EXTRA: Castillo first Chicago ballplayer suspended for steroid usage

The Baltimore Orioles being in Chicago this week to play a series against the White Sox was supposed to be significant for the fact it would give local fans a chance to see Orioles star Manny Machado. He's the infielder who supposedly wants to be traded, and whom Cubs fans are convinced is eager to play on the North Side.

Apologetic for his 'steroid' usage

Yet these four games may be most significant (Machado only got one hit in 11 at-bats the first three games) because of the White Sox' catcher -- Welington Castillo. He's a Dominican ballplayer who on Thursday got hit with an 80-game suspension (that's half the 2018 season) for drug use.

SPECIFICALLY, FOR USE of Erythropoletin, a substance considered to be performance-enhancing, and thereby banned by Major League Baseball.

So for all the jokes about Sammy Sosa and his 600-plus home runs being tainted by steroids, Castillo will go in the books as the first ballplayer for a Chicago team who got a suspension for steroid use. Although I believe he's the fourth ballplayer overall to get hit with such a suspension during 2018 -- most prominently Robinson Cano, the one-time New York Yankee star who now is lost to the Seattle Mariners for half the season.

Castillo actually was signed just this year by the White Sox to be the catcher. The guys on minor league affiliates who are thought to be the long-term answer to the catching position aren't considered quite ready yet.

So Welington, who last year was a catcher for the Dominican Republic national team that partook in the World Baseball Classic, was not a long-term solution. His contract runs through 2019, with an option for 2020 that I seriously doubt will be picked up.

AND WHILE THE White Sox catching needs for this season will be uncertain, I doubt they will be any worse than they were with Castillo on hand. Six home runs so far this season, along with a .267 batting average, isn't the markings of a future champion.

Steroid suspect, even though never suspended

If anything, they're part of the reason why the White Sox have such an awful record -- even though they play in a weak division (the American League central).

Before any Cubs fans start gloating too loudly, keep in mind that Castillo originally was signed into professional baseball by those baby blue bears. Overall, he's just as much a Cub as any other team.

And now, his half-season suspension will likely be what his nine-year career in Major League baseball will be remembered for.

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Will ‘da Judge’ buy “Fast Eddie” claim his witnesses are too old to remember?

I understand that Edward R. Vrdolyak has no desire to go to prison.

VRDOLYAK: Trying to get charges dismissed

The one-time Cook County Democratic chairman and City Council member who led the vocal opposition to then-Mayor Harold Washington has already done one stint as a “guest” of the government, and sure doesn’t want to go back there ever again.

BUT I FIND myself intrigued by the line of defense that Vrdolyak is trying to put up for himself.

Vrdolyak spent the bulk of 2011 in a federal prison work camp in Terre Haute, Ind., following his conviction on charges related to real estate transactions in the Gold Coast neighborhood.

Two years ago, he was hit with another round of indictments – for his involvement in the settlement of a national lawsuit against the tobacco industry back in the 1990s. It resulted in a $9.2 billion payout by “Big Tobacco,” and Vrdolyak managed to enrich himself significantly.

So much so that federal prosecutors say he did too well, to the point of being criminal. They use the word “unauthorized” to describe it.

BUT VRDOLYAK CONTENDS he didn’t do anything illegal, and in fact had the blessing of political people (including then-Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan) for his conduct.

WASHINGTON: Eddie's legacy exceed Harold

He’s trying to get a judge to dismiss the charges, with his own attorneys filing motions claiming that the people who could testify under oath that Vrdolyak’s legal activities were truly legitimate aren’t capable of doing so.

They point out one person who was fully aware of Vrdolyak is now dead, while another suffers from severe dementia. A third would be Jim Ryan himself, although the one-time Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate suffers from his own ailments that would make it impossible for him to be called upon to testify.

All this may be true. But I will be amazed if any judge out there would be inclined to dismiss the case on these grounds.

BECAUSE IT WOULD truly create a circumstance where someone could escape the legal system and “justice” because of the passage of time.

RYAN: Could Jim 'clear' Vrdolyak?

And when it comes to Vrdolyak, I’m sure the kind of people most eager to see him obtain another criminal conviction and prison term (one most likely long enough that the 80-year-old would die in prison) will not want to allow for any reason to come up that would let him escape justice.

