT IT STILL comes across as a juvenile gesture – one that legitimate police officers seeking public respect ought to know better than to commit.

For the record, police in New York have been turning their backs on de Blasio ever since the death of Eric Garner – who was strangled by a New York cop with a headlock grip. De Blasio, who has a biracial son, made comments about how he feared his son might be treated by police.

In short, he conceded that the activists upset over the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburbs may well have a legitimate point when it comes to police encounters with black people.

These officers, instead of trying to figure out how to close the gap in trust that exists between them and black people, seem to expect blind loyalty.

AS THOUGH THE lesson we should learn from the deaths of Ramos and Liu (who by all evidence were not doing anything threatening to anyone at the time they were shot) is that people like Garner and Brown (and anyone else whom police decide to use force upon) got what they deserved.

I know there are some people in our society who will be eager to believe such a line of thought. But THAT is the problem we face!

That is why I’m not sure what to think of the fact that other law enforcement agencies feel compelled to express their support to their New York counterparts.

Including Chicago, where on New Year’s Day our city’s own officers gathered at a police memorial near Soldier Field to show their support for fallen police officers – with Ramos and Liu given special mention for the Dec. 20 incident in which the two were shot and killed while on duty in Brooklyn a month earlier.

I’D LIKE TO think our own police officers would behave better than their New York counterparts if the incidents were occurring here.

Then again, with the gap in trust between police and some in our society, that might be the New Year’s wish that’s just too much to ask for.

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Floyd, Dye may not make “Hall of Fame,” but won’t be forgotten locally

Baseball fans will learn Tuesday who, if anyone, will get into the Hall of Fame and there already are many people speculating on who deserves that honor – along with who was such an awful ballplayer that they shouldn’t even be allowed to pay their way into the museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Yet I was more intrigued by a pair of nominees who are highly unlikely to ever get elected to the Hall of Fame, and may very well get so little support this year that they won’t be eligible for future consideration for the baseball honor.

FOR ANYONE WHO takes an interest in the Chicago baseball scene isn’t going to forget the names “Cliff Floyd” and “Jermaine Dye.”

They may get next to nobody amongst the sportswriters who receive Hall of Fame ballots to cast votes for them.

But both of them did enough during their careers that they don’t deserve to be completely forgotten.

In the case of Dye, he bounced around many major league clubs in the 1990s and early 2000s and was in danger of being the guy whose career as a professional baseball player was ruined by a foul ball he hit off his knee during the American League playoffs in 2001 while playing for the Oakland Athletics.

THAT BROKEN LEG caused him to play sporadically in coming seasons, and was the reason the Chicago White Sox were able to acquire him prior to the 2005 season – nobody else wanted him, or thought he was capable of playing regularly any longer.

’05, of course, was the season the White Sox led the American League all year, then went on a streak in the playoffs, beating the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels prior to their World Series victory over the Houston Astros (remember the constant televised site of former President George and first lady Barbara Bush sitting in a front row seat, and bussing each other when the “Kiss Cam” focused on them?).

Dye wound up being a significant part of that championship ball club and even became the Most Valuable Player of the World Series – largely because he drove in the only run scored in that 1-0 White Sox victory in Game 4 that clinched the World Series title for the Sout’ Siders.

He then went on to have his best season overall in 2006 – with 44 home runs, 120 runs batted in, a .315 batting average and some votes for American League Most Valuable Player that year.

NOW I’M NOT arguing that Dye is a Hall of Famer. Only that he’d probably get some serious consideration if his time with Oakland, the Kansas City Royals and Atlanta Braves were as good as he was in Chicago.

He gets to be an honorary Chicagoan for the fact that he was a White Sox World Series winner. Unlike Floyd, who is a real-life Chicagoan (born in the city and raised in suburban Markham) although he now lives in Florida and I recently saw him as a baseball commentator on the MLB-TV channel that I spend too much time watching.

Floyd did play one season with the Chicago Cubs, in 2007 when they made it to the National League playoffs, but lost His World Series appearances were in 1997 (with the Florida Marlins who defeated the Cleveland Indians) and the Tampa Bay Rays (who lost to the Philadelphia Phillies).

But he was the local boy made good who went on to play 17 seasons in the major leagues after being discovered by professional scouts while playing ball for Thornwood High School in suburban South Holland.

HE WAS A three-sport star while there, and led Thornwood to an Illinois state championship in high school baseball his senior year. Upon graduating in 1991, he passed on college when the Montreal Expos offered him a chance to play baseball.