For the politico known as “Fast Eddie” is the man who will forevermore be remembered for the way he openly led a resistance to Washington’s election in 1983 as the city’s first black mayor.

That was something some people would want forevermore celebrated. The fact that Vrdolyak was able to tie up in knots just about everything Washington tried to accomplish during the first few years of his mayoral term is something they will forevermore be bitter about.

TO THEM, THE only true justice will be if Vrdolyak gains as his political legacy a record of recidivism. To become one of the few people in Chicago political people who wind up with multiple convictions and prison terms would be the only true justice to those individuals.

Seriously, most people with political corruption convictions wind up withering away into nothingness. It would be Vrdolyak and someone like one-time alderman Ambrosio Medrano who would have records of returns to prison.

MEDRANO: In Vrdolyak's league?

But a part of me can’t help but wonder if Vrdolyak’s attorneys have a point about the 20-year delay between the actions and the bringing of an indictment “dramatically, and even fatally hindering (Vrdolyak) from establishing that fact to the jury.”

All of which makes me think no matter how a judge ultimately rules, this is going to be a criminal case that will leave some people seriously p-o’ed about its outcome and complaining for life about the lack of justice.

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What did police academy protesters accomplish with their screams?

I couldn’t help but be amused, yet also a bit embarrassed, by the reports of a City Council committee on Tuesday giving its support towards construction of a new policy academy facility in West Garfield Park.

Police Dept. would like to have new academy facility

The council’s Budget Committee heard from a raucous batch of protesters, many of whom were of the mentality that anything done on behalf of the Police Department was a waste of time and funds.

THE MORE HIGH-minded of them talked of how the measures being used to raise money for a training center, that also would be used by the Fire Department, would be better put to use to come up with more money for mental health and public education programs.

While others just talked of their distaste for the police.

Not that any committee members were swayed by such talk. The Chicago Sun-Times reported how once the protesters were removed from the room where the committee session was being held, the vote was taken and aldermen gave their support for the plan.

Specifically, aldermen backed a measure that would take some $20 million raised from the sale of a fleet maintenance facility on the North Side of Chicago and put it towards the $95 million cost of the training facility for police and fire.

WHICH WHEN COMBINED with the sale of air rights over an existing fire station and the sale of the current police and fire training facilities is expected to produce much of the money needed for the project.

A part of me wonders how many of the aldermanic types who cast votes Tuesday were emboldened in their attitudes against the people who oppose the police academy project.

,

Police dream of this new training facility, ...

Did the raucous behavior wind up strengthening support for the project that some activist-types were trying to say ought to be put somewhere else because they don’t want it in their neighborhood?

Humorous if viewed from the notion that the activists undercut their own argument with their rude behavior. But embarrassing if we view it as politicians being shallow enough to cast a vote out of spite.

ODDLY ENOUGH, THE one argument that didn’t seem to concern many was the notion that the $95 million needed for the new facility isn’t completely covered. The Sun-Times reported that city officials are about $37 million short of covering the tab.

Are people really that convinced city officials are capable of coming up with the cash? City officials say they’ll work with the Chicago Infrastructure Trust to close the funding gap – even though they admit it may involve the city itself having to sell (and repay) bonds to raise the money.

Which would mean taking on some long-term debt.

Not exactly the ideal solution for a city that has other financial problems to address and would prefer to take on as little debt as possible.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T have a problem with the police and fire departments for Chicago taking actions to improve the quality of training they provide to their officers. Such training could result in better-qualified cops and firefighters, thereby improving our public safety.

... replacing the current one on West Side. Images provided by city of Chicago

I’m also skeptical, in general, of people whose argument against something is that they don’t want it built anywhere near themselves. My three-plus decades as a reporter-type person means I have heard it made so many times.

One can always find someone to object to location. If that line of logic were allowed to prevail, nothing would ever get done with regards to any issue or project. In short, Chicago would go nowhere. That isn’t what anybody ought to desire.

But I don’t doubt that the people who got escorted out of a council committee hearing on Tuesday just before approval was given are going to feel particularly spurned. Which also is likely to make their future arguments against the project all the more intense and angry.

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Fixing up the governor’s mansion; that’s Rauner’s one kept promise

If we’re going to be fair, we have to acknowledge the one accomplishment of Bruce Rauner’s time as Illinois governor – the state completed a necessary rehabilitation project of the Governor’s Mansion, work that was desperately overdue.

The governor's mansion -- old enough Abe Lincoln would remember it

The repairs needed to the structure that dates back to 1855 were so extensive that Rauner and first lady Diana actually had to move out of the official state residence provided for our governor.

FOR THE PAST two years, the Rauners have used the state-owned house that is part of the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield as their official residence. While more spacious (4,000 square feet) than what is essentially an apartment on the top floor of the mansion, it doesn’t quite have the aura of the structure in downtown Springfield located a block from the Statehouse.

Close enough that I remember the sight of then-Gov. Jim Edgar routinely walking to work every morning that he needed to be in the Capitol Building.

Definitely a step up from the livestock barns of the fairgrounds, whose aroma could carry over to the director’s house (built around 1945) if the winds were blowing the right way.

But the governor and first lady got to return to the mansion that had some $15 million spent on upgrades including a new heating and air conditioning system, a new roof (the old one leaked badly) and a new entrance.

RAUNER: Will he get credit for rehab?

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, many of the problems with the aging structure became apparent during the years of Pat Quinn as governor.

Not that I’m saying Quinn & Co. trashed the place.

But like any structure, constant upkeep is necessary to ensure the building doesn’t rot away. During those Quinn years, there often were higher financial priorities that had to be placed ahead of the official mansion.

Particularly since during the Quinn years, state government undertook a very pricey rehabilitation of the Statehouse itself. The structure dating back to 1877 had its own share of problems that needed to be fixed.

QUINN: Will he get blame for condition?

BECAUSE OF THE structure’s age and historic significance, there are certain standards that have to be met. Certain details that must be fulfilled.

Meaning the expense became so high that many people complained. Just think how much more they would have ranted and raged if Quinn had tried to proceed with a mansion upgrade?

Which is why I think Rauner deserves some praise for getting the mansion project done. Particularly since he managed to put together a group of private donors who took an interest in the building’s historic significance and came up with the cash to get the needed work done.

Which became obvious on Monday, as Rauner himself could be seen carrying boxes of personal possessions into the rehabbed mansion.

A PART OF which will include a display of some of the historically significant people who worked there on behalf of the people of Illinois.

No word on how prominent such as display will be about The Rauner Years – which thus far are much more significant for all the things that didn’t happen and the degree to which partisan politics have dominated the way government worked.

The degree to which people will place the blame on Rauner for the inability of things to get done will depend largely on one’s own ideological leanings and whether one wants to “Blame Bruce!” or “Blame Madigan!” for everything that is wrong in Illinois these days.

The official Rauner residence the past two years

Although one has to admit that if fixing up the mansion is Rauner’s one significant achievement as governor, then something is significantly wrong with the way our state operates and the fact that we seem willing to tolerate such lack of activity from the officials doing “the People’s business.”

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How much do celebrity stances, endorsements influence political issues?

I always wonder how much the so-called famous amongst us think we really care about what they think of our “local” issues.

Would the youthful Mick have cared about ERA?

Are they so self-absorbed that they believe we’re going to be swayed by their official pronouncements? Or are there those of us who really will consider taking a stance just because of what an entertainer thinks?

TAKE MICK JAGGER, the aging rocker whose band ripped its name off an old Muddy Waters tune and whose early records included a riff on Chuck Berry with “Around and Around.”

Mick, that aging rocker who still has the big ol’ lips that became the Rolling Stones’ logo, of sorts, wrote a brief letter that his daughter, Elizabeth, distributed through Instagram.

His issue of concern is the Equal Rights Amendment, where there are some political people of Illinois behaving in ways as though the issue is a still-pending one, rather than one whose time expired some 36 years ago.

Mick isn't the first Jagger to try to sway Ill.

For the record, the man whose band gave us the drug-tinged song “Mother’s Little Helper” is for the ERA. In his brief letter, Mick wrote that three of his daughters, including Elizabeth, are U.S. citizens.

“THEY SHOULD ALL deserve equal rights under the Constitution of the United States,” Jagger wrote.

Which struck me as an interesting line of logic in that many of the conservative ideologues who often rant against the ERA acknowledge that same basic concept.

They argue that it is so obvious that women already have equal protection under U.S. law that they don’t want to have to add a constitutional amendment. They go so far as to say it is insulting to women to have to specify they’re equal.