Two years later, he was in the major leagues, beginning the trek that saw him play for seven ball clubs and be a part of the National League All-Star team in 2001.

None of that may make him worthy of a bronze plaque in Cooperstown. But it’s certainly much more than many guys, I’m sure, would give their male organ up in order to receive.

And it’s the closest Chicago sports fans will get to having a local tie to this year’s Hall of Fame speculation – unless you want to get worked up once again over arguing whether or not Sammy Sosa should EVER be honored for all those home runs he hit that made Cubs fans over a decade ago wet their pants with glee.

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Is Rauner headed down political path reminiscent of Blagojevich era?

Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner may want to believe he’s unique and special and is Illinois’ political savior, but there’s a part of me who wonders if the next four years are going to turn into a fracas that will make the Rod Blagojevich years seem meek and quiet by comparison.

Because the overbearing way Rod Blagojevich tried to run state government is what is popping into my mind when I see the tactics being used by Rauner these days.

BY TACTICS, I’M referring to that memorandum from his budgetary staff that Rauner made sure was publicly distributed. The one headed “Sins of the Past and Dishonest State Budgets.”

           

It shows that the cheap rhetoric we heard during the campaign season in which he tried to make Pat Quinn out to be a venal, corrupt hack is going to be the same line of logic he’s going to continue to spew.

“Illinois’ massive budget hole is the direct result of previous governors and General Assemblies giving away benefits they knew the state couldn’t afford, deploying fundamentally dishonest budget practices and kicking the can down the road,” the memo said.

We’re probably going to continue to get accounts of how everything that goes wrong during the Rauner Administration (which we’re 10 days away from now) is somehow Pat Quinn’s fault, and how the way the General Assembly can help to resolve problems is to shut up and do what the governor tells them to do.

THAT MAY WELL be the way a corporate CEO can get away with behaving, because if their company goes out of business due to management ineptitude it’s just themselves who get hurt.

Government isn’t business, and can’t be run in the same way. It has responsibilities that need to be fulfilled, even if certain ideologically-inclined people think the way to balance a government budget is to cut the services they’d prefer not to offer.

It doesn’t work that way.

It’s not just the memo that grates on my nerves these days.

THERE’S ALSO THE Crain’s Chicago Business report this week that points out the $20 million (and possibly growing) fund Rauner has created in his campaign operation. Rauner says he’s not saving now for a 2018 re-election bid. The money will be spent to have a partisan political operation to influence government officials to go along with his desires.

The money is coming partly from Rauner himself (he’s been elected governor, and is still spending his own cash on his campaigning), but also from business executives Ken Griffin and Dick Uihlein – who gave massive amounts of money to the election last year.

That money could wind up paying for future media campaigns meant to sling mud at legislators who don’t go along with the governor’s desires. Which would mean the ugliness of the 2014 election cycle could well become the style of governing for Rauner – “Shut up and do what you’re told, or else!”

If that becomes true, it won’t be long before we all (even those of us who were eager to dump Quinn from office) start counting down the days until the November 2018 election when this Rauner term would be over.

NOW HOW DO I bring up a Blagojevich comparison?

Let’s recall the ugly relations that developed between Blagojevich and a General Assembly that theoretically should have been aligned with the former governor.

We all heard stories of how Blagojevich felt compelled to put his foot down on the neck of Democratic leaders, including Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who snubbed him when he was a mere legislator from the Lincoln Square neighborhood back in the early 1990s.

But that attitude of wanting to let the legislators know who the “boss” truly was created the tensions that rose to outright hatred so that when Blagojevich encountered his legal problems, his alleged allies were more than eager to go along with the notion of impeachment.

I COULD ENVISION Rauner becoming so overbearing that the political people in Springfield will look for excuses to turn on him.

Heaven forbid he should ever do anything in coming years that actually attracts the attention of federal prosecutors. Because he could create a mess of people eager to believe the worst – which is actually the last thing we need in Chicago and Illinois.

Rauner needs to be reminded that as governor, he is head of the executive branch of government – which is equal to the legislative and judicial branches. It’s not like he’s the mayor of Chicago who can get away with such strong-arm tactics. The opposition will speak up.

Being governor is nice and has influence, but it doesn’t make him the king. We all know that only Mel Brooks as Louis XVI is the King, and it’s good for him.