 

Bianca fought for Garcia, who's still alive in '18

 Of course, those ideologues often behave in ways that show their actions are not the same as their thoughts, which is why others believe the ERA – with its simple, declarative statement that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”

JAGGER’S LETTER HAS been brought to the attention of the Illinois House of Representatives, whose members are contemplating the ERA – the same legislative body who back in 1982 failed to approve the measure, and that failure is oft regarded as the death blow for the amendment’s ability to be ratified by three-quarters of the nation’s legislators.

Will Mick Jagger really be able to sway the way our political people think?

Or will his involvement (as minor as it truly is) become the matter that offends ERA critics to the point where their opposition is stepped up to a new intensity.

Will the man who gave us “Paint it Black” or “Sympathy for the Devil” have any impact on the Illinois ERA battle, where state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, said he hopes to have a vote take place before month’s end – which also would be the end of the ’18 spring legislative session?

IT AMUSES ME in part because I remember a moment from a couple of decades ago when one of Jagger’s ex-wives, Bianca, had her own little activist moment in Illinois.

How many Stones fans also wore these pins?

She actually made the journey to the Statehouse in Springfield to try to sway state officials about capital punishment. Specifically, as to the pending execution of Guinevere Garcia – a woman who killed her husband after being released from prison for another crime she was convicted of.

That 1996 execution ultimately was commuted by then-Gov. Jim Edgar, although I remember some people were bothered by the presence of Amnesty International and Bianca Jagger. As though that would have been reason enough to let Garcia die.

Will Mick’s involvement get the anti-ERA types equally riled up? Or are there others star-gazed enough to wish that the soon-to-be 75 Jagger, himself, could make the sojourn to Springfield.

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Do we give a fig about royal wedding?

“If George comes to Chicago, I’ll crack him in the snoot” – William H. Thompson, former Mayor of Chicago

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I’m sure by now, many of you are sick and tired of hearing this line, spouted in the heat of the 1927 election cycle as Thompson ran an anti-British theme throughout his campaign for re-election that year.

Do 'we' really wanna 'read all about it?'

Because the “George” he refers to was then-King George V – as in the grandfather of current Queen Elizabeth II (who having been Queen since 1952 has the kind of lengthy term that American politicos can only fantasize about) and great-great-grandfather to Prince Henry (more commonly called Harry), who on Saturday will have the world’s eyes on him as he marries one-time Northwestern University student Meghan Markle.

THAT LINE FROM Thompson is being used by many people who try to come up with some sort of connection between the English royals and those of us native to the “Second City.”

It also gets used by those of us intending to show our disdain for anything happening in London on Saturday. Some of us feel the need to spew trash talk about how we fought a war against those people to break our ties to the English king.

George III, to be exact.

George V, with his 'snoot' intact

While others will want to get caught up in the pageantry of the spectacle and will think it sad that some people will be “haters” – although whenever I hear the word used like that, I’m reminded of the various delusional, and youthful, women who dated Hugh Hefner during his final years of life.

PERSONALLY, I CAN’T say I feel either way.

“Hate” would definitely be the wrong sentiment, because in order to hate something, you have to care about it. You have to have a legitimate sense of feeling that, in some ways, could border on “love.”

Yet I also have the same feelings of apathy whenever anything involving the English royal family comes up. It just all seems so trivial.

All bluster from 'Big Bill'

At least if we were talking about an American power-play wedding, such as a White House-staged event involving President Donald J. Trump’s younger daughter, Tiffany – we could complain about the gross misuse of tax dollars during the Trump years in D.C.

IF ANYTHING, IT bothers me to bring this up because we then have to recall the 1915-23 and again from 1927-31 mayoral reign of Thompson – the man whose tolerance of Al Capone is the reason why a hood was able to achieve such prominence in Chicago.

Remember that scene from Kevin Costner’s 1987 take on “The Untouchables” when Costner’s Eliot Ness is stopped from arresting Frank Nitti for bringing a pistol into a courthouse – because Nitti produced a note granting him permission to legally have the weapon?

A note signed by none other than “William Hale Thompson” himself. That scene wasn’t exactly fictional – although the follow-up scene where Ness throws Nitti off the roof of City Hall to his death inside an automobile (“He’s in the car” was Ness’ response when asked about Nitti’s whereabouts) was pure fantasy.