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Will Obama library/museum wind up like ’16 summer Olympic games?

We’re in a brand-new year. A fresh start for everything, or so they say.


But for some things, we’re just going to continue on with the old trends.

TAKE THE PROPOSED presidential library and museum that will someday be built to pay tribute to the legacy of President Barack Obama. Word came out this week that the facility may well wind up being built in New York City, rather than at either of the two sites proposed for the South or West sides of Chicago.

News reports indicated that the foundation created by Obama to pick a site, then develop it into an actual facility, has problems with the West Side locations preferred by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

They’re concerned about upcoming changes in university administration and whether the new officials will remain as committed to the project as the current ones. There’s also the fact that as a state university, any funding it provided for a library would be subject to the whims and financial problems faced by the state.

Could a future Republican administration decide it wants to play politics with Obama’s image by cutting off such a library? Petty politicking is always a real possibility.

THERE ALSO ARE the proposals for three sites on the South Side near the University of Chicago, which as it turns out are parcels of land not actually owned by the university.

The Chicago Park District owns the plots of land, and the Chicago Sun-Times reported foundation officials wonder if the university has any right to provide land they don’t actually own.

City officials backing the South Side sites believe they can offer the park district other plots of land in an exchange. But those people who back the park district often get finicky when it comes to alternate use of their land.

Just look at the stink that has developed over the possible building on the lakefront of a new museum connected to filmmaker George Lucas. That battle is in the courts, and I don’t doubt the park activist types would have no problem in adding an Obama museum to their list of gripes.

IT WAS INTERESTING to learn from Crain’s Chicago Business that city officials working for Mayor Rahm Emanuel are now scrambling to try to alter the South Side proposals to increase the chances that the foundation picks it over the desire of Columbia University officials to have the Obama library on their home turf.

Which I’m sure is going to provoke some speculation that a backroom deal is being concocted by the White House and City Hall. You just know the ideologues will have fun playing with that mental image. Particularly since the Emanuel image would take a serious hit amongst the voters inclined to back his pending re-election bid if he can't deliver an Obama library/museum.

Although when I learned of the possibility that Obama’s Chicago ties (he lived his adult life here and wife Michelle is a South Shore neighborhood native) might not be enough to ensure a presidential library gets built in our city, I couldn’t help but remember the mess that became of the efforts to persuade the International Olympic Committee to locate the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Chicago.

In retrospect, it appears the committee had every intention of locating the games south of the equator, ultimately putting them in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Chicago’s best chance to get the games someday was to use the experience as a learning lesson for a future bid.

BUT I RECALL how everyone was convinced Chicago was the place. It was going to be the crowning glory of Richard M. Daley’s mayoral stint, and there was the possibility of Obama himself being able to visit events played in a temporary stadium to be erected in Washington Park – which isn’t that far of a walk from his Hyde Park neighborhood home that now sits so empty.

I also recall the shock that was felt on the day the site for 2016 was chosen, when Chicago literally became the first site knocked out of contention instead of being the last one standing.

The future Chicago South Side of some peoples’ dreams would have had memories of the Olympics being played here, and of the Obama legacy living on here.

Are we going to have to settle for no games AND the local legacy consisting of memories of how back when he was a nobody like the rest of us, Obama used to enjoy breakfast at the Valois restaurant on 53^rd Street?

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Were Cubs minor leaguers better than Louisiana pol at IDing racial tension?

One of the stories making national news these days involves Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who some 12 years ago when he was a mere state legislator gave a speech to a conference of people interested in organizing themselves for political purposes.

At least that’s the way Scalise, who is about to become the majority whip in the House of Representatives, tries to tell the story. He didn’t know that the group – European-American Unity and Rights Organization – was affiliated with one-time Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist politician David Duke.

DUKE, OF COURSE, downplays the racial hang-ups his group’s members have, claiming they’re merely using their right to express their views and organize themselves for future electoral power.

But what caught my attention in the reports coming from the Washington Post and New Orleans Times-Picayune, which appear to be inspired by a report in the New Orleans alternative weekly paper The Gambit, was the fact that a baseball club took the situation seriously enough to back off of the conference.

That ball club was the Iowa Cubs, the Des Moines-based outfit that is the Chicago Cubs top minor league affiliate.

It seems the Iowa Cubs were in New Orleans the same weekend as the conference in 2002 to play a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs, and in fact were supposed to stay in the same hotel where the event was held.