Do we really want to be recalling the sentiments of a man who makes the political people of our era seem so meek and mild? One who would make Rod Blagojevich seem like a choirboy by comparison and would probably upset the conservative ideologues because Thompson was a Republican – the last GOPer to date to hold the Chicago mayoral post.

NO WONDER WHY our local voters don’t think much of the one-time Party of Lincoln.

The queen w/ Chicago 'royalty'

But the other “local moments” in our history include the July 6, 1959 visit of Elizabeth, herself, to Chicago – spending 14 hours in our city and even having a meeting with Richard J. Daley himself.

Or that three-day visit Princess Diana made to Chicago in the summer of 1996 – with its profound moment being the formal ball at the Field Museum where some local “gent” managed to cut in and got himself a dance with Diana herself.

Although that, at least, left a memento, as the Drake Hotel suite where she stood is now known as the “Princess Diana Suite” (which TripAdvisor.com puts at $187 per night – if available).

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Obama no longer the ‘community activist’ of old, he IS the establishment

It always manages to amuse me whenever people talk about Barack Obama as some sort of leftist radical who’s out to subvert everything they hold dear about this country.

The image some would like to have of Obama

Largely because Obama himself is so much a part of the establishment of our society – except for those ideologues with intense racial hang-ups who can’t ever accept someone of his ilk as belonging.

SO I CAN’T say I’m surprised by the opposition that has arisen to the development in Jackson Park of an Obama Presidential Center – or the fact that city officials gave the concept their overwhelming approval on Thursday.

I’m sure there are those who think that the Obama of a third of a century ago who arrived in Chicago after an East Coast establishment education (Columbia in New York, and later Harvard Law in Cambridge, Mass.) would have been amongst those who would have challenged what they want to perceive as the destruction of a South Side neighborhood – all for something that “outsiders” would come to visit.

Although I’d say anybody who had the type of education Obama had probably would have been amongst those leading the project’s development – in hopes that all those outsiders/tourists would give the neighborhood surrounding the park a jolt.

Regardless, the Chicago Plan Commission on Thursday gave its support to the idea of a facility paying tribute to the eight years that Barack answered to the title of “Mr. President.”

NOT THAT THIS resolves anything. It’s merely a “first step,” The city’s zoning board will still have to review the technical issues of whether such a facility can be permitted at that specific site on park land.

The full City Council also will have to take a vote on whether to approve an agreement by which the Obama Center would lease the land from the city. There’s also the fact that federal officials will have a say because the Jackson Park site is of significance as it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The way 'others' want to think

What with the fact the World’s Fair of 1893 – an official celebration of the 400^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas and an unofficial event celebrating the city’s full recovery from the great fire of 1871 – having been held there.

Technically, one could argue that Obama, with his plans to erect buildings with a museum and library, is defacing a historic site.

BUT NONE OF that seemed to interest the officials who gave their approval. They may not have the lengthiest timespan for appreciating history, or maybe they think the election of Obama as the nation’s first non-white official to become U.S. president is a historic-enough event to want to pay tribute to.

Anyway, it puts Chicago city officials as being on the record for wanting this project here – even though I don’t doubt there are some people who oppose the idea because they’d rather have nothing built that pays tribute to Obama.

They’re the kind who are inclined to believe in this Age of Trump that we ought to erase all traces that the nearby Hyde Park neighborhood ever produced someone who rose to the level of the Oval Office.

While others are just close-minded enough and have grown used to having nothing of any significance in their home neighborhood. Of course, they’ll also complain about the fact that no one invests in their neighborhood, but it seems they’d rather complain instead of trying to do something to change.

THEY, I SUSPECT, were the ones who gathered at City Hall hours before the Plan Commission hearing began so they could hold simultaneous pickets, both for and against the idea of an Obama Center.

The presidential center, as envisioned by the Obama Foundation

They also were the ones who spent several hours during Thursday’s hearing making their objections known, and probably thinking they were disrespected by the commission – which likely had its mind made up even before the hearing.

So now we take baby steps toward development of the 19-acre site, which supposedly will have an eight-story museum tower, a forum building with auditorium and a third building that will be used, in part, as a Chicago Public Library branch.

What’s most ironic about all this fuss is that this WON’T actually be where the documents recording the Obama Administration will be stored. Those will be kept elsewhere, at a facility that most likely will rival the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Grand Rapids, Mich., as having the lowest levels of public interest.

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