THE IOWA CUBS at the time had six African-Americans among their 30 ballplayers and coaches who travel with the team, and Cubs management thought there was enough potential for an incident that they didn’t want their team subjected to being in contact with so many EURO (that’s what they call themselves) members.

“We would just as soon stay away from a group that will create controversy,” team general manager Sam Bernabe said to The Gambit back then. The Zephyrs, who according to Pacific Coast League rules cover the costs of teams traveling to New Orleans to play their team, found another hotel.

There wound up being no confrontation between racially-motivated ideologues and future Cubs ballplayers.

But what does it say that a minor league baseball team knew more about the group that Scalise was to speak to, than Scalise did himself?

FOR THE EXPLANATION that Scalise has given in recent days to the Post and Picayune news reports is that he was poorly staffed at that point in his service in the Louisiana Legislature and didn’t know what the EURO group was about,

He says now he never would have spoken to the group if he had comprehended what they stood for or that Duke (who served one term in that state Legislature and has tried unsuccessfully running for governor and president) was connected to them.

But the Washington Post reported that Scalise was invited to the conference by long-time associates of Duke, and quoted people who say that Scalise should have realized there was a connection – unless he’s truly clueless about the Louisiana political scene.

Although I also realize that the reason all of this is coming out now is because there are those people who want to have the new Republican-run Congress (both chambers) tainted with all kinds of unseemly allegations.

BURY THEM IN muck, and maybe some of it will stick and bolster the political opposition’s chances of making the GOP domination of Congress a mere two-year run. I’m not ignoring the self-serving reasons for this tawdry story coming out now.

But still, it appears that the Iowa Cubs management was more capable than Scalise of identifying a potentially ugly situation and avoiding it. Which makes me wonder how much the people of Louisiana are suffering from his apparent lack of a political IQ?

Perhaps Iowa Cubs management should be in charge of coping with racial tensions, instead of training future ballplayers? Since based on the performance of the major league Cubs in recent years, they haven’t exactly succeeded at the latter!

Although I suspect Scalise would be just as inept as Cubs management at running a ball club.

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EXTRA: Weren’t ’14 Chicago Bears merely typical of local sports scene?

It was everybody’s good laugh this week. Virginia McCaskey, the matriarch of the Chicago Bears (and daughter of team founder George Halas) is “pissed off” (or so says team management) at the Bears’ performance this season – which came to an end Sunday with a 5-11 record and no playoff performance.

Now I’m not any kind of a football fan (I’m eagerly counting down the 90-plus days to the beginning of baseball season, plus the month until the Caribbean Series). But it just doesn’t seem like this season’s awfulness was particularly awful.

PERHAPS IT’S BECAUSE I’m old enough to remember the years of the 1970s following players such as Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers – seasons in which playoff appearances were rare, that 2014 doesn’t strike me as being unusual. In fact, that decade was just truly awful for all the Chicago ball clubs, regardless of what sport they played.

Watching a youthful Walter Payton become the football equivalent of Ernie Banks and Luke Appling (Hall of Fame baseball players who were surrounded by losing Chicago squads back in the 1950s and 1930s, respectively) was what the Bears were usually about.

Let’s be honest. Michael Jordan was the basketball equivalent in the 1980s. Does anyone remember how bad the Bulls were prior to those two streaks of three 1990s championships in a row?

So to learn that McCaskey is displeased with the Bears? You’d think she’d be used to it by now. Because 1985 and that Super Bowl victory over New England was truly a team oxymoron.

I FIND IT interesting that one-time Bears quarterback and San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh finds the prospect of coaching Michigan in the Big 10 to be more intriguing than being with the Bears.

Take into account her other statement from Monday when the firings of the Bears general manager and coach were announced – that she had been alive for eight of the nine NFL championships won by the Bears during their 95 years of existence (including the season they were based in Decatur, Ill.).

But eight of those championships came prior to the creation of the Super Bowl – which itself will be 49 years old. Making them seem about as relevant as the fact that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series back in ’07 and ’08. And I don’t mean 20--!

So what should we make of McCaskey’s feelings? Perhaps she will succeed in finding competent team management that can bring another championship team to Soldier Field in the near future. At the very least, she gave us a chuckle.

ALTHOUGH I THINK the real outburst will come down from the heavens in the form of Halas’ spirit. He, of course, who once said, “We’ve run out of time outs. Go in there and get hurt.”

Somehow, I feel Bears fans would be in complete agreement these days.

